Dev Update (April 2023)
Developer Update | April 2023 - BHVR
Developer Update | April 2023
It’s been a little over a week since the Tools of Torment Mid-Chapter hit the Public Test Build (PTB), the server where we test out and fine tune upcoming changes before pushing them live. As always, our team has been combing through your feedback and identifying room for improvement before the update debuts on live servers.
We want to start by giving a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to leave detailed and constructive feedback. Thank you! Your feedback has helped shape this update’s release. In this month’s Developer Update, we’ll reveal all of the changes we’ve made to the Mid-Chapter between the PTB and live releases.
Healing
Possibly the hottest topic since it was announced, the PTB raised the base healing time to 24 seconds from the usual 16 seconds. Some tweaks were made to Med-Kits with this in mind. Changing such a fundamental part of the game is a very touchy subject, so we kept an extra close eye on this change to see how it would play out.
After reviewing player feedback, we found that many of you agreed that the speed which you heal others was already in a good spot prior to the update. This change also had knock-on effects elsewhere in the game, making effects like Mangled and Hemorrhage stronger and making ‘slugging’ (leaving Survivors in the dying state) even more effective.
Therefore, we have reverted the base healing time to 16 seconds.
On the other hand, we found there was a lot of support for tuning down Med-Kits in particular. Med-Kits allowed Survivors to heal themselves multiple times whenever it was convenient to them, leaving their teammates free to work on Generators while they do so. We have decided to shift our focus to Med-Kits with a series of changes.
First and foremost, all Med-Kits will have a total of 24 charges (the same as the PTB).
Second, we’ve increased the healing speed bonus when healing others across all Med-Kits. The new bonus is as follows:
- Camping Aid Kit: Increases the speed that you heal others by 35%,
- First Aid Kit: Increases the speed that you heal others by 40%.
- Emergency Med-Kit: Increases the speed that you heal others by 45%.
- Ranger Med-Kit: Increases the speed that you heal others by 50%.
Third, all Med-Kits will now have a 33% speed and efficiency penalty when used for self healing. This will reduce the number of times a Med-Kit can be used to heal yourself and make it take longer to do so. This means that a Med-Kit will by default grant one self heal over the span of 24 seconds (before factoring in Add-ons).
Combined, these changes will decrease the power of Med-Kits when used for self healing, but increase their power when used for healing teammates in return. (We all know you’ll probably continue using them for self heals, but at least the choice is there!)
Last but not least, in light of the tweaks above, we’ve made some adjustments to various Med-Kit Add-ons:
- Rubber Gloves: New effect – Increases the Great Skill Check success zone by 10%.
- Butterfly Tape: Increases healing speed by 5% (was 3%).
- Sponge: New effect – Increases the Great Skill Check success zone by 20%.
- Needle & Thread:
- Added effect – Increases progression bonus for succeeding a Great Skill Check by 5%.
- Removed effect – No longer provides bonus Bloodpoints for hitting Great Skill Checks.
- Medical Scissors: Increases healing speed by 10% (was 12%).
- Surgical Suture:
- Added effect – Increases progression bonus for succeeding a Great Skill Check by 10%.
- Removed effect – No longer provides bonus Bloodpoints for hitting Great Skill Checks.
- Abdominal Dressing:
- Increases healing speed by 15% (was 20%).
- Rarity increased to Very Rare (was Rare).
- Gel Dressings:
- Adds 16 charges to the Med-Kit (was 14).
- Rarity increased to Ultra Rare (was Rare).
- Anti-Hemorrhagic Syringe: While this Add-on is unchanged, please note that its healing speed will be reduced by the Med-Kit self healing penalty (resulting in a 24 second heal by default).
We hope these changes will tone down Med-Kits when used for self healing while making them more appealing for altruistic heals.
The Hillbilly
On the PTB, we tested out some changes for The Hillbilly, both toning down the overheat mechanic and adjusting two of his top performing Add-ons. While the overheat mechanic felt less oppressive, many of you raised concerns with the changes to the Engraving Add-ons, reminding us that these Add-ons allowed The Hillbilly’s power to be used in more situations. This overshadowed the overheat adjustments and made the whole package feel like a downgrade.
For the release, we have reverted the changes to the Death Engravings and Doom Engravings Add-ons.
We have kept the tweaks to the overheat mechanic to make it less limiting than before, making The Hillbilly feel better to play.
Perks
The PTB featured updates to various Perks, including some meta options for both Killer and Survivor. When it comes to toning down a powerful Perk, some level of contention is expected. But with that said, we’ve heard some very convincing arguments for a few of these perks, so we have done some fine tuning before the changes go live.
Dead Hard
Since reducing the Endurance effect any further would make Dead Hard too finicky to use, we instead opted to limit the number of times it could be used by requiring a safe unhook to activate the Perk. While this had the intended result of limiting the number of times it appeared in the match (and prevented it from being used in the first chase of the match), some of you pointed out that this new design indirectly encouraged the Killer to chase the unhooked Survivor. This makes a lot of sense; the unhooker may have activated their Dead Hard, but you can be sure that the unhooked Survivor does not have it.
For the update’s release, we have changed Dead Hard to instead activate when you are unhooked or unhook yourself. This way, the unhooked Survivor becomes less of a clear target for the Killer.
Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance
On the PTB, Pain Resonance was changed to only activate the first time each Survivor is placed on a Scourge Hook. This change was specifically made to reduce the number of times Pain Resonance could activate in a given match, especially later in the match when one or more Survivors were likely to be sacrificed. While this did have the intended result, many pointed out that this left the Perk in a fairly weak state, not quite stacking up to other regression Perks.
Considering Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance can now only activate four times in a match and requires the Killer to target different Survivors, we feel comfortable making it more rewarding for Killers who choose to take on the added challenge.
Therefore, we have increased the regression amount of Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance to 15/20/25% (was 11/13/15%).
We hope those who choose not to chase the unhooked Survivor will find this perk much more rewarding.
Boon: Circle of Healing
Since this Perk no longer grants the self-heal ability, Circle of Healing found itself in an awkward spot. The altruistic heal speed bonus was nice, but when you crunched the numbers, Circle of Healing rarely provided any benefit. A 50% healing speed bonus would only shave roughly 5 seconds off of a heal, but it’s easy to spend that much time running over to the Boon’s area of effect- and that doesn’t even begin to factor in the time it takes to set up.
With this in mind, we have increased the healing speed bonus on Circle of Healing to 50/75/100% (was 40/45/50%).
While this won’t make setting up or running to the Boon the optimal choice in every situation, we expect this to make it more impactful if the Boon is nearby.
Autohaven Wreckers
Last but not least, we managed to sneak one more change into the Autohaven Wreckers map updates. A while back, we added some new tiles to the realm. One of these new tiles- which featured a window and pallet- ended up being fairly unsafe. We rebalanced this tile, but it unfortunately didn’t make it into the PTB in time. However, an updated version of this tile will be available upon release. Take a look!
With that, we’ve reached the end of the Developer Update. We want to once again thank everyone who gave the changes a try and left detailed and constructive feedback. Our team will continue to keep a close eye on things once the update goes live to ensure that everything goes smoothly.
Until next time…
The Dead by Daylight team
Comments
Why do you think they remember the old issues?
They have reverted and brought back old problems countless time, this is not new.
Thank you devs re the healing nerf reverting. I feel this is what should have been done to begin with - nerf COH and/or medkits and then observe. The impact of anti-healing perks and certain add ons wasn't taken into account when making healing 24s. While the medkit nerf does disproportionately affect solo imo, I feel it's a small price to pay in ensuring hits have more value. So I'm okay with it.
I feel had healing remained at 24s then two choices would present itself: my already low solo escape rate would drop further with my variable builds, or I'd be forced to adopt meta perks to keep my escape rate. Neither were appealing. I really don't want to be tied to a meta, and I feel like the point of these overhauls was to break the meta in general and not just develop new ones.
You know, you can still run that combo on the current patch?
It's mega awful that dead hard survived two meta shakeups, where so many people were hoping dead hard would get nerfed into uselessness. It's the most complained about survivor perk by a lot, and has been for a while. But now we still have to worry about every single survivor having the perk, because the un-nerf they just did was massive.
I'd seriously be fine if every healing nerf was reverted, if that meant dead hard would get deleted from the game.
Yeah.
The fact people actually think DH got better is delusional.
Two uses max per trial. Exhausts you. Can't use it first chase. Depends on the Killers ping. Still deactivates if you whiff.
Had someone tell me earlier that it's actually better than old DH prior to its rework.
So now Pain Res, an already heavy RNG perk with multiple counters, now can put killers in a position of being punished for hooking survivors? Survivors finish a gen, you get the hook off, PR activates on the next gen in line at 0%. Huzzah. It needs a safety element where a token is not lost if it doesn't get its full 25%......and considering how terrible the perk is now, it should have its scourge hook requirement removed and work on any hook. Also dead man's switch's duration nerf needs to be reverted since, as in the devs' own words, was nerfed because of it's strong combo with PR (which is terrible, now).
that's not true, though. New PR could easily get 0% regression per hook if survivors finish a gen prior to a hook.
I like the heal revert. PTB was dumb and made survivor hell.
COH did not need a buff at all. Will go back to being obnoxious.
PR still sucks. Against non idiots, if you have 4 hooks and someone is not on death hook yet, you are losing.
I was really hoping we would finally rid this game of its worst designed perk in its history (besides I guess old MoM). But I guess if dead hard must remain, this is the best it can be. Still think you shouldn’t be able to drop a pallet for 1 full second after you dead hard.
When the activation condition required a safe unhook, that meant that a survivor could equip dead hard, but never get a chance to activate it, because they didn’t safe unhook someone. But with the new dead hard, every survivor that equips dead hard gets two activations for free.
Requiring a safe unhook is much more restrictive. What if a survivor gets knocked down on the other side of the map? What if a different survivor gets to the hooked survivor before you do? What if you’re injured and the killer is camping? Survivors aren’t guaranteed to be able to safe unhook, and therefore wouldn’t be guaranteed any dead hard activations.
Ok
Dead Hard remains meta and CoH remains SWFs' best friend. I thought this update was supposed to change things, but it's not going to change anything at all.
How long your team wants to keep nerfing killers?
Many killers unplayable now because of how fast gens are repairing, and you nerfing pain resonance after destroying Eruption. And you planing to nerf other two meh perks which are at least usable but not worth to go for on many killers.
Now we will have only pain resonance which is usable 4 times which will save at most =100 seconds.
This is nothing compared to perk on survivors like prove thyself giving you UP TO 45% repair speed with 4 man repairing gen. 45% per ONE person. This is ridiculous how you easy responding to surv mains and their feedback, but keep on nerfing killers.
Trapper is dead, pig somewhat dead, billy is rare as hell, half of killers losing games passively because of gen repair speed AND unbalanced maps.
7 years passes and you still do nothing to delete camping and tunneling for killers. Nothing encourages killer to go for another survivor. Want me to give example of good change?
Make pain resonance like this: 15% gen regression as on old one, but only blowing gen if you hook ANOTHER survivor which you didnt hook last. THAT will encourage killer to ignore unhooked. There is so many ways and things you could balance, but you choose the way to find the best perks and then hard nerf them. You better to think how to buff bad ones.
Whilst I appreciate your comments, your suggestion to Pain Res would actually promote slugging more than healthy gameplay - it does not promote the killer to ignore the unhooked person, it just encourages them to slug that person.
I mean isn't that true in the current game? I don't see games where PR procs do nothing to also be the games where I struggle. Those are the games where the players arn't glued to gens and a single gen being done means there are zero additional gens that have progress.
The thing is you don't lose a limited use on live in that scenario. PR procing when it damages no generators is going to hurt now, because that's a use gone.
Oppression works the same way where it goes on CD regardless if there were any other generator hit.
It's a huge difference, because with the nerf, you only get 4 uses. It didn't matter previously because you could use the scourgehooks as many times as you could hook people on them. If it didn't have an effect, no biggy. Now it will be a huge biggy, because it has so many counters and downsides, and could ultimately provide absolutely no value to you whatever due to only having 4 a match.
Does that matter though? Like do you get hard games where you don't have an idea of the gen progression being made? Like if we go over a scenario where you get your first down and 1 gen already popped. You should have an idea of how many players were on that gen and if there is another gen that should have progress on it with that information. That game sense allows you to make the correct play on whether you pop that PR or not. The games where this isn't the case are game I already don't find to be very challenging in the first place.
I would also disagree that you don't lose a limited use on live. You should have the game in the bag at 9 PR hook. It's really more that the new effect is more punishing if it gets wasted. I think that's fair, but you should be able to have the game sense to know if it's a bad idea to pop that PR. Maybe this feels awful on live though since you might need to micro manage the perk more.
It does matter, because you are hard locked at 4 uses and losing 1 because a gen pop as you were in the hooking animation and no other gens had progress is a huge blow that at least doesn't matter as much on live because PR has up to 12 uses.
The new PR is basically 2 old PR procs (25 vs 30). Yes it is more punishing if you waste a proc but shouldn't game sense fix this problem? Like the games were it would be wasted the most are game where player don't hit gens hard. I don't find I need strong regression in those game in the first place. There is also a limit on how many procs you got with the current version. The only difference I see is that you hitting a gen with no/low progress is going to hurt more with the new one. I don't see how that is a problem when I take my experience on when that scenario is most likely.
I don't see the logic at thinking current PR is 12 procs. The game should be wrapped up around 9. New PR is basically 2 old PR procs(30vs25). The scenarios where game sense shouldn't cover this are where the survivors are basically messing around. Are you really having games where a single gen pops and there is nothing else being worked on and you can't have game sense to know that?
I didn't expected to get those kind of explanation when BHVR made DH to punish those who don't tunnel tbh.
- 40 sec chase with 8 sec heal still a thing
- 30 sec gens still a thing
- all hex perks dead
- all gen regress perks dead
- body block bully etc still a thing
- more camp tunnel ( bec why i should go and pressure/kick gens if it gives me nothing )
- swf still rules the game
- voice chat.exe discord.exe hud exe still feels like cheating
- dh still a thing ( and even if not . easy to replace )
- I cant even make a build for killer bec 90% perks now trash or countered just by didcord.exe ( like DMS for example )
- game still balanced around cryinng skill issue survs ( gqme cant be balanced around noobs because the noobility line just goes down every time untill moment survs get the flying getpack and still will cry )
"Ouuu my teammates are bad" - so learn the game mmr will rise and you will feel surv power. Or get discord.exe legal cheating
PLAYING BETTER as KILLER result in higher mmr and more and more unfair games and swf bully etc...games where you cant do nothing abd stay afk bec its horrible to play with 30 sec gens without BNP even....
PLAYING BETTER as SURV result in higher mmr with better team more easy walk in park games....
GIVE ME A REASON TO PLAY KILLER?
" Ouu but 60% winrate " - first its killrate and not winrate....second by this obviously wrong statistics Nurse is worst killer....so. Mb buff her? Or survs can only say for killrates when they need it. ....
Casuals and noobs which go cry on forum instead of rising skill killing every game....
For those who say killer still issue - its not sbout skill its about how unfair survs are to killer even heaving ability to compliyely ignore perks or stealth etc by side programm....
You have the stats. The gens are gone if the patch goes like you announced it. You can't kill whatever is left of gen defense while leaving gen speed and toolboxes/addons complete untouched. The terrible "buff" you're trying to make everyone else cope with on pain res is terrible. The entire idea of survivors taking long to heal was to stop making games end before 5 mins.. you reverted the heal changes as expected but kept the massive nerfs to the gen kicking perks that killer had left after the old patches killed most of them. I do wonder if you sometimes play against real efficient survivors and not really incompetent ones that can't finish 1 gen and everyone die at 3-5 gens.
By all means keep pleasing one side, see how that will end up for the game.
You really like that line huh.
Survivors escape 39% of the time at "High MMR"
Nightlight is completely unreliable as it is entirely self-reported and is much too small of a base to draw any meaningful conclusions.
The official statistics from BHVR taken from the entire population of the game.
vs
A third-party, self-reported and extremely exclusive website that only a handful of extremely dedicated DBD players know about?
Gee, I wonder which.
I mean, you could try to ask BHVR for some stats. Who knows, maybe they'll indulge us.
I suppose we are.
BHVR intentionally faking statistics is definitely intriguing, but I'll give you this; it's definitely something I haven't heard often.
Probably not the people accusing them of lying and conspiracy to punish Killers for existing.
I certainly wouldn't.
You do realize that most people do play both sides, right? Just because there are 4 survivors for every killer in a match does not mean that they are a perfect split of 80-20 and never cross sides. Primetime often has incentive bonus for killers, because more people are playing with friends. Off hours often has a survivor bonus in my experience. It's ridiculous to assume that 80% or more of the player base are purely playing survivor exclusively.
For you. Remember, MMR and region both affect your incentive bonuses. I will have a different bonus than my friend does and that bonus will often change once we party up. It just means in your specific MMR bracket and in the region you play, there are less killers in queue at that moment. Also remember that while the killer has to play the entire match, the survivors don't, so the dead ones are often jumping back into queue while the game is still going. It's not so simple as "there are more than 80% of the people exclusviely playing survivor!"
And that...that's your flaw.
I will say this and leave you with it, take it as some advice from one Killer main to another.
Seal Team SWF are incredibly rare. You are not getting them every game. In fact, I'd argue that you are probably getting Solo's or some combination of Solo's and Duo's.
Eventually, you will need to realize that there are flaws in how you play. By blaming others, you shift the blame, perhaps it's not your fault, perhaps that match was unwinnable, but all of them? Unlikely. By insisting "every other match is a Seal Team SWF" you refuse to take accountability. Once you do, you'll see your gameplay improve and your enjoyment of the game go up. It isn't easy but it is very rewarding.
Suddenly, those players you thought were unbeatable god squads? Child's play.
I will tell you a truth it seems you need to hear. The game is not fair. No matter what you do, the game isn't fair for everyone and it never will be. That's the nature of asymmetrical games. Someone is ALWAYS at a disadvantage. If you are looking for fairness, you will not find it in DBD.
Game sense doesn't always help you here. You can't possibly keep tabs on all survivors and their exact whereabouts, along with knowing exactly how much progression a gen is - especially considering a gen can go from 0% to 100% in under 30 seconds these days. You're heading to a hook, survivors complete a gen. "Game sense" would unlikely help you here.
Devs I'm not gonna lie... The killer perks that got nerfed is BS tho. How come that didn't get relooked at? Pain Res still got an overall nerf and the survivors got back what they wanted. I don't think that's fair.
Sure, it certainly won't 100% sure fire let you avoid never ever wasting a single proc. The problem with your scenario is that not only does it have to be common enough occurrence to be problematic but also the gen pop while you simultaneously are getting a very quick down. Can you give some scenarios of that being realistic?
You can keep tabs on survivors whereabouts though. They are on a gen. They are saving, healing, or on a gen.
When a chase ends you should have an idea of how far gens should be with that chase time. This certainly isn't the case all the time but usually is because players are not hitting gens that hard. You already have passive slowdown there since they just arn't hitting gens in the first place. Do you feel that you need slowdown for these games? Would you not trade a perk slot to just have survivors do other things instead of gens? The reason I want the perk is when players do gens and trying to keep them at bay. It may or may not accomplish this with the changes but I simply don't see the reason this perk won't be top tier. Sure the procs might sometimes be a dud. If that isn't the case in harder games then it really wont be an issue for me. The harder game should allow game sense to avoid that issue, making it fine imo.
But why are all the killer regression perks getting nuked but survivors perks still living? Dead hard will STILL be in every game. COB is dead, OVERCHARGE... DEAD! PAIN RES... No... Come on now.
To slug person, you have to hit that person twice already, and then you have to find another person and hit him twice. By that time you will certainly lose downed one.
The thing is that you lowering amount of pressure by that perk. You basically limiting how much perk will work. Also killer dont know, when hooking, how much each gen is repaired for. That means there will be lots of situations, when you waste your perk 1 of 4 times for almost nothing. Current PR doesnt have this problem since you have no limits on use.
To be honest this new DH promotes tunneling. Killers are tired of Dead Hard. They don't want to deal with this perk so letting go a survivor who might have it can backfire really badly. So its better to hit them at the hook and tunnel them out. Dead hard at endgame is sometimes a crutch survivor needs to get out, believe me i know im a dead hard user i love that perk as a survivor but i know how broken that perk also is.
I think you overcatered a little bit to the survivors with this patch. You should have kept healing at 20 seconds if not that 24 seconds since you did not undo any of the killer nerfs. Coh losing selfcare is a good change, but i think you should still keep the altruistic healing at 50%. 8 Seconds heals even if altruistic shouldnt be a thing. Remember when this perk came out with 100% and how broken it was? Survivors have we'll make it, botany desperate measures, multiple healing perks to help out the healing they don't need 8 second heals from CoH. Pain res is still pretty bad. Its still better to tunnel than to get 4 individual RNG hooks that you might not even make to unless you have agitation.
I think you should undo the pop goes the weasel nerf. That was probably one of the healthiest perks the game had. Not sure why you had to nerf it. Same goes to corrupted.
Survivors will still have their gen perks + toolboxes and brand new parts. I'm not sure why you thought it was a good idea to even buff one of their gen speed perks while you completely destroy all the gen defense.
Please think this through.