Horror gaming is something that has always been an important part of my life. When I reached an age where I couldn’t play them as often, I began to watch other creators play them. It was a way to experience the game without playing it, and it works for a lot of games I’m too scared to play. (Looking at you Visage!)
But recently, my partner and our kids really wanted me to start joining them to play Dead by Daylight. Now, as an avid member in the Let’s Play viewer community and a horror fan, I already knew what this game was. I had watched John Wolfe play it and I had seen countless clips and memes. I don’t particularly care for online games where you have no choice but to play with strangers. This is why my co-op horror experience is pretty much limited to Left 4 Dead.
However, you can’t say no to family! And when we started out, it was an insane amount of fun and really encouraged bonding in our new mixed family household. It didn’t take long, however, for me to start to remember why I avoid games like this.
On the off chance you’re not super familiar with gameplay the premise is relatively simple. The game consists of four survivors and a killer. The objective for the survivors is to complete five generators to be able to open the door to escape. If you are the final survivor and everyone else is dead, you can try to finish generators for the door or find the ‘hatch’. The hatch is a little square opening with black smoke that allows you to exit the game as ‘escaped’. The goal for the killer is, well, probably pretty clear.
The game is loaded with things like perks and items. You get add ons to the items as well. The main three things you can use are flashlights, health kits, and toolboxes. Flashlights stun the killer, health packs speak for themselves (but are also the only way to heal yourself unless you mend before death or have a perk for it), and toolboxes help with generator repairs or sabotages.
In order to play the game the way it was intended, you play online with strangers. If you are playing as a survivor you can play with three other friends, you just have to invite them or have them join your lobby. If you want to play as a killer with friends, you can’t in the online game. The only way to play with friends in both spots is to do a custom game, but you gain nothing when you play that way. There is a reward system and a tier system. The reward system is you get points for everything you do in game. You get points for surviving, doing generators, cleansing totems, healing your teammates, etc. These points are called blood points and you can use them to get perks, items, and add ons from something called ‘the blood web’. They have an offering system where you can burn objects obtained in the blood web and they help with things like luck, hook distances, and extra point boosts.
Most killers have the same set up, with each one having their own “thing” or special ability. Killers, unless they have their ability on or special perks, usually take two hits before they knock you down. Once you’re down, they can pick you up and hook you. This is a super brief run down of a game that has a bunch of mechanics, but the playing of the game isn’t the focus of the article, so I’m summarizing.
In the last few weeks a lot of things have come up that make me remember why I typically avoid playing online with strangers and I wanted to sort of talk about what I’m noticing in the DBD community players. I’ll separate it into sub categories to hopefully make for an easy flow of thought.
Tunneling: If you aren’t familiar, tunneling is when a pain in the ass killer hooks you and then doesn’t do anything else except focus on killing you. The object of the game is to kill people, yes, but how many generators would you guess could get done by all the other players being ignored in the time it takes a killer to finish the one person they’re focused on? If you guessed almost always all of them, you’d be correct. We played against a Michael recently who tunneled me so bad I literally could not play the game. He hooked me the first time and stood and waited for someone to get me down (ignoring ALL other players) and then he got me again. He was relentless and not in a fun, ‘Oh damn this is a good killer’ kind of way. It is insanely irritating when this happens. Dying at the hands of a well balanced, skilled killer is not a problem. Being tunneled ruins the game experience and meanwhile all other survivors got out because you wanted to be a dick. And for what?
Teaming with the Killer: This, thankfully, hasn’t happened as much for us. But it happens enough it has its very own ‘report button’ on the game if you decide to report someone. This simply means one or more survivors work with the killer and route them to other survivors or purposefully sabotage the game so the other survivors are found by the killer and they can still get out. Just…don’t do this shit. It is irritating. If you want to be a killer, just be one.
Ignoring Teammates/Not Doing Your Part: The entire point of co-op games is to play as a team. I’m not sure why that isn’t clear to some people. If you aren’t going to play as a team, then play by yourself. My partner and I were playing recently and the other two people clearly knew each other. They only helped each other the entire game. If one of us got hooked, the other one of us had to come to the rescue. They ignored requests for help healing and they were essentially just playing by themselves and ignoring us. (This was actually made even more irritating because the killer was tunneling my partner. It made for an insanely frustrating and hard gaming experience.) We’ve also played with people who just hide in lockers and move from one to another or don’t do generators. These people wait for everyone else to do the work and then try to escape without helping. It is always insanely satisfying when killers catch on to this and take them out. This happened recently in a game where a David King wouldn’t help us and wasn’t doing anything. The killer ended up letting my partner go (I was already dead) and taking out the David King.
Killers Being Weird: This isn’t always a complaint, but I do wish I better understood killer motivations. Some killers are just assholes, and while they aren’t breaking the rules, they really aren’t playing the game the way it was intended. But sometimes they do really bizarre things. Our middle and I were playing one time and the killer was essentially only hitting us if we messed up a generator. Otherwise, he’d stand by and watch us. It was a weird control thing that made me feel quite gross by the time I left. I’ve had other killers that act like they are going to let me go and then knock me down and watch me crawl out. Which…I’m sure in some circles might be funny? But I honestly think the killers that do this might need therapy. Some killers will take your character to the hatch if they are the last one. While I don’t understand this, it can be helpful.
There are a few gaming things I don’t agree with as well that sound more whiny than helpful. For example, The Trickster killer is insanely OP. You don’t even have to be good at the game to play him and I loathe him with every fiber in my being. I also really hate that they reset your rankings. So basically you spend all this time working up to whatever rank you are, and then they knock it to nothing. Which, doesn’t make any fucking sense. Now you’ve completely trashed your matchmaking element in the game so people who were, say, only in silver level rankings, are now playing against iridescent players (which is the highest you can go). So needless to say, this last time they reset it took me six days to even win a game. Which really just doesn’t make for a fun experience. Why would you put lower level players against the higher level ones? Leave the ranking alone…
Anyway those are my gripes about Dead by Daylight. I hate that the strangers playing are the worst part of the game sometimes. It can be so much fun and I have so many killers I’ve loved playing against because they made the experience a challenging, but fun one. If you’re reading this and you play Dead by Daylight I ask on behalf of all other players, please don’t be a dick. It is a game and it is meant to be fun, so stop robbing people of a good time. There is a new killer releasing in December and next summer we get FNAF. I’ll continue playing, because it is a really fun game, I just hope to keep getting players who want to play the game the way it was meant to be played.
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