What is wrong with Dead by Daylight?

Thanks for reading my rant on what I think is wrong with the current Dead by Daylight as of 28/08/2019.



I'll start off by mentioning that I've got to rank 1 as killer and survivor while playing multiple different killers and not just Nurse to get to rank 1. In my experience actually doing this I didn't really find it difficult at all, the only times I found it difficult was when I fought against a fully communicating SWF using meta perks and meta items to gain a big advantage against me, but even then I still won most of my games.

I think in Dead by Daylight as it currently is, killers have way too much power over survivors in certain situations, it really is hard to believe that no less than a year or two ago survivors were monsters against killers and made it miserable for them. Well I think the coin certainly has flipped because it has gotten to a point now where I personally don't feel any satisfaction when I win as killer in Dead by Daylight. I'm going to split my argument and reasons up into different segments and go over why the game has gone down this path and my reasons as to why certain killers/as well as addon combinations you can give them make them extremely difficult to deal with as a normal solo survivor. I'll also be talking about several other issues that plague Dead by Daylight as well.

I'll start by giving my opinion on why I think Dead by Daylight has turned into a more killer oriented game rather than being balanced for both survivor and killer.


Influence and Game Balance

About a year ago the power role in this game was firmly in the hands of survivors, things existed such as vaccum pallets which turned most chases into long drawn out chases for the killer and the survivor could get away without a mark on them, they could easily make it so chases would last the entire game and the killer would be forced to leave them lest they lose the game off of ONE chase. Not only that but instant blind flashlights as well as a slow hook time plus a slow pickup time meant that survivors had a huge window to save their teammates in pretty much any situation as long as the killer wasn't near a wall when he picked up the survivor. Thankfully the amount of pallets on the maps as well as vaccum pallets and instant blind flashlights have been removed and are simply a thing of the past. But I think this marks a crucial turning point in killers becoming too MUCH of a power role.

One of the biggest reasons they nerfed all of this was because they started to listen to the co,mmunity more and listen to their feedback on how game balance should work, at first they were sort of ignorant and didn't pay much attention and would make silly changes that would most likely get reverted anyway but regardless they started to listen. One of the biggest players I think had a hand in shifting the balance and making killers the way they are today is Tru3Ta1ent.

Tru3Ta1ent is a Dead by Daylight player who streams on Twitch and pulls in an average 2.7k/3k viewers each stream. His influence over the game in my opinion is quite large and he is outspoken with his opinions about the way killer and survivor are currently in Dead by Daylight. But I think he is HEAVILY biased towards killers and puts survivors on this high and mighty pedestal when I don't think they should be placed up there. This isn't me attacking Tru3Ta1ent as a person but I do think he is incorrect with a lot of his statements and I'm going to try and disprove some of his opinions about the game.

First take into account that Tru3Ta1ent bases most of his opinions off how good a killer is if they can consistently tackle rank 1 survivors that are most likely in a SWF group. But something that Tru3Ta1ent does frequently is assume that every survivor fighting these killers is playing at a 100% optimal level to the best of their ability when this is almost NEVER the case because he doesn't factor in human error into his opinions. His most popular opinion right now is that only Nurse and Spirit can consistently tackle teams at rank 1 and most likely win; this is incorrect and I'm going to explain why and give an example.

For my example I will be using one of Tru3Ta1ent's own videos to show a killer that he is playing at red ranks (Rank 1-Rank 4).

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr3fTss04Ek

Tru3Ta1ent is playing as the Plague on the Disturbed Ward map. He notes that before the game starts that he will probably be facing quite the challenge which is usually a correct statement to make at red ranks due to survivors being more skilled than your average player. Except that during this game Tru3Ta1ent makes a large amount of mistakes that he simply brushes off as the survivors play optimally when this isn't true at all, I will now put down timestamps of that video and prove to you that Tru3Ta1ent's opinions about the way the game currently is shouldn't be taken as factually correct 100% of the time. (He is also using two meta addons that increase vile purge effectiveness and highlight survivors auras for 5 seconds whenever they vomit, a very powerful combination)

Mistake One: At 0:54 a series of events unfold where Tru3Ta1ent has just broken Jake and is now close to him at a pallet, Tru3Ta1ent instead of just chasing him normally tries to go for this really weird movement option where he turns around repeatedly in an attempt to mindgame Jake and confuse him but the amount of turning he does is excessive and in no way shape or form is actually going to make a difference during the chase. He then loses Jake and later acknowledges that he mindgamed himself under the pretense of 'he needed to do it' when in actual fact he did not need to do it as he could of easily chased and forced Jake into throwing the pallet down lest Jake goes down, he then notes that if he chases him into the middle of the map he will lose the game, again this is untrue as we'll see later on.

Mistake Two: At 2:20 he finds another broken survivor and opts this time to go for his movement option but messes up the timing and precision heavily and gets punished heavily for it, he then later acknowledges that he made a lot of 'small' errors that have cost him time and generators, I personally don't believe he made small errors because if you look at the video he could of been up an extra hook or maybe even two if he didn't make these 'small' mistakes.

Mistake Three/Four: At 3:17 he finds Nea and learns that this survivor does not fall for the typical mindgames a normal survivor does, he swings at the pallet and misses which costs him time, in the same chase he makes yet another mistake by swinging for the pallet against the same survivor that just told him that he can't do that. He then makes a somewhat accurate but inaccurate statement ''I can't win by going around and breaking pallets.'' This isn't strictly true as breaking key pallets can net you a victory in the long run by eliminating the survivors options of escape.

He makes yet another statement saying that this is a GG game for red ranks but not just red ranks master red ranks. But these survivors have made just as many mistakes as Tru3Ta1ent has, except the mistakes he made cost him entire chases and a lot of time when they get stacked together. The survivors mistakes came from them being broken and infected (something that will always happen in a Plague game) which means they can not afford to make the same mistakes Tru3Ta1ent is allowed to make during his Plague game.

Mistake Five: He makes yet another mistake at 5:00 by swinging for Jake through a window but hitting the side of it instead, like Tru3Ta1ent himself stated all these 'small' mistakes cost a killer time but what I'm trying to prove is that he keeps making these mistakes yet still wins the game anyway.

Mistake Six/Seven/Eight: At 5:22 he starts a chase against Nea again, he once again swings at the pallet for a third time in this game against the same survivor that knows better than to wait at pallets, something that Tru3Ta1ent should of picked up on by now. During the same chase he attempts to play a mindgame against Nea and swing at her for a fourth time this game, which costs him even more time. During the same chase he attempts to swing at Nea after playing a mindgame with her again, but she dead hards to a pallet and evades him to which Tru3Ta1ent responds with ''way too optimal I'm wasting too much time with this survivor.'' But RIGHT after this statement the Nea makes ONE SINGLE mistake and goes down because of it. Yet Tru3Ta1ent in this chase made three different mistakes but the Nea made just one incorrect read and she pays the ultimate price for it. Tru3Ta1ent acknowledges that ''the only thing saving me right now is that he can see them all.'' Acknowledging the power of his ultra rare addon.

He finds Jake trying to complete a generator in the killer shack, the generator is nearly complete so the Jake throws down the pallet in an attempt to finish the generator, he doesn't finish the generator and Tru3Ta1ent responds with ''quite optimal.'' This simply isn't the case at all, that was a waste of the best pallet in the entire game. 6:22.

After 6:22 the survivors start making several mistakes that end up costing them the entire match, and thanks to Plague's power to keep survivors broken unless they want to face empowered leatherface and huntress in one she gains the edge because she is essentially (in Tru's own words) a T3 Myers, meaning all survivors are one shot.

Mistake Nine: At 7:18 he finds Nea again and engages a chase with her, he tries the exact same thing he's been doing before and swinging at her through pallets to which he is met with a missed attack, he should be adapting to this survivors playstyle and not make the same mistakes that have cost him all this time to begin with.

He then makes another statement ''we've got a chance, we've got a chance, this has been so difficult.'' My problem with his statements during this game and many of his other games is that he is not playing not even close to optimal for a rank 1 killer, making several mistakes and hindering his own progress due to him not adapating to certain survivors habits and making incorrect reads a good majority of the time. In short HE made this game more difficult than it should of been. During the statement one survivor is slugged, one is on a hook, one of them is just being put on a hook and one of them is running around, meanwhile all of them have been broken for the entire game.

Mistake Ten: From this point out he can make as many mistakes as he wants to because the other three survivors are either slugged or on hooks due to making actual small mistakes that cost them their lives. At 8:26 he engages a chase with Ace using a Corrupt Purge, he then misses his pukes (again his own mistakes) and once again he makes the ''so optimal'' statement despite in the SAME SECOND he utters this statement the Ace makes a mistake that ends up in him getting hit, granted he was talking about when Ace cleansed himself but its still quite a thing to say during a chase where the survivor is making mistakes that are very costly.

He makes another statement about the slugging mechanic. ''We had to slug but I'm not going to lose the game when I can potentially win.'' Again proving that killers are not 100% helpless at survivors in red ranks despite him not playing the only two killers that can consistently beat good teams at rank 1 (his own words). ''That was a really optimal team man.'' Again if they were so optimal they would of not made mistakes and they would of won, not Tru3Ta1ent.

Now you might be wondering why the hell did you make us read all of that? I'll tell you why. Because the game has been influenced in this way where a killer can make over 10 different costly mistakes and still win the game due to using unfun mechanics such as slugging as well as overpowered addons that Tru3Ta1ent admitted himself he needed in order to win that game. I used Tru3Ta1ent's Plague game as an example because he is a prominent top player of this game that is outspoken about his opinions, many of these games exist but I'm only going to be using this one, if you did some digging for yourself you'll soon realize just like I did that this isn't just a one off game.

Another example would be this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QYyFBBohIs&t=3s but I'm not going to go over what went wrong here as generally he made the same mistakes he was making in his Plague video, it would be pointless of me to do so again.

What I've just proved is that the game is balanced more towards killer than survivor in this scenario. Granted this doesn't happen every game but because overpowered addons were in play as well as survivors making actual small mistakes they lost the game even with a huge amount of time wasting mistakes came from the killer. This just goes to show that survivors can't actually just 'fart' around most games and still win which is what most people will tell you, and they'll tell you this because they probably listened to opinions that were incorrect and simply passed them on.

While I think Tru does make a lot of good points about the way game balance works in Dead by Daylight I think he over exaggerates his videos and if you do actually pay attention to his games where he claims he played very optimally and he still lost chances are that isn't always the case. I think too many people are only listening to one side of the story here.

Addons Items and Offerings
This system needs a completely new rework. While addons and items shake up the game and make it more fun and less stale some of the items and addons/offerings can make such a drastic difference to the game to the point where you can simply be carried to victory by using them. I've just proved that addons can actually carry you to victory in matchups, and the example I was using was somewhat tame compared to some of the things you have access to in this game. However not all addons are bad for killer, some of the options given to you can actually make certain killers more viable but that is the problem, a killer should NOT have to rely on addons to make the killer viable. I'll start by giving you some examples of overpowered killer addons as well as survivor items.

Killers:
Wraith: Using the addons The Ghost and Coxcombed Clapper can render the Wraith's approach completely silent and undetected as well as the effect persisting for an extra 6 seconds, granted this killer is somewhat weak compared to other killers but these two addons give Wraith a huge mindgame potential in terms of chases as well as his approach option. If you're on a generator and the Wraith uncloaks behind a wall and you stop paying attention for even less than a second you could be grabbed off the generator.

Hillbilly: Using the addons Carburettor Tuning Guide and Primer Bulb can turn Hillbilly into one of the most punishing and difficult to deal with killers you can fight. These two addons make it so that Hillbilly's chainsaw charges almost immediately which leaves little to no counterplay aside from throwing down pallets which wastes them for your team when their time comes to fight him. The only counterplay you have outside of pallets is to try and 360 him/confuse his movement but if he's right on top of you while doing this chances are autoaim will kick in and do the rest for him. Hillbilly is already the third best killer in this game so the fact that you can add these addons to him makes it so survivors have a really unfun experience against an insta down killer with overpowered addons to leave survivors with little to no counterplay.

Nurse: This is probably going to be a long one so just bare with me. The Nurse is the undisputed best killer in this game, she does not need meta perks or addons to succeed at all, the only time she'd need a bit of help is against an extremely co-ordinated SWF using mics as well as meta perks and items, this again doesn't happen in every game contrary to popular belief/opinion. However the Nurse still has extremely overpowered addons that make her near impossible to beat.

Using the addons Ataxic Respiration and Catatonic Boy's Treasure essentially bumps the Nurse into a tier list of her own, they make it so you now have 'omega' blinks which will let you teleport extremely far and it also means survivors have to play even more optimal to try and evade a hit, even for top tier survivor players its an extremely difficult task and it turns the game into a 'matter of time' scenario before she gets you. The only counterplay is to stealth but all it takes is for one survivor to go down and then her BBQ and Chilli procs which means she now knows exactly where to find you, which in turn slows down the game even more.

Several more of the Nurse's addons give her extra blinks, a certain combination gives her five blinks to use, yes, five blinks. That means during any given chase a survivor has to try and dodge the Nurse five times. Now unless you are the worst Nurse on the planet chances are these addons will carry you to victory and allow you to get hits you simply shouldn't get.

Michael Myers: Using Tombstone Piece and J. Myers Memorial turns Michael Myers into a somewhat slow killer until he reaches T3 and is allowed to kill any survivor he wants in the game for free, they don't even have to be hooked, if he is also running perks to heavily slow down the game this process becomes easier, I won't mention Fragrant Tuft of Hair or Judith's Tombstone as I believe these addons are too slow to be used effectively at rank 1. Once he has simply deleted a survivor of his choice from the game he can just do it all over again and by that time the survivors have pretty much lost and whoever the survivor he killed is chances are they won't gain a pip towards their rank because they suddenly died.

Hag: Using the addons Mint Rag and Rusty Shackles turns the Hag into the best camping killer in the entire game, it means that once you have a survivor on a hook you can teleport to that hook from anywhere on the map and they will have no idea that they triggered a trap unless they are using mics/a survivor is smart enough to get rid of it using a flashlight if they brought one in. In my opinion this is one of the unhealthiest addon combinations in the game because it encourages the Hag to simply wait for someone to unhook and repeat a process that is very difficult to counter unless you are a SWF co-ordinated team. And the trap that is placed down doesn't even have to be triggered, but if it is triggered it means the Hag gets to simply pull you off the hook for free.

Doctor: Using the addons Interview Tape and High Stimulus Electrode turns the Doctor into a long range shocking machine. This allows him to play a totem protecting build where no totems will ever get cleansed unless the survivors are in a SWF team and are communicating, the only way this gets counterplayed is if the Doctor commits to a chase while someone else is getting his totems, something that isn't going to happen if the Doctor is even a little bit smart. If he gets the odd hook or two it makes his totems that much more difficult to deal with, Hex Thrill of The Hunt will tell him when you've touched one, and he can shock from an extreme distance away which will remove you from the totem, if you keep touching them you'll be put into madness 3 which will prevent you from doing anything.

Huntress: Using the addons Iridescent Head and Infantry belt give the Huntress three hatchets that will immediately put survivors into the dying state. This is probably one of the most unfun things to come across in this game as it becomes another matter of time before she hits you with one of these, you can go around throwing down pallets but as soon as the Huntress is on top of you it just becomes a case of running around in a circle hoping she doesn't hit you.

Freddy: Ever since his rework he gained the powers of several other killers (albeit not as strong) which makes him extremely adaptable. Using the addons Red Paint Brush and Paint Thinner make it so Freddy automatically has everyone in the dream world and he now has the power to generate fake pallets. During a chase Freddy can choose to activate these dream pallets thanks to his Red Paint Brush and immediately cause a lot of pallets to be fake and it turns it into a matter of time until the survivors are caught. Once he starts chasing another survivor it becomes even worse because they might think a pallet is safe but it isn't due to another survivor previously using it and Freddy turning it into a fake one.

Spirit: Dead by Daylight's second best killer in the game. Again she borders the line of not needing addons and meta perks to succeed at the game but having access to them gives her a lot of powerful options to further benefit her already massive power. Spirit's ability in general makes it so everything a survivor does is generally a 50/50 guessing game, most people refer to it as a 'mindgame' which is a nicer way of saying 50/50. The only way you can play mindgames with a Spirit is if you have Iron Will to hide your pain noises. You can't afford to be conservative against the Spirit because if you don't throw down the pallet and play her guessing game she's simply going to hit you. There are things you can do to try and play around her game but any Spirit worth their salt will simply pick up on this and punish you for it, typical ways involve crouching away or simply standing still if you aren't hit, but thanks to how the Spirit works she'll know if you had chosen any of these options simply because no scratch marks will appear.

Using the addons Prayer Beads Bracelet and Mother-Daughter Ring turns the Spirit into nearly the best killer in the game. They remove the noise made by the Spirit if she is using her power, this is commonly known as 'Gen-Grabber Spirit' it makes completing generators a very dangerous task as at any second you could be grabbed off with absolutely no warning. The survivors will have absolutely no idea you are coming if you used your power out of sight.

Legion: The Legion is a very frustrating killer for people to go up against due to their addons and simply how their power works in general. If they stab you using their Feral Frenzy and they're using certain addons they will now know where every other survivor is and they can simply go do the same to them, this wastes so much time for the survivors because each time they get stabbed they have to mend AND heal. Most choose to only mend, its a similar situation with the Plague. Healing against the Legion is completely pointless because they can simply instantly stab you and repeat the cycle all over again. If you want to win against the Legion you have to play the game injured 100% of the time unless the Legion simply never finds you which is extremely unlikely.

Using Iridescent Button and Filthy Blade give's the Legion entire map presence as well as extremely slowed mending. If they are using Sloppy Butcher as well as Thantophobia it quickly turns the game into a very boring snooze fest as you have to siimply rush gens to win as you can't afford to heal.

Plague: The Plague is in a very similar boat to the Legion, her power makes it so that if you get infected it becomes only a matter of time until you are broken, once you are broken you are one hit down and this is a very scary situation to be in as you CAN'T heal. The only way to get rid of this is by cleansing yourself, however if you cleanse yourself you just gave her the power of Leatherface and Huntress all in one. Doing this will probably make it so your team lose VERY quickly because they probably didn't cleanse. Again it forces you to remain in an injured state and simply rush gens against her to win, not fun for anyone. Using the addons Vile Emetic and Infected Emetic will turn the Plague's power into a very fast working infection that will make you broken extremely quickly, due to how these addons work she can end chases extremely quickly. Another addon she has known as Black Incense give her extremely powerful aura reading abilities, whenever you vomit for 5 seconds your aura is revealed to her, and if you don't cleanse to deny her Corrupt Purge then you are FORCED into chases with her, removing all stealth mechanics, exactly the same as the Legion.

I think the addon system in general needs to be reworked, certain killers shouldn't need to thrive on addons to be viable (Leatherface/Trapper/Pig to an extent/Ghost Face to an extent) and other killers shouldn't be extremely powerful with certain addons/next to impossible to beat or counterplay due to their addons.

Survivors:
Certain Survivor items when stacked in a SWF team can make a killer's game very miserable and quick if they decided to bring them in, certain meta perks that you'll always see at red ranks like Hex Ruin can stop this to an extent but it still needs to be mentioned.

Using a Dull Key with addons of your choice to either save the key or run it baseline make it so you can open the hatch for your entire team as long as the hatch is available on the map, this is an extremely poorly designed mechanic just like ebony memento mori. Giving you a free escape because the hatch is on the map is not healthy for the game at all, just like how ebony memento mori's aren't fun because you got downed put onto a hook then died immediately once the killer finds you again.

Using an Engineer's Toolbox with powerful addons to speed it up in a co-ordinated SWF group with mics and certain perks to either speed it up and help find each other can end games extremely fast and make gen rushing a big problem in this game.

Using a Camping Aid Kit along with a Anti-Haemorrhagic Syringe or Styptic Agent can easily turn the tide of a chase and drag it out further than it needs to be, any survivor looking to ruin your day will run the Syringe and follow you around and when you down a survivor they will rush to their aid and fully restore their state so they are healthy forcing you to chase them all over again. Or you can use it to simply keep the killer on you to drag out a chase.

I think certain item combinations or the items themselves plus the addons need to be seriously looked at. They shouldn't have the power to carry a player through the ranks, they should be there to add small benefits to a killer, not carry them. It should be more indicative of skill rather than what you bring.

Hitboxes and Latency

As I'm writing this Dedicated Servers are not currently out for us. So I'm going to talk about how latency and hitboxes are plaguing this game.

They have tried to fix these issues but they are still a very problematic issue that occur to this day. They heavily influence certain games and can easily make you rage if you come across it (which is very common to do so).

I'll talk about hitboxes first, if the killer has a somewhat high latency and commonly most games will offer you a latency of 150 give or take, then you're probably going to experience a hit that shouldn't of touched you. If you want examples of this N00b3's videos have an extreme amount of them, I don't feel like I should give any because there is a TON of examples out there.

The reason they make people mad is because it feels like you're playing well until the killer hits you from a couple of meters away and it feels very anti-climactic as well as frustrating when this happens. This has been an issue for a couple of years now and it really needs to be fixed fast.

Another issue is latency itself, if a killer has a high latency then sometimes you might vault a window only to be placed back onto the side you vaulted it from and then hit by the killer, examples are everywhere of this happening once again. High latency can also mess up your movement during a chase causing you to get hit early and take hits you shouldn't of taken because of latency, and latency if you didn't know is based off of the killers internet.

I'll skim over the Huntress hatchet hitbox. I'm just going to leave you with this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yrPi_kLzD4 (credit to SpitfireOrMichina).


Survive With Friends

This will be my final point that I'll go over in my rant, it is probably one of the most controversial debate topics in Dead by Daylight.

I'll start by first giving my own personal opinion on SWF then I will go over what it actually does to the game and what it turns the game into.

I think that SWF is a good mechanic that is executed poorly and balanced poorly in a game such as Dead by Daylight. SWF could be very fun in this game but because of the way the developers have balanced this game it can easily turn games into complete stomps for the survivors and they can completely dominate unprepared killers if they are all co-ordinated, generally from my experience two man SWF's don't impact the game as nearly as much as people think they do. The real problem for me comes when all four of them are in a team on mics as it makes it a real pain in the ass for the killer to actually succeed. Granted it is possible, it is very much possible in the current Dead by Daylight thanks to certain killers and their addons (like I've mentioned).

What does SWF actually do you might be thinking? Well I'll explain. First and foremost it gives a full team access to perks they otherwise wouldn't have because of the fact they might be using mics, a good example of this is Bond. You simply get this perk for free because you know where everyone is, as well as Empathy, you also get to let your teammates know when you are in a chase so the other three can optimally do generators, granted this doesn't happen as nearly as often as most people will have you believe and I have a lot of hours in this game.

However when it does happen it can easily turn the killers mood sour once he realizes that he has to deal with a SWF that could potentially be running meta perks and items, but the same goes for survivors that have to deal with certain killers and their addon combinations plus a potentail ebony mori. Again its chopped down to poor game balance that in my opinion needs to be looked at.

SWF in the most basic form means a killer has to play that much better to succeed against them, but otherwise I hold the opinion that killers do have a lot more power than survivors if they aren't against a four man SWF, which again doesn't happen nearly as often as people think.

I think the longer that the developers don't address these issues the harder the game becomes to balance in the long run because certain killer perks/certain survivor perks/items/addons/offerings you name it, it'll become a full time job to try and balance them and factor in every little thing into a decision to do something to one of these things I've mentioned. Certain perks have been buffed and nerfed such as NOED applying to every tier (which is really weird) and Mettle of Man getting a somewhat swift nerf to the overall power it once had. But I don't think simple balance changes will be enough to save Dead by Daylight and the issues it has. Some issues require complete reworks in my opinion.



Conclusion

What I want for people to take away from this is to actually do their own thinking on Dead by Daylight and not take the opinions of popular streamers/youtubers as factual evidence until you've actually done the digging and research yourself, I would also like some of the issues I've pointed out in Dead by Daylight to get looked at because a lot of them honestly ruin the game for me and a lot of other people as well.
Obviously not everything in this rant is meant to be taken as 100% factually correct, you will get cases as a killer where you find a really good survivor that can loop effectively but it doesn't happen as often as people think and I think people need to start looking at both sides and actually work together to balance the game rather than being at each others throat all the time. Doing this will create an equally fair game for both sides.
 I would also like the developers to think about rebalancing the game for both survivor and killer and not favouring one over the other because one side of the fanbase can scream louder.

However, thank you for taking your time to read my long rant and I hope that you can take away several points from this and think about them.