DBD's Monetization is Terrible, BTW
Dead by Daylight's business model has always rubbed me the wrong way, regardless of how much I enjoy the game. Though, among the sea of terrible monetization models in modern day gaming DBD can seem pretty innocuous or inoffensive, I think it's pretty bad and unfair overall and should be changed.
Double-Triple-Quadruple Dipping
BHVR for some reason... felt it was necessary to monetize the game in multiple different fashions. For starters, the game has a $20 paywall. On its own, this would be alright. Though I personally think the paywall is holding the game back from growing infinitely more, a one-time pay for full access would be pretty good. However, DBD also has an indefinite character DLC cycle, which also accompanies a $7-12 additional price per DLC, and with about 4 per year, that's essentially buying 2 extra copies of DBD per year if you want to try all of the up-to-date content. For some reason, the game doesn't allow you to test these new perks or characters in a custom game mode so that you can even make informed decisions on what you would like to purchase.
Furthermore, Dead by Daylight also has purchasable skins of varying rarities and costs-- akin to many live service games of the current era, with the most desirable and expansive collection of skins being of the higher rarities, costing around $10-15 worth of equivalent in game currency to obtain. However, the majority of game services that use this monetization style are also free to play. Dead by Daylight is not free to play, as so each skin someone would actually want would be worth half the cost of the actual game. Additionally, DBD's skins are not entirely customizable or truly high effort to warrant such a steep cost, with many skins being needlessly locked to sets and an uncomfortable amount of skins being recolors, instead of allowing players to simply choose their own colors.
Lastly, Dead by Daylight jumped on the trend a few years back by adding a battle pass. The "Rift Pass" in this game is about on par with other games' $10 worth of in-game currency to obtain the majority of the rewards. However, even here DBD's version is still lacking. Much of the Rift Pass is filled with the largely panned and quite honestly low effort basically invisible charms that are cheaply tacked on to the back of survivors' waists, or stapled on hooks for killers. Until recently, the free route was basically mostly empty aside from a recolor of a mid-tier skin and the charms here and there. The battle pass also preys on FOMO, which is quite a cheap business tactic, as it essentially forces those who did purchase the battle pass to continue grinding away and the slow challenges to continue playing the game, and furthermore subtly manipulates some players into an additional purchase for a skin you may desire that not feature in the battle pass.
For the amount of ######### Overwatch (2) is getting for its monetization, even that game does better than DBD on more important fronts here. The game is:
- free to play
- free post-launch characters
- less battle pass bloat
- easier, less RNG/annoying battle pass progression
And for such steep costs for everything in DBD, the gameplay cycle is extremely repetitive and rigid in comparison, as DBD is just one standard game mode. I'd understand charging more if the amount of content reflected the price tags everywhere, but it simply doesn't. For example, Warframe has a lot more diverse content options for players, and the game is free to play, only charging for customization, with most skins costing around $10. Even looking at a more egregious pricing example, take a look at Final Fantasy XIV. Though the price of entry is much steeper at $50, the game offers a very long, technically indefinite trial period, allowing players to play for absolutely free up through the first expansion of the game, and with mostly unrestricted classes and job available for players during this time. That's hundreds of hours worth of free content. While the DLCs are also equivalent in price to the base game and a subscription is required to play for standard players, essentially everything else is earnable without paying extra and the game offers thousands of hours worth of extremely polish content in return for the steep price.
There's lots of room for improvement for DBD here...
The Pay-To-Win Discussion
What also doesn't help is that DBD is actually pretty pay-to-win.
There! I said it! I said it, and I'm tired of pretending that it's not.
While """""""technically""""""" DBD's strongest killer is available for free-- The Nurse-- and players can get by completely fine by increasing their skill and only using the base game's perks, many of Dead by Daylight's strongest perks are locked behind a paywall. Only 6/20 of the best survivor perks are available without purchasing the DLC, and merely 3/20 of the best killer perks are available without DLC. Even then, if players only used the one strong build they could put together without any DLC, the game would feel incredibly stale and unrewarding.
Also not everyone plays killer. This point was mentioned recently and I don't get why no one thought about that.
_
Okay that's my post.
In short, Dead by Daylight shouldn't be doubling down on paths to monetization for every aspect of content in the game, and locking strong and band-aid perks to big problems the game has behind a paywall is a terrible decision for the players.
I dunno how to end the post, bye bye! :)
Comments
One of the only things I don't like is them putting every new skin on purple rarity when they are not even that detailed, an example would be the hooked on you cosmetics, they are really pretty but also basic, they should be green rarity at Max
Did you even read the post. It's like half the people just saw "Overwatch" and "better" in the same sentence and turned their brains off, not even trying to look for contextual reasoning. I didn't say it was better overall, but they do some things better than DBD certainly, and to deny it just feels disingenuous.
The entire purpose of the comparison was to note that even those at the bottom line are doing better in certain aspects.
See: Warframe.
Last time DBD was "free" on PS was in 2018. And that was with a yearly $60 payment for a limited window of time. Stop calling subscriptions with additional side content "extra free stuff."