Camping is a problem in Dead by Daylight – at least for some players. A perk might ruin the fun for campers.
If you look at the problems in Dead by Daylight, there are a handful of things that the community keeps mentioning. “Killers are too strong” and “Survivors are too strong” are the biggest ongoing issues, but there are other points that follow closely behind. “Tunnel vision” and “Camping” are often criticized, especially in the lower skill rating area.
In the next patch, Dead by Daylight brings a perk that significantly makes it harder for campers if there are competent team members. The time on the hook can be extended almost indefinitely.
What is Camping in Dead by Daylight? Camping refers to the situation in Dead by Daylight when the killer hangs a survivor on a hook and does not leave the immediate area around the hook – they simply wait for the survivor to slowly die, making a rescue by other survivors difficult to impossible.
Camping is not prohibited, but it is indeed a valid strategy for the killer, which is punished by the game to a small extent. Killers lose part of their victory points if they are too close to a hanging survivor while no other survivors are nearby.
Why is Camping seen as negative? Camping is generally perceived as a fun-killer in Dead by Daylight – at least for the survivors. The player on the hook has no chance to continue participating properly in the game and must desperately wait for their health bar to deplete without being able to do anything.
While the survivor on the hook can speed up this process and kill themselves faster, they hinder all other survivors since the killer is rewarded even quicker and can go back to hunting sooner.
How to deal with campers? So far, there are some strategies that survivors can use against campers. The most commonly accepted approach is to simply ignore the camper survivor and just repair generators during that time. If all 3 other survivors do that, then in the time the 4th survivor dies, at least 3 generators will be completed and another one already started.
The second option is riskier and requires a good team as well as coordinated allies who start the rescue attempt simultaneously and intercept each other’s hits. This is only difficult to execute without communication and is therefore hardly suitable for solo players who are not in voice chat with their teammates.
What perk is coming next? Thanks to some leaks in the subreddit for Dead by Daylight, the upcoming perks of the next “Resident Evil” DLC are already known, which also brings the new killer Wesker. The DLC features two new survivors, hence 6 new perks. The most interesting perk among them is from Rebecca Chambers and is called “Reassurance”:
If you are within 6 meters of a hooked survivor, press the active ability key to pause their sacrifice process for 30 seconds. If the survivor is already in the second sacrifice phase, skill checks that the survivor normally has to complete will also pause during this time. Reassurance has a cooldown of 40 seconds.
What impact does this perk have? Even though at first reading it may seem like a “drop in the ocean”, the effects of Reassurance are likely to be quite drastic. Depending on whether the cooldown begins immediately upon activation or only after the duration ends, one or two other survivors can keep the ally on the hook alive indefinitely.
In the worst-case scenario, a character with Reassurance can increase the duration of the sacrifice process from 120 seconds to 180 seconds if the cooldown only begins after the effect duration ends. If the cooldown starts immediately, this duration rises to a whopping 450 seconds – that is over 7 minutes.
Even in the most unfavorable case, two survivors could extend the duration to 7 minutes for sure.
That is enough time for a single survivor to repair 4 generators alone.
Of course, this perk will not be a cure-all against camping, but if used correctly, it should quickly show campers that it is much more efficient to just look for other survivors instead of watching the one survivor on the hook the whole time – otherwise, they can expect a very long, very boring game where they spend many minutes waiting for their victim to die on the hook. Although this does require good survivors who can get close repeatedly.
What do you think about this new perk? A cool way to really annoy campers? Or does it need a more radical solution from the developers?
