Cortyn from MeinMMO loves Dead by Daylight. Or the game is hated. A wild mix like a drug.
Ah, Dead by Daylight. I’ve been playing you for over 4 years now. Actually, you were supposed to fill the void in my gaming heart left by Evolve. But then you captivated me and throw me back and forth. Sometimes I don’t want to touch you for weeks, sometimes I can’t go an hour without you.
Yet you frustrate me again and again, leaving me banging my head on the keyboard or simply unsatisfied.
For the truth is: I hate loving you and I love hating you.
Dead by Daylight – My (worse) substitute for Evolve
In my thoughts, I still often compare Dead by Daylight to Evolve. After all, Dead by Daylight was for a long time just a worse substitute for the best game that has ever existed (I won’t argue about that!). Both are asymmetrical games and in both there is a “Power Role” and a weaker role. What was the monster in Evolve is the killer in Dead by Daylight. However, the longer you compare both games, the clearer the differences become that affect the experience.
In Evolve, the monster was not the driving force at the beginning – but the victim. It fled, had to eat, hide and gradually gain strength until it was strong enough to turn the match around and attack the hunters. At first, you might be able to engage 1-2 hunters at the same time or knock them out early, but later you could have epic 4vs1 battles that were full of adrenaline for all players.
In Dead by Daylight it’s different. As a killer, you are from the very first second the driving force in the match. It is your permanent task to keep the opposing team under pressure. Every second you fail to do so is a lost second.
This situation means that being a killer – at least at the higher ranks – is a constant stress. Often, this stress is rewarded at the end when you can eliminate one, two, three, or even all four survivors. In many cases, however, it isn’t. Because if a survivor “knows what they’re doing right,” they can keep you busy alone for several minutes while every second in your head the thought pounds “The other 3 survivors are working on generators and getting closer to the goal.”
This leads to the killer being in a constant state of obligation to keep the game exciting, but also to the survivors who are not currently being hunted having relatively boring gameplay. Because if you are not being bothered by the killer, you just sit at the generator, hold down the left mouse button, and occasionally complete a skill check. No wonder survivors continually wish for new mechanics or more varied objectives.
In Evolve it was different, the power dynamics shifted throughout a match and allowed for cool “revenge actions.” If the Trapper bothered me the whole time while I was still running away as a small level 1 Goliath, I could turn the tables at level 3, separate the Trapper from the team, and then enjoy devouring him. Or the Trapper knew about this rivalry and tried to stay away for that very reason.
This shift from “victim” to “hunter” for the monster and from “hunter” to “the hunted” for the human opponents affected every match.
In Dead by Daylight, it is rigid and linear. Of course, it’s a fundamentally different game. But due to the lack of this dynamism, the power dynamics in a round unfortunately only change rarely. As a killer, you are constantly under massive tension, which a survivor only experiences in exceptional situations. Playing as a killer is pure stress.
Sure, this tension dissolves into satisfaction when the round has a “good” ending, you’ve had a long, exciting match, and in the end, maybe one or two survivors had to bite the dust.
If you are, however, being outperformed by the survivors as if you were a small child trying to push a square block through the round hole, then it is exhausting. It doesn’t help much if the toxic survivor – and believe me, every round has one – is tea bagging the whole round, clicking the flashlight, and in the end still throwing a “gg ez, baby killer” in the chat. You just want to break out into a scream, maybe call the players’ parents and ask what went wrong in their upbringing and whether a postnatal abortion looks enticing after all.
I don’t mean to say that Dead by Daylight is unfair and that killers are permanently at a disadvantage. That wouldn’t be accurate. But the gameplay is completely different because the “Power Role” in Dead by Daylight can in most cases only occupy one survivor at a time. Sure, a few killers, like Legion, can affect multiple survivors at once. Yet the playstyle is so annoying that survivors and killers occasionally agree that there’s no fun in that.
From a survivor’s perspective, it’s different. The matches are more diverse, but that doesn’t necessarily mean better.
In some matches, you are constantly hunted by the killer, have cool chases, end up on the hook, rescue teammates, and escape by a narrow margin.
In other matches, nothing much happens that requires your influence. You leisurely repair three generators in a row, because the killer – as mentioned above – is struggling with a survivor who is leading them around the nose the whole time.
This then feels like an easy victory, but it feels almost as unsatisfying as the crushing defeat you endure as a killer.
Why play DbD at all?
Now, of course, every player with somewhat intact self-reflection would ask: Cortyn, why on earth are you still playing this game?
I think about that often. On one hand, Dead by Daylight is still very entertaining, especially when played in a group with people who are not all at the same skill level. It feels good to be able to protect the “weaker” members, teach them something, and watch them grow.
On the other hand, there is this small percentage of truly great matches where everything just fits. These are often matches that last over 15 minutes, where you as a killer encounter all survivors, experience a lot of action, and it’s a very close race. This is rounded off by friendly people in the endgame chat. I can gladly overlook “the one idiot” who whines about you playing the “cancer killer” while he runs around with all four current meta perks.
These few matches, perhaps occurring in 10% of all cases, make Dead by Daylight feel like an addiction. A drug where you know that in 9 out of 10 cases something will go wrong, and you will end the game frustrated, yet still seek that “kick” from that one out of ten that is simply a lot of fun.
Do you also have a game to which you have developed such a love-hate relationship and from which you just can’t escape? A game that continuously frustrates you yet doesn’t let you go?
