Lengthy discussion on the perk grind
I was going to post this as a reply to the "What features would you like in this game?" thread that @Skairipa posted, but now I want to make it its own topic. Dead horse TL;DR: I would like to see DBD's grind reduced dramatically. Just a broad flat reduction. It's too much. I feel like I need to make a cut-and-paste thing for future use, because nobody seems to get it. But here goes.
- The game launched with 25 survivor perks (12 teachable and 13 universal), and 20 killer perks (9 teachable and 11 universal).
- The game currently has 65 survivor perks (51 teachable and 14 universal), and 60 killer perks (48 teachable and 12 universal). This is a 260% increase in survivor perks, a 300% increase in killer perks, and a 278% overall increase in perk count.
From a normal player's perspective, it is nearly impossible to properly understand any individual character's play style or capabilities, and hence whether they are is a good fit for your own preferences and enjoyment, without a reasonable assortment of perks to sample. This is a particular issue for killers, less so for survivors.
In other words, I can't just jump into a level 1 Spirit and get a sense of what she is really capable of, because I don't have any strong perks that would help shine a light on how "actual" play unfolds. Thus, I am required to commit deeply to her, in order to collect enough resources to ascertain this in the first place. The more teachable perks you unlock (in your effort to realistically sample various characters), the taller this mountain is.
And if I do take a shine to a specific killer -- let's keep using Spirit as the example, because it's what I did -- and I want to unlock a full perk inventory for this ONE character (no prestige ranks involved), I would need to clear a current total of 600 Bloodwebs across all other killers (15 killers at 40 Bloodwebs apiece), and then clear 180 Bloodwebs with her (60 perks at 3 ranks apiece, including her teachables). That's 780 Bloodwebs. And that's if I do it in the most robotic, efficient way. I estimate that it takes about 1.1 million Bloodpoints to level a character from 1 to 40, so that's 16.5 million BP just to get the teachables unlocked for the killer role.
Yes, the Shrine of Secrets provides a little bit of help. And yes, it gets "easier" to bring up other killers once all perks are unlocked (since your other characters are now 40 levels deep, and need fewer Bloodwebs to check them off the list). But the commitment just to, say, have a relatively modest "current" collection of killers -- say ~3 or so at any given time -- is super, super oppressive. Survivors follow a similar arc, though they are more merciful, since you just need to pick a main, stack all perks on them, and never touch anyone else.
In the last Twitch Q&A, I suggested removing ranks 1-2 of each perk, leaving only a single rank apiece. Behaviour seems to think that it's better that most of each perk's power is housed in the lowest rank 1 version, but that isn't remotely the issue at hand. The issue is that there are flatly too many perks to unlock for a reasonable adult human with limited time to commit to a single video game, let alone ANY video game. If each perk only had 1 rank, the numbers would be way more player-friendly, especially for anyone who is looking to play multiple characters at a non-potato level.
If it's an issue of Behaviour being nervous about player retention and clinging to an oppressive grind as some sort of solution, I mean, I suspect that's a toxic influence that bleeds out all over the rest of your game. I can't count how many new players I've tried to bring into the game, who saw that grind and said "no way, I'm out." You may be hitting some internal player retention goal with this predatory system, but you how many potential fans are you leaving out in the cold? And how frustrated is everyone who plays? I know this forum is a vocal minority, but if we're going by this place alone, the answer is: VERY.
The Archives or Rifts or whatever are going to add more grind. I'm not convinced that they will lessen the grind, because they specifically said in their Q&A answer that they would "spread it out." That doesn't sound promising. I mean, if they add a bunch of cosmetic grind and reduce the perk grind to compensate, I'd definitely go for that. But I frankly don't think they're that charitable, and care about their retention metrics to the extent that they are overlooking their community's broader well-being. I should say that I also don't believe this is malicious. The developers want people to have fun playing the game that they obviously continue to work hard on. Their goal is not to drive anyone away. But this grind has reached critical mass, and they aren't addressing it.
I started playing this game on November 3, 2018, and I've unlocked 42/65 survivor perks and 46/60 killer perks. I have 1 survivor and 1 killer (Spirit) with a full perk inventory -- that is, everything I've unlocked so far. This is stupid. I know I'm going to get a bunch of "WAAAAAH WORK TO EARN IT" replies from people who don't understand video games and fun, but I've put what I estimate to be ~500-600 hours into this game (minus lots of idling in the background while I'm not playing!). That's a lot of investment, a lot of earning that I've been doing, for a really lopsided payout. And it's just going to get worse, every time a new set of survivor and killer perks gets added to the mix.
Comments
Sorry for a couple of typos. I've fixed them in my text document for the next time I have to post this thread.
You don't need perks to do good and learn a new killer.
:0
Just clarifying that this is sarcasm, yes? :D :D :D
I have like 250 hours on this game and I almost have everything I am missing like 7 killer perks and 4 survivor perks
It sounds like you were a lot more optimized about your BP spending than I was (I definitely wasn't). But very few new players are going to figure out how to do that in the best way possible.
Yeah that's true I joined the game during a double BP event and leveled up my first survivor to 50 during it then after that I looked up the best way to spend bloodpoints, so I did not waste many bloodpoints at all. I don't think that the grind to get characters to level 40 to get their teachable perks is that hard. However getting one character to have all of the perks is an absolutely insane grind. When you get to level 50 it takes like 50,000-70,000 just to finish one blood web and get one perk. I play survivor mostly and got a p3 character at around 180 hours and the last 70 ish hours have been trying to get all the perks on that one character and I still have like 15-20 perks to max out
They should just start having a double BP event like once a month, because you can get a ton of bloodpoints during those.
@Scal3r Yep, there you go. The game isn't friendly to players who don't do extensive research as they go. And I didn't even think about double BP weekends, but yeah not everyone is so lucky.
Counterpoint: Maybe double BP should just replace the current normal amount
The only problem I have with people being able to finish blood webs faster is add ons/items being in the blood web too. If you get too many bloodpoints and finish blood webs faster yes you get more perks but all of the sudden everyone has a ridiculous amount of items too. Ebony moris, op add ons, flashlights, and insta heals would be pouring in all the time. I think that they should make it so that you can get more than one perk per bloodweb
I have said so before and I will keep saying it. This problem has a very simple solution. No need to remove tiers. Make bloodwebs have more than 1 perk per bloodweb the higher you go.
There are all kinds of solutions, yeah. More BP rewards, no rank 1-2 perks, more perk choices per web (I'd say like 7-8), the option to buy all three ranks of a perk immediately for additional BP cost, or just a straight-up full list where you choose the perk you want from each web and pay the BP cost.
A big part of my issue is that they refuse to give a straight answer for why they don't pursue anything like this. I want to know, specifically, what they think the underlying advantage of the current Bloodweb system is in both gameplay and business terms, and why it is worth the player happiness and convenience sacrifice.
(I apologize in advance, I didn't get a chance to read the whole post, I'm about to head out and wanted to share some info before I did. Sorry if any of this is mentioned.)
As you've mentioned, removing perk tiers isn't the direction we'd like to go at the moment. It's a little easier said than done and would create some issues, namely that a new player would stop getting perks early on (level 14 for survivor, for instance) and then receive no perks at all until they start unlocking teachable perks at level 30. It would feel pretty lackluster.
That said, we do have a pretty significant change coming to bloodwebs with the next update. We'll have a blogpost coming out towards the end of the month explaining the change.
Making changes requires someone to implement them. That costs money
Cool, looking forward to it. I hope it means less overall time investment per individual character!
Luckily, they have employees whose jobs are exactly this!
noice
Considering that the summer event was cancelled despite them having everything needed for one and bloodweb changes requiring more work than that it is very unlikely that anything will be done. Obviously there are more important things to work on
Such as the battlepass
Or lootboxes
Are you being serious in how you are defending that rationale right now? Battlepass and loot boxes are going to completely throw this game down a well dude.
I am being sarcastic because the devs have ignored massive issues that exist since launch but they use resources to develop anti-consumer garbage such as a battlepass
Lootboxes, though not confirmed, are the next logical step
Haha sorry, sarcasm is hard on the Internet sometimes.
do ppl get rewarded like with legacy back in the days? hope we get at least something
For what?
The Archives or Rifts or whatever are going to add more grind. I'm not convinced that they will lessen the grind, because they specifically said in their Q&A answer that they would "spread it out." That doesn't sound promising. I mean, if they add a bunch of cosmetic grind and reduce the perk grind to compensate, I'd definitely go for that. But I frankly don't think they're that charitable, and care about their retention metrics to the extent that they are overlooking their community's broader well-being. I should say that I also don't believe this is malicious. The developers want people to have fun playing the game that they obviously continue to work hard on. Their goal is not to drive anyone away. But this grind has reached critical mass, and they aren't addressing it.
I started playing this game on November 3, 2018, and I've unlocked 42/65 survivor perks and 46/60 killer perks. I have 1 survivor and 1 killer (Spirit) with a full perk inventory -- that is, everything I've unlocked so far. This is stupid. I know I'm going to get a bunch of "WAAAAAH WORK TO EARN IT" replies from people who don't understand video games and fun, but I've put what I estimate to be ~500-600 hours into this game (minus lots of idling in the background while I'm not playing!). That's a lot of investment, a lot of earning that I've been doing, for a really lopsided payout. And it's just going to get worse, every time a new set of survivor and killer perks gets added to the mix.
I agree with most of the things you said, but I think that for the Rift and for archives it's an idea to balance the game, it's ok you will have to pay to get all the rewards and cosmetics, but I think the basic idea is something completely different from the past. I am one who has been playing since January 2017 and I have seen the growth of this game, slow but always improving. I would like to give a little more confidence to this group, I am sure they will not disappoint us for the next updates. :) right?
Will there be any kind of reward or compensation?
For what?
Just4fun u know.. NO clue why I'm asking this smh...
It was mostly a rhetorical question.
Just because you put a bunch of time into a broken system doesn't mean improvements should be held hostage by players who think they deserve something extra for putting up with the worse old way.
What do you want from me? I haven't asked you, move on. Geeg, some people with their presimistic attitude are disgusting.
I am devotion 5.2. I have all perks I can get for my main survivor and main killer. To help keep boredom at bay,I am now prestiging all characters, by using all the items in their inventory before prestiging. I would absolutely hate it if this process was sped up in any way
Sorry bro but you are not the majority
Why even have the grind at all? Why do we need to grind for addons that make our killers playable past rank 15? Why do perks have arbitrary ranks? Why have the bloodweb at all when it basically exists as a tedious grind simply for the sake of "Character progression? In end, it makes the game more tedious for people who play longer than a week.
Some type of meaningful progression is important to a game-as-service's long-term existence.
I agree, philosophically, that a game should just simply be fun enough to sustain on its own, without players having to endure an oppressive grind. But at the same time, I can look back at Last Year: The Nightmare, and I believe that a total lack of progression is a big part of the reason why that game died so quickly. I think the answer these days is just... kinda complicated.
I don't begrudge DBD its grind entirely, I just wish it wasn't so random AND oppressively long on a per-character basis.
For that I am glad.
Ok, so let's say they speed it up and next 6months, everyone has all characters with every perk available. Then what?? Have you ever heard of game longevity?