Haddie needs love
I've found a video that summarizes things that have gone badly with Haddie, and possible solutions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMkKar0im7kIt is still not too late to correct this. You've shown us that you care about the LGBT representation by presenting us with David's touching lore, and direction. As well as by promoting the Into the Rainbow events, and giving us representative charms.
I would love to see Haddie, a representative of Indian culture, to get care and attention. She has SO much potential, in cosmetics and otherwise, you just have to not be oblivious to it.
If you show the community that the money isn't all you care about, and that you do care about representation and variety of characters, it will go long way.
Comments
They have shown money isn't the only thing they care about with focus on things you mentioned which isn't where the money is. Making a character gay, or in Haddie's case making a generic, uninteresting character (in my opinion) isn't going to bring the masses in willing to throw money at the game. Honestly what more do you want from them? Not every character design is going to be received well. You learn from that and move on to better ideas that will produce a better response. I don't know what they can do with Haddie at this point to generate more interest in her. Another outfit or even 10 new outfits for her won't suddenly make her one of the top 5 most played survivors. The character itself is where the failure is. They can focus on representation within the game, which they have, but they also have to focus on keeping the game profitable which means creating content that will produce a lot of sales. If characters like Haddie don't do that then it isn't reasonable to expect them to focus on parts of the game that most people simply aren't interested in. They should focus on making the next Feng, the next Yui, the next Kate, etc.
I already said in my first reply. In my opinion, Haddie is generic and uninteresting. Nothing really stands out with her. She's just a forgettable NPC. I honestly forget she's even in the game because I never see her in lobbies. You know who I do see in lobbies all the time? Feng, Yui, Kate etc.
Do you honestly believe a lack of cosmetics is why Haddie isn't super popular and in lobbies all the time? Most of the Kates I've seen lately had her default outfit on. Things like this come down to preference of the individual but it sure seems to me the preference of many DBD players leans more towards some characters than others. Making new characters in a game thats been out for awhile is always risky. Sometimes they're received well and sometimes they aren't. All I'm saying is new characters going forward would probably have a better chance of being received better if they're designed based around the ideas of the characters that are received well and played often in the game.
Every purchase I've made in DBD has been based solely on the cosmetic appearance of the outfit or character. I have my personal preferences, and Haddie fits none of them. If you want an example of an Indian character I like and own every outfit, voice line, emote, highlight intro, victory pose and competitive gold weapon of, look at Symmetra from Overwatch. Overwatch characters do have unique playstyles but I also find Symmetra's overall visual design to be interesting and appealing to me. In DBD, no survivor is going to allow me to play differently than the others so the only thing that persuades me to spend money on them is the visual appearance of the character.
If you think Haddie is not generic or uninteresting then good for you. If so, would you care to explain why?
There are us who like/love Haddie. I would play her more if she had more cosmetics (and especially good cosmetics). I don't think Haddie should have been like Kate, Yui or Feng. Haddie is unique both in regards to her race/ethnicity, and her body type. A lot of DBD players can relate to her on that level. Seeing BHVR not caring about Indians and/or women of her body type isn't sending a good message. Also, they are missing out on creating that deeper connection between players who relate to Haddie, and the game/devs.
I love Kate, Yui and Feng, but god do I get tired of seeing them all the time sometimes... I want more Haddies, more Davids, more Adams, more Janes, Élodies, Zarinas, Jeffs, ... Rather than dumping away these characters, the devs could make them more appealing to play. For example, finally make all survivors equally loud, so people don't avoid playing Jane/Jeff for the reason that they are loud . Then, start giving them more cosmetics that are actually good, so they would be more appealing to play. I myself didn't really play Jane or Jeff much until BHVR finally started giving them some cool rift outfits. Getting those outfits made me actually want to play them. I am a kind of person that plays every survivor, and changes their cosmetics often. If I can't do that with someone, I don't really feel like playing them most of the time.
What a boring game DBD will become, if BHVR starts giving (good) cosmetics to only hot (by popular opinion) females, and other survivors suffer lack of them. Every lobby will be just females of the same body features. Even now it's often like that. It's so f-ing boring and bland. I want variety. Give me interesting lobbies, various characters, male, female, other genders, slim people, people with bigger boddies, hairy, etc. Variety is awesome. Not lobbies full of clones of females that are "beatiful by the popular standards" smh.
P.S. Dear BHVR, give us guys with body hair, give us a granny survivor <3
To sum a lot of it up simply, she's unrelatable to most people for a few different reasons. That's putting it nicely.
I actually disagree with the lack of cosmetics thing, there are many other survivors with worse/less cosmetics. Good cosmetics definitely play a large part in what people play but she is far, far from the bottom compared to others. There's other survivors much more neglected than her.
It would be boring to you, but it would appeal to the majority. I think its pretty lame and unfair to say they don't care about Indians and women of her body type because they aren't focusing on making her new cosmetics right now. They didn't have to make Haddie to begin with, so why are you here saying they don't care? DBD has to stay profitable for it to stay online and for them to invest more time and money into it. Its not that they don't care about Indians and people who look like Haddie. Its the fact that the consumers didn't respond well to her. You want them to keep producing content that doesn't appeal to a large enough crowd to make it worth producing to begin with. At this point it would've been better had they not made Haddie at all just to avoid the constant complaining from the small amount of players who do play her. You gotta look at this from a marketing perspective instead of a personal one to understand why things shift more in certain directions than others. Haddie is not as marketable as Feng and other characters. Sorry that is just the truth. They're not going to hard focus on her just because you think they don't care about Indian women representation in their game which again was really wrong in you to say. You can demand more representation all you want but if it isn't marketable don't expect them to focus on this more than what is actually producing a good return in their time and work investments.
The lore of the characters would be more relevant if the game had a story mode or something that made the lore have more substantive value. I'm pretty sure most sales within the game are based entirely on the appearance of the outfit and character themselves rather than the lore pertaining to them. For licensed characters however that is a different story. I'm a huge Resident Evil fan so when they introduced an RE chapter I didn't hesitate to buy it for myself and even gifted the chapter to my friends who played at the time. The characters themselves look very cool, but they are also very rich in lore and have a long established fan base. When you're designing a new original character that doesn't have those things you have to consider what people are more willing to respond to in a positive way if you want them to be and continue to be marketable.
First of all, she needs to improve her useless perks in order to buy her and even more so to play