The new game mode in Dead by Daylight is really good. Too good, because it creates a new, huge problem that finds no solution.
I am being completely honest: In the last few months, I have played considerably less Dead by Daylight than before. I have kept myself updated, briefly tried out all the killers to understand them and their mechanics – but I haven’t really played it energetically anymore.
That has completely changed with the currently available 2vs8 mode. Here, 2 killers face off against 8 survivors. This is the first time that killers can cooperate and you can team up with a friend to show a few survivors that they actually won’t survive.
Playing killers with someone else is indescribably more relaxing. There are several positive aspects that you suddenly have with 2 killers:
- If you lose, that burden is shared by 2 people. You don’t feel as downhearted when things go badly – especially because you are on a team with someone and can think together about how to do better.
- A survivor is constantly leading you around by the nose and “triggering” you all the time? Just ignore him. There are 7 other survivors you can probably get to more easily.
Additionally, the game is much simpler to play without perks. I don’t have to consider hundreds of perks in every chase and think about what the survivor might be doing and whether I might accidentally trigger any of their perks. Everyone knows what every other character in the game can do – this applies to both killers and survivors.
Too many killers – no survivors
However, there is a massive problem that is currently dampening the enjoyment of the game. The waiting times are long. Extremely long. At least when you want to play killers. Survivors have virtually “instant invites” and can get started right away.
This is because this type of experience is something new for killers. Whether you play alone or in pairs makes a gigantic difference from the killer’s perspective.
For survivors, this difference is smaller. Whether you have 3 or 7 teammates has only a marginal effect on the course of the game.
This means that there are many more killers who want to try the mode and simply too few survivors. Because it’s clear: Even in 2vs8, there must be four times as many survivors as killers for matches to occur continuously.
And this is exactly where the problem lies. There are far too many killers for far too few survivors. The waiting times for killer pairs often range between 10 and 20 minutes – with a tendency towards 20. That is a bit time-consuming and dampens the enjoyment of the game on the killer’s side somewhat.
The developer Behaviour has also recognized the problem early and given survivors an additional incentive to sign up: Survivors receive a whopping 400% additional bloodpoints. That is such a massive bonus that you pretty much leave every match with well over 100,000 bloodpoints. Anyone who still wants to level up characters and unlock perks should make use of this now.
However, the bonus has not actually helped to level the playing field. The waiting times are still extremely high.
But I don’t see a solid solution to this. Maybe the mode just needs more time for more people to get used to it and switch back to the survivor side. I am just worried that this massive imbalance could even be a reason to halt the development of the mode – and that would be a shame because I haven’t had as much fun in Dead by Daylight in a long time as I have had in these matches. Even more so than with the best killers that you can currently play in the real game.
