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Dead by Daylight recently released its usual mid-chapter patch update, but for the first time in a long time, brought some major changes across the board to both survivors and killers and quality of life changes.
We’ll speak about the QOL changes first, as these were implemented to reduce the grind of the game, so these only improve the game for everyone.
Progression, Prestige Levelling And Matchmaking Incentives
Previously, once you reached level 50 with a character on their Bloodweb and choose to prestige them, it would completely reset that character, losing all the items and perks you had unlocked on them already. For this reason, most players wouldn’t bother increasing their characters prestige levels, and just continue to progress in their Bloodweb unlocking more perks.
Aside from the achievement / trophy to reach prestige level 3 with a character, the only reasons to prestige a character would be to unlock a cosmetic for the first 3 tiers of prestige you reached. These cosmetics have now moved to prestige levels 4, 5 and 6, whereas the first three levels will now unlock that character’s perks on every other survivor or killer. Prestige 1 will unlock all three of their perks at level 1 and prestige 3 will unlock them all at their strongest level.
This new change reduces the grind by about 75%, as all you would have to do now is prestige any newly released characters to level 3 and get their perks unlocked on everyone else too, rather than taking each one to level 40 and then finding those perks in every other survivor and killers Bloodwebs too. This on top of having all the perks you want already unlocked instantly on any new survivors and killers as soon as they are purchased, means you have no reason not to prestige anymore.
Additionally, new icons have been added to the post-match screen so you can show off your prestige level with any given character up to prestige level 100. Reaching prestige levels 7,8 and 9 will also unlock some new charms based on those characters 3 unique perks.
One more QOL change is aimed at reducing matchmaking times by providing incentives to play as a certain role. There’s no way to tell how long you’re going to be expected to wait for a match for either role, but this new change will let you know which one is in more need (and therefore a quicker queue time) and offer you bonus Bloodpoints ranging from +25% to +100% for playing the desired role.
Speaking of Bloodpoints, the 1 million cap on Bloodpoints you can store has been doubled, which should help with levelling new characters. It costs about 1.6 million to prestige a character once, so if you can store 2 million before a new Chapter, then you’re already ahead on your progression. The amount of Bloodpoints you can earn in a match has also been increased too.
Gameplay Changes And Perk Reworks
This is where things start to take a more drastic and serious change to the game that has a lot of players up in arms. Typically, the community is built of survivor mains and killer mains, depending on which role they prefer to play, and you can’t please everyone when it comes to making changes.
I won’t go in to the specifics of the near 40 perk changes (those can be found in the June Developer Update here and the July update here after some slight edits to those) but basically the changes
have heavily nerfed some of the most heavily used perks on both sides, whilst buffing some of the most underused perks.
Whilst a lot of survivor mains are unhappy with the changes and feel like they have no perks to counter some killers now, others welcome the changes that shake up the meta a little bit. Meanwhile, killer mains can rejoice that the most annoying perks they would come against every game are now basically so dead they won’t be used much at all.
Some core gameplay changes have also been introduced to help prevent killers tunnelling survivors, and to help killers catch up to survivors, as well as slowing down the games progression. We’ll cover these below as either a pro (for that role) or a con (again for that role only):
Survivor change #1 (Pro) – After being rescued from a hook, players are now granted with a 5 second endurance status effect (where they can take an extra hit from the killer) as well as a brief 7% haste status effect. This effectively builds one of the survivor’s perks into all survivors’ base kit without needing to waste a perk slot for it.
Survivor change #2 (Con) – After being hit once, the speed burst survivors get has been reduced from 2 seconds to 1.8 seconds, meaning they don’t get to travel as much distance from the killer as previously.
Killer change #1 (Pro) – Players can now destroy breakable walls, pallets and damage generators 10% faster, allowing them more time to catch up to survivors they are chasing.
Killer change #2 (Pro) – The cooldown time for successfully hitting a survivor with a basic attack has been reduced by 10%. This is the second change that makes survivors get to travel less distance before the killer has caught back up to them.
Killer change #3 (Pro) – Kicking a generator now immediately cause a 2.5% loss of progress in addition to starting regression.
Killer change #4 (Pro) – Bloodlust trigger times have been reduced to 15 seconds for Tier 1, 25 seconds for Tier 2, and 35 seconds for Tier 3 (was 15 seconds, 30 seconds, and 45 seconds) making it easier to catch up to survivors in long chases quicker.
General change #1 (Survivor Con / Killer Pro) – Generators now to 90 seconds to repair instead of 80, giving the killer additional time to interrupt survivors on gens and damage them to make them regress.
Breaking down the changes like this, it’s clear the killer side has received a lot more buffs than the survivor side received, and killers didn’t get any negatives with those gameplay changes either.
So why would developer Behaviour make all these changes to the gameplay and favour the killer so much? Well, as the game is a 4 vs 1 online game, friends can team up and have an advantage over the killer by being able to communicate things to each other such as which killer it is, where abouts on the map they are, if they’re camping etc. So these changes help killers combat the survive with friends groups.
On top of the perk changes being generally considered better on the killer side too, it’s definitely cause for concern for a specific type of player, and a large portion of the player base. Those players, are known as the “Solo Survivors”, those who queue up to play by themselves without friends and don’t have the advantages previously mentioned that friends in constant communication do.
My Opinion
I’m personally happy to see perk reworks and look forward to more in the future to shake up the meta more often, which Behaviour have promised will be a more regular thing going forward. Though, as someone who plays both survivor and killer roles, I do agree that killers have had a bit too much of a buff with this update as I’m losing more survivor games and winning more killer games.
I would have preferred to see just the perk rework without the other gameplay changes first, then see how things are going and maybe introduce them later on if needed. The gameplay changes could have also been reworked perks, so at least it takes up a perk slot on the killers side. Alternatively, these changes could have just been implemented to either a new game mode, or to top ranked player games only.
Of course, the game is a live service online game that continuously receives updates on a regular schedule, so Behaviour will no doubt be keeping an eye on things in the coming weeks and months to see how games are playing. We already know they track survival rates and how certain killers are performing, so only time will tell if all of these changes will stick.
In the meantime, I’m going to be playing killer most of the time, as I can’t seem to get a single game as survivor where someone doesn’t kill themselves on the hook after being hooked once, or rage quit and disconnect as soon as they are downed.