We need to pick up the pace
Dear BHVR,
The overhaul that is coming some time next year (hopefully) will be a huge deal for the community but also will probably attract a ton of new players to the game, along with old players that quit. I don't think anyone here would be surprised if DBD smashes it's concurrent player record on Steam.
However, breaking the concurrent player record means absolutely nothing if we don't retain any of those players. Just recently DBD destroyed that record by almost 50,000, peaking at 168,000 players on Steam. And yet, the player count almost immediately plummeted straight back down to where it was before. This is what is going to happen with the overhaul if serious changes are not made by then.
With the overhaul, I am assuming that a lot of bugs will be fixed (although there might be more bugs overall for a little while as the devs iron out the code), and I'm assuming that one of the things they are rewriting is the god awful netcode. I'm also assuming that with the coding and graphics overhaul together, that we will finally be getting proper settings for things like graphics. Therefore, I will leave these topics alone.
But overall, the game will be the same as the one we have today. Even though I'm sure this will fall on deaf ears, there are so many things that need to be changed before the overhaul to actually have a successful launch, and we're nowhere near achieving them:
We will be getting a big perk patch that is supposed to focus a lot on general perks, which is perfect for new players. We need more than just one patch of this. We don't need every single perk in the game to be strong, but we need the majority of them to at least be viable or interesting to use rather than what we have currently where 50% of perks are left collecting dust.
The killer guides they added in this last chapter are an amazing edition to the game for new players, but the tutorials desperately need updating still. There are so many things that are not explained or touched on at all in the tutorial (such as perks or Anti-camp), and it also only serves to tell you a couple actions you can do rather than teaching them how to do it. For example, telling a new player they can drop a pallet is not nearly as useful as putting them through a tutorial where they are guided to loop around a simple filler tile and then drop it.
There are still killers that have been S tier since their conception, while there are killers that have become completely left behind in modern DBD. Nobody is expecting perfect balance, but the difference between Nurse and Trapper or Ghost Face is ridiculously wide. Players should be able to main any character they want without being told their character is absolutely terrible.
The puny amount of servers in comparison with other live service games of similar size continues to isolate players that want to engage in countries where there are zero servers nearby. Even within the regions with the most players such as Europe or the US, the server spread is so empty that many players are still sitting on high ping, which even with better netcode will make the game feel worse to play.
We still are not able to load into a custom game by ourselves or with a killer bot. Having the ability to load into a custom game solo would give new players the chance to walk through any maps they may find confusing, and being able to add a killer bot can give players a chance to practice looping a simple killer.
For a player that already has thousands of hours in the game, the "economy" of the game isn't a big deal. However, for new players it is astronomical. Even with a standard escape cake every single game, assuming you get around 30k score per game (which is generous), it would take 3-4 hours (not including waiting time) just to get a single prestige. When putting into account how many characters there are, and how one prestige only initially unlocks the first tier of that perk, this is ridiculous to expect from a brand new player. The simplest solution would be to get rid of perk tiers and have all "tier 3" perks unlock with prestige 1, they don't really serve an actual function anyway.
Connected to the BP grind, there are iri shards. As of now, we have 54 survivors and 44 killers, and there will probably be a few more by the time the overhaul comes. Not all of these need to be unlocked, some must be paid for which is fine, and some of the non licensed characters are cheaper than others. However, for one full priced 9,000 iri shard character, it takes 35-45 hours of actively playing the game. Many people play other games as well, expecting them to either spend hundreds and hundreds of hours to unlock even just the characters on one side or spend extra money on dozens of characters is a surefire way to chase them off. More characters need to be made cheaper, whether that is at 4500 shards or ideally 2000 shards. This would not infringe on the grind for cosmetics, as cosmetics are fine being expensive because they are purely cosmetic and do not hold perks or abilities.
I genuinely love this game and want to see it succeed. The overhaul is by far its biggest chance to become something more than it is right now, but as DBD is right now it just won't be able to take advantage of that chance. The game is just way too slow with change, and I am continuously baffled by how the company behind this game has over 1200 employees. I am well aware that many of them work in publishing other games, perhaps working with license holders, etc. However, there should definitely still be hundreds of developers, and yet the game is slower to make meaningful change than any other live service game I've ever played. I understand that BHVR is navigating the balance of a unique game from a genre like hero shooters that can base balance off of other games in its field. However, this game has been out for over a decade and we still lack certain basic functions that every other live service game, big or small, already has had for years.
If BHVR is to take advantage of this chance and make DBD explode in popularity, change needs to come at a faster rate. It's okay if some things need to be corrected later, they just need to be actually worked on and fixed before the biggest event of the game's history. Any rough patches during this next year may lose some players along the way, but for the longevity of the game, for long term growth, this next year is the most important to determine DBD's success.
From a loving fan that wants to see this game become something more.
Comments
My pie-in-the-sky desires:
I agree with you on all points, basically, but the biggest problem is this:
Most people stopped playing DbD because of the Denuvo disaster and uninstalled it completely; trust is crumbling, or for most, it’s already gone, and so is the hope.
Most players whose processors were damaged, whose graphics cards crashed, or whose PCs and Laptops overheated due to Denuvo have completely lost faith. Players who manage to get into the game crash out of lobbies and receive matchmaking bans of up to six hours or more.
It’s not just Steam anymore, it affects all platforms, with players on Epic and consoles now also hit by these bans. Especially since 2v8 is back. Frustration is mounting, yet BHVR is stubbornly pushing ahead with the test phase and trying to cover everything up. Practically everyone feels exploited like a lab rat.. People are already speculating that BHVR simply wants our MSinfo.nfo files to spy on us.
If not for all this, I would fully agree with everything you said. But BHVR needs to earn back our trust first, and unfortunately, that’s not so easy. More than half of the Steam players have left DbD and want to play other games like Left4Dead, Fall Guys, and S6 and others.
Stats don't anyway support your statement. August average of Dead by Daylight steam players was about 71000 players and so far september average is about 58000 players. Where is the over half the playerbase drop?
Using a monthly average only from steam to downplay a critical issue that only went live a few days ago is just poor math. Look at the actual live drop-off since the Denuvo integration, especially today during a major 2v8 launch that should normally double the concurrent numbers, but instead, people are flooding the forums with GPU crash dumps.More importantly, you completely missed my point: Dead by Daylight is a cross-platform game. This disaster isn’t locked to Steam. Thousands of players on Epic Games and consoles (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch) are dropping the game or actively boycotting it because the constant PC kernel crashes are breaking the global matchmaking queues, leaving console players slapping them with unearned 6-hour matchmaking bans. Players are leaving cross-platform entirely, and no selective Steam chart is going to hide that.
You made claim that I proved to be wrong thats that.
I'm hoping the graphics overhaul adds jiggle physics for more charactets like Lara Croft and Thalita