Developer Update | May 2025
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The 9.0.0 Update will be here before we know it, so it's time once again to take a look at the notable gameplay changes you can expect from tomorrow’s Public Test Build. As with last time, stay tuned for the PTB Patch Notes where we’ll share the precise values that are changing for each of the topics below!
Read on for all the details:
NEW FEATURES
- Added a system to identify whether a Survivor’s sacrifice is an intentional attempt at “going next”.
- If a player is identified as intentionally “going next”, they will receive a Disconnection Penalty Point.
- Removed the option to self-unhook on first hook stage unless they have one of the following equipped:
- Slippery Meat perk
- Up the Ante perk
- A Luck offering
- Added “unlocks the ability to attempt to unhook yourself” effect to Luck offerings.
- Survivors are no longer instantly killed after two struggle skill checks pass without any input.
Please note: The Disconnection Penalty system is not active on the PTB, so certain facets of the “going next” penalization will not be available to test.
DEV NOTE: We’ve made the above changes in order to tackle “going next” from two directions: penalizing repeat offenses and limiting exploitability of self-unhooks. By restricting early-match self-unhooks to specific perks and offerings, this still allows players to work it into their strategy while limiting cases where it’s used in bad faith.
- Updated AFK detection system.
- Reminder: If a player is considered AFK crows will gradually begin spawning above the Survivor, beginning with 1 and capping at 3.
- Once a Survivor has 3 crows following them, they lose collision with other players.
DEV NOTE: With this updated system, we’ve adjusted how the game identifies players who have stopped contributing to a match. While the crow system largely functions as before, an additional effect at 3 crows prevents Survivors from intentionally griefing teammates with body blocking, while also preventing the Killer from holding Survivors hostage.
- Added an Auto Bloodweb button which allows you to set how many levels you want to automatically progress through, Bloodpoints permitting.
DEV NOTE: It’s no secret this is one of the most common community requests, so we’re excited to put this in your hands! It’s what it says on the tin, so check out this GIF. Even better, we’ve removed some recurring pop-ups after you see them once to make your time in the Bloodweb even more snappy.
- Updated the Mori system so that it can now also be activated when 2 or more Survivors are dead, and the following occurs:
- The second-last Survivor is Hooked and on Struggle Phase
- The final Survivor is in one of the following states (Healthy, Injured or Dying)
DEV NOTE: With this change, Killers will be able to activate their Mori earlier – so long as victory is assured – removing the need to wait for any hooked Survivors to be Sacrificed. This will let players on both sides get back into the action sooner.
- Map offerings grant a flat percentage chance of being sent to the associated Realm. This chance is no longer a guarantee.
- Map offerings no longer stack their effects.
- Map and gameplay-affecting offerings are treated as secret during the loading screen reveal.
DEV NOTE: By making map and gameplay-affecting offerings secret on loading screens, our intention is to preserve the element of surprise, preventing the opposing role from starting the match with knowledge of your strategy.
- Adjusted the following spawn rules:
- Survivors spawn as close together as possible
- Survivors spawn on the same floor (where applicable)
- The Killer will not spawn at the center of small maps
- Changed the name of Shroud of Separation to Shroud of Vanishing and changed its effect to nullify offerings that change Survivor spawn locations.
- Changed the name of Shroud of Binding to Shroud of Separation and changed its effect to spawn Survivors apart from one another.
DEV NOTE: With these changes to spawn rules, players will find their spawn locations to be more consistent when not affected by offerings.
We also know certain Shroud offerings have historically worked counter to what each role might want, so we’ve adjusted them to better line up with these expectations.
- Added a Video category to the Graphics Settings menu.
- Added a Brightness setting to the Video category to adjust Gamma.
DEV NOTE: Dead by Daylight is a game that relies heavily on the play between light and dark, which can be difficult to strike a balance between when playing on console, given the more limited options available. To help alleviate this, we’ve added a setting for adjusting Gamma, which gives players more control over how light and dark elements are displayed.
Lowest Setting
Highest Setting
- Increased spectator slots in Custom Game to 5.
- Added hotkey inputs to Custom Game spectating to quickly switch the view to a specific character and cycle through character views one-by-one.
- Added controller support for the above improvements.
DEV NOTE: Not only is Custom Match a way to easily play with friends, it’s also a valuable tool for coordinating tournament play. To help streamline its use in these environments, we’ve added hotkey support to various methods of view-switching to make casting on-the-fly even easier. Plus, with increased spectator slots, tournament organizers have the option to give viewers visibility of all players in a match at once.
Even better, we have more improvements coming to Custom Match in a future update. Stay tuned for more on this!
KILLER UPDATES
- Adjusted several Add-Ons.
DEV NOTE: Overall, The Artist is in a solid place balance-wise and boasts useful add-ons that meaningfully change how her kit works. To encourage even more pick variety among these, we’ve adjusted her top and bottom-performing add-ons to bring their usefulness more in line with her other options.
Stay tuned for the patch notes for specific details on these changes.
- All of The Lich’s Spells are available at the start of a Trial.
- Reduced cooldowns of all Spells.
- Dispelling Sphere's projectile moves quickly when first cast and slows down over time.
- Increased the Killer Instinct duration once Survivors exit Dispelling Sphere.
- Increased the attack cooldown period after Fly ends.
- Increased the duration and movement speed of Fly.
- Adjusted Mage Hand hold time to make it consistent for both Killers and Survivors, resolving a known bug.
- Increased the effects of Magic Items when casting the associated Spells.
- Adjusted several Add-Ons.
DEV NOTE: For The Lich, much of his power focuses on providing utility over reliably injuring Survivors. We’ve adjusted his four Spells to increase the frequency with which they can be used to ensure there’s more spell-slinging, while quality-of-life adjustments help make these Spells feel smoother to use.
On the Survivor side of things, we also wanted to ensure Magic Items feel like more viable options for countering each Spell, so we’ve buffed them slightly.
PERK UPDATES
- Updated Call of Brine
- Updated Dark Devotion
- Updated Hex: Retribution
- Updated Machine Learning
- Updated Superior Anatomy
- Updated Terminus
- Updated Thrilling Tremors
- Updated THWACK!
DEV NOTE: We’ve adjusted values on the above perks which boasted lower pick and kill rates to introduce small buffs to increase their viability. Stay tuned for the patch notes for specific details on these value changes.
- Updated Botany Knowledge
- Updated Champion of Light
- Updated Counterforce
- Updated Desperate Measures
- Updated Empathic Connection
- Updated Exultation
- Updated Light-Footed
DEV NOTE: Similar to the above, we updated values on some perks with lower performance, introducing small buffs. We’ll share the exact values in the coming patch notes.
Until next time...
The Dead by Daylight Team
Comments
Not just be unhelpful, but making sure gens don't get done and teammates die, often getting the hatch in the end, just to spite everyone. It always feels great to have them in a match. I've gotten really ticked off at teammates who saved someone who obviously wanted to leave just so we could all get screwed over even worse.
Yeah, I don't think the Go Next changes are going to lead to an improvement in matches. People will take their frustration out on everyone else, I'd rather be down a player. BHVR's strange notion that people stick with this game because they enjoy the frustration is coming back to bite all of us on the ass, because no, they play despite the frustration, and their frustration comes out in the way they play, negatively affecting everyone else. One frustrated person in a match becomes a vector that spreads an increased level of frustration to four other people. It's a damn contagion. If BHVR thinks punishing the symptoms will make players happier, they're seriously underestimating the damage they've allowed to accrue by shrugging at people's frustration for years.
Do you mean duplicates of the same offering, or survivors each bringing an offering for a different map?
Duplicates of the same offering are what they mean here, based on how they talked about this the first time it was mentioned.
why the hell would every survivor be given the chance to get off the hook scott free? Do you survivors even think logically?! Holy F man no wonder these devs have to cater to such brain rot.
This is 100% false.
I mean 4 survivors each being an offering for a different map.
For example, for the sake of discussion, let's pretend a map offering has a 30% chance of occurring. If each survivor in a 4-SWF brings an offering for a different map, would there be…
This wouldn't be a real issue if BHVR was better at banning people for this kind of behavior in the first place.
It was 20% first time they mentioned it, so I would presume there's just a 20% chance of each map offering being rolled, and a 20% chance no map offering is rolled?
If the killer also brings a map offering, I'd assume that would mean the game is guaranteed to be on one of those five realms. That's something worth paying attention to once the PTB drops though, for sure.
This is true, but I think that someone obviously trolling and making the match worse in such an active way would incentivize more reports and such, ending with some sort of penalty in the end. "Go next" has gotten so bad I don't even really think most players bother reporting it anymore.
So long as BHVR steps up their game with penalizing reported players appropriately, this would help root it out rather than providing them with some sort of "I was just trying to unhook myself!" cover y'know?
Ultimately, I don't think there's any "issues" to fix that would stop people from throwing just to get into the next match faster. The reality is a lot of players are just deeply unhappy and are more than willing to throw a fit over something as silly as getting downed first in a video game or not liking the killer. Can't fix a person's temperament and personality.
I think that means that if each survivor brings a separate map offering, they have a 1 - (0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8) = 59% chance that one of their map offerings is picked.
That would still mean the survivor side can still have a map offering they want, over 50% of the time.
It's still only a slight chance though.
Plus wards are still in the game if you're worried about it, Killers still have a means to cancel all of them in that hypothetical scenario.
People will probably use them less since they aren't guaranteed anymore though.
This is what makes me think Map Offerings should get a greater nerf. In my opinion, they should remove them but that will never happen. I want to use my BP Offerings without seeing McMIllen, Azaroth, Badham, and Ormond back and forth
59% is a slight chance? It's more than a 50/50 chance.
Your scenario is a hypothetical in which all 4 survivors in a swf burn a different realm offering
It's an edge case, not something that will happen consistently imo but even if it does wards are still a thing to render all 4 completely useless.
You're not necessarily wrong, but I think it's very very relevant that "a map offering they want" has to be split between four map offerings, some of which were made significantly less strong for the survivor side. Sure, they've still got the classic realms with solid maps, but for genuinely survivor sided stuff… it's just Gideon's and Badham they can rely on here, right?
Eyrie and Garden of Joy are still survivor sided, but if they burn those offerings, they might get Dead Sands or Greenville Square, which aren't.
I think this is still a significant improvement even if it does work that way.
This may be the patch that makes me quit DBD for good. Being stuck in a match with players who want to leave but can't is really going to suck the fun out of matches.
"But griefing is bannable."
Sure, but if BHVR is busy processing all of these reports on griefing, they'll never get around to fixing the other issues. You know, the ones that cause Survivors to give up in the first place.
The problem is it's not that small of a minority and people inherently don't like wasting their own time. People who would have previously gone next will play out a match for real more often now. I'm pretty certain the mechanic was used to leave more often than it was used with actually getting off the hook in mind.
Burning a Withered Isle offering is still overall survivor-sided, when viewed as a long term strategy, because Garden of Joy is way more survivor-sided than Greenville is killer-sided. And burning a Withered Isle offering still allows survivors a better chance to avoid maps they absolutely don't want, like Haddonfield or Midwich.
Autohaven Wreckers, Springwood, Crotus Prenn Asylum, and The MacMillan Estate, would be an example of what a SWF could burn as a team, where the survivors are trying to avoid bad survivor maps as much as possible.
Now, don't quote me on this because I don't know the internal structure of BHVR. But, I'm reasonably confident it's not the same team of people going through reports and also working on game balance, content updates, bug fixes, etc. Like, most dev studios have different groups of people with different tasks and such.
I think they just need to beef up whatever team is processing reports because I imagine there'll be a sizeable influx of griefing and trolling reports should these measures hit live.
Survivors give up for literally 1000 different reasons. Its not just because of said "Core Issues". If the killer looks at them in the wrong way, they give up. If the killer downs them to quickly they give up. If they load in and its not the killer they wanted to face, they give up. If they load in and its a killer they hate, they give up. If the killer runs a certain perk or perk combo they give up, if they load into a map they didnt want to go to, and have to deal with a specific killer on that map because their offering didnt go through…They give up. If the killer runs certain addons, they give up. Literally I can just go on and on. You get the point.
I am so tired of players messing it up for me as a survivor when we are actually doing well, and they give up just because. Its 100% one of the most frustrating things about playing survivor.
Sure, but again, we've got to put this in context compared to what it is right now.
Right now, survivors can guarantee actively beneficial maps on their own.
After this change (if it works the way either of us assume), they can almost guarantee not getting a detrimental map, which isn't the same thing, only in a full SWF.
I don't know, a full SWF burning those specific map offerings post-change doesn't seem that scary to me. Autohaven and MacMillan have okay maps in, and I've got a decent enough chance of getting those over Badham or Crotus Prenn. Plus, I'd be able to burn my own offering for an equal chance (compared to theirs cancelling mine now), and I'd still have Sacrificial Ward available. It also doesn't really matter to me how survivor-sided their tactic is long-term, because I'm only facing them in this one game. The chances for that game are the ones that matter, right?
It'd probably be better for the game for map offerings to do something else, but what you're describing doesn't sound that bad to me.
Yeah, and the developers still won't focus on WHY people want to go, but they will try to implement more ways to keep you in the trial. It's annoying, but I would rather have a bot that wants to do gens, heal, and eventually open the door and run out versus a player that is trolling, wasting pallets, and sometimes sandbagging. And no one cares about BP's; most of us are swimming in millions anyway, so offering more BP isn't exciting. At least, as you point out, sometimes The Killer will farm, or it is so bad that a 3v1 is still winnable.
there's no single reason that keeps people going next. Frankly you would kill the game trying to cater to rage quitters. Plus you weren't getting a bot before and it was just forcing you into a 3v1.
I never said there was, but why not explore the topic? The devs should want to ascertain the reasons, and they can determine which are valid and consider how to address the pain points that lead to it. They have surveys asking the same questions every few weeks, why not one based on why players commit DC or suicide?
they already put out surveys asking how players feel about the state of the game. They don't need one for rage quitters. If you want to rage quit you get punished. If you aren't enjoying the game at all stop playing.
This oversimplifies the issue; not everyone is a rage quitter. People can enjoy the game while not enjoying every aspect of it. That's why they solicit and welcome feedback.
The only thing I wonder is, what if there's 2 survivors left that haven't been hooked yet, you down them both close to each other and hook them both. If you need those 2 sacrifices, do you just have to stand around and wait for 140 seconds since they can't self unhook? If they abandon, will the bots try to self unhook now?
Also, if there's 2 people left, then there will be no way to give up on hook and give the last survivor a chance at hatch, which is going to be pretty painful I think. I think the 2v1 needs some updates so there's more incentive to at least try to play and not hide for hatch, and less incentive for the killer to slug for the 4k.
Other than that, great update, very welcome changes.
I don't understand the anti-hiding changes. How does the survivor losing collision help the killer find a survivor that's hiding, whilst they're not contributing to the match? I've read it three times, and I still don't get it.
it's to stop the killer/another survivor from bodyblocking someone in a corner permanently
It's more of an annoyance that if killers specifically want indoor or outdoor maps, they only have a 20% chance of succeeding. Maybe they want an outdoor map because their killer's power is awful on indoor maps. Maybe they want an indoor map because they have a stealth build that is awful on outdoor maps. But with a 20% chance, they probably aren't going to get the map type they want.
And it's annoying because BHVR still won't balance maps depending on the killer being used. For example, Ghostface is really awful on big open maps, and there really should be increased line of sight breakers when Ghostface is being played, so that he wouldn't feel like he's already fighting an uphill battle just because of the map he's playing on.
Do you want your teammates to die? I don't. If you Gens B4 Friends there isn't any point in trying to wait the game out.
If you refuse to rescue, you give the Killer the win. Try. You have to play the game now. If you refuse to play the game, then take a break and play something else.
I will be downvoted for saying this but if you don't want to play, simply do not play. These changes are coming because Survivors give up too easily already, just like the AFC and anti slug coming, just like the anti tunnel coming. I'm sorry, but blame people for Going Next for why we cannot have nice things anymore. Downvoting me will not make that change.
This may have already been addressed but the mori change sounds confusing.
Does it mean that if you have a strong looper that the killer can just ignore them all game, wipe out the other 3 average players, and then mori the strong player without even having to hit or engage with them in any capacity?
People are confused by the wording
All this change is for is so the killer doesn't have to wait for the 2nd to last survivor to finish dying to mori the last survivor once they are downed. Nowhere does this say it auto-moris the last survivor
It's the same as it is now, the only difference is if you down the final survivor while the 2nd to last survivor is in struggle state, you can mori them immediately instead of having to wait for them to die.
Would the simple solution to the go next problem just remove dc penalties and invest the dev time in making bots better rather than all these go next prevention systems that ultimately won't work?
People only kill themselves on first hook leaving the game in a 3v1 to avoid the penalty.
The proposed changes will just cause those players to chase a killer down, throw every pallet on the map, afk under a hook etc, resulting in a 3v1 anyway.
Improve bots and let people leave a match if they want. I'd rather have a bot teammate than a real one who's going to grief and ruin the match.
That makes sense, I just don't understand why it says while they're healthy or injured
Why not just disabling the self unhook option for the first 3 (or x) minutes of the match?
Unless you have said perks/offerings of course.
That would affect 95% of all go nexters without affecting any "honest" players. All scenarios in which it makes sense to try to kobe (and/or die faster to give hatch) take place later in the game.
Just classic BHVR wording I think, trying to cover all bases even when it doesn't quite make sense.
A better way to word it would be: "When the 2nd to last survivor has reached struggle state, the final survivor may be mori'd when downed".
Please please please give some sort of buff to Scratched Mirror Myers to make up for that Map Offering change.
Scratched Mirror on an outdoor map is statistically one of the worst killers in the game. You're a tall-ass easy to spot killer with the slowest move-speed and T-rex arms with no bloodlust and slow action speed…permanently.
But INDOOR he's iconic and there's thousands of hours of content that have been made for this beloved build.
This change makes Scratched Mirror DOA. No one is going to want to run that addon after this change goes live, as the experience will be miserable
PLEASE consider giving Myers a way to pick his map or at least give some buffs to the addon/kit/T1/something/anything.
I'm begging you.
It doesn't matter if you were winning decisively or not. Even on a decisive win a random self znhook can cause a hatch escape. And just because a win wasn't perfect, doesn't mean the Killer deserves to lose. You said sometimes Survivors make a comeback with the self unhook. That is purely luck and the killer can't do much about it except bleeding out. This is like advocating for a Killer Mechanic that each Survivor has a 10% chance of entering the Dying state once the last gen pops, so the killer can make a comeback if the Survivors aren't winning perfectly enough.
Also, interesting for you instantly went to accuse me of having 4 man slug as my preferred play style. The only time I had a 4 man slug this year was when I was playing Bubba and went against a Sabosquad who were all lingering near each other to get the sabo save. I just acknowledge that all remaining Survivors being slugged is a realistic scenario that can happen and should be accounted for.
i guess we are not falling for this worn off ragebait this time
@UnknownEnjoyer seeing people downvote this is crazy, like in what world should RNG decide outcome of the match? It has no place in PvP games.
If you want to get a beneficial self-unhook, just bring Deli or Wicked, simple
This could be because of an upcoming perk or Killer. "Do some thing to unlock the ability to kill the last Survivor without downing them first.". Since they are updating things right now they might have added this now instead of later, even if it's currently useless.
They should go to another game. Why are they booting up dbd just to not play it? They clearly don't actually like playing the game if they just quit at the start of every match.
That's easy to say, but having Survivors leave the game will just lead to eternal queue times for Killers, and then the game itself will die.
They already detailed how it will work and you're overcomplicating it, it's not multiplicative, it's static.
Think of it like there are 5 "map slots" that the players can influence through offerings. By default, all five slots are just "go to a random map". Not a specific realm, just "any map in the game". But if one player brings a map offering, then one slot becomes that map offering, so it's a 20% chance to get that realm, and 80% chance for a random map. If four players bring a unique offering (since multiple of the same offering still only fills one "map slot", then they have an 80% chance to get one of the four realms they brought offering for and 20% chance for a random map.
Sounds bad, but remember that Sac wards will now be stronger than they've ever been now that all map and game altering offerings are hidden. If the killer brings a sac ward, survivors can't know that, and thus can't dodge it unless they're willing to dodge oceans of matches. On top of that, even if survivors bring 4 map offerings and killer doesn't bring a sac ward, having an 80% chance to get one of four realms is still way less obnoxious and powerful than guaranteeing a realm with a single offering. And they may still get that 20% chance for a random map.
I think we will be seeing far, far less map offerings after this update, they simply aren't as impactful and reliable as before which is about time. What I think we'll be seeing a lot of is shroud offerings from survivors, since it's very important to spawn separate. Maybe a mix of shroud offerings, hatch offerings and map offerings, forcing the killer to counter only one of them.
Why would they want to buff his spells? I mean they are buffing Fly, and Mage Hand and Flight of the Damned are already strong enough, I see no reason to buff their effectiveness. I also don't see how his macro skill expressions is being reduced with these changes.
I seriously doubt that will happen.
Glad to see go next finally being dealt with. As a few others have posted, I think a better idea would have just been disabling self unhooks for the first few minutes as those end game times when an unhook does occur were incredibly exciting. I also worry about how many people will bring perks to unhook, but am willing to take a wait and see approach to how things shake out.
I suppose a possibility is that once the Mori stage activates, its active and doesn't turn off. So if the killer hooks a survivor with one left, Mori turns on, and if that survivor is unhook, its still on and the killer can now hypothetically mori two survivors.
But I'm thinking its just awkward wording.
Should've been an accessibility setting. Or part of their colourblind mode.
Are fly mage hand or flight of the damned gonna be good enough to have 40s cooldowns with these changes? Clearly not, and his macro skill expression is reduced with lower spell cooldowns because it means you don't have to be as careful/intentional in how you use your spells, whereas with 40s cooldowns youd maintain the average frequency and required skill as a killer with only 1 ability and a 10s cooldown (since vecna has 4 abilities)
I agree with MaddieMage.
These are just band-aids that are only gonna penalise legit players who have no choices but attempt to try and turn the game around. If you want to get rid of people going next constantly, hardcore slugging, camping and such (which there should be more updates about in the year) then BHVR needs to address the core issues: find out why people do those and solve that issue. Or at least make it better.
Plenty of survivors who are trying to go next are unhooked before they're able to (often even before they reach stage 2) and it changes literally nothing. Because that person doesn't want to play the game anymore. So all they do is stand there AFK or run into the killer asking to go next. Or sometimes even worse: they're pissed off they couldn't go next so they go around the map dropping every pallets in order to grief the other survivors.
You cannot force someone who doesn't want to play anymore to keep playing the game. And the fact BHVR and many people stubbornly think you can is baffling.