After much criticism, Dead by Daylight is reworking the major overhaul once again. The fan feedback has highlighted many issues.
In the Dead by Daylight community, there are mainly two major topics year-round: Firstly, the discussion about whether killers or survivors are currently “completely op”, and secondly, the ever-present grind in the game.
At least the developers wanted to significantly reduce the grind and basically give the community a gift. However, the anticipation did not last long, as exact calculations showed that the grind would not decrease by 75% as promised, but rather – depending on the method of calculation – could even increase. Now the developers are making further adjustments and fine-tuning.
What is the problem with the grind? Anyone wanting to have all perks in Dead by Daylight must play – and that quite a lot. To unlock all perks on a single character, one must now invest easily over 500 hours of playtime, in most cases even more. While this is still somewhat bearable for veterans, it presents a massive barrier for newcomers.
Worse yet: The grind increases exponentially with each new character, as you can unlock the new perks on all characters.
This is how the developers wanted to solve it: With patch 6.1.0, the developers wanted to reduce the grind by 75%. Perks should be unlocked through the prestige system. For each prestige rank, all other survivors can use the perks of the prestige character at the respective level. For example, if Claudette is at “Prestige 2”, then all other survivors could use “Self-Care”, “Botanical Knowledge”, and “Empathy” at rank 2.
The devil, however, was in the details. To “prestige” from blood web level 50, one had to pay 50,000 blood points – and that was mandatory, as without it, new items or addons could not be acquired. Here, urgent adjustments needed to be made.
This is how Dead by Daylight wants to save the promise of “Less Grind”
In the latest “Developer Update” for July, the developers once again addressed feedback from the community and promised a whole series of changes and adjustments. While they do not want to deviate from the fundamental plans, they aim to improve many areas. The most important points concerning blood points include:
- Maximum blood points per match increase: The developers are raising the earnable blood points in a match in each category from 8,000 to 10,000. Thus, one can earn up to 40,000 blood points per match and also get a little more when doing just one thing for the entire match (like repairing generators).
- Prestiging becomes cheaper: The costs for prestige leveling drop from 50,000 to 20,000 blood points. The hurdle for leveling up is thus significantly smaller.
- Blood point cap increases: The current upper limit of 1,000,000 blood points will be raised to 2,000,000. This way, everyone can accumulate more blood points to save for the release of the next chapter. Blood points from promotions (like redeemable codes) can still exceed the cap.
However, some changes will also be made to the prestige system, which will be a bit more complex.
When the new patch goes live, all characters will receive bonus prestige levels, based on their progress. “Progress” in this case means how many perk levels a character has unlocked and how high their prestige rank already is. A character that is already at “Prestige 3” will be at “Prestige 9” after the update. A character that is now at “Prestige 1” will definitely have at least “Prestige 3” after the update – enough to unlock their perks for all other characters.
If you do not yet have a prestige level with a character, you can still receive bonus prestige based on the number of perk levels your character has already unlocked. However, the exact calculation for that is not known.
In a future update, the developers want to make the prestige climb a bit more worthwhile as well. Currently, it is the case that after leveling up, for some tiers in the blood web, relatively poor items are offered – mostly many common addons and items. This will be revised in the future, but it will not be the case with the next patch.
What else is in the update? Aside from the larger changes to the grind and the prestige system, the developers have also made a number of gameplay adjustments. For instance, it will no longer be possible to connect multiple “Endurance” effects (like from “Borrowed Time”) in a chain reaction. As long as a character is already in the injured state – meaning a hit with “Condition” has been absorbed – this effect cannot be triggered again until they have healed their wounds.
What do you think of these adjustments? Good that the developers are making further improvements? Or does it seem rather clumsy and change nothing?
