Dead By Daylight Is Seeing An "Upsetting Trend," Says Otzdarva

Dead by Daylight streamer and Fog Whisperer Otzdarva criticized developers on his Twitter account last week, noting that the 4v1 asymmetrical game "has seen an upsetting trend in recent months." In the thread, he cited failed balancing attempts that either did not improve the game or worsened it.

Dead By Daylight's "Upsetting Trend"

Otz explained multiple examples of changes developers have made that were not implemented in the long term or not well-received by players.

"My main impression is that they're busy working on the next 3-4 kills, 2-3 in-game events, and other stuff to actually dedicate a lot of time to polish existing content," the streamer explained in response to a user on his Twitter post. "If/when they do, it's often quick and rushed."

DBD has seen an upsetting trend in recent months where re-balancing attempts achieved nothing or even backfired and made things even worse. Some examples... 🧵

— Otzdarva (@OtzdarvaYT) June 19, 2023

Killer Add-Ons And Survivor Item Add-Ons

To provide an example of a balance issue with add-ons, we can take a look at The Spirit. One of The Spirit's green add-ons was nerfed; however, Mother-Daughter Ring, which Otz called "one of the strongest add-ons in DBD," was not changed at all. As a result, players have more of a reason to run the overpowered add-on, and even less of one to use the green add-ons, perpetuating existing balance issues rather than fixing them.

Another add-on problem comes with The Nemesis, who has a common add-on that is stronger than one of his uncommon add-ons. The common Broken Syringe increases the length of Killer Instinct when a survivor uses a Vaccine by 3 seconds and increases the time it takes survivors to inject Vaccines. The uncommon Adrenaline Injector boasts only the first half of this ability, extending the length of Killer Instinct by the same amount of time but not offering any longer Vaccine injection times despite its higher rarity.

According to Otz, the add-on issues do not end with killers; he pointed out that after medkit self-heals were nerfed, Syringes and Styptics saw hardly any changes, resulting in survivors using these powerful items even more often than before.

"They also didn't add any new or exciting add-on effects. So now these two are even MORE popular than before," Otz said. "I played 6 games off-stream today and have seen one every time."

Dead by Daylight Perks

Gabriel Soma is Dead by Daylight's newest survivor and brought with him to the game the survivor perk Scavenger. Essentially, the perk used to allow you to recharge one used-up Toolbox by getting 4 great skill checks.

After the PTB, the perk was nerfed, requiring players to hit 5 great skill checks instead of 4 to earn a Toolbox refill; while this doesn't sound so bad, refilling your Toolbox this way also reduces your Repair speed by half for 30 seconds, which is a pretty major inconvenience. To help smooth this out, you can now rummage through an opened Chest to get a basic Toolbox once per match when using this perk, but the hefty Repair penalty still hardly makes this worth it.

"Instead of addressing toolbox balance or making it give you a standard yellow toolbox, they gave the perk a massive built-in penalty,"  said Otzdarva. "Now it's a perk like Calm Spirit that no one uses."

DBD Game Mechanics

Lastly, Otz highlighted some changes to the game that only remained in the game for a few days to weeks or didn't even leave the PTB. Among them are faster recovery from the dying state, nerfs to The Hillbilly's Death Engravings add-on, and the ability for The Executioner to apply Torment with his ranged attack, Punishment of the Damned.

"Why waste precious development time on these changes that NOBODY in the community asked for?" Otzdarva asked regarding the walked-back changes.

"BHVR needs to find time to make reworks that are meaningful and feedback-driven," he further explained. "Feedback needs to happen earlier, not just on the PTB when it's already too late to change anything properly."

This isn't the first time Otzdarva has spoken out about developers' missteps; last September, the streamer stated that he "didn't feel safe" playing Dead by Daylight following an uptick in cheating, hacking, and DDOS attacks. Developers have since enacted new steps to fight cheating in Dead by Daylight, including fixes that disallow hackers from enacting many existing cheats and increasing the penalty for offenders.