March 2024 Dev Update
Spring has sprung, and so has a new Developer Update! In this post, we’ll share everything we’ve been working on for our next update. As always, these changes will first head to the Public Test Build on Steam. We encourage you to give them a try if you can and let us know what you think! [CHANGE] Reduced the time it takes…
Developer Update | March 2024
By PeanitsLast Updated: 2:57 pm
Spring has sprung, and so has a new Developer Update! In this post, we’ll share everything we’ve been working on for our next update. As always, these changes will first head to the Public Test Build on Steam. We encourage you to give them a try if you can and let us know what you think!
[CHANGE]Reduced the time it takes to switch back to Charlotte to 1.5 seconds (was 3 seconds)[CHANGE]Reduced the time it takes to unbind Victor to 0.75 seconds (was 1 second).[CHANGE]Reduced the time it takes to charge Victor’s Pounce to 0.85 seconds (was 1 second).[NEW]Added the ability to recall Victor at any point while he is unbound.[NEW]Added the ability to change between Victor & Charlotte near a hooked Survivor. *
Dev note: We have made switching between Charlotte and Victor more responsive and given the Killer the ability to recall Victor at any time so they feel better to play.
* Be warned: The anti-face camp meter will still fill if you’re too close!
[CHANGE]Updated 7 Add-Ons.[CHANGE]Victor’s Pounce no longer latches onto healthy Survivors.[CHANGE]Victor can no longer be kicked after successful pounces which do not latch onto a Survivor.[NEW]Victor’s Pounce now latches onto Survivors when they are put into the dying state. Other Survivors can crush Victor during this to help the dying Survivor. Victor will automatically return to Charlotte after 20 seconds.[NEW]While Victor is attached to a Survivor or holding a Survivor in a locker, Charlotte gains a 10% Haste effect. This effect will be lost prematurely if Charlotte hits a Survivor.[REMOVED]Survivors near Victor while he is latched onto another Survivor are no longer revealed by Killer Instinct.
Dev note: Previously, The Twins’ Power heavily encouraged ‘slugging’ (leaving Survivors in the dying state) since Victor could chain together pounces on multiple injured Survivors, but only pounce a single healthy one. Furthermore, Survivors could often save each other before Charlotte could make it to them.
We have flipped this around: Victor will now be much more effective at injuring multiple Survivors and instead assist Charlotte – who now moves faster while Victor is latched on – in picking up the Survivor. This makes it possible for Victor to both injure and down a Survivor without being forced to switch back to Charlotte in between.
[NEW]The Visual Terror Radius accessibility setting will now include Victor’s grunts.[NEW]Victor will now glow red whenever he is vulnerable to being crushed.
Dev note: We have updated the Visual Terror Radius to include Victor’s grunts to improve accessibility, and added a red glow to Victor whenever he is vulnerable to being crushed to improve visual feedback.
[CHANGE]Improved collision detection to reduce cases where The Blight slides off objects.
Dev note: It could be frustrating to slide off an object you were trying to bump into and end your Rush prematurely. We have improved the collision detection to make The Blight’s Rush more consistent. This also fixes an issue which allowed The Blight to incorrectly slide along obstacles and lunge around tighter corners than intended.
[CHANGE]Updated map layout and reduced the overall size.[CHANGE]Reduced the length of hedges and fences to create more openings.
Dev note: The map’s long & narrow shape and rows of unbroken fences and/or hedges made getting around very time consuming. We have reduced the overall size and added more openings to make it easier to traverse.
[CHANGE]Adjusted various houses to reduce the strength of strong loops.[CHANGE]Reduced the number of houses in the map. All remaining houses can be entered.
Dev note: Many houses were closed off, making the map larger without any room for gameplay. We have reduced the number of houses that spawn, though each one that remains will now be open and playable. We’ve also reduced the strength of some of the strongest window loops to be fairer and more interesting to play.
[NEW]Added pallets and lockers along the edge of the map.[CHANGE]Updated street tiles to feature more pallet loops.[CHANGE]Adjust pallet loops in park tiles.
Dev note: The outdoor areas were fairly empty before, encouraging Survivors to make a run for the nearest house when they were chased. Since we’ve reduced the strength of houses, we have added some additional loops to the street & edges of the map to spread out chases and reduce deadzones.
[CHANGE]Increased stun duration to 5 seconds (was 3 seconds).[NEW]Added a new stabbing animation when Decisive Strike is used successfully.
Dev note: The Survivor is locked in place for part of the stun while they are being dropped by the Killer, so it didn’t leave them with much time to run away once they hit the ground. We have increased the duration of the stun to give the Survivor a fair chance to create some distance.
While we were at it, we added a new animation which plays when a Survivor successfully uses Decisive Strike to break free to give some visual flair to the Perk.
[CHANGE]Adrenaline no longer activates if you are hooked when the gates are powered.[CHANGE]Reduced speed boost duration to 3 seconds (was 5 seconds).[CHANGE]Adrenaline no longer causes you to wake up when facing The Nightmare.
Dev note: Adrenaline had a lot of exceptions which made it difficult to play around. If a Survivor was hooked while the exit gates were powered, they would be healthy and receive a substantial speed boost upon being unhooked, making it very difficult for the Killer to catch them before they could escape. We have made it so Adrenaline no longer pauses when you are on the hook.
We’ve also removed the wake-up effect when facing The Nightmare to clean up the Perk as we’ve moved away from Perks that affect specific Killer Powers over the years.
[CHANGE]Now reveals Survivors aura instead of causing them to scream.[CHANGE]Reduced activation time to 15 seconds (was 30 seconds).[CHANGE]Increased cooldown to 80/70/60 seconds (was 40/35/30 seconds).
Dev note: Ultimate Weapon was a jack of all trades, providing both information and a consistent way to interrupt Survivor actions (allowing it to synergize too well with other Perks). Rather than screaming, Survivors will instead have their aura revealed. This means it will no longer interrupt Survivor’s interactions, though Survivors won’t know that they are being revealed to the Killer.
Since Ultimate Weapon is easy to activate, it was possible to keep its effect active throughout the entire match. We have increased the cooldown and decreased its activation window to ensure some downtime between uses.
[CHANGE]Removed the ability to lose a pip.
Dev note: With Emblems being used solely for monthly rewards these days, it felt needlessly punishing to lose a pip after a rough match. This quality-of-life change will make the Emblem system less stressful. This also applies to Modifiers – you can enjoy these limited time modes without worrying about your grade!
[CHANGE]Visual overhaul to the entire store menu.[NEW] Added “Specials” tab to highlight items that are on sale.[NEW] Added “Collections” tab to find cosmetics from a specific collection.[NEW] Added bundles, containing multiple items at a discounted price.[NEW] Killer mori animations can now be viewed in the store.[NEW] Added a weekly gift that can be claimed for free.
Dev note: The store hasn’t changed much since it was introduced in 2018. This update makes it easier to find what you’re looking for and allows us to bundle content together at a reduced price. For example, it’s now possible to purchase an entire DLC pack through the in-game store rather than purchasing each character separately.
[CHANGE]New Tomes & their respective Rifts will now open at the same time as the update.[NEW] New Rift Bundle option, which grants the Premium Rift rewards & a 20 tier head start at a discounted price.
Dev note: Rifts have historically opened the day after our Mid-Chapter updates, but no more! You can now get cracking on those challenges right away. We have also introduced a new Rift bundle which includes the Premium Rift Pass and 20 Tiers at a discounted price. (The Premium Rift Pass can still be purchased separately if you prefer!)
Until next time…
The Dead by Daylight team
Comments
Thanks for commenting!
Would you be able to clarify some of the wording. When it says you can recall Victor at "any time", does that include while attached to someone on the ground?
Yeah, collision in dbd is a funny animal for sure. What I can say, is something does need to be done at the moment as blight either cant have the immense speed with 0 wind up or has to have collision.
It should also be mentioned, that if Victor is planning on hitting a survivor twice, the survivor can make so much distance that they could just jump into a locker before the second hit, and be far away enough from Charlotte and she won’t be able to reach the locker in 10 seconds, even with the haste buff. This means the survivor will leave the locker, Victor will get recalled, and Twins just wasted a lot of time.
A 10 second locker hold for Victor, is no longer good enough. Victor should pull survivors out of lockers and latch onto them. Or the locker hold needs to be greatly extended, to give Charlotte a fair chance to grab the survivor out of the locker.
It should work the same way that it does currently, just with a longer stun duration (and fun stabbing animation) :)
We're reading all the feedback around the Dev Update, and will continue to do so once these changes are testable on the PTB, so if you can, please do test it out and let us know what you think.
Could you at least tell us what victor being on a downoed survivor even does? You guys never said what it did.
Back to more slowdown/chase perks I guess no point running aura perks when 2/4 survs per lobby are running distortion
The devs did solid job with these changes. Hopefully For the people/buckle up is next on the radar.
I don't understand why nothing was done to address the survivors that weaponized DS against killers that weren't tunneling, because the survivors "didn't want to waste their DS"? Recently unhooked survivors were getting full healed, and then would try as hard as possible to bodyblock the killer, to bait them into eating their DS.
The counterplay back then was to make it a point to tunnel survivors off the hook, to stop them from offensively using a full DS combo, and it still applies now. If killers don't want to eat a weaponized OTR+DS (+possible DH) combo, then killers really should hardcore proxy camp, and make it a point to tunnel a survivor off a hook, just in case they might try to weaponize a full DS combo against them.
And BHVR spent years to figure out how to nerf Twins slugging…. then BHVR boosts DS even though that perk encouraged a lot of killers to slug survivors? I don't understand, does BHVR want to discourage or encourage slugging? And because of flip-flop, if a killer decides to slug someone to wait out their DS timer, they might be forced to let the survivor bleed to death, because the survivor might use that extra time to crawl somewhere where boil over can prevent the killer from getting them to a hook.
I could always be wrong but looking at the add ons these are the add-ons probably being changed for twins they all either buff something that's being buffed in this ptb or have to do with crushing victor when attached which is now an outdated mechanic.
I'm actually excited for these as 4 of these are probably gonna do something completely new and could change how we view this rework a lot. It also means the speed add-ons likely arn't being touched which is kinda terrifying tbh.
OTR doesn't give you an endurance hit once you're healed. So you'd be injuring, then downing that survivor like you'd do a regular non-OTR gamer once they're healed. Then they can get their DS.
For 3 seconds? I'd probably review that after the PTB - depending on feedback.
Don't forget that it reveals auras of those within the terror radius, most of which average (iirc) about 32m. So they're within easy catch up distance of the killer. 15s would be understandable if they were on the other side of the map, though even Lethal Pursuer gives less than that when survivors and killers start on opposite sides and it's usually enough time for the killer to latch onto a survivor. 3s is fine when so close to each other.
Victor being used for both injures and downs is a mess of an idea. I get what it's meant to be for, but it still is clunky: why not just have Victor start to drag the body back to Charlotte by himself while you are in control of her and closing the gap? BHVR already has AI for multiple Killers and, sure, it's clunky and unreliable for Nemesis or Knight, but the goal here isn't to chase or anything of the sort: it simply is to close the gap as best as Victor can while taking into account terrain.
Nemesis' Zombies rarely get stuck anymore, so Victor shouldn't be as well. I do not understand why it isn't a thing when they are stated to be, well, twins.
"Nerf the Ultimate Weapon" itself is welcome. This perk has been too strong until now. However, there are roughly divided into three doubts.
A unique feature of this park was that it detected survivors by making them scream rather than revealing their auras. Survivors may adopt Calm Spirit to counter UW, and UW also has aspects that increase the value of Calm Spirit, which was often neglected by people. I don't think it's a good thing if UW loses its originality and becomes a park similar to Darkness Revealed, as it will reduce "the variety of parks and game development" for both the killer and survivor sides.
In addition, survivors will also be able to perceive when they suddenly become Blindness state, even if they don't scream, that they are affected by this perk. There are cases in which a survivor may not notice that they have been affected by this perk, but only "if they do not pay attention to their status HUD" or "if there is a possibility that they will be in Blindness state under other ways".
Therefore, I don't think there is any much benefit in not make the survivors scream. It is doubtful whether that advantage outweighs the disadvantage of being countered by one Distortion.
Why is the cooldown of UW so different at 60 seconds while the similar perk Darkness Revealed has a cooldown of 30 seconds?
There are many doubts regarding the Distortion specifications, so I would like you to consider not only changing the UW, but also changing the Distortion.
What part of the OTR rules says the endurance deactivates if someone is full healed by someone else?
7.5 out of 10 pretty good changes but DS just gonna become a problem again. I'm all for tunneling getting nerf but how will this be any different from the last time DS was meta. Strong players will use it offensively again.
Offensive-use DS will be an issue. It wasn’t good enough for anti-tunnel so I am happy it’s getting changed, but with the longer stun it previously was (and once again will be) too easy to use it aggressively against killers that are not trying to tunnel. 5 second stun is fine if it’s truly only useful for anti-tunnel, but that’s not the case at the moment.
Most of everything else seems okay. No problems with the nerfs to UW and Adrenaline, both perks are still going to be good. Haddonfield changes seem promising as well based on what was described.
I don’t know how to feel about the Twins changes, I need to see the PTB to get a better feel for them.
At first glance it looks nice overall.
Also, depip being removed is a breath of fresh air.
I always felt compelled to play harder and harder to reach rank 1.
Now I will be able to relax a bit and be nice even when in the red ranks.
👍️
Maybe. I guess I was thinking that aura time should be more in line with other aura perk such as I'm All Ears, which gives a longer time. 3 seconds feels too skimpy, especially if it's a radius and 3 seconds may be unnoticed if a survivor somehow sneaks around a blind spot. I do hear what you're saying though.
Thank you for doing these.
As for the update itself? I’m excited for the new shop!
Nah, I've had games as Bubba where people blocked my chainsaw with OTR while they were fully healthy because they still kept the endurance.
It Should deacticate the endurance when you get fully healed IMO, but it doesn't
Glad to see the store get updated after all these years. Adding the Collections tab will help make finding things much easier and I am guessing if say the Iron Maiden Collection got more skins, they will also go under the Iron Maiden tab along with the skins already released. Good update overall.