SnailOXD's analysis of DBD
Was probably one of the best I've seen so far that did a fairly good dive into the history of DBD, and the obstacles/challenges faced by the community. I HIGHLY recommend giving it a watch because it addresses everything from complacency on the developer's part, to the community kind of letting BHVR get away with beating a dead horse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0A0Xy7DExgHe covered everything from the UQAM study, to the actual core issues of the game (which is just the game's core, that's it, that's the issue.)
It really boiled down to things like no voice chat and the amount of coping around not having it, boredom on both survivor/killer players, and the fact that the game's design inherently breeds toxicity. Actions often considered reprehensible in other games such as camping, body blocking, sandbagging, are pretty much effective tools IN this game. Teabagging is mentioned (and if you're offended by teabagging in 2023, I dunno, go outside.)
There are a lot more things you could add, everything from unique emotes beyond just pointing, waving and squatting-- which, seriously, why aren't there at least voice lines? FOV sliders for Gamma/brightness (which PC players have a workaround, console players generally don't.) I think the biggest issue with me, for DBD, is the wasted potential. So much time is just put into fixing bugs that are hard baked into the terrible spaghetti coding, appealing to thirst but having some of the laziest twitter posts with in game snapshots of characters a posing (not even going to actually pose them your-selves?) It's like, with each passing month, you just see the flaws of complacency and mismanagement bleeding through.
So here comes a question: what are things that DBD is critically lacking or just needs (more than another chapter,) that we seem to constantly be missing?
For me, it is immersion. There is no sense of story: the cinematics give story but usually it is vapid. The in game lore could be expanded upon with actual objectives and not boring pumpkin kicking, shard interaction garbage. There is no actual dynamic lighting and it's ridiculous, because that would benefit BOTH parties if it were: there aren't more objectives or interactable features like traps which TCSM is going to include.
Comments
The biggest thing for me is no tangible proof of progression as a player in terms of skill, and no proof that matchmaking works at all.
Those two things tie together. You could be one of the best DbD players in the world and have no idea. Unless you're willing to break TOS, you have no way of knowing your skill level. And even if you did know that, you only have BHVR'S claims about where the playerbase's MMR is relative to yours.
It leads to a really toxic discourse when players don't know where they stand in terms of skill. You trade potential elitism at the top for the Dunning Krueger effect, and suddenly everyone is top MMR on a magical server full of demigods. It's not a bad thing to tell people they aren't good in a constructive manner. Just showing people where they stand could go a long way. I look at the mentality of other competitive communities and DbD's is quite frankly sad. There's no try, and no will to improve. There's only us vs them from players who think they've hit the skill cap at 400 hours in a 7 year old game.
The last component of this is matchmaking. We're constantly told how it works and assured that it's working. Ok...prove it. Because it certainly doesn't feel like it to many players. You either have a system that isn't working intended, or it is working as intended but needs tweaking, and pointed/specific player feedback could help. OW is very far from a perfect game, but being able to say "silvers make diamond lobbies unplayable" is very important for overall game health. It's not a personal attack on silver players. It identified a matchmaking bug for the devs to address.
Things that the game "needs":
I would drop another 5K hours on this game if they added a tournament mode.
Those are all wonderful gameplay and quality of life suggestions that would improve the game's variety and features. I would also like to suggest an accessibility option: an FoV slider. This would help for players that get headaches, motion sickness, or disorientation from a too low or too high FoV setting. Additionally, it would allow people to play with the setting that is most comfortable for them given that an FoV slider is a common accessibility setting in many games.
More gamemodes.... No HUD, 2 Killers, Perkless, 1V1 chase
An actual ranked mode and an unranked mode
A real Spectator cam (free cam), A Map for the spectator to look at
Maps need to go under the microscope...
Gen efficiency needs to be looked at (numbers need adjusting)
They also could start to limit how many similar perks are brought in (Gen regression for Killers and Second chance perks for Survivor)
I disagreed with a couple things but overall a pretty good video and I agree with most it.
As Edgar mentioned not being able to see our own MMR is a big issue as well and hiding it makes zero sense. The only legitimate reason to hide it is because it doesn't actually work well and we can't complain about it if we can't see it. Hiding MMR because of "elitism" is a joke.
Here are some of my picks, though honestly I think DBD is an a content enough place for me. I also haven't watched the video.
-General QoL stuff for killers/survivor. Biggest being no random skill check when getting off a gen. Make it work like overcharge.
-Recycle shop to get rid of unused items so you can buy others. No one needs 100's of brown crap. Let us get rid of them and upgrade or switch. This is probably my biggest want and something I think DBD should have had ages ago.
-Shared inventory on survivors. They're just skins, let them share crap. I know it will never happen but it's a pretty big want of mine.
-I would like to see a couple more emotes and some for killer but not a lot. Just very simple things, like a weapon wipe or something. I don't want breakdancing survivors as funny as that would be.
-Separate daily's for killer/survivor. Simple change and should have been a thing already.
-Let us see our MMR. Doesn't have to be shown to anyone else you play with.
-While I don't need any of them, more accessibility stuff is always nice.
-3 killers a year instead of 4. This would allow them to do more testing and maybe even have multiple PTB's.
-New game modes that switch overtime. I don't want straight up added modes but stuff that'll change. This week is prop hunt, next is 2v8, etc. I think doing it that way will keep people coming back more often and BHVR wouldn't have to do all that much bug testing since it'd only be for a week at a time. This would keep it fresh without getting overwhelmed and without taking the majority away from main because they're is too many gamemodes.
-Seed Selector in customs so people can have proper tournaments. The game already has seeds, let people choose them.
-Bots in the main game via DC's as pointed above.
I've seen it mentioned and I'm 50/50 on in game voice coms. I personally don't want it and I understand why people do but one of my main gripes is the toxic nature that comes with it. If you thought this game was toxic already, then boy oh boy would it actually be toxic with coms. Nothing like listening to little Billy scream profanities and death threats at you while you run to unhook him. Just mute him you say? Just turn off endgame chat and messages. Wow, no more toxicity.
On the other end content creators would have a blast milking people for reactions and tbf, sometimes it's hilarious. Also, I think the majority wouldn't even bother using it and it'd just be you talking to yourself so it'd have minimal impact anyway. Like many other voice chat games.
Personally if I had to have it, I'd want proxy chat with killers/survivors both and have it on the new game mode idea above. Not a general feature.
I think with the ability to turn it off, Voice Comms should be in the game. I think the idea that the feature shouldn't exist because of the potential for toxicity is absurd. Yes there is potential, but the ability to turn it off nullifies that as a reason to not have it. Also, I don't think its crazy to say that if survivors could actually communicate they'd be less frustrated with each other. The fact that I can't tell my teammates how to successfully rescue me, or to slam gens, etc. infuriates me more than them actually not doing these things.
"There's only us vs them from players who think they've hit the skill cap at 400 hours in a 7 year old game."
As I said, I'm 50/50 though I disagree people being less frustrated. I think people would actually get more frustrated since I don't think many people wouldn't bother using comms in the first place.
As an example, lets say you're getting facecamped by an insidious Bubba. You tell them as such and yet the whole team still comes and now everyone is dead. Before coms you might get annoyed but what can you do, it's solo queue. If that same thing happened with coms after giving them a warning, I'd be pretty pissed.
As a note, stuff like the above already can and does happen with Kindred. I run Kindred religiously and the amount of times I've been camped and yet the entire team is there watching or no one comes to get me even though the killer is on the other side of the map is rather frustrating. Those kind of things can piss a person off and with comms, it opens up even more of those possibilities happening.
Then again, maybe I'm just being pessimistic and coms would be a godsend and people would use them properly and not get frustrated with each other.
As a note, my opinion of comms generally comes from 1000's of hours of COD zombies over the years. It's 4 people working together to kill stuff and you get comms. 95% of the time I'm the only one talking. I'll give advice or let people know what's going on and no one listens and it frustrates you. Someone else is on comms? It's little Timmy being a douchebag, someone blaring music and or someone telling you everything you're doing wrong and how to properly play. If zombies didn't have comms I think the majority of my games would have been the same and nothing of value would have been lost.
I'm of the similar opinion here for DBD. I get why people want it and am 50/50 myself but I don't think it'll really change much and if anything it will only serve to make things worse since people tend to do whatever they want anyway.
Again, maybe I'm being pessimistic because of my own experiences. Should DBD have comms even in the worst case they end up being #########, not used and frustrating? Maybe.
That's an EPIC quote
Story mode would be quite good. 1 player v killer (ai) Only viable for killers with there own realm, which is a decent chunk of them. Each story has objectives and things to do revolving around said killers lore.
Good comments.
Too bad we'll never get any of these things in the game because BHVR knows they can make money of meme cosmetics and appealing to thirst.
Hopefully when TCSM and Killer Clowns comes out, they'll feel the heat and ACTUALLY do something different.
Honestly, as a community, we have to let BHVR/DBD team know that the level of complacency we're seeing (like no solution to the DDoS,) and them refusing to make actual changes like in that dreaded dev stream is not enough.
You're always going to make money BHVR, but you seriously can't upgrade Easy AntiCheat?
Meme cosmetics are nice but this game has been in extended alpha for 7 years, on Unreal 4, and it doesn't even FEEL like this is an unreal 4 engine. It is insanity at this point and we as a community REALLY deserve better than having our own community manager mispronounce the name of one of the MOST known players, and say their name like "oh gee, I dunno who this is."
That whole attitude is the entire team. Blasé, and unmotivated. They'll cope for hours around why SBMM doesn't need to change, they'll cope about voice chat and how it nullifies certain perks (guess you better make your paycheck by putting in ACTUAL developer work,) but there are solutions to all of this. Hell, WE could figure it out for you (and your spaghetti code.)
The thing that has been very noticeable is the fact that players have been saying, time and time again, where the problems are, given a ton of constructive critism, feedback and genuinely good ideas on the daily.
But what keeps happening is that it either gets swiped under a rug because of some nonsensical "argument" much of which have no basis in ANY other game, like adding an FOV slider, visual/audio improvements.
Why is it so hard to add the basest features literally every other game has?? Heck people have been asking for a search bar for the perks/add-ons for years, and instead we get more charms/skins for Feng 😅 The when people rightfully get upset, because it sometimes is like talking to a wall, they get banned from here as well...
The core issue is that the most important objective of the game on survivor side is boring as hell. Why not add other better, and more fitting objectives? Heck remove the whole gen idea and replace it with something that makes sense lore-wise, and adds to the horror genre of this game. Make the maps deathly mazes for all I care, have the survivors have to find multiple items to escape the building in Macmillan and then find parts of a gen to do them, while the killer is on the loose.
They should add several modes: with the option to play with 10 people: 8 survivors and 2 killers. Whether it's in customs lobbies only, or both, just add more options.
It would be nice if daily challenges were scary, and made lore sense?
Like for the Trapper, maybe you can find pages of his diary detailing his up bringing in a better way than the kind of-- lame recordings?
They've talked about how "oh uwu, it would take time and money to do this."
So you're gonna instead spend 7 years in an extended alpha? At least 7 Days to Die, which is still in Alpha, continuously does QOL updates and adds new stuff to it and their team is smaller than DBD's team and don't have BHVR's 250 million behind it.
The truth is, the devs are complacent because BHVR is complacent. They don't NEED to do any of these things because they want that Fortnite Meme Cosmetic Money. The cosmetics are mid at best, half the time they're mega overrated.
That's why posts like this NEED to be pushed right up to their noses because we, as a community are exhausted by this.
I had to laugh at the Arguments against Voice-coms bit at 12:58
I wholeheartedly believe that voice chat in dead by daylight would solve a large portion of the game's cultural and balancing problems however I want to make clear that this voice chat should be optional on by default but you have the option to turn it off if you want there is literally no good reason in 2023 to not have this feature in any multiplayer game ever made whatsoever any arguments against these features at this point is just cope and I will not hear any of them because they frequently make no sense there are so many problems solved by the introduction of a voice chat that it is asinine to not added at this point
Sounds like he is coping a bit himself. I hope someone will make a better constructive argument for the idea.
Seems a bit of an insipid rebuke by calling it a "cope", tu quo que, really?
There have been numerous explanations around voice chat, or even proximity chat being a good tool for handling the game's more competitive leaning tendencies, and additionally it'll cure a lot of Survivor Boredom that occurs. There's just not REALLY a substantial reason to not have VC, especially if Voice Chat also comes with the added cost of revealing your location to a stalking killer.
Can we get an explanation as to why you think this is coping? I would prefer something a little more in depth if that's the only thing you took out of the entire video. :3
Why its cope to say that=? because it tries to disregard and dismiss any discussion or arguments outright in order to overcome it.