Intro
This is an analysis of dead by daylight, my favourite game. I stopped playing it because something felt wrong. I designed quite a few games myself and I decided it might be interesting to investigate what went wrong with dead by daylight? Spoiler I think dead by daylight is in deep **** and they know it. If some studio with decent artists would follow this analysis and make a game, I believe dead by daylight would get replaced.
DBD is Suspicious
Strating with a bomb, I know. Well in dead by daylight there is this problem called tunneling. I believe tunneling is a part of the optimal strategy for the killer. The solution by the devs was weird to me. Because they gave the unhooked survivor buffs for 15 seconds. It is seems reasonable at first, but when you think about it for a minute... The devs could have disabled hooked icon in the killer's HUD. The reason they did not do it, is because preventing tunneling completely will require for DBD to be completely rebalanced.
Why is Dead by Daylight not Replaced Yet?
Well it is. Forsaken on roblox is pulling more players (at the time of research). But on steam every 4v1 game seems to die out except for dbd. There are shallow arguments such as "oh the game has movie characters" or "oh it is an original 4v1 game", but I disagree. There are far too many people with more than 1000 hours on the game and I doubt they played Michael Myers the whole time. The game is simply fun enough.
The Genius Of Dead By Daylight
The Chases are extremely fun in dead by daylight. They require little to none mechanical skill and is all relient on tactics and bluffs. The red light in front of the killer exapnds the strategy to moonwalks and fakes. Resource management expends another dimetion in chases. Requiring little to no skill is the main appeal of the game. The vaults creates distance for the survivor making it exciting to not get hit while being close to death.
Why is DBD in deep **** and they know it?
Well as I said, chases are fun, fixing gens and getting tunneled in not fun. The game revolves around the killer, whos goal is to have short chases, meaning most of the killer will drop chases as soon as they can. Survivors have gotten good and can loop older killers for few gens now, therefore dbd started making the killers that can end chases rather quickly making the game boring. I know this will sound pathetic and I probably should not say it, but I believe removing the old ruin messed with the whole game's balance. (And that comes from a person who played surivor more). I wonder what would happen if we bring back old ruin but killer can't see unhooks anymore in their HUD.
I can Fix it! Pitfall
A lot of people win now go ahhh! The gens are boring, the chases are fun we should remove tunneling by removing hooks and badabim badaboom the game is fixed! Well it is a valid point. Generators make you locked in place while clicking boring skill checks. And hooks are just a second life option. However, you will encounter a problem much trickier than this one: Snowballing.
The Real Problem of Assymetrical Design
If you look into past games, a lot of them promised to replace dbd, but every game was missing something, yet they solved the problems above. Well it's the issue with snowballing. When its 3v1, 2v1 and 1v1 the killer technically has already won. If you are extremly skilled and have enough pallets maybe its possible to carry ("Doing gens, you?"). I know because I was working on a 4v1 game for more than 4 months and I have encountered this precise issue where gens and hooks did not seem like a bad idea. I knew there had to be something better, but gens and hooks isn't D tier anymore, it's a pretty decent solution, I would give it B tier as a game design mechanic.
Well how do we solve it then?
I was stuck on this problem for good 3 weeks. And I believe I found a solution. Unfortunately you have to CLICK ON THIS LINK and pay 5$ to access the information.
Did you pay yet?
Just kidding, let me tell you how my game worked, because describing it theoretically is hard. Every 5 minutes a rune would spawn (everyone would know where as soon as it has spawned), which works as a pick up item. Survivors have to pick up 5 runes. If killer picks up a rune the counter resets. Furthermore, the killer gets their power. Yes, in my game killer power is not on cooldown it requires runes (Maybe I should have called runes mana ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) in the mean time, other survivors would loot boxes or monitor map ojectives (security cameras, power sources, etc.) to gain perks and items for the upcoming chases. See what I have done is force the player to take chases which directly impact the win and people, who are not in the chase are powering up. Also killer can spend 3 runes to summon a player right in front of them :D sort of like an ultimate in MOBAs.
Wait this sounds pretty cool, why did you not release the game yourself?
Well... The answer might trigger people but it actually is because of "Don't kill games" protest. I am not sure of the details, but as far as I know once I release the game I will have to pay for the servers forever and I can not shut them down. That would lock me into working on this game forever, I am alone I'd have to learn art, music and keep up with the updates to retain players. It is essentially impossible for an indie dev to make a multiplayer game. That is why I am leaving this here. I hope to inspire someone to make this game into a reality. Or maybe a DBD dev will make a secondary game mode for this???? Just kidding.
Other Cool stuff my game had
Killers were able to lock doors, so survivors would loose time trying to lock pick them. Players could not heal, the system was based on HP and different survivors had different damage. Suprisingly this helped balancing the game. You were able to shoot a gun to slow down the killer. I had security cameras. Finally I had this elevator, doors would close slowly and you see the killer running at you and hope the doors would close fast enough.