2 people found this review helpful
Not Recommended
6.3 hrs last two weeks / 2,972.0 hrs on record (2,368.5 hrs at review time)
Posted: 20 Feb, 2018 @ 4:42pm
Updated: 21 Aug, 2023 @ 2:33pm

Dead by Daylight has some of the absolute worst developers I've ever seen in charge of a game before.

Simple changes like search bars take 7 years to get added, and then they hype it up and expect cheers and a pat on the back. Ridiculous. Same with perk loadouts, a small change that would take anyone else a week to add. BHVR made us wait six years and then made it out to be some big deal. These are very simple easy changes to make and they act like it's a huge undertaking.

Some of the changes the developers have been making lately outright prove they don't play their own game at all. Stuff like the look down after a hit, look down while vaulting a window, the recent vault changes, changes to scratch marks to make them less visible, etc. Nobody is asking for any of this. Nobody wants any of this. If the devs played their game like they should maybe they'd realise that they are objectively terrible changes that shouldn't have ever been proposed let alone into the game.

Chapters lately have been pretty bad, and Skull Merchant is the standout. An absolute travesty of game design, it's a wonder how she got past the conceptual phase. Everyone involved should be embarrassed, I know I would be. She doesn't have fans, the only people who play her are in it to make the game less fun for everyone else involved. This should not be in the game, period. The fact that it is shows how incredibly blind these devs are to their own games mechanics.

The players you go against are more often than not only in it to make sure you don't have fun. I'd say a majority of my matches the killer chooses one person to take out of the game immediately, hooking them 3 times and essentially winning the game right then and there. No consideration for the fun of any of the other players at all. There is no penalty for bad behaviour or anything. I propose a bloodpoint penalty for hooking the same person three times in a row, or for letting people bleed out on the ground for no reason other than to waste time, but we all know that's too complicated for behaviour. Maybe we'll see it year 10 and they'll hype it up as the biggest change yet. You may say that people should be able to play how they want, and for any other game I'd agree, but DbD is filled with people who are only here to waste other peoples time because of the fact they can. Rules are supposed to exist for a reason, to stop these types of people from ruining it for everyone else. DbD just doesn't get that I suppose. Because of the lack of any sort of guidelines, over 50% of my matches are just killers trying to ruin the match for everyone. Can't wait to bleed out my entire timer the next three matches I play and then get targeted relentlessly until I'm dead in the next. So much fun.

These devs allow vocal minorities of the playerbase to bully them out of making good changes. 7.5.0, The Locomotion Update. This is mostly remembered for the admittedly terrible mobile game HUD, how that got to be in the game is beyond me. What I'm focused on though were the new animations for movement. If you came to a halt from running your character would lean forward as is normal in every other modern game. If you quickly changed from running forwards to back, they would turn on their heel more realistically. It was the best the game has ever felt, such a small change made the game feel so much more modern and polished. Well it got removed almost immediately. Why? Because a vocal minority of the community complained that they couldn't loop the killer as well as before the changes. This makes sense, people don't want to relearn the game they're already good at, right? The thing is though, the animations changed nothing. It was purely cosmetic. You lost no distance, you did not slow down, nothing. It just looked and played better. The devs didn't give the playerbase enough time to get used to the new animations for it to be normal, they just deleted it outright the very next update. To this day the game feels janky, and like you're controlling character models instead of people.

The team is so terrible at balancing that it's comical. The Hillbilly got an overheat mechanic that NOBODY asked for or wanted. It was hated across the entire community, but Bhvr insisted upon it and put it into the game. This killed Hillbilly's strength in game, and his pick rate. It's so rare to see one these days, but still a blast because some of his base mechanics from before the overheat are still fun. Well, recently Behaviour decided to nerf him again by way of his addons. Why? Nobody knows. It makes absolutely no sense. On the other hand we have Blight. Blight is pretty strong, in fact most people consider him the second best killer in the game. On top of this he has some busted addons, they are way too strong, and way too many of them are like that, making any blight with any of his OP addons a pain to deal with. Sounds like they should be nerfed, right? Well Bhvr doesn't think so, seeing as they haven't been touched in 3 years. But Hillbilly? Yeah they nerfed him a couple months ago even though he's already weak and nobody plays him.

This team takes forever to make any sort of small change whatsoever. I already mentioned the search bar and perk loadouts, but instead of just adding them in when they're ready, the team insists on making them this big deal like they're huge features. Yeah they're important, but they should already ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ be here. It is insulting that we had to wait six years for loadouts, and seven for a search bar. Most recently they have been talking about adding a mechanic where the last survivor gets morid when the killer wins a match. Cool, right? You'll finally get to see some of those cool animations that never get used. Makes dying more fun, and winning the match more satisfying as killer. Well, we've been waiting over a year for it. They announced it's coming, even let us try it out in a PTB, and now nothing. No news, no updates, no release date, it might as well not exist. Why is it so hard for them to do the most basic of things? Why are these people who have trouble adding a search bar for 7 years not fired? That's unacceptable for a modern game. This game is baffling, just in way of the absolute incompetence of the people making it.

Having been with this game since the beginning it is sad to see how little it's come. The concept for this game is so strong, and it has so many good licenses to pull from, but the developers aren't equipped to handle it at all. They have made what should be a great game into what is more often than not something painful to play. No other game makes me as frustrated and generally upset while I play it. And there is nobody to blame but BHVR.

When Dead by Daylight dies behaviour interactive is going with it. This is their winning lottery ticket, their lucky game. We've seen Bhvr try to make other games before, and it never works out. From what we see of them working on this game, they would be absolutely clueless making anything else.
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