Valuetown
Valuetown
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@Emeal said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3947102#Comment_3947102
Correction: The patch notes does indeed state that it CAN do a DC penalty, but the video in question does not show that.
Full Link for those who care:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/patchnotes#:~:text=%22Going%20Next%22%20Prevention
But I don't dispute the patch notes, Thanks @Hex_Ignored for pointing that out.
Thank you for issuing a correction for my obvious tongue in cheek joke. Some people might have taken it seriously.
I am surprised that you took the patch notes for their word. Did you know that software doesn't always behave how the patch notes say it should? I thought you might have held onto the argument that there's still no evidence because of that.
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@Hex_Ignored said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3947092#Comment_3947092
"Going Next" Prevention
- Added a system to detect Survivors who intentionally die early in the match.
- When a Survivor is determined to be doing this, they receive a disconnection penalty and lose one full grade.
According to BHVR's own patch notes, the system can hand out dc penalties if it flags a player.
Sorry there's no video evidence so the patch notes must be lying. 🤷♀️
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@Emeal said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3947088#Comment_3947088
BHVR disabled the system because there were reports of false positives and they are investigating them, I have not disputed that.
The point is, there are reports of people getting banned or DC penalized too, but nobody has been able to provide proof of this.
BHVR has yet to admit that the system is able to ban and DC penalize players, we dont even know if the system is capable of this. Why? Because you have no proof for it, yet.I dont think you are lying or in a conspiracy, you probably just don't care about having evidence for your beliefs, so you saw videos about it and assumed what you heard was correct. You are certainly unskeptical and you SHOULD be concerned about the lack of evidence being provided here.
You don't disable a system unless you see proof. That means BHVR has seen substantial proof of it happening.
After a warning comes a ban. That's how warnings work. If someone is warned and BHVR disables the system, then it means yes, the next step would be a ban. They wouldn't disable a system that just warns people.
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@Emeal said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3947083#Comment_3947083
You mean this Video? https://www.reddit.com/r/deadbydaylight/comments/1lfj0xq/video_of_all_4_survivors_being_defeated_causing/
Sure and would you like to show me when in that video the DC Penalty shows up on screen to prove all of this?
I watched this video three times, and I watched his VOD on Youtube, there was no DC penalty when he came back to lobby.So where is it?
I see what you're doing by trying to muddle the conversation with pedantics. Let me phrase it to you like this: do you think BHVR would have disabled the AFK system yesterday if there wasn't a MASSIVE problem with it because it was falsely banning players? Or are we just making everything up and you caught us in a massive lie because you deigned to ask for a source?
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@Emeal said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3947078#Comment_3947078
At least in that scenario you would have evidence and video footage of the penalty, Trust me bro I want you to be right, I want to see the bad stuff happen. But we need video evidence of it.
Did you... not watch the linked video? I can't help you if you're refusing to interact with the data provided to you.
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@Emeal said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3947053#Comment_3947053
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3947054#Comment_3947054
Well the streamer in question didnt get any DC penalty on his VOD, Do you guys have a source for were you saw this?
EDIT: YEAH YEAH, Just vote me down for asking for a source. But you should care about evidence-based reasoning!
There's a difference between asking for a source to validate suspicious info versus asking for a source because you have no other counter argument.
Any false positive for a system that automatically serves out punishments is a complete and utter failure, no questions asked. Could you imagine a system where a killer would get a matchmaking penalty potentially added to their account if they haven't hooked a survivor in 2 minutes?
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@Rogue11 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3946242#Comment_3946242
Why was it deemed necessary to begin marking players as "AFK" when they are actively playing the game? There are myriad reasons why someone wouldn't be on a gen for a minute at a time (multiple expose perks, killer instadown powers, traveling across the map to unhook, slugging for the 4k, just to name a few).
Why is this intrusive system considered an improvement when 99% of the time, the only situation where "excessive hiding" occurs is when 2 survivors are left alive with multiple gens uncompleted? Why not have this system active only in that situation and disabled once either survivor is slugged/hooked (to avoid further encouraging slugging for the 4k)?
Because disabling the system until 2 survivors are left makes too much sense.
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@Fix_Killers said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3945577#Comment_3945577
Nowhere did I say I want Survivors to be fodder. I even agreed that gen rushing is not a real thing.
But keep swinging at that strawman, because you have literally nothing else to go after. 🤷♀️
Survivors are so spoiled in this game that their own screeching points are BS they say for the Killer, then act like the Killer said it.
Survivors are spoiled, yet lose at least 60% of the time, while killers win 75% of the time. Make it make sense.
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@Fix_Killers said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3945527#Comment_3945527
But at a certain point, do you REALLY need that 3rd or 4th slowdown perk? Do you really need to try out the latest content creator build that "makes survivors give up!!!!!" to see it for yourself?
I don't know.
Do you REALLY need a 4-man SWF?
Do you REALLY need everyone to bring 4 meta perks?
Do you REALLY need to try out the latest content creator build that 'makes Killers ragequit!'God forbid you get a 3k instead of a 4k. Heavens to Betsy if you walk away from a match with a 2k.
God forbid you get a 3 man escape instead of a 4 man escape. Heavens to Betsey you walk away from a match with a 2 escape.
Hell, I've seen Survivors say that they expect to be given the hatch if they are the 4th survivor.
Not 'It would be nice if' but 'The Killer has to do this, or they are toxic'.Survivors queue up with a 60% chance of getting sacrificed, and a 25% chance of not really playing the match if the killer decides to play meta. Killers load up and wonder how many 4k win streaks they can get. Do you see the difference?
The only 'difference' is you making up BS numbers to cry about how hard Survivors have it, and how it's all Killer's faults, and Killers should stop trying to win because it makes Survivors sad.
Killers are not your hired help.
They are not employees.
They have every damn right to try winning, same as Survivors.
And I am sick and tired of Survivors malding that Killers need everything they do heavily policed ecause 'I'm sad I lost! 😭'I don't know.
Do you REALLY need a 4-man SWF?
Do you REALLY need everyone to bring 4 meta perks?
Do you REALLY need to try out the latest content creator build that 'makes Killers ragequit!'
High MMR 4 man swfs still have a sub 50% 4-man-out escape rate, those are official BHVR stats from this year. Less than 1% of lobbies are 4 man swfs running 16 meta perks. The average kill rate is 60%, meaning 7.2 hooks, rounding up is 8 hooks. That's the AVERAGE kill rate.
Seeing you try to throw what I said back in my face and failing shows me you really don't understand the issue and just want survivors to accept your complaints without you hearing theirs. That is literally the case in point of what I was talking about.
Survivors queue up with a 60% chance of getting sacrificed, and a 25% chance of not really playing the match if the killer decides to play meta. Killers load up and wonder how many 4k win streaks they can get. Do you see the difference?
The only 'difference' is you making up BS numbers to cry about how hard Survivors have it, and how it's all Killer's faults, and Killers should stop trying to win because it makes Survivors sad.
These are not made up numbers. Solo queue players have a 40% escape rate from the same BHVR data I referenced. That means they get sacrificed 60% of the time. 25% of the time (1 out of 4 survivors) they are the first caught, and by your logic, are the first to get tunneled out. Math isn't difficult.
Killers are not your hired help.
They are not employees.
They have every damn right to try winning, same as Survivors.
And I am sick and tired of Survivors malding that Killers need everything they do heavily policed ecause 'I'm sad I lost! 😭'
These comments are hilarious when you want survivors to be fodder for the killer player's enjoyment based on your statements. 🤷
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@Fix_Killers said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3945483#Comment_3945483
No, the problem is that killers expect survivors to not take getting tunneled personally due to your reasoning, but then take everything personally that happens to them.
I mean, some do. I don't.
Getting "gen rushed" is a phrase invented by killers who lost their first chase as a way to deflect blame to survivors.
You are correct.
I first started using it around the time Survivor's started complaining about 'Proxy camping' and tunneling. I was hoping to shed light on the fact that 'playing to win' is not a crime.If getting tunneled is "doing the objective" then "gen rushing" is also "doing the objective."
Correct. Both are doing the objective as efficiently as possible.
Chasing a survivor with 4 second chance perks out of spite is taking it personally.
The problem is; Survivors assume everything is out of spite. And this goes for Killers as well.
I once had a Claudette accuse me of racism because I 'tunneled' her out.
You what to know how I 'tunneled'? I ran into her 3 times. She was the WORST on her team at avoiding me, so I randomly found her before I saw any other teammates.
Was that her being bad? Nope!
Was it bad luck? Naw!
It was obviously me tunneling her because she was Claudette! In her mind that was the only rational explanation. That I was a filthy tunneler and targeted her.Bringing lightborn for someone who has a flashlight is taking it personally.
I hope this is an example I am somehow missing context for. Because if not, it's a wild take.
Survivor players hate being told that they just have to "suck it up and enjoy not having fun, but don't take it personally!!" when on the flipside, you can't go one thread without hearing "toolboxes this, medkits that, genrush genrush genrush, heal tech, body block, etc." It gets very tiring.
Funny thing is; The opposite happens, too.
Killers (Like me) get tired of being told to 'play off-meta!' because 'I'm tired of seeing meta killers!'
Of being told 'Stop using meta perks! It's boring!'
Of being told every, single tactic is wrong, toxic, unfun, bad for the game, and 'only bad Killers do <insert tactic here>'!
Camping? Bad!
Tunneling to create pressure? Toxic!
Slugging (Which some Survivors think means 'Pick up NOW, even if you know someone is going to flashlight save!'? UNINSTALL!
'Proxy camping' (A term Survivors invented when Killers tried to stop camping, to say 'You are still too close/Come back too fast')? Stop playing!Each side seems to have it in their head that 'Trying to win' is bad, because it means THEY lose.
It's not your fault that the killer meta makes survivor an absolute hell on earth experience, nor is it your fault for wanting to win. But at a certain point, do you REALLY need that 3rd or 4th slowdown perk? Do you really need to try out the latest content creator build that "makes survivors give up!!!!!" to see it for yourself? People want to play the game. These metas prevent at least one survivor from really playing the game. God forbid you get a 3k instead of a 4k. Heavens to Betsy if you walk away from a match with a 2k. Survivors queue up with a 60% chance of getting sacrificed, and a 25% chance of not really playing the match if the killer decides to play meta. Killers load up and wonder how many 4k win streaks they can get. Do you see the difference?
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@Fix_Killers said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3945426#Comment_3945426
Speaking of "poor sportsmanship" that is exactly what slugging, tunneling, and camping actions are by killer players.
So trying to win, if it makes your opponent unhappy, is 'poor sportsmanship'? Nah.
One other commentor here pointed out another aspect of "poor sportsmanship" of survivors who pallet stun killers and blind them, sometimes repeatedly in my experience, or do the same at dropped pallets when the killer goes for the break.
Pallet stuns and blinding are not poor sportsmanship, either. They're ways to slow down the Killer and/or save a teammate.
I'd make an argument that t-bagging and rapid flashlight-clicking on Survivor's side, or repeatedly revving a chainsaw in a Survivor's face (Bubba and Billy), t-bagging repeatedly (Pig, Ghostface) and the like ARE poor sportsmanship.
Along with staying in the exit gate to taunt the Killer.The concept of poor sportsmanship is rife on both sides and you are very clearly missing the point - when a survivor clearly sees they will be left hanging for the remainder of their time in the match, it is better to leave sooner than later. This mechanic change just forces those hooked survivors to have to endure essentially doing nothing for some or most of the game.
That's an inherent flaw in the hook system, honestly.
I saw an idea, years ago, when I browsed here & Steam, that someone had. It's too late to use it, but it's nice:
Moris replace all hooks.
When a Survivor is Mori'd, they become a ghost. They can run around the map. They cannot see Survivors or Killers. Or Gens or Totems. To avoid 'scouting' in a SWF.
They have a countdown before they can respawn. Afterwards, they can respawn at-will.
After being Mori'd 3 times; they are out.Or, alternative gameplay loop:
They can be mori'd infinitely, and the Killer's goal is to simply prevent them from escaping in a time limit. Which means the removal of kicking gens & changing gens to be more interactive to progress (IE: No holding M1. You need to find parts, work for a bit, find more parts, etc).
If Survivors ultimately escape before time is up; They win.
If the Killer prevents them from escaping before time is up (Or kills them all during the EGC); He wins.Sadly, this will never happen.
imo slugging, tunneling, and camping happen too muvh and these are NOT game mechanics, they are player choices that just happen by interating with the other players. There inlies the difference.
They are tactics to slow down the game, since the devs, in their infinite 'wisdom', stacked so many gen-speed perks and healing perks, Survivors can pop 3 gens in the Killer's first chase.
Even if the chase is quick.
At that point, the Killer HAS to knock someone out of the game as fast as possible, to slow down any more progress.
Problem is; Survivors keep claiming the Killer trying to win by taking out the weakest link (The person he caught first & can catch again) is somehow 'poor sportsmanship'.Is it 'poor sportsmanship' for Survivors to return to a gen they got to 75%? No! It's 'doing the best objective'.
So why is it 'poor sportsmanship' for the KIller to take out the wounded Survivor who was already hooked once? It's one less hit (So a shorter chase) and Stage 2 (Requiring saving sooner).Oh, because it affects a player instead of an object like a gen. So OF COURSE the Killer should be required to not do that. Because losing is not fun and that's the Killer's fault. Somehow.
No, the problem is that killers expect survivors to not take getting tunneled personally due to your reasoning, but then take everything personally that happens to them. Getting "gen rushed" is a phrase invented by killers who lost their first chase as a way to deflect blame to survivors. If getting tunneled is "doing the objective" then "gen rushing" is also "doing the objective." Chasing a survivor with 4 second chance perks out of spite is taking it personally. Bringing lightborn for someone who has a flashlight is taking it personally. The list goes on and on. Survivor players hate being told that they just have to "suck it up and enjoy not having fun, but don't take it personally!!" when on the flipside, you can't go one thread without hearing "toolboxes this, medkits that, genrush genrush genrush, heal tech, body block, etc." It gets very tiring.
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@Aven_Fallen said:
Yes, they were not lenient enough with the system. Especially because it was a QoL-Update (without the Quality…) and probably aimed towards better new player experience. Guess what, a new player dies faster and a new player is more likely to miss Skill Checks on the Hook and therefore getting a penalty.
Just imagine you are new at the game and after your first game or so where you had no idea what you are doing and die on the Hook in second stage, since you are not used to Skill Checks yet, you get a DC-Penalty. This person will likely refund the game on the spot.
They should have been way more lenient with the system. It is better to not punish someone who wants to go next instead of punishing people who did nothing wrong.
I'm honestly starting to think this was one of the reasons as to why we didn't get a survivor for FNAF. Could you imagine the amount of people getting banned for trying out Michael Afton, while also having under 4 hours in the game? If all the new players are on killer, they don't get penalized. Tin foil hat theory for sure, but stranger things have happened.
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@Adriana_ghoul said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3943582#Comment_3943582
Would be great for the devs to tell us these reasons instead of blindly nerfing things out of nowhere so we can correct them on their mindset/approaches to changing characters.
We still dont know why Artist, Merchant, Billy, Twins got their nerfs.
I too would like transparency behind the balancing philosophy, but unfortunately I don't see that being the case from the devs. In my opinion, they have spreadsheets generated for every addon/perk combo, and ones that deviate too much from their target win ratio gets nerfed.
This is why it often seems like there's no rhyme or reason, because there isn’t most of the time. It's like twisting a bunch of knobs on a machine that you have no idea on how it works, and trying to achieve a specific result. Most of their data is correlation not causation, so they take their best educated guess on more obscure nerfs or buffs to compensate, while also cross referencing projected changes to other combinations. At this point, there is too much to balance. In my opinion, killers shouldn't have addons but 3 or 4 loadouts that mimic specific addon combos.
Other changes are way more apparent. Kaneki for example was completely broken and it doesn't take a spreadsheet to figure that out. This unfortunately isn't very common, so most changes end up being weird number tweaks that do nothing, or complete reworks because the thing in question became too problematic to balance among everything else.
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@Firellius said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3943375#Comment_3943375
And what would you know about that? Unless you do believe you are god's gift to the killer community, how would you know what is 'unbeatable'?
Yeah, the game is unbalanced. BHVR said so. By design.
It's why killers win more than they lose.
It's why even high MMR swiffers can't break a 50% escape rate.
It's why there's killer winstreaks that go deep into triple digits, some even quadruple digits!
But all of that is evidently fine. You can have a 90% KR, you can win 99-99.9% of your matches, none of that is problematic.
But if -ever- there is even a single game where the survivor team has the audacity of beating a killer? THAT is unfair.
The killer winning literally everything else, that's fine. The killer winning literally everything when going all out, that's fine. 100% winrate is A-OK!
But the survivors winning a singular match?
Clearly OP.
Let me ask you: Should the best killer in the world have a 100% winrate?
Most killer mains will unironically say yes, they should have a 100% win rate.
I don't know where in the development of this game we got to this point, but somehow killer is now seen as the "underdog" or "hero" role, despite being able to sacrifice at least 2 survivors per match by nature of the game facilitating that, which has led to unfair perks, map nerfs, good tile reductions, and much more to let the "underdogs" feel like they have a fighting chance (even though they always did within the past 5 years).
Another thing with killer mains is them calling dbd an "asymmetrical game with RNG elements" seems to only apply to survivors and not to killers. Killers want perks/addons/abilities/etc. that completely eliminate the asymmetrical elements of this game. Take a look at blight for example: He is able to win at almost every pallet if he has his power up. He is able to traverse the entire map in one ability usage, and the rush is off cooldown within seconds of him using it. With all these RNG nullification elements in the game, most people think that their skill alone should carry them to high win streaks. It's this mentality of "high skill ceiling" killers that allows killer mains to think they SHOULD be able to have a 100% win rate, which anyone with any sort of intellectual honesty knows that if a certain side can win 100% of the time, it's not a game anymore and people will leave in droves.
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@GlamourousLeviathan said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3943027#Comment_3943027
I'm sorry, but if people are losing to a Huntress in the first 2 minutes in 2025 they deserve to lose. Also, Oni and Plague are killers that escalate at the mid/late game as they require some setup, so they wouldn't snowball either. Mind you that even Nurse and Blight are not that oppressive when having to patrol only 4 gens, otherwise they would have 100% win rate since no survivor would be able to pass the last 2 gens threshold. As it stands, the game basically always start at 3 gens left, since the survivors have to be REALLY incompetent to not do two gens before the first chase, Corrupt normalizes this so you actually play with 5 gens every game.
You do realize the game is designed that the killer shouldn't win with 5 gens remaining right? If the chase target from the devs is 45 seconds per chase, two chases would be 90 seconds aka 1 gen complete. That means, if one person stays on a gen for the first two chases of the game, one gen should be complete at least.
Also I never said that huntress would finish a game in 2 minutes, but I know why you'd intentionally misinterpret my message as such. Good huntress players know how to slug. She now only has to patrol her slug for about 2/3 of the map's size because corrupt is covering bases. So now here's the situation: the survivors do the gens nearby where huntress is because those are the non corrupt gens, they wait 2 minutes for the gens to unblock to then force a 3 gen by where the huntress is, or try to pick up the slug, who is now 2 minutes off their bleed timer, while huntress is getting free hits with a hatchet. It's not that hard to understand what a simple game plan would be.
I'm tired of having to explain basic survivor action economy to every killer player, but alas here I go again:
At the beginning of the match, 1 survivor is in chase, 3 are on gens. That is the strongest the survivors will ever be. The map resources have not been used, nobody has any hooks, everyone is healthy (barring no mither). Once that first survivor is hooked, the survivors progress the game at 1/3 the speed. This is because there is 1 person on hook, 1 person going for the save, and 1 other person who is now being chased. That leaves AT MOST 1 survivor doing gens. The game frequently cycles this state if the killer is competent. Since the target time the devs have chosen for a chase is 45 seconds, it takes roughly 45 seconds for a survivor to rotate to a hook, to spend 16 seconds healing, and then the remainder of that time to find a new gen and work on it. This means it will take an entire ~6 minutes for the lone gen survivor to finish the other 3 gens (gen time + movement around the map), IF 3 gens manage to complete that first chase. THIS IS NOT FACTORING IN GEN REGRESSION OR SLOWDOWN.
Did it ever occur to you that unless you are playing 4 slowdown blight/nurse/etc. that there will be at least one gen that gets complete if both sides are competent at their roles? If kill rates are hovering around 60% and there are 12 possible hooks, that means 7.2 hooks are occurring. Since you can't have .2 of a hook, we round up to 8 hooks. That means either everyone is on death hook but are still alive, or 1-2 people are sacrificed. I'm constantly told that killers can't multihook because it takes too much time. How is it then that an average of 8 hooks are happening every game? Would that mean that there's 8 * 45 seconds = 6 minutes between the first and last hook? Oh would you look at that - it's the same time it takes for one survivor to do 3 gens by themselves.
Like I said before, most games are won and lost in the first 60 seconds. This is proof that this is the case.
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@GlamourousLeviathan said:
Before the perk overhaul some years ago, it was kinda agreed on that Corrupt Intervention and Borrowed Time should be both basekit, since they both fix gameplay flaws on both sides and allow for more healthy games. Then BT became basekit and Corrupt got nerfed in the same patch because logic I guess.
The devs have also talked about an early game collapse of sorts some time ago, since the early game is really rough on killers as they start with no pressure. However, they seem to have forgotten about that idea. It is just like some other people said, survivors are the only ones allowed to have meta perks as basekit.
Could you imagine nurse/blight/spirit/huntress/oni/wesker/plague/etc. only having to patrol 4 gens for 2 minutes, while also snowballing hooks? Corrupt has always been designed for setup killers. The reason it got nerfed was because it was completely broken on the killers that don't require setup. Even AFTER its nerf, it's still used on anyone going for kill streaks. People need to understand that most games are won/lost in the first 60 seconds of a match based on killer performance/survivor gen progress. If the survivors cannot progress multiple gens in that first 60 seconds right away, they will probably lose.
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@gingerGeorge12 said:
How it would work is that the farthest 3 gens from the killer are blocked for 80 seconds with the new Corrupt Intervention being able to add 20/30/40 seconds to the base-kit if equipped.
If the Killer downs a survivor this base-kit mechanic deactivates like what current Corrupt Intervention does.What this solves is that it buffs weaker killers more than the strongest killers (Blight, Nurse, Spirit, Ghoul, Hillbilly, Dark Lord) because the stronger killers tend to get the first down on the survivor really quickly and weaker killers tend to struggle.
This wouldn't work for multiple reasons.
1. Corrupt soft-forces a 3 gen. Either the 3 gens that are blocked or the 3 gens that are closest to the killer upon spawning end up having a higher chance of becoming 3 gen capable.
2. The killer will require less patrolling to encounter a survivor. If every match forced the survivors more towards the middle due to corrupt, the killer will encounter a survivor much quicker. The strongest the survivors will ever be is at the beginning of the match with 3 people on gens and 1 person being chased. The shorter amount of time before that initial chase begins and the first hook, the odds of the survivors losing exponentially skyrockets.
3. This will essentially open up 5 slowdown builds if killers got corrupt for free. No thank you.
The only way this would work would be if the killer does anything but setup traps or break walls, the corrupt would disappear (if they equipped the perk corrupt, it would stay as it is now). Anything, and I mean anything, that the killer would do that isn't those two things would automatically deactivate the corrupt. That would be start chase, use any power, have a successful m1, break a pallet (that would imply a chase began where a survivor pre-ran). That's the only reasonable way for base kit to work that wouldn't completely break the killer role.
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@Rulebreaker said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941849#Comment_3941849
You seem so sure that killers are doing it more…
Regardless of that line of thought, we could point out how we see more survivors bail, but the fact that we saw a post that literally states they will bail as trapper when they see a map offering means any else will be mute or somehow someone will come make a similar post as that one.
Everyone wants to play that game, by all means, floors yours.
It's all anecdotal so realistically it means nothing. I'm sharing the amount of opportunity killers have over survivors in the same situation.
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@PleaseRewind said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941798#Comment_3941798
And you claim you aren't biased…
What?
@Rulebreaker said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941798#Comment_3941798
Yet since survivors do it too (it's not a maybe, it has and does happen), doesn't that make it a both sides issue?
Both sides can be at fault, but when one side does it more often and for more "entitled" reasons, then it tips towards it being a that side problem. Like I said, if the killer doesn't like their odds on the map that is being burnt, they will disconnect. Survivors don't like stealth, hit and run playstyles, especially when solo queueing, which is what indoor map offerings imply 99 out of 100 times.
If you want to talk about offsetting this, killers can bring Franklin's/lightborn/more slowdown to counter every type of item. If a killer sees 4 toolboxes, that's a gen rush playstyle. If a killer sees 4 flashlights, that's a flashlight blind playstyle. Killers have this knowledge and can even lobby dodge. That is the equivalent of a survivor DCing against a map offering.
This means killers have another set of information to decide whether or not they want to play the match, that being the offering screen. That is how this is a killer issue. They have two instances where they can essentially back out of a match for free if it isn't in their favor.
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@Mr_K said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941747#Comment_3941747
If that be the case then I would want that to change. My argument has always been, once you hit that Ready button or waitout the 60s to back out, you have commited to the match. To leave or refuse to play is ruining the experience of the other players who also agreed to play that match. It doesn't matter which side it is.
If killers are DCing during loading, punish them. It's all the same to me. But what I and many other players experience nearly every day we play is someone with a chip on their shoulder refusing to play the match they agreed to play.
I agree. There should be no reason that disconnecting on the loading screen shouldn't invoke a matchmaking penalty.
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@PleaseRewind said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941741#Comment_3941741
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941747#Comment_3941747
Correct, you don't get a penalty but not sure why you are framing it as a killer sided issue. I've seen survivor do it too when they don't like a map offering. I've seen a few do it too when a killer brings survivor pudding - very odd behavior.
It's a killer sided issue because killers buy into the "bad map, instalose" fallacy more than survivors. Survivors MIGHT DC if they see Midwich or any other indoor map because that signals a boring stealth killer hit and run game. I don't condone that behavior, but the fact is those are two different situations. One is for playstyle, the other is for not having the map stacked in your favor.
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@Mr_K said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941596#Comment_3941596
Okay, we are talking about to different things because I misinterpreted your original statement. Fair enough.
Disregarding my previous replies, I still think the statement is incorrect mainly due to this:
Killers are allowed to "go next" for free, without penalty, all because they don't like the map.
It is my understanding, if DCing during the offering screen, a penalty is still issued. Because in order to pull this off you either have to pull your Internet connection or force close the game. As anyone who has to deal with DBD over the years knows, you get a disconnect penalty even if the game crashes while loading.
You do not get a disconnect penalty if you disconnect on the loading screen. Most killers who are insecure about their skills against competent survivors force close the game if they see a map offering. I see this at least 3 times a day from the killer side. They are free to relaunch the game and queue right back up. The only thing you lose is the offering you burnt, and any addons you might have had. A very small penalty, especially considering the relative ease in which killers get their best add ons.
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@terumisan said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941468#Comment_3941468
this statement is incorrect specifically
>So therefore, killers disconnect and dodge at the the same if not higher rate than survivors do
since by design there are more survivors than killers
I'm talking about individual survivors. If every survivor had a 1% chance to dodge, but the killer had 2%, the survivor total would be 4% and the killer would be 2%. That is still a higher rate than any individual survivor.
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@Mr_K said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941565#Comment_3941565
Where was I the one bringing lobby dodging? I was replying to you.
Also to make an equivalent statement, assuming people are disconnecting for your killer selection, being first found, etc, do you know how many killers disconnect on the load screen when they see a map offering? I would also consider the killer offering screen dc an epidemic.
What part of disconnecting on the loading screen is lobby dodging to you? Once the timer hits 0, the match has begun. Burning offerings are a part of the match...
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@Mr_K said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941468#Comment_3941468
You would lose that one. Survivor dodging is well known and even meme about. It's not some edge case.
This issue I have with you is equating lobby dodging and DCing in match. These are not equal even if you or I believe both to be bad.
They are not equal, yet you are adding instances of lobby dodging to try and help your argument, which wasn't even the point of this entire topic.
Keep the goalposts in place please.
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@Mr_K said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941396#Comment_3941396
Killlers can dodge lobbies because a survivor is wearing a hat. In other words, dumb reasons.
Survivors dodge other survivors for similar dumb reasons. And soon, they can dodge because another survivor is bringing a non-meta build.
I'll take things that don't happen for 200 Alex. And even if so, they also DC for the reasons I gave in which survivors cannot. So therefore, killers disconnect and dodge at the same if not a higher rate as survivors do and for more reasons, all while putting the blame solely on survivors. That's called entitlement.
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@Mr_K said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941035#Comment_3941035
There's a clear difference between in the lobby and in the match. Your time waiting for a match is violated if a player leaves after the match starts. If someone leaves in lobby they are replaced. Besides, both sides do this and I expect one side to do it more often when perk builds get displayed in lobby.
How do both sides do this when survivors cannot see anything about the killer? The match begins when the offerings are burnt. If you disconnect after the offerings are shown, people have to wait for the game to realize the player disconnected. That wastes so much time. You're thinking of lobby dodging, which only the killer can do in response to survivors. The survivors know nothing about what the killer will bring until the match starts, aka the offerings screen.
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@Hannacia said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941016#Comment_3941016
I have survivors giving up EVERY single day for stupid reasons. I mostly play survivor now and people give up when they are found first or the killer doesnt please them. Its constant and it hurts us as a team and we end up losing because someone starts raging at 5 gens and gives up.
I've also lately had plenty of trolls. They load into the game and drop every single pallet or just stand doing nothing following the killer being a menace.
I added it into my post because it happens almost daily if not daily. I don't see anything wrong with adding something into a post i forgot to put there afterwards.
Anyways i'm not going to keep talking about this. If you play killer as much as you say good for you, if your matches are always easy and you always get 1k at least again good for you. I personally don't believe that is true. This forum is filled with survivor mains who only see the game from survivor side and are extremely hostile in their answers and extremely biased without seeing the other sides point of views at all. You came across as someone like that in your post thats why i answered.
The downvotes of every killer supportive message is prove of this.
If you want to criticize my points go ahead, but assuming who I am as a person and criticizing me because you "don't think I play killer" is the point where discussion breaks down and becomes ad hominem.
You do know you can continue the conversation in a new reply... that way people can see the flow of discussion, and most importantly, the people involved in the discussion can be notified of an addition so they can address it...
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@CorvidXCVIII said:
You're, there are also plenty of killers who just give up and wait by an exit gate to end the game. That's also an issue I hope gets addressed. I also hope lobby dodging, perk switching and such also get addressed but that's not what this thread was about.
As for the "I must know" thing, obviously I can't know, just like you can't know that they're doing it for completely reasonable reasons. Maybe trapper is an unfun killer, but still, I can't see it warranting several games in which the first survivor goes next,unless almost every game has a survivor with some emergency going on in the background.
So yeah, hope that covers your whataboutism adequately so we can go back to the actual topic.
It's not whataboutism. Both topics are discussing going next. They are the same topic. Please understand the logical fallacies you're going to accuse me of before throwing the terms around irresponsibly.
Your whole second paragraph was the point I was trying to make. Either my assumptions and your assumptions are both valid, or none of them are. For you to discard mine as wrong and then describe your own as true was the whole point of that.
As for your first paragraph, they are related to the topic at hand. Killers can adjust their builds based on what they see in pregame, often times out of spite (flashlights into lightborn, toolboxes into Franklin's or more slowdown, etc). Survivors cannot do that. If the survivors were hidden from the killer, which they should be out of fairness, killer "go nexts" would skyrocket. Survivors cannot adjust anything or lobby shop, hence they are forced into more matches they would have dodged to begin with. Killers have the luxury of having a good deal of knowledge on what survivors will bring and can counter accordingly.
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@CorvidXCVIII said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3941016#Comment_3941016
I'm only going to speak from my own experience because that's all I can do. I've had people give up instantly because either I've found them first, they don't like the killer I was playing or the wind blew the wrong way. How do I know this? Because they didn't give me the opportunity to even think about camping, tunneling or whatever. Must be because I play a meta killer then, right? No. It's happened to me as one perk Trapper, as no slowdown Wraith, Billy despite constantly bonking into walls (seriously, I suck as Billy).
To argue that "survives give up because non-game related, immature reasons" has been in any way disproven implies that you know the mentality of every single person who has ever "gone next" and that none of them have ever done so out of non-game related, immature reasons. Somehow I doubt that to be the case.
The point of anecdotal evidence aside, you are also assuming that they are disconnecting for those reasons you gave, without asking them for their rationale. That implies you 100% know the mentality of every single person who has ever "gone next" against you. So in other words, no you don't know.
Also to make an equivalent statement, assuming people are disconnecting for your killer selection, being first found, etc, do you know how many killers disconnect on the load screen when they see a map offering? I would also consider the killer offering screen dc an epidemic. Killers are allowed to "go next" for free, without penalty, all because they don't like the map. Or, better yet, they can just stand in a corner for the entire match if they massively lose their first chase, wasting everyone's time, trying to farm sympathy from the survivors.
If you're going to complain that this is only a survivor issue about not wanting to play against unfun or boring things in the game, at least acknowledge killers do the same thing to the same degree.
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@Hannacia said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3940996#Comment_3940996
I edited to add something into my post. I removed one line. Which i can say again. I press X for doubt that you play much killer due to the things you say.
You added an entire second paragraph. You can check your original post because I quoted it when I responded to you in this message:
@Valuetown said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3940970#Comment_3940970
What you choose to believe and what the facts are are two different things lol. Killers are awarded at least 1 pity kill if they know how to play the game. If you are getting 1 or 2 hooks before endgame that's a skill issue, or you're playing pig/myers/onryo. Every killer B tier and above can get at least 1 kill for free, that's how the majority of the community feel.
Having a one off game every 1 in 20 matches isn’t killer "struggling" to keep up with survivor, it's one match where the killer had a one off game.
Just because I'm pointing out killer bias, which is the topic of this thread and my criticism, doesn't mean I also don't acknowledge the issues with killer. I dislike how certain killers require slowdown while others don't need to run it. But at that point, it's a core issue with the game design and less of a killer problem.
You are adding a tired and disproven killer talking point that survivors give up because of non-game related, immature reasons. This is simply just not true for the majority of cases. If you would have had that in your post originally, I would have talked about it. But in editing afterwards, my response will now be taken out of context. Thankfully, I noticed.
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@Hannacia said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3940966#Comment_3940966
Yet you are purely biased on survivor side. Hmm.. i play both sides as well, and i can see issues on BOTH sides. Killers arent awarded a pity 1 kill per match eather. I have matches where i get 1-2 hooks sometimes and so does many other killers out there. Even killers with thousands of hours struggle in some matches.
It is easier to get 4k though if someone ragequits on first hook just because the colour of the grass was wrong. Or DCs and gives me a bot. So yeah i do think the kills on hooks are counted in kill rates and they are making them look a bit better than they actually are.
@Hannacia said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3940976#Comment_3940976
Lets just agree to disagree.. Hope your games go well and enjoy the incoming anniversary event.
Agreeing to disagree then editing your post is an…interesting choice when trying to come across as intellectually honest and not biased, especially considering the content of your edit...
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@Hannacia said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3940966#Comment_3940966
Yet you are purely biased on survivor side. Hmm.. i play both sides as well, and i can see issues on BOTH sides. Killers arent awarded a pity 1 kill per match eather. I have matches where i get 1-2 hooks sometimes and so does many other killers out there. Even killers with thousands of hours struggle in some matches.
Yeah sorry im gonna hit X for doubt on this one.
What you choose to believe and what the facts are are two different things lol. Killers are awarded at least 1 pity kill if they know how to play the game. If you are getting 1 or 2 hooks before endgame that's a skill issue, or you're playing pig/myers/onryo. Every killer B tier and above can get at least 1 kill for free, that's how the majority of the community feel.
Having a one off game every 1 in 20 matches isn’t killer "struggling" to keep up with survivor, it's one match where the killer had a one off game.
Just because I'm pointing out killer bias, which is the topic of this thread and my criticism, doesn't mean I also don't acknowledge the issues with killer. I dislike how certain killers require slowdown while others don't need to run it. But at that point, it's a core issue with the game design and less of a killer problem.
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@Hannacia said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3940950#Comment_3940950
Tell me you don't play killer without telling me you don't play killer… Sigh i hate this absolute one sided way of thinking.
I am iri 1 killer and survivor every month. I can call out the hypocrisy of killer only mains while also playing killer.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3940857#Comment_3940857
I did not know I was speaking to the supreme master of DBD, the one who can determine other people's thoughts so easily, my apologies.
Your absurdism fallacy isn't clever, but it does reveal that you have no true rebuttal, which is fine.
Try to check your own bias.
Every killer main forgets that bhvr disables almost every second chance perk in end game, guaranteeing at least 1 kill out of pity. Every map has become smaller, thus lowering the need for gen regression, yet they bring 4 anyway. Almost every decent tile with a window has now been replaced with a garbage replacement of two pallets next to a tree. I'd consider that killer hand holding.
Every time I see a killer main complain about "the UI is hand holding" or "base kit BT is hand holding" I can't help but laugh. The UI was added to bridge the gap between swf and solo queue. That way perks can be balanced in a way where it doesn't feel like SWF has a massive advantage over solo queue (have killers already forgotten that whole line of criticism?). Base kit BT I laugh even more because any killer who genuinely complains about it has never once seriously played survivor for anything other than tome challenges.
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@Zuiphrode said:
The main good thing about xeno tunnels is that if you're up against a bully squad and give up you can just hide in the tunnels and they can't teabag/flashlight click at you
What's this thing about survivors being entitled and causing the "go next" epidemic?
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@crogers271 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3938573#Comment_3938573
This will be my last post on the topic as its getting a circular and I'll try to sum up my arguments. You're welcome to have the last word.
1: Growth and inevitable decline.
You say -
You asked for what I defined as significant.Not that I can find, though in fairness its a long discussion so maybe I'm missing it or you interpreted something I said different than I intended. I said significant was subjective and then I explained my point on the growth issue. Getting into what executives and a company might be looking for growth numbers was never an issue.
The point of the growth issue has always been connected to the player count retention issue - games have a pool of players that they appeal to. Over time players will naturally move away from the game. Depending on the game type the timeframe this occurs over may change. Looking at the history of games, a game not on the decline nearly ten years into its life cycle is amazing.
Comparing it to things like Minecraft is like saying a business isn't successful because it doesn't bring in as much money as Amazon.
2: Change it up - Going back to your original statement that I responded to:
I don't know where people get this idea that games need to "change it up" in order to retain their players.When someone says a games needs to change, I presume they mean change until I see a qualifier. I don't think they inherently know that they are supposed to be using a standard from a survey that BHVR conducted and that clearly some forms of change aren't part of the topic.
You seem to agree that lots of forms of change are necessary, though when I've asked for clarity you've avoided the specifics. This makes the discussion difficult and you're arguing with a strawman.
3: Player counts - You have to compare like to like. You have to compare June with June, April with April, etc. You also have to consider other factors that could impact the player counts, in this discussion mainly the availability of players during the pandemic.
Looking at the numbers any other way than this I think is flatly wrong. On a month by month comparison 2024 is on par with 2020 and overall slightly beats it.
You also seemed to have a misunderstanding of what the numbers meant that come from things like Steamcharts for the monthly player count and that players having more . You didn't address this which means:
There's been a miscommunication - not addressing it makes the discussion impossible.
I'm the one whose wrong - not providing me the info on why I'm wrong makes the discussion impossible
You're the one whose wrong - in which case a fundamental premise of your discussion on players is no longer true and needs to be acknowledged, not avoided.
4: Core gameplay loop - No one ever disagreed that a core gameplay loop was important. We're not talking about fixing bad games, we're talking about what is needed from a successful video game to retain it player counts.
5: Games are games - Just because two things have similarities does not mean they are the same. This seems to be a massively overdrawn connection on your part that ignores reality. As an example: a scary movie, a scary game, and a scary haunted house all evoke similar feelings, but also have massive differences in terms of things like their repeatability.
An obvious point being: if they were the same, why have all three?
The experience of running to an exit gate while chased by killer while actually sitting in a chair holding the W key is radically different than the experience of actually running down the field with an actual human trying to catch you. Are there similar reactions? Broadly speaking, sure. Can a good simulation mimic this for a limited amount of time? Absolutely. Are they the same? Not at all.
With how things have gone with things like the sports issue, I feel like no matter how many times I list clear factual differences between two things, you're just going to say 'games are games' and ignore them.
This will be my last post on the topic as its getting a circular and I'll try to sum up my arguments. You're welcome to have the last word.
Thanks for giving me permission to have the last word! 😁 It's only circular because you are refusing to accept the data I'm presenting you, so I have to reexplain things multiple times.
I said significant was subjective and then I explained my point on the growth issue.
You said it was subjective, so I defined what it meant to me.
Getting into what executives and a company might be looking for growth numbers was never an issue.
I never said it was? I used it to justify why my growth percentage was what it was.
Looking at the history of games, a game not on the decline nearly ten years into its life cycle is amazing.
Most games aren't designed to be replayed continuously and forever. I'm talking about the games that are designed with replayability in mind. I figured that was a no-brainer, but of course a game like Nier Automata or will lose its appeal after you 100% beat the game and run through all of the content. DbD/Minecraft/Skyrim are not like that; they have different, more evergreen, loops.
Comparing it to things like Minecraft is like saying a business isn't successful because it doesn't bring in as much money as Amazon.
False equivalence. I never said that if you weren't as successful as Minecraft you weren't a successful game. I showed with data that dbd is on the decline over the past 5 years. You claim it isn't because "dbd gaines 1 player every couple of months for only 1 month!!"
When someone says a games needs to change, I presume they mean change until I see a qualifier. I don't think they inherently know that they are supposed to be using a standard from a survey that BHVR conducted and that clearly some forms of change aren't part of the topic.
What does this even mean? Of course when people say a game needs to change, they want a specific set of changes to make the game feel different. Those are usually tied to core gameplay issues. Gripes around balance are purely a pvp issue.
Player counts - You have to compare like to like. You have to compare June with June, April with April, etc. You also have to consider other factors that could impact the player counts, in this discussion mainly the availability of players during the pandemic.
You don't have to compare June with June. I don't know what data and statistics class you took in school, but a continuous data comparison over a period of time is just as valid as what you are suggesting, as long as you are aware of the trends. I thoroughly explained the data to you, yet you are still ignoring it. I can't help you there.
There's been a miscommunication - not addressing it makes the discussion impossible.
Just because I don't address a point you raised does not make the discussion impossible. You are attempting to hide behind definitions when everyone else knows what I'm talking about. The tactic of saying "oh well we don't know" or "oh it's not certain" or "this data might not be accurate" is a telltale sign that someone does not want to interact with the data available (within reason, sometimes there are valid instances to question the data). This is the only data we have. I know how steam charts work. I know what averages are. You know how steam charts work. You know what averages are. The discussion is impossible because you will not agree on the most basic data we have available.
Core gameplay loop - No one ever disagreed that a core gameplay loop was important. We're not talking about fixing bad games, we're talking about what is needed from a successful video game to retain it player counts.
This just went right over my original point then. If your core loop is good, it will retain its players more reliably over time.
Games are games - Just because two things have similarities does not mean they are the same. This seems to be a massively overdrawn connection on your part that ignores reality. As an example: a scary movie, a scary game, and a scary haunted house all evoke similar feelings, but also have massive differences in terms of things like their repeatability.
From wikipedia: Sport - a form of physical activity or game.
You're not going to win this point, I'm sorry. How humanity as a whole defines sport is against your personal definition. I'm not arguing that you are having a similar level of physical activity and associated hormones when playing video games, in fact, I said that was their only difference. You can still get adrenaline playing games. You can still have an anxiety response when under the pressure to perform in a ranked environment. Side comment, do you know what mirror neurons are? They are neurons that fire when we witness activities that mimic the neurons that would fire if we were actually performing that activity. Look them up, it's an interesting topic.
With how things have gone with things like the sports issue, I feel like no matter how many times I list clear factual differences between two things, you're just going to say 'games are games' and ignore them.
I hoped someone with as much experience as you would know the difference between facts and opinions. The only facts we have discussed in this thread are the player numbers from steam charts. Everything else has been opinion. It just so happens that we're just going to have to agree to disagree with the both of ours.
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@crogers271 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3938119#Comment_3938119
This is extremely pedantic and completely disingenuous to the thread at large. Growth would signify a continuous increase in player numbers to a significant degree (more than 5%).You don't just to get to state things and presume the other side was arguing them all along. I never said growth was 5% or that was my claim. Your presuming I'm arguing from those same standards.
My standard on growth, which I've repeated a few times: any growth is remarkable for a game of DbD's age.
If you think those numbers aren't relevant, that's fine, I disagree, but we're back to the retention of the player count.
Please explain to me how out of the past 58 months since June/July 2020, only 17 months had player numbers higher than the average player count for July 2020 (40,500 players)?This is simple
1: COVID
2: The summer months are generally DbD's best months
3: Any months later in a game's history having a higher player total is remarkable,
To turn the question around: Please explain why June 2021, 2022, and 2024, beat June 2020?
If changing it up is bad, why haven't player numbers dropped? Why aren't those months lower?
The Minecraft launcher allows you to play ANY version of Minecraft that has been released over the past 16 years. I do not have a number, but a sizeable amount of the Minecraft player base plays on a version that is not the current versionAs I said, I've never really played minecraft so without some sort of numbers kind of impossible to discuss.
The only difference between sports and video games is that sports require more physical activity, aka the health benefits.This is missing the forest for the trees.
What video game has matched sports levels of player retention?
Looking at the numbers its clear that they aren't the same and can't be compared. The 'why' is a fun academic question which I get into later, but a distraction from the issue.
In fact, you talk about player retention: how many people do you know that have kept playing soccer or football or basketball outside of their high school or college years?I asked for clarity in the last post whether we're discussing playing or spectators, so I guess we're on playing.
This actually backs up my point a lot. Most people move on from sports, which as I've been saying is the norm for human activities. Except as one generation ages out, another generation ages in. This does not apply to video games because the amount of competition increases substantially (i.e. what kids play the same games their parents played when the parents where kids, that's pretty rare and usually is things like Call of Duty or Madden that are constantly releasing new versions)
You asked for why sports are different? Well a possible reason is that its just really, really hard to start a new sport (think of how incredibly rare something like pickleball taking off is), while new video games come out constantly.
No, you just completely ignored my comments about how even bhvr specifies what is a "balance change" and an actual "content change." The thread is about content changes. Balance changes are not those.I'm asking for clarity:
If we were having this discussion before the survey how would you be talking about it?
If balance changes create a new meta is that a balance change or changing it up?
Where do features like the abandon system fall?
Where do things like new mods like 2v8 fall?
New killers are content changes, are they part of the issue?
It shouldn't be up to the game to regulate a player's self-control over if they are playing too much or too little, and the game absolutely should not change for simply the sake of change to appease those very players who cannot control themselves.Video game companies don't get to ignore human nature. If you're arguing that video game companies should just let these players go, that's a different discussion.
Much like with DLC tourists, they are players. What does a company have to do to retain its player numbers?
The only difference between sports and video games is that sports require more physical activity, aka the health benefits. That's it.I put this at the bottom because I don't think its related to the discussion, but you are really missing how substantially different these activities are. There's probably more than this, but here's five in addition to what I've discussed:
1: The physical activity is a bigger part than you make it out to be. The adrenaline, the endorphins, the bruises, they are real things that happen. Video games are a simulation of an experience. Inevitably the 'simulated' experience will die off if the creator doesn't keep it fresh.
2: Ease of access and versatility. As a child I played 2 on 2 basketball with my friends and 5 on 5 organized games with my school. When we had an odd number of basketball players we made up our own games (the most common being 21, but that has different names) I've played football with anywhere from 3 to 30 players. Kids around the world make soccer pitches out of small lots with however many kids they have on hand.
With just a little bit of equipment and space people constantly modify sports to fit what they have.
If you play a video game, you are playing the game that has been designed. Even with games with mods, you are limited to whatever the community has created for you. If the only way that people could play soccer was 11 by 11 on a full size pitch it would not have nearly the level of player retention.
3: Sports have an off season and less frequency of play.
4: Level of competition for the activity, there are generally three to five major sports in a country, with potentially a dozen minor options that a person might have reasonable access to. The level of video games that are available vastly exceeds that.
5: Timespan. The first major league baseball game occurred in either 1871 or 1876 depending on what standard you want to use, though the original version of the game was vastly different than what exists today. If ever a video game has a development cycle of the length of sports, then it might be a different discussion.
You don't just to get to state things and presume the other side was arguing them all along. I never said growth was 5% or that was my claim. Your presuming I'm arguing from those same standards.
You asked for what I defined as significant. I defined it. If you want to disagree with what significant means to you, that's fine, but this is the metric I'm working off of. The executives at any company wouldn't see "growth" as "just a single player increase or player retention," they would want an actual, tangible percentage, which is why I arrived at a fairly lenient percentage of 5%.
My standard on growth, which I've repeated a few times: any growth is remarkable for a game of DbD's age.
I showed with the month by month player averages that DbD is not growing. Temporary player increase is not player growth. Month over month player retention is what matters.
To turn the question around: Please explain why June 2021, 2022, and 2024, beat June 2020?
If you would have read my entire post, you'd have seen that I explained it to you:
Since the pandemic began, there have been 3 separate instances where the average player count for a period of time was significantly higher (>5%) than June/July of 2020: the first Resident Evil DLC, where after 6 months, the majority of those players (or a combination of existing and DLC tourists) left; the infamous Patch 6.1.0 in June/July of 2022 (PTB and Live), that only lasted that month; and the D&D DLC, most likely due to Stranger Things' D&D influence, and Vecna being a long desired addition to the roster.
This is missing the forest for the trees.
It literally isn't. The only thing different from conventional sports (which are games) and video games are the physical aspect.
Except as one generation ages out, another generation ages in. This does not apply to video games because the amount of competition increases substantially (i.e. what kids play the same games their parents played when the parents where kids, that's pretty rare and usually is things like Call of Duty or Madden that are constantly releasing new versions)
The second wave of Minecraft players would like to have a word with you. Sorry I know you haven't played Minecraft, so feel free to avoid that fact.
You asked for why sports are different? Well a possible reason is that its just really, really hard to start a new sport (think of how incredibly rare something like pickleball taking off is), while new video games come out constantly.
As a child I played 2 on 2 basketball with my friends and 5 on 5 organized games with my school. When we had an odd number of basketball players we made up our own games (the most common being 21, but that has different names) I've played football with anywhere from 3 to 30 players. Kids around the world make soccer pitches out of small lots with however many kids they have on hand.
So which is it? You can't start a new sport, or you can start a sport based on what you have on hand? I think you're conflating major league sports with just general sports. You can make up literally any sport physically imaginable. Getting that to be a major league sport? Sure that's another thing entirely.
If we were having this discussion before the survey how would you be talking about it?
It would have been the exact same because I felt the same way about updates as bhvr did prior to the survey.
Video game companies don't get to ignore human nature. If you're arguing that video game companies should just let these players go, that's a different discussion.
They cannot control human nature. If you polish a turd, it's still a turd. People get bored of turds. That was my whole argument about the core gameplay loop. If it's a good core, people will stay.
The physical activity is a bigger part than you make it out to be. The adrenaline, the endorphins, the bruises, they are real things that happen. Video games are a simulation of an experience. Inevitably the 'simulated' experience will die off if the creator doesn't keep it fresh.
So the adrenaline and endorphins you get from playing video games is just fake? Do you know how the endocrine system in the body works? When your palms are sweaty from nervousness or anxiety in a game, that's just "fake" or "simulated?" Sorry, you statement is just flat out wrong.
At the end of the day, games are games. Sports are games.
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@crogers271 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3937612#Comment_3937612
Edit to add: I discuss it more below, but please explain what you mean by 'change it up'. The discussion won't be very fruitful if we have very different standards on that.
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And all of that is besides the point: your original argument was about growth, not retentionLiterally not the argument chain that happened.
The first thing to point out: I'm responding to you. I am not the originator of the argument. In my very first post to I specifically cited the claim you were making about retention that I disagreed with.
The second thing to point out: if a game has grown by even a single player, than it has obviously retained its player count, the point of disagreement.
To go through the discussion -
In my first post I claimed:
DbD hasn't just retained their players by changing it up, they grown over the years.That was one point out of four and the briefest point. Note I did not specify a year (see below).
In your next post you said:
Third, like I said, dbd has not had any significant growth since 2020.I respond:
'Significant' is incredibly subjective. Games almost always lose players over their lifespans, games that are growing at all are an extreme minority. I'm sure there are a few other examples, but games running on ~10 year old engines that have any level of player growth are all live service or MMO style games. The fact that DbD is experiencing growth at any level is rather remarkable.Please note my explanation. DbD having any growth at all is remarkable. I'm quite clear here that I'm not claiming the growth numbers have been large. Everything should be working against the game, time, competition, boredom, etc. Even slight gains at all are remarkable, especially considering the growth the game experienced compared to its original starting.
On the issue of significant you reply:
Sure, significant is a subjective word, but I'd assume that significant meant any number above 5%, which dbd's numbers are not.This confuses two issues
1: Taking into account DbD's age any type of growth is surprising and significant.
2: Ignoring the growth of the first few years. BHVR had to 'change it up' to achieve that level of growth. This is important to the discussion because as I argue in a few places people aren't opposed to the idea of changing it up, people are opposed to specific changes that have been made.
In summary: Your original argument was about retention, I was disagreeing with that. I said not only have they retained, they've grown. You might not think the growth is amazing, but I think even the small numbers of growth are bucking the expected trend
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Where is it written that dbd should have its player count decreasing? The major drop off point for any game is usually within the first few months after its release or major updatesThe history of every video game, ever. As your point out, the vast majority of games drop, most even quicker than the first few months. Games that grow a player base are a rare exception, they are almost always associated with live service or subscriptions, and even then the time frame they can maintain this is limited.
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The players that remain after that point are usually long term players. Look at any player retention chart, it's always a reciprocal slope.You talk about DLC tourists. Are they not players? Do they not exist in other games? You are discounting a whole portion of the player base.
That you talk about how these players exist proves the point that companies need to do things to attract them. We're talking about retaining players, not retaining just a specific set of players.
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Comparing pandemic numbers is the only reasonable strategy in a post-pandemic world. The lockdowns allowed many people to be introduced to this game; players we would not have had if the pandemic did not happen. You can't just start comparing numbers prior to that major event because it was the catalyst that allowed dbd to have its highest player growth ever.And you can't act like a time when the player pool was substantially larger is the same as what happens after.
You just got done telling me that dbd gained players between its release and 2020, which is true, but only by about 4-5 thousand players total.That's just not true. June 2016, 11k, February 2020 23k, that's a 100% growth.
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People don't need to play 4 hours a day to be counted as a monthly player.Wait, no, this isn't how the average monthly count works.
Steamcharts scrapes the Steam API every hour and counts the people playing. You can read about it on the about page or just look at how the numbers shift over a 24 hour period. If there is any more info about their methodology out there I'd be happy to read it.
There are ~33k people playing DbD as I type this. There were ~36k people playing a couple of hours ago. The average monthly player count is an average of how many people are playing DbD at any given time. That means the more an individual plays, the more they will be counted. If a player plays for four hours, they get counted four times.
The average monthly players is the average amount of people who are playing at any single moment of the game. Average player counts can be increased both by gaining more players or players playing more.
If you are aware of any info that this is not how Steamcharts works, or if you are using a different cite that has a different methodology, please let me know. I'm open to being wrong on this, but the Steamcharts page can cause confusion because because when they say average players they mean average concurrent players.
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Peak player count doesn't mean peak gameplay. Look at minecraft. It has become bloated with systems that do not serve it, but it currently has the highest player count it has ever had. Most people would say minecraft peaked either during the pandemic or back in 2011-2013 during its initial hype.I've only played Minecraft once for about ten minutes, but a few observations:
1: You have a lot of confidence in the opinions of what millions of players would say over two different games.
2: If more people are playing now, then that means there are a lot of players who could not have been playing during those periods (i.e. new players). This makes it impossible for them to say a former version was better.
3: Even if point 1 was true, this looks like a good indication of how people's behaviors are better indicators of how they feel then their words. Why are more people playing if they like it less? Since that time there are more games, more competition, more options. Why would even more being playing a game that they agree they like less?
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That's because it is a balance update. That is not new content. That is not "switching it up" to provide new content for people to stay.What examples are you talking about? We are multiple posts into a discussion and it seems strange to have not brought up earlier 'well, when I say change, I don't mean all of these examples of change, I only mean this limited set of changes'.
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What study does it say that it takes longer to burn out on sports? That "truth" seems like a complete thin-air pull. If you were to argue that sports provide more physical benefits, I'd agree, but to "burn out?" How would you even quantify that?Let's start with the obvious fact:
Not a single video game, ever, has achieved the levels of sustainable player retention that sports have.
That's just a fact that undermines your entire argument. Sports and video games don't work the same. Trying to say that a video game could just be like a sport, even presuming your earlier argument about sports not changing is true, then why has not a single video game managed that feat?
Now I then discuss why I don't think they behave the same way. You're welcome to disagree with those reasons (though just saying they are a thin-air pull isn't actually explaining why or recognizing the differences), but the underlying fact remains is that they don't.
So Bobby Fischer, one guy out of the billions of people who have lived since chess was created and modernized, was bored and made a fun party game variant of chess.Your argument relies heavily 'Skyrim', a single, outlier of a video game that I don't think even backs up your point. What is your standard for how many examples I need to provide in contrast to your own?
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None of your examples are examples of "switch it up" content like you are describing for dbd. Marketing strategy changes is not a content update.As I said earlier, you're drawing a thread that basically entails 'changes I'm okay with or are supported don't count'.
Also are we discussing people who play a sport, or people who watch a sport. Because we seem to be discussing the latter, in which case marketing content and presentation changes are significant content updates if we're making a comparison between sports and video games.
I'm not sure why you are fixated on "burnout" being such a major issue.I'm talking about becoming bored and burnout, with burnout being the more extreme stage of the former.
And I'm discussing them because they are completely normal human behaviors. As I've said, I'm not aware of a single video game that has managed to overcome this, the ones that hold it off the longest are the ones with change.
Literally not the argument chain that happened.
In my first post I claimed:
DbD hasn't just retained their players by changing it up, they grown over the years.That was one point out of four and the briefest point. Note I did not specify a year (see below).
It was in your original argument, one of your 4 main points. You even quoted it yourself. Everyone can see it. It was a part of your argument. And even besides the point, in which I will elaborate further, I said that dbd does not retain players. The DLC tourists are a temporary influx of players which quickly leave after their DLC is over.
The second thing to point out: if a game has grown by even a single player, than it has obviously retained its player count, the point of disagreement.
This is extremely pedantic and completely disingenuous to the thread at large. Growth would signify a continuous increase in player numbers to a significant degree (more than 5%). Please explain to me how out of the past 58 months since June/July 2020, only 17 months had player numbers higher than the average player count for July 2020 (40,500 players)? Please also explain to me how out of those 17 months, 9 of them had a player increase at least 5% higher than July 2020's numbers? 7 out of those 9 months were the direct result of the first Resident Evil DLC releasing (June 2021), but notice how by that December, the numbers quickly retreated to that of July 2020, even dipping lower after that; most likely due to the DLC tourists finally being done with the game, and also pain resonance being added with the Artist chapter.
So to recap: Lasting significant growth? Nonexistent. Temporary number padding? Absolutely. Since the pandemic began, there have been 3 separate instances where the average player count for a period of time was significantly higher (>5%) than June/July of 2020: the first Resident Evil DLC, where after 6 months, the majority of those players (or a combination of existing and DLC tourists) left; the infamous Patch 6.1.0 in June/July of 2022 (PTB and Live), that only lasted that month; and the D&D DLC, most likely due to Stranger Things' D&D influence, and Vecna being a long desired addition to the roster. That bump only lasted one month. So no, there is no lasting significant growth. Did you know based on that same data, 34 out of the past 58 months saw significant (>5%) decrease in numbers lower than the average player count of June/July 2020? Almost 59% of the time since the beginning of the pandemic. Hence my stance. DbD is losing players more than it retains them. Having a DLC release to pad player numbers temporarily doesn't mean those players are retained. The core gameplay is losing players at a rate that any DLC release cannot make up for. Those are the facts.
The history of every video game, ever. As your point out, the vast majority of games drop, most even quicker than the first few months.
Did you read the second part of my statement? The players that remain are long term players. It's a reciprocal slope. We are at the point where the slope is still negative, but close to zero where players are hopefully being retained, and the amount of players dropping is drastically lower than the first initial months. As I demonstrated above, this is the case.
Games that grow a player base are a rare exception, they are almost always associated with live service or subscriptions, and even then the time frame they can maintain this is limited.
Temporary growth is not lasting growth. Live service and subscription games are the case in point here. Most people subscribe for the month of a new patch, if they decide to resubscribe at all. FFXIV is currently going through this right now.
You talk about DLC tourists. Are they not players? Do they not exist in other games? You are discounting a whole portion of the player base.
You are talking about player retention and player growth. The majority of DLC tourists leave after a few months, usually permanently. This is what the data shows. They are players, but they are not retained. If they would stay, they would be counted.
I've only played Minecraft once for about ten minutes, but a few observations:
This is obvious when you follow up with this:
This makes it impossible for them to say a former version was better
The Minecraft launcher allows you to play ANY version of Minecraft that has been released over the past 16 years. I do not have a number, but a sizeable amount of the Minecraft player base plays on a version that is not the current version, or even a version from the last 3 years of development. The reason there are more people playing is 1) because gaming as a whole has increased over the last 15 years, 2) an entire generation of new players has been born to play the game.
Not a single video game, ever, has achieved the levels of sustainable player retention that sports have.
Sports and video games don't work the same.
The only difference between sports and video games is that sports require more physical activity, aka the health benefits. That's it. Oh, and perhaps it's more socially acceptable to spend the majority of your time playing sports than video games 😁. Games are games. In fact, you talk about player retention: how many people do you know that have kept playing soccer or football or basketball outside of their high school or college years? I'll take a guess: not many. You'll have a FEW people play in rec leagues, but the majority of players stop playing outside of extracurricular activities. That fact undermines your entire counterargument. Video games retain MORE players over a LONGER period of time because the physical barrier to entry is much lower, and the medium is more accessible.
As I said earlier, you're drawing a thread that basically entails 'changes I'm okay with or are supported don't count'.
No, you just completely ignored my comments about how even bhvr specifies what is a "balance change" and an actual "content change." The thread is about content changes. Balance changes are not those.
And I'm discussing them because they are completely normal human behaviors. As I've said, I'm not aware of a single video game that has managed to overcome this, the ones that hold it off the longest are the ones with change.
If you are doing the same thing over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, you will get burnt out. Everything should be done in moderation. It shouldn't be up to the game to regulate a player's self-control over if they are playing too much or too little, and the game absolutely should not change for simply the sake of change to appease those very players who cannot control themselves.
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@crogers271 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3937516#Comment_3937516
I selected ~June 2020 for multiple reasons. The pandemic was the greatest influx of players dbd has ever had bar none, so it would be fitting for the "post pandemic" numbers to include only "post pandemic" stats, otherwise you are comparing apples to oranges. Secondly, this is the exact time range where I said that dbd was at its peak. I am using it as a point of reference. Thirdly, I am using average monthly player numbers. People who only play once a week or even once a month are factored in. Not to mention, 2020 was dbd's 4 year anniversary. We are now 5 years from that point. Dbd's numbers have been stagnant for 5 years (more than half its lifespan), yet you call that growth. Even if dbd is not retaining old players and brining in new ones to replace them, the delta in player count is still nonexistent. Nobody with a single iota of intellectual honesty can call that "growth," let alone "significant growth."My original statement was a single sentence
>
3: DbD hasn't just retained their players by changing it up, they grown over the years.You're really trying to focus on this growth argument. I really should try and redirect this to the point about retention, which is where my initial disagreement with you is, but I'm a sucker so I'll go in.
A game of DbD's lifespan, any player growth is impressive because the player counts should be decreasing. Comparing 2020 to 2024, 10 of the 12 months of 2024 had more than 2020. The fact that numbers are even marginally higher is amazing.
Going through your points
1: Comparing pandemic numbers is an awful idea. There were more players available.
2: And GeneralIV has the peak at 2019. The OP has the peak at 2 to 3 years ago. why is 2020 the peak? It certainly isn't the peak player count.
3: I've never used anything but average monthly numbers, I don't know why you keep bringing this up.
I'm not arguing that 100% of players will stay playing a game if no changes are made. I am saying that if your core gameplay loop is good, the people that enjoy it enough will stay.To what degree? How do you measure this? Of course some players will stick around, even unsuccessful games have some players stick around.
DbD is a unique game being asymmetrical. The majority of the players that do end up staying are the players that enjoy the game for its gameplay loop: the chases, the mind games, the game sense macro gameplay. The people that don't end up staying are the people who only come for their favorite DLC franchise.I think the asymmetrical nature causes the opposite to be true. Things like the Overbrine meta took a little while to really set in. Asymmetrical is inherently harder to balance, if things aren't changed up players will overtime figure out the min/max path.
I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but for that to be your draw for new players? It feels like we're operating on borrowed time (pun intended).Everything is operating on borrowed time. Even Skyrim will eventually die out. People get bored, new games appear, its just the way things are.
If this was the end of 2023 / 2024 I'd be more likely to go for the argument that the game was in trouble because player counts did seem on the noticeable decline, but counts rallied after that.
You are giving examples of live service MMORPG games, so those examples are already irrelevant. People pay around 15 dollars a month to ACCESS WoW and FFXIV.You throw out Skyrim as an example even though it is a very different genre, I'm trying to give you examples of games with ongoing charges, inevitably those games are going to have some type of monetization. What's your standard for games that we can use as examples?
If games need to change things over time, explain to me how chess has managed to exist for so long? How about soccer and football? How about basketball? All these games have existed with next to ZERO rule changes, and the ones that have changed are done in the name of player safety and not in an attempt to "retain players." That's my core disagreement with your post.Because they are totally different things. But to get into some of the obvious differences
1: It takes a lot longer to burn out on sports. Most people don't have the opportunity to play a sport with near the same level of frequency as they do a video game. For those who do burn out is not at all surprising.
I'm far from a chess expert, but Bobby Fischer developed Random Chess out of frustration with how stagnant chess could become.
2: Sports are more complex than video games as they incorporate a physical element into the game that creates its own variety without a rule change.
3: For next to zero rule changes, it depends on your frequency. The NBA didn't have a three point line until the 79-80 season, in the NFL a player on the offense and defense now gets to have the mic helmet, not to mention they kick extra points from a different distance (and I'm old enough to remember when two point trys were a college thing). The major sports leagues have rule changes that they discuss every year.
On top of that, in terms of professional sports, they change up how they present games, how they market them, how they try to attract fans. This is in addition to having enforced scarcity with off season or, in the NFL's case, limiting their games to a few days a week.
A game is a game. You play it for fun. If you have fun with the game, you will play the game. It's really that simple.And if someone burns out on a game, they'll stop playing it. And human beings will eventually get bored with just about any activity no matter how good it initially is without variety.
Where is it written that dbd should have its player count decreasing? The major drop off point for any game is usually within the first few months after its release or major updates. The players that remain after that point are usually long term players. Look at any player retention chart, it's always a reciprocal slope. And all of that is besides the point: your original argument was about growth, not retention. The small increase blips are major DLC releases. Notice how quickly those numbers return back to where they were before, and are even getting smaller.
Comparing pandemic numbers is the only reasonable strategy in a post-pandemic world. The lockdowns allowed many people to be introduced to this game; players we would not have had if the pandemic did not happen. You can't just start comparing numbers prior to that major event because it was the catalyst that allowed dbd to have its highest player growth ever. You just got done telling me that dbd gained players between its release and 2020, which is true, but only by about 4-5 thousand players total. The pandemic alone brought almost 17 thousand players on average per month. People don't need to play 4 hours a day to be counted as a monthly player. After being introduced to the game, a good portion of those 17 thousand players have stuck with the game well into 2025. Just because they have less free time compared to the pandemic doesn't mean that they just up and vanish if they are still enjoying the game.
I gave a range between 2019 and 2020 for my estimate. Peak player count doesn't mean peak gameplay. Look at minecraft. It has become bloated with systems that do not serve it, but it currently has the highest player count it has ever had. Most people would say minecraft peaked either during the pandemic or back in 2011-2013 during its initial hype.
Perk balancing changes are different than DLC updates and "new content." In a player survey released last year, bhvr made the three distinctions: balance updates - just number tweaking, major updates - functional changes that keep with the same theme, complete overhauls - start fresh, may or may not keep previous theme. The overbrine meta could have been solved in 1 week. It requires one person to change cooldown numbers, to build the game, QA test the change, and submit the build for verification. That's because it is a balance update. That is not new content. That is not "switching it up" to provide new content for people to stay.
What study does it say that it takes longer to burn out on sports? That "truth" seems like a complete thin-air pull. If you were to argue that sports provide more physical benefits, I'd agree, but to "burn out?" How would you even quantify that?
So Bobby Fischer, one guy out of the billions of people who have lived since chess was created and modernized, was bored and made a fun party game variant of chess. That proves my point more than anything. Nobody is ditching normal chess for random chess, and I would hardly consider it "new content" to the base version of chess. Chess is still fun for those who have found it fun.
My frequency is based on a yearly basis. It's been 45 years since the three point line was added to basketball. More than half of the entire world's population hasn't lived in a world without the three point line. Would you consider changes like the three point line a frequent or common occurrence? And this point is very similar to my point about balance changes versus new content. Adding a three point line versus having more defining rules on penalties change the game in drastically different ways. Even the yearly NFL rule changes are more akin to balance tweaks rather than "content updates." I'd argue the recently added kickoff rules lean more into a partial rework, aka more like a new content change, and the majority of NFL viewers hate it in terms of entertainment. None of your examples are examples of "switch it up" content like you are describing for dbd. Marketing strategy changes is not a content update.
People can burn out from anything if they are exposed to it for too long. Burnout for dbd isn't an issue unless you are playing at least 20 hours a week. I'm not sure why you are fixated on "burnout" being such a major issue. I know a common sentiment among killer main apologists on the forums is that "survivor mains are just burnt out," no, survivor players are tired of being second rate players to killer mains, who are allowed to have killers like release legion, release kaneki, oni/legion 2v8, and metas like overbrine, chess merchant, etc. for sometimes MONTHS at a time before their concerns are addressed. However, these changes are not "switch it up" content. These changes are balancing updates because the game currently has ebbed into a very one sided state, most likely due to actual content additions like call of brine, like overcharge, like eruption, etc. Boredom is not a function of a lack of change, it is caused from overexposure to a less than ideal experience.
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@crogers271 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3937266#Comment_3937266
I would expect for someone who is lecturing me on "subjective" points to not retort with subjective points of their own, and wrong data to boot.I'm saying that the claim that the majority of the community feels a certain way is a subjective claim.
It's obviously subjective given that it is a personal impression unless you had a survey of the community members (even then how would we define the community and how well does it represent the overall player base)?
Your first contradiction is that you say dbd's numbers have remained stable, but then the next paragraph you say they have had growth. Those are mutually exclusive. You cannot have stable numbers and also growth. Stable means no change. It's one or the other. Second: June 2020, dbd had 40k players. May 2025, dbd has 42k players, while the previous 7 months had values in the low 30s. How can you with a straight face say that that's growth? It's not growthIt's where you're choosing to pick your starting value.
June 2016, 11k players on average. Beyond a shadow of a doubt DbD has grown since then.
June 2020 is right in the heart of the pandemic. You talk about 'tourist players', but what about the pandemic players? DbD's numbers are at the same point without the same pool of available players. Given that people have less time to play, but their player numbers are around the same level, the logical conclusion is they've added more players than they lost to make up for the less available hours.
But your original argument was -
I don't know where people get this idea that games need to "change it up" in order to retain their players.Even if you want to discard the growth over the games first four to five years, they've definitely kept the player numbers.
I never said that a game's player count wouldn't naturally fall off after its release, my point was that if you have a good gameplay loop, you will retain players, extra props to skyrim for having numbers comparable to dbd while being a 14 year old game and being a single player experience. Skyrim's original success is irrelevant.Skyrim's original success is the most relevant point.
We're discussing player retention. How many players does the game retain without changing it up? To have a discussion of that we need to actually look at the player count at its height and how much it drops off.
That's what retention is. I don't know how you can have discussion about retention without that being the most relevant number.
If you're arguing that literally 100% of the players won't quit the game if it stopped changing it up, well yes, obviously. There's still people who log into Deathgarden (a peak of 11 in the last 24 hours) despite it being dead for quite some time.
For a game that has existed for 4 console generations, 30k-40k players after almost 14 years is a miracle. Just because skyrim was the most successful game in 2011 doesn't mean that translates to it having a very active player base 14 years later.Earlier I tried to do counter examples of games that saw player drops, let me try a two different examples:
World of Warcraft - 21 years, somewhere around 1 million daily players
FF14 - 15 years, somewhere around 400k daily players
Those are games that change things, add things, update things, to keep players invested. And even then, these games are nowhere near their heights. Because, and this is my central disagreement with your original claim, if a game does not change things up over time their player numbers will inevitably, and substantially, drop.
I selected ~June 2020 for multiple reasons. The pandemic was the greatest influx of players dbd has ever had bar none, so it would be fitting for the "post pandemic" numbers to include only "post pandemic" stats, otherwise you are comparing apples to oranges. Secondly, this is the exact time range where I said that dbd was at its peak. I am using it as a point of reference. Thirdly, I am using average monthly player numbers. People who only play once a week or even once a month are factored in. Not to mention, 2020 was dbd's 4 year anniversary. We are now 5 years from that point. Dbd's numbers have been stagnant for 5 years (more than half its lifespan), yet you call that growth. Even if dbd is not retaining old players and brining in new ones to replace them, the delta in player count is still nonexistent. Nobody with a single iota of intellectual honesty can call that "growth," let alone "significant growth."
I'm not arguing that 100% of players will stay playing a game if no changes are made. I am saying that if your core gameplay loop is good, the people that enjoy it enough will stay. DbD is a unique game being asymmetrical. The majority of the players that do end up staying are the players that enjoy the game for its gameplay loop: the chases, the mind games, the game sense macro gameplay. The people that don't end up staying are the people who only come for their favorite DLC franchise. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but for that to be your draw for new players? It feels like we're operating on borrowed time (pun intended). The fact that skyrim has retained its players despite not having an update in 12 years shows that its core loop was beloved by many. 2020 dbd was very similar in that it felt like the best this game has ever felt. It wasn't until 2021 where the survivor movement changed, resident evil was added, 2022 when 6.1.0 dropped and destroyed the overall soul for this game did dbd feel like a husk of its former self. And why was this? Because changes were made for the sake of change. Because changes were made that did not serve the most important thing for both sides equally: the gameplay loop.
You are giving examples of live service MMORPG games, so those examples are already irrelevant. People pay around 15 dollars a month to ACCESS WoW and FFXIV. If I was paying 180 dollars a year to even play a game, yeah I would expect there to be 180 dollars worth of content for me to play.
If games need to change things over time, explain to me how chess has managed to exist for so long? How about soccer and football? How about basketball? All these games have existed with next to ZERO rule changes, and the ones that have changed are done in the name of player safety and not in an attempt to "retain players." That's my core disagreement with your post. A game is a game. You play it for fun. If you have fun with the game, you will play the game. It's really that simple.
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@crogers271 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3936864#Comment_3936864
A few responses:
First, your assertion that because dbd has changed it up they've "retained" players is wrong. Looking on steam charts, dbd has not had a lasting standing increase in average monthly player count (that hasn't lasted more than a month for DLC releases) since the start of the pandemic back in 2020.This confuses retention and growth.
Retention - we have no idea how many players are being retained vs players leaving and being replaced, but the player count numbers having remaining in a stable 30k to 40k range for the last five years.
Growth - The numbers have trickled slightly upwards over that time, which I'll cover a little more later.
Second, I don't disagree with your point about different games having different lifespans, but is your assumption working on the fact that you think people should be playing the same game every single day?What?
We're talking about overall player numbers. I literally have no idea where you're going here.
Third, like I said, dbd has not had any significant growth since 2020.'Significant' is incredibly subjective. Games almost always lose players over their lifespans, games that are growing at all are an extreme minority. I'm sure there are a few other examples, but games running on ~10 year old engines that have any level of player growth are all live service or MMO style games. The fact that DbD is experiencing growth at any level is rather remarkable.
My point about skyrim is that it has not had a content update in almost 12 years, yet is still sees numbers comparable to dbd, showing that you don't need a constant stream of DLC updates to have good player numbers.Skyrim is one of the biggest, most successful games of all time. Just 'be a Skyrim' is not practical advice.
It also ignores the larger point I made that Skyrim, like the vast majority of games, has seen its players numbers significantly decline over time without those updates. Skyrim has retained approximately about 10% of its player base compared to its height, but its height was about 10 times the size of DbD's current average.
Fourth, that's correct, but around 2019/2020 is the point in which the majority of people agree would be an ideal middle ground to return to - before dbd starting going majorly downhill.Majority seems subjective. Every time posts like this come up there are many people I see replying in the comments that the game is in a generally better state than its ever been.
I would expect for someone who is lecturing me on "subjective" points to not retort with subjective points of their own, and wrong data to boot.
Your first contradiction is that you say dbd's numbers have remained stable, but then the next paragraph you say they have had growth. Those are mutually exclusive. You cannot have stable numbers and also growth. Stable means no change. It's one or the other. Second: June 2020, dbd had 40k players. May 2025, dbd has 42k players, while the previous 7 months had values in the low 30s. How can you with a straight face say that that's growth? It's not growth. That 2k difference is DLC tourists oscillating the player numbers by a couple thousand before they leave. Sure, significant is a subjective word, but I'd assume that significant meant any number above 5%, which dbd's numbers are not.
You are completely missing the point of my skyrim example. I never said that a game's player count wouldn't naturally fall off after its release, my point was that if you have a good gameplay loop, you will retain players, extra props to skyrim for having numbers comparable to dbd while being a 14 year old game and being a single player experience. Skyrim's original success is irrelevant. For a game that has existed for 4 console generations, 30k-40k players after almost 14 years is a miracle. Just because skyrim was the most successful game in 2011 doesn't mean that translates to it having a very active player base 14 years later.
Your last sentence is a flat out denial of the community sentiment. Ask anyone on the forums who played before the pandemic. They'll tell you 99 out of 100 times 2019-2020 was peak dbd. You can have a personal disagreement with that, but that's how the majority feels.
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@crogers271 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3936690#Comment_3936690
I'll jump in. I agree with most of what Shroompy said, but will add on my own:
Let's go back to the original claim
I don't know where people get this idea that games need to "change it up" in order to retain their players. They really don't, especially if it's an asymmetrical game like dbd. If your game loop is good, people will play it. "Live service" is a fancy way of saying DLC is the primary revenue stream. You don't need DLC to enjoy a game for what it is. A game like Skyrim is going on 14 years old, and it has comparable player numbers to dbd. If you need the game to change in order to like it, you didn't like the game in the first place.A couple of issues:
1: At its height, Skyrim had 287,411 players on Steam. The release of the special edition saw a height of 69,777 players.
Simply put, Skyrim has only retained a fraction of their players. If DbD stopped 'changing it up', they would retain some players certainly, but not nearly the amount that currently play the game.
2: The games are radically different genres. Different genres have different lifespans. As an example, X-Com 2 released the same year as DbD and right now ~5k people are playing it. Does that make it a bad game? No, X-Com 2 was awesome, worth multiple plays, but not something to play consistently for years.
3: DbD hasn't just retained their players by changing it up, they grown over the years.
4: Even people who are clamoring for an older version usually want a version somewhere along the line (i.e. not the OG) - such as claiming 2019, or 2020, or 2021 was the best year. Basically everyone wants some of what BHVR changed up, just not everything.
There are multiple issues with your post.
First, your assertion that because dbd has changed it up they've "retained" players is wrong. Looking on steam charts, dbd has not had a lasting standing increase in average monthly player count (that hasn't lasted more than a month for DLC releases) since the start of the pandemic back in 2020. For the "change it up" theory to be correct, dbd's average monthly player count would have seen a steady increase due to the amount of DLC releases. This means one or two things: 1) the players who join for DLC do not stay after the first month, and 2) the players that have joined from new DLCs are joining at a rate proportional to the players leaving because dbd just isn't the game it used to be. Either way, that's not "growing."
Second, I don't disagree with your point about different games having different lifespans, but is your assumption working on the fact that you think people should be playing the same game every single day? Is your argument based on the fact that the only way for dbd to retain players that play 4 hours a day, 7 days a week, is to constantly cater to those players as opposed to the average player? My point about skyrim is that it has not had a content update in almost 12 years, yet is still sees numbers comparable to dbd, showing that you don't need a constant stream of DLC updates to have good player numbers.
Third, like I said, dbd has not had any significant growth since 2020.
Fourth, that's correct, but around 2019/2020 is the point in which the majority of people agree would be an ideal middle ground to return to - before dbd starting going majorly downhill.
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@Shroompy said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3936674#Comment_3936674
yknow what ok you win 🏆
I'm not trying to win anything, I'm just trying to have an honest discussion. If you don't want that, then sure, let's agree to disagree.
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@Shroompy said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3936660#Comment_3936660
I am looking at the stats, but imo an average playercount gives a much better picture than peak player count. Its also worth mentioning that this is steam alone, which I believe is smaller than both Xbox and PS. I cant imagine Skyrim has that big of a playerbase on either of these platforms due to the inability to mod it.
Terms of the modding frequency, maybe you dont change things up but I have several friends who do switch things up frequently as they have sort of phases every few months. Your experience doesnt represent everybody elses
I'm not talking about my experience only, and likewise for your anecdote. Just because you have a small handful of friends who aren't satisfied with their mod lists and need rapid change doesn't mean that's an accurate representation of the majority of players.
You also can mod skyrim on xbox and playstation.
January still stands for your average month metric, but I still don't know what you're trying to prove. Do you know how many games would give anything for 20k players after 1 year? "Oh but it's not one to one exact." I said comparable numbers not the same.
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@Shroompy said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3936561#Comment_3936561
So then are you saying your own complaints of going against, and I quote: "blight, nurse, blight, wesker, kaneki, huntress, blight, knight, skull merchant running the most broken builds". You named 7 killers here? When before not only was it 2 killers, but they far stronger than the ones listed here??? What is your point here???
Also I never said the playercount is bad for how old the game is. You just mentioned how their numbers are comparable when they really arent. This is using steam charts for both games from the past year:
Dead by Daylight:
https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/A3LEY48IE970/1000004171.jpg
Skyrim:
https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/3MFT6SZ719B8/1000004174.jpg
Also mods are in fact a big selling point of the game, but you also have the option to switch things up at will to keep things fresh which is exactly why the game has lasted this long. DbD keeps in longevity purely because of its constant updates. Had the game stayed the same as back then, I can guarantee you we wouldnt be having this conversation.
Your whole first paragraph doesn't make sense to me, sorry.
Look between december and march on your screenshots. DbD only peaks during big events and DLC releases. Without the DLC tourists stopping by for a month, skyrim has identical player numbers. Skyrim actually BEAT dbd in numbers in January. Guess who is staying in between the licensed DLC drops? That's right, the people that actually CARE about dbd as a game and not as a tourist attraction. So no, you're just wrong.
Mods are a big selling point, but they cost nothing. They are completely player driven. They are a base part of the game when you buy it the first time. You also conveniently ignored my point that people who mod skyrim don't do it at the rate that DbD releases updates. Once you have your mod list it does not really change. Saying you can mod your game doesn't mean you change it at a similar cadence to a live service game.
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@Shroompy said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3936556#Comment_3936556
Im not using Nurse and Spirit as an example of killers released in that era, Im using them as an example as people were complaining back then. "All you see are the same killers! Nurse, Spirit, Blight!". Nothing has changed in that regard.
Skyrim is also not a good example at all and only gets about half the players DbD gets nowadays. I also dont know a single person who plays the base game, they usually mod the crap out of the game to keep things fresh.
People will always complain. My point was those two in particular were probably the only two killers back then whose complaints were actually valid based on the lack of counterplay.
I just looked at the current player count for skyrim special edition, and its sitting at 35k. Is 35k (on steam only) a bad player count for a 14 year old game in your opinion? I would expect a 14 year old game to only get a fraction of players compared to the game that's about to have its anniversary while simultaneously dropping the most hyped crossover in the genre (fnaf). And no, once people settle on a mod list after ironing it out for multiple days, they usually stick to it, or make very small changes. But still, modding is sold as a base part of the game, aka it is a feature of it. You wouldn't call skyrim live service because it supports mods. It simply has a system that allows players more authority over their gaming experience. Most mod lists are engine and graphic overhauls anyway.
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@Shroompy said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3936430#Comment_3936430
I'd gladly go back to 2020 dbd when moris were more powerful, there was no base kit borrowed time, the HUD didn't show survivor actions, etc. if that meant I wasn't going up against blight, nurse, blight, wesker, kaneki, huntress, blight, knight, skull merchant running the most broken builds on the planet, (1950 blight win streak btw) and proxy camping, running back to hook, and slugging weren't in every match.
See the thing is, people had the exact same complaint of constantly going against Nurse and Spirit back then, who were even stronger, Billy was also up there until he got nerfed, and then he was replaced with Blight shortly after. Build diversity in the higher ranks were almost non existent since the more gimmicky perks you have nowadays were even worst than they are now. Slugging was also very much prevalent since the only real way to combat it was Unbreakable, and you couldnt tell if someone just decided to give up and not recover until you ran up to them. People killing themselves on hooks and DCs were even more prevalent than they are now because there was no penalty of doing so other than losing pips, which no one gave a ######### about since BP rewards werent a thing yet. Not to mention cheaters were also a much bigger issue back then.
Power simplicity is something that I can agree with, how ever for a game to stay alive it does need new ways to keep old players and more complex powers mean it takes longer to learn. This is a problem that every live service game that adds new characters regularly suffers from and I cant think of a solution for it.
I do have problems with modern day DbD dont get me wrong, the last midchapter is probably the worst thing theyve ever done to this game and that's something Ill stick by for the rest of time. That being said, DbD's soul is its community, and the game headed in its direction (for the most part) as a direct response from us. A LOT of the things we asked for back then are now in the game, but even then... its still doesnt feel the same, it doesnt have that same spark.
I do still remember those times (especially 2018) fondly as I probably enjoyed the game the most at that point, even if my PC was a literal dorito that could only run the game at 20fps (15 if it was Doctor lol) but thats because the players and community were so much different back then. If I could go back in time to relive those moments I would, but would I want to go back to 2018/2020 DbD with the modern day mindset? Absolutely not.
Nurse and spirit are a tier of their own and shouldn't be used as an accurate representation of the killers released in that era. Try pig, clown, plague, ghostface. Those are all more accurate representations of killers released then. Build diversity is a moot point because we've added 100+ perks, yet only the same top 20 get run on either side. I'd rather there only be 5 unique builds for both sides rather than there being the illusion of more than 5 like we have now.
I don't know where people get this idea that games need to "change it up" in order to retain their players. They really don't, especially if it's an asymmetrical game like dbd. If your game loop is good, people will play it. "Live service" is a fancy way of saying DLC is the primary revenue stream. You don't need DLC to enjoy a game for what it is. A game like Skyrim is going on 14 years old, and it has comparable player numbers to dbd. If you need the game to change in order to like it, you didn't like the game in the first place.
DbD's soul is the community yes, yet the original community has been sidelined for the DLC tourists. I understand that direction from a business perspective, but that further shows my point that dbd's soul was sold to the fortnite gods.
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@Shroompy said:
Nostalgia is helluva drug
People just want to have fun playing the game.
I'd gladly go back to 2020 dbd when moris were more powerful, there was no base kit borrowed time, the HUD didn't show survivor actions, etc. if that meant I wasn't going up against blight, nurse, blight, wesker, kaneki, huntress, blight, knight, skull merchant running the most broken builds on the planet, (1950 blight win streak btw) and proxy camping, running back to hook, and slugging weren't in every match.
There is beauty in simplicity. The fact that dbd has bloated its roster and systems to the point where it is bursting at every crack of course would make people yearn for the game that was more simple. Like other people said, you used to be able to see a killer power and understand it very quickly in a match. Now I have to sit down and read PARAGRAPHS that describe only a FRACTION of what the killer power does. Why don't they explain everything? Did you know that m1ing as Ghostface resets the stalk meter? Well you didn't find that out by reading his power, I know that for a fact, because it isn't written anywhere. If you're going to complicate things, explain them, but if not, people will want simplicity.
The obvious "gotcha" response to that is "well if you're not having fun with the game, then don't play." Sure, but let's not pretend that it's the people who've changed. The dbd everyone used to love does not exist. It has been sacrificed, and this hollow fortnite clone has taken its place. Tomes? Gone. Lore? Screw it. Original characters? Nobody cares. All I ever see now are people begging for the next resident evil dlc, and asking when the other 100 outfits Jill has throughout the series will be added to the game. DLC tourism both saved (Halloween DLC) and destroyed (Resident Evil) the identity of this game.
If you are happy with dbd as it is now, that's your prerogative. But dismissing criticism because, checks notes, nostalgia? A time when dbd actually felt like it had a soul and the majority of people WANTED to play it? Okay lol
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@Rokku_Rorru said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3932378#Comment_3932378
it's not that deep
So the basics of business, supply and demand, and corporate standards cease to be just because you said so? lol