Dev Blog Discussing 10/02/23 - Eruption Nerf, AMN Buff, Red Forest Beautify, Map Repeat Prevention
It’s about that time for another Developer Update, the series of posts where we discuss upcoming changes making their way to Dead by Daylight. This time, we’ll go through some notable changes happening in the next update alongside a brand-new Chapter and beyond!
Red Forest Visual Update
Over the past few years, various realms have gradually received facelifts. This process- which we named The Realm Beyond- has us revisit older maps and bring their visuals up to modern standards. We’ve already updated the majority of maps, and today, we turn our focus to the classic Red Forest.
Home to both The Huntress and The Plague, the Red Forest debuted nearly six years ago. This visual update maintains the iconic rainy climate of the original maps as well as the small details and nods to their respective Killers’ lore.
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, so rather than having you read a few thousand words, take a look at these previews!
Map Repeat Prevention
Speaking of maps, many of you can probably single out a favourite; a map that you’re always excited to see. But with so many maps to choose from, you probably don’t want to play the same map several times in a row even if it happens to be your favourite. Variety is the spice of life, and variety in Dead by Daylight is no exception.
No longer will you need to resort to map Offerings in a plea to The Entity to stop sending you to Fractured Cowshed: Map Repeat Prevention is here!
This new feature eliminates the possibility of playing the same map twice so long as a map Offering is not used. The same goes for any other players in your trial: If each person played a different map in their last match, none of those maps will be chosen. Furthermore, the chance for these maps to be chosen will also be reduced for the next few matches, steadily returning to their usual odds.
We hope you enjoy seeing a wider variety of maps as you play!
Bot Loadouts & Improvements
We recently introduced Survivor bots to custom matches, allowing you and your friends to fill the remaining spots with robot allies, or just practice a new Killer against an entire lobby of bots. We were thrilled to see such an enthusiastic response to this feature from the community. Since then, we’ve been working hard on improvements to the Survivor bots and their AI, and as such, you’ll notice a few changes in the next update.
First, we’ve added the ability to customize a Survivor bot’s loadout. Once you’ve added a bot to the lobby, simply click their name and you’ll find a new edit button. Here, you can customize the bot’s Perks, Item, Offering, and even which Survivor you’d like them to be. We’ve also taught the bots to use most –but not all– of the perks, so go wild and test out various combinations!
Second, we’ve made a large number of improvements to the Survivor AI. Some of these improvements are smaller than others, but here are just some of the more noteworthy tweaks:
- Improved navigation in some areas, preventing bots from getting stuck in some places or attempting to loop something that they shouldn’t.
- Bots are now more bold when it comes to unhooking their fellow Survivors. Though they prefer to go for the save when it’s safe, they will now attempt an unsafe rescue as a last resort.
- Bots will now actively attempt to seek out Totems when using Totem hunting perks such as Small Game or Counterforce.
- Bots will now react to some audio queues (e.g. The Wraith’s bell). Previously, they would only respond to the Terror Radius.
- Bots have learned to better respond to certain Killer powers. For example, they will now crouch near The Hag’s Traps and disarm Bear Traps.
- Bots will now attempt to break line of sights in a loop while a ranged Killer is aiming at them.
- And many, many more!
Bots are by no means meant to replace a real person, but we hope these improvements will make them a slightly more realistic practice buddy.
Perk Changes
Although we typically save perk changes for our Mid-Chapter Updates, we had a little room in this Chapter to squeeze in a few perk tweaks. We are in the midst of planning another package of perk changes for the next major update.
Eruption
Eruption has been a hot topic as of late, and for good reason. This perk was updated in our meta shake up last year and has steadily grown in usage ever since. These days, it has solidified its spot in the new meta.
Many of you have raised concerns surrounding how the perk disproportionally affects solo players. Since solo players cannot warn their teammates when they are about to go down, their teammates cannot stop working on the generator to avoid the Incapacitated effect. This made Eruption very powerful: Not only would it immediately lose 10% of its progress, but it would continue to regress until the Incapacitated effect wore off.
This made Eruption a very clear choice for any loadout, not only regressing generators, but also preventing further repairs from being done. To bring Eruption more in line with other generator perks, we have made a few changes.
First, Eruption will now cause the generator to lose 10% of its current progress, not total. This means the effect will be less severe on generators with less progress, but more impactful on generators that are nearly completed.
Second, Eruption will no longer apply the Incapacitated effect to Survivors who were repairing the generator when it exploded. Instead, Survivors who are actively working on the generator will scream and reveal their aura to the Killer for 10 seconds. Not only will this make the perk less frustrating for solo players, but it will also give the Killer crucial information on the other Survivors’ whereabouts so they can attempt to interrupt them.
We hope you’ll find this new version of Eruption to be much more comparable to other generator related perks!
Any Means Necessary
This perk makes it possible for a Survivor to pick up a dropped pallet, allowing it to be used again later in the match. Back when this perk launched, many people (us included!) were worried that it may be too powerful, so it had a fairly long cooldown. Over time, it became clear that the biggest obstacle to using this perk was not in the fact the cooldown, but rather finding a pallet that had not yet been destroyed. Since the perk requires a fairly lengthy interaction and can be interrupted by the Killer, Any Means Necessary cannot be used aggressively.
To give this perk a slight boost, we have removed its cooldown entirely. Survivors running this perk can now reset a dropped –yet unbroken– pallet whenever they have the chance! Killers will want to keep an eye out for pallets mysteriously resetting and be extra vigilant when it comes to breaking them.
While Chapter releases like this one tend not to come with many balance changes, you can expect a larger package of perk changes in the following Mid-Chapter.
New Outfit Plans
In recent weeks we have noted a passionate conversation amongst the community in regard to who in the game is, and is not, getting cosmetics.
Over the years, the roster has grown to an astonishing count of 64. With such a wide variety, producing new Outfits for each of them has become a tall task. Each new cosmetic takes a good amount of time and careful planning to bring to life, and there’s only so much time in between updates. We have to be very conscious about the Outfits we release, balancing both character and style variety, but also content which we know players will love.
This can result in some characters receiving a new Outfit less frequently that we, or you, would like. We try our best to include a vast array of Survivors and Killers so everyone can find one that resonates with them, and it can be upsetting when it feels like that character was forgotten. That feeling is mutual; we love everyone who has been brought into the Fog and want the best for each of them.
But there’s good news on this front which we wanted to share today! We have recently expanded our production capacity to increase the number of cosmetics we can produce for each update, and you should start seeing the results over the coming months. With this, we hope to increase both the quantity and variety of Outfits we release without sacrificing quality.
To illustrate with an example, here’s a look at how we’re planning content around one beloved Survivor, Haddie Kaur, in the upcoming releases:
While the example above will not always be possible across all Killers and Survivors, it’s the type of release scope we’d like to see for the whole cast, especially newer ones who have joined the Fog.
We are all looking forward to this increased output capacity in our Outfits, and will be happy to share more as we progress.
An Update on Cheating
Wrapping things up, we have a quick update to our ongoing plan to combat cheating. Not only have we continued to detect and patch out various cheats since our last update, but we’ve also expanded our team! We’ve recently welcomed a new Team Lead to our growing security team who will help coordinate our efforts moving forward.
And with that, we’ve once again reached the end of the Developer Update. Most of the changes we’ve talked about today will be available to try during the Public Test Build starting next week. As always, we’ll be keeping a watchful eye out for your feedback once you’ve had a chance to try them out!
Until next time…
The Dead by Daylight team
Comments
No and that's why.
The ONLY problem eruption had was the inability to do anything - that's just not engaging nor fun. No one was complaining about the damage eruption did. This is a SIGNIFICANT nerf to gen control with this change, and imho, an overnerf. Here's why. With this nerf, it's gen control potential got nerfed TWICE. It's losing preventing 30 SECONDS of repair time. That's a HUGE nerf already That's a loss of 33% repair time PER survivor. On TOP of that, now it loses 10% of it's current progress. That means if the gen is at 50%, it's doing a mere 5%...and that's on a perk that not only has a cooldown, but also require the killer to spend time to stop and manually kick the generator. That is a MASSIVE nerf making this a practically useless perk for gen regression and instead moves it to an info perk.
I'll say again, though, no one had a problem with the damage the perk does. It already did minor damage, and it required kicks. That's a lot to pay for just to get a small 10% reduction. Now it will ALWAYS be less than how it was pre-nerf. I agree the survivor disabling effect should have gone away, but you shouldn't have double dipped and also removed it's regression potential. That is a 33% potential nerf (depending if a survivor got hit with the effect), and a guaranteed loss of regression swapping it to CURRENT progress. This is an absolutely terrible balance pass on this perk. Revert CURRENT progress to a flat 10%.
I feel yall nerfed Eruption way too hard. Yes, it needed a change/nerf but making it 10% of the current is dumb and the aura reading is a neat idea but I feel it is completely useless. I just don't see the benefit of being about to see survivors for 10s when I downed someone on the other side of the map. By the time I hook the downed survivor and get to the gen they working on they most likely either finished it or ran to another part of the map. I just don't see how that benefits an m1 killer(who was the most who runs Eruption). You could say it be good for high-mobile killers like nurse or blight or for sniping as a huntress but those killers really need to kick gens. As huntress you really don't have time to kick gens, usually, that time is better-used reloading. As for nurses and blight since they can down survivors fast, pain res is usually the go-to perk since it rewards you for downing survivors back to back. Overall I think you did what you always do the overused killer perks and nerf it to the ground instead of lowing it down slightly. Eruption now joins the nerf club with Thana, Ruin, Pop, and Overcharge. Congrats BVHR you did it again. You have shown you can't just slightly tune down an OP killer perk to make it fairer and rather just kill it off completely. Meanwhile, the number one survivor perk stays number one even after its rework in 6.1. DH can continue to live as the best survivor perk while killers always lose theirs.
You do realize that this Lunar New Year we've got a cny themed recolor for Prime, a CNY rabbit themed skin in the shop and a tome skin + recolor of said skin.
The only thing BHVR didnt do is make another Feng Min cosplay skin such as a Lady Dimitresque one.
Even if devs aren’t Survivor or Killer sided, they really need to think about how people would react when reading their dev update.
Putting a huge Killer perk nerf and a random Survivor perk buff out of nowhere together is going to give a skewed perspective even if they do have plans for other perks down the road.
If the goal was to start a fire, they definitely know their stuff.
Finally killer-players know that when survivors cry loud enough in the forums, BHVR will hold their hands like holding a babys hand and butcher every single perk worth using in the killer-roaster.
Next Target: Pain Resonance and No Way Out.
Then, finally, every regression perk is dead. Time for speedup the Toolboxes, aye?
Finally killer-players know that when survivors cry loud enough in the forums, BHVR will hold their hands like holding a babys hand and butcher every single perk worth using in the killer-roaster.
hasnt that been the narrative for years now on these forums?
also we are talking about a perk that was pretty much useless against swf anyways..
Doesnt matter. When survivors cry, the devs will stand still a do what they want, because survivors are the majority of the playerbase.
Lets increase Healing-Speeds, Toolboxes and numbers on other perks, shall we? Killers are just a toy for them, right. How about Aurareading where the gens are Basekit like OP-Killers have? Also i think its time to add a 3rd health-state basekit, Killers are too unfair with their tunneling, right?
Well, we know they need this more and more and more, but its unfun for survivors, just make them God-Mode when unhooked for 2mins. This seems fair, right?
Survivors need to have fun to buy our aura cell-only cosmetics, so these bad people who plays killer need to come in line.
Sorry for my words but i am too fcked to think straight. EVERY PATCH killers get nerfed, even this OP-Killer-Patch 6.1.0 contained a lot of Survivor-Buffs while we get a stupid 50% brutal strengh. Cant laugh as loud as Id like to vomit. Honestly, this is such a big fck you every.single.patch.
While usually I'd agree, Calm Spirit only denies info that killers may not even use in the first place. Distortion, on average, would block more info than Calm Spirit, with only a few exceptions.
Don't get me started on Calm Spirit.
I'm happy they're doing something about back to back maps. There's a ton of realms and a bunch of them have multiple maps within the realms, there's more than enough maps to prevent 5 from showing up next round. I hate ending up on the same map multiple matches in a row without a map offering being played. Maps are the one thing that gives a change in scenery when facing same killers and killer/survivor load outs. I'm curious how Badham is going to be treated since there's 5 versions of the same map.
Map rework I'm worried about Trapper with grass. Hopefully there will still be plenty of grass all over the map to hide traps in. Hoping no breakable walls.
I'm glad Eruption was nerfed, although seems bit heavy handed. Incapacitation should never have been part of a perk and hopefully they won't add it to any future perks.
I'm happy Haddie is FINALLY getting a cosmetic. I think it's funny they are making it look like she's getting 4 when 2 were originally for her release but they held them back with one being released in Prime and the other stored away. Then there's the 1 anniversary cosmetic they they're probably making a time limited cosmetic at anniversary time. They increased production but Haddie is only getting 1 new cosmetic, meanwhile Feng just got 2 unique and 2 recolors in the last patch. If they increased production for Haddie to get 1 new cosmetic after a year then how many more are the characters with already abundant cosmetic collections getting?
I also guess since Haddie prime cosmetic is coming to the store this means the other prime cosmetics will also come to the store? If so I'm happy to see that those without prime will finally have access to these cosmetics.
Bot update is cool, hopefully this gets them closer to being put in matches to replace players that DC.
I am really curious how the AMN buff is going to work out. I can see it doing nothing and I can also see getting a stun with a pallet starting the animation the killer waiting for it just to cancel the animation and then start it again just to be cheeky and buy extra time.
Any Means Necessary though? Couldn't that wait until the Mid-Chapter?
You say all this.. but statistics, my games even on killer side as a low-skilled player and streams on all killer-players levels clearly indicate that killers don’t really struggle that much. also killers get buffs while survivors also get nerfed frequently (and yeah I know you will disregard every instance of these anyways).
you seem way too tilted over this and unable to see it from any other side than your own. Maybe it’s time to take a break, and get a view from a different perspective.
I already do, playing Hogwarts. But I dont play S-Tiers, I play the forgotten trash killers which cannot handle such nerfs "as good" as the good ones.
oh, I don’t play S-Tiers as well, and even if (also A-Tiers) not on that high level. Still very much manageable and not as bad or vomit-inducing (if not for actually physical reasons such as motionsickness) as you try to make it out to be.
Cool cool. Map stuff. Bot stuff.
Eruption? Just go ahead remove it. The most unique thing about it just got removed.
Any means? Whoa there, give it some sort of cool down. Even a small one. At least 20 seconds. Right?
Outfits? Didn't outright say, yeah they favored some survivors over the others, but at least it's a step over. Nice.
Honestly, didn't even take a look at that part
I'm pleasantly surprised that they nerfed Eruption. I figured they'd wait until the midchapter, but I'm glad they could see how problematic the perk was and prioritized fixing it asap. Though, I feel like they could've done that multiple updates ago, but whatever, I'm glad I can start playing survivor again and not fear games becomes way longer than they should be because of killers 3 genning from the beginning of the match. Though, the 10% of current progression seems like a bit of an overnerf. Nobody really complained about that part. 9% is only really 9 seconds of progression.
Any Means Necessary buff seems a bit weird to add into this chapter. Not sure why they didn't just wait till the Midchapter, unlike Eruption that was problematic and needing a nerf asap, Any Means Necessary could've definitely waited for a buff.
Map reworks look ok, seems like Mother's Dwelling has lost its blue tint, and become gray? I find Temple and Mothers Dwelling balanced maps, except Mother's Dwelling could need a size reduction, so I hope they make it a bit smaller. Otherwise loops and such on the maps are fair. Only downside is that I doubt we're gonna get a new map, since we're getting graphical reworks. :/ I usually prefer new maps.
Bot load out is gonna be great. I've been a killer main for a while, so I don't really need the practice, but I'm glad because I have a couple friends who are new to the game and still do bot practice matches before jumping into the real deal.
Overall a great update and to go along with a new chapter is just amazing! They rarely do so many things in a chapter update.
"To illustrate with an example, here's a look at how we're planning content around one beloved Survivor, Haddie Kaur, in the upcoming releases:"
I really expect The Twins will get A LOT OF LOVE, this killer has almost 3 years and they recieved 1 cosmetic and the rift cosmetic, and they have a lot of bugs, where that rework on Twins?, they need that, especially when the slug update release. Why The Twins are so hated ?
Why investing so many time in bots? Is there a goal to implement them one day into the real trials, so they can fill the gaps for DCd survs? And what about survs killing themselfes on hooks? Should be only possible with certain perks, also get rid of hook grabs. If you really wanna help solos... Also tell me one reason killers should play nice when more and more gen defense is taken away from them. Action - reaction.
seems like it.
They're filthy
Victor can't get skins
Playstyle is SLUGGING & Camping
I'll just be happy if they're bug free and bhvr isn't neutering Forced Penance to not work with Victor.
Now i can put the gen perks on bots and see how long it take me to hook.
as long as everyone gets a shirtless model in the wardrobe update i think we'll be good. 👍🏻
No you're right cause it similar to fortnite's item shop.
But Fortnite's Item shop is bloody terrible, straight up awful.