Who here actually likes the Withering blight over the Hallowed blight?

[Seiko300]

I'm coming out and saying it, the Withering Blight is absolute garbage in comparison to the Hallowed Blight. On its own, for those who never played the Hallowed blight it might still be a grand time, but in comparison in sorely lags behind in multiple categories when set side by side with its predecessor.

Foreword

(I realize this thread became way too long about halfway through, so I'm putting a TL;DR at the bottom for those who don't want to read my terribly long rant)



I'm not mad at the devs, they reacted and responded accordingly to the feedback that the community (for the most part) gave from the event last year.

However, it's important to keep in mind that sometimes, the feedback the community gives, is absolute ♥♥♥♥.

The faults people point out in last years event, were over-exaggerated and not actually all that bad

I get that it kinda sucked the first few days when there were a decent chunk of survivors just killing themselves to maximize serum gain, but once you stopped taking the game seriously and just had fun with the event it really wasn't all that bad if at all. As a killer you basically get free points, free pips nobody as a killer should be complaining because it's not like this was everybody and it's not like it was every match either so you still got to play relatively normal games as killer.

As a survivor, all you had to do was switch your build to something much more self-serving to keep yourself alive. I was running the previous incarnation of Left Behind which granted increased generator repair speeds when everyone else was dead, and without a hatch closing mechanic in place at the time all I had to do was repair one or two generators to get the hatch to appear when I was the last one standing. With self-care to make sure I could take a hit, these were pretty easy victories too.

But people got so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ uptight because they what, couldn't continue the same monotonous routine of repairing generators like they do literally all times for the rest of the year??? The game is fun don't get me wrong, but these events are here for a reason, to switch things up every once in awhile, keep that blood pumping.

There was no change for the event this year

NOW we basically don't even have an event. Gameplay is absolutely normal, nothing has changed, even the aesthetic of the event is about on par with some of the most boring events we've had like the summer BBQ, or the earlier lunar new year events. At least for the Moonrise event we had an interesting capture the flag type of deal going on where survivors were essentially playing their best to survive with a lantern.

The atmosphere for the event had been completely stripped away

There's nothing to look forward to, there's no vial being slowly filled with serum as I milk the oozing amber substance from the visceral cankers. The cankers added so much more than just a second objective, they added atmosphere. Something that most definitely the Withering blight lacks, without the visceral cankers scattered growing throughout the maps I can hardly tell an event is going on in the first place. We have tiny pumpkins on top of generators and on the ground next to the hook, nothing spurting, nothing oozing, no gross factor nothing. Even the main menu / lobby looks and feels barren, a few pumpkins with the sad husk of what used to be these pumping, pulsing, visceral cankers. Even the music seems toned down, I can hardly hear it at all much less so now that we have unique themes that play when certain killers are selected like the Clown, Legion, Demogorgon, Myers, etc. I can more than confidently say that the halloween menu's from the past two years were better even all the way back to 2017 for those who can remember All Hallows Eve before the Hallowed Blight came into being.

The diary entries left people with a reason to come back each day, and created a well written and interesting story which provided new revelations regarding lore

The new diary entries that were released once every single day during the Hallowed Blight were also genius, interspersed with the landmarks that were the animatics it gave something to look forward to each and every single day. I get that now we have the archives which by themselves are great, an amazing new step in telling the story of DBD but the story from the book "The Hunger" just wasn't up to par like last year it was just filled with how confusing the character felt each time and that was it. No purpose, no "obsessively deciphering Vigo's journal." to discover the horrifying properties of the "putrid nectar - the thick fluid I saw oozing from the trees.". The animatic this year was great, seeing what I can only interpret as the void where all the hopeless souls of past survivors in the chaos of the realm of the entity was amazing. But one good animatic does not an event make.

The cosmetics this year just don't hold a candle to last years

Even the cosmetics this year, I can still appreciate them and the effort put into them and how cool they look, but honestly I liked last years cosmetics better, comparing each one back and forth if they were sold as DLC packs you know for sure the former would sell better. The only one I really liked from this year was the Clown, but it sucks because my appreciation for the cosmetic is halted by the fact that the Clown, ngl, is kind of a terrible killer who needs a rework, an update, a tweak, something, anything. Aside from the Clown it was also great that they were finally able to revisit and renegotiate terms with the license holder for Halloween to get new cosmetics for Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.

Overall, I'm not mad, just disappointed. Halloween should be the best most interesting time of the year for Dead by Daylight and the devs totally dropped the ball caving into the demands of the community and taking away the one feature that made the whole event unique, and distinct.

TL;DR

-The community sometimes gives bad feedback leading the devs to make bad choices like getting rid of the visceral canker.

-The visceral canker added so much more than just a secondary objective, it provided atmosphere for the event, really letting you know that something was off in the realm of the entity. Taking this key and crucial feature away from the event took away the one thing that made it unique, distinctive, and fun.

-The removal of the only change in gameplay (the visceral cankers) left the community with nothing but normal gameplay, which we can already experience most 80% of the 365 days of the year. Events are meant to shake things up and change things slightly, along with the last years Hallowed Blight, the Moonrise event was also a perfect example of how the devs were able to accomplish this.

-The Menu is so much less festive in comparison to last years hallowed blight, and the year prior's All Hallows Eve. All there is left are a few pumpkins and the sad husk of what used to be a pumping, pulsing, creepy visceral canker. Even the music seems to be toned down in the menu especially in the killer character selection screen where we see more and more killers have unique themes applied to them when selected (The Clown, The Legion, The Shape, The Demogorgon, etc.) the spooky event theme should always take priority during an event

-The Diary Entries released every single day from last year gave something to look forward to, and a reason to play each and every single day. It gave you enough information but left you with something new to leave you in suspense the same way a TV show keeps you coming for another episode.

[Potato]

In my opinion, the only big downside the Rift/Archives have is the inability for the players to grind it without waiting 12 days for another level to unlock, I do all the missions in 2 days and then have to go back to the normal boring gameplay. If they let me unlock the next levels for additional 100 cells or something, it would be much better.

[Machine Spirit]

When it comes to the actual gameplay, Hallowed Blight was much better with the secondary objective of getting the nectar.

[Seiko300]

Originally posted by Potato:

In my opinion, the only big downside the Rift/Archives have is the inability for the players to grind it without waiting 12 days for another level to unlock, I do all the missions in 2 days and then have to go back to the normal boring gameplay. If they let me unlock the next levels for additional 100 cells or something, it would be much better.

This is part of the reason why I think the diary entries from last year were much better. As a player you didn't crank out all the story in two or three days (which I also did) it stretched out the event, setting the tone for it, and kept you coming back to keep up with the story in the same way that a TV series does.

One of my favorite Diary entries came from the third day of the event:

"21 October - The Blight
I have been obsessively deciphering Vigo's Journal. His work is elegant but erratic, drawing obscure conclusions from disjointed fields. Most entries mention a powerful force, The Entity, which undergoes a purge that occurs once a year. During this period, The Entity is infested with blight. According to Vigo, cankers bloom into “Pustulas”, a type of flower that spurts putrid nectar—the thick fluid I saw oozing from the trees. The last pages of the journal mention a serum distilled from the nectar, but the pages detailing its effects and preparation were torn out."

Imo, none of the writing introduced into the archives this year matches up to the style, intrigue, and the mystery that last year was able to do.

[Seiko300]

Originally posted by Machine Spirit:

When it comes to the actual gameplay, Hallowed Blight was much better with the secondary objective of getting the nectar.

Going out and actual seeking out the Nectar risking life and limb for the substance was honestly thrilling.

I wish they had actually kept both, the Visceral Cankers and the new cankerous generators. It would give people more opportunities to unlock the skins they want and hopefully have less of an impact on gameplay than just having the visceral cankers exclusively (which admittedly did encourage people to not work on generators at all). Perhaps make the offerings corrupt more generators to be infected but make sure three visceral cankers always spawn on the map by default so some lucky survivors can get to them.

The offerings would only create more cankerous generators and there would only be three visceral cankers scattered throughout the map in each trial through the duration of the event so it wouldn't encourage people to farm the cankers since there would be so few by default. People who tried to farm the cankers exclusively would find themselves lagging behind people who did both the cankers and generators.

Even if hypothetically the same problem occurred (which I'm fairly certain would not because of the number disparity, especially if four survivors + the killer all brought offerings for cankerous generators / hooks) there's an easy solution. That solution being make generators worth more and contribute more toward the progress of unlocking skins. Not only will there (typically) be fewer cankers than cankerous generators, but the cankers themselves wouldn't be worth as much as the generators. Which makes even more sense when you consider it takes longer to finish a generator than harvest a canker.

[Machine Spirit]

Time was probably the issue. They had too much going on for one update with the engine upgrade, rift and a balance patch. Even the Halloween gens are lame, hardly any effort at all, but the bigger picture is we got one hell of an update with everything else.

I hope the xmas update is more than themed gens and hooks.

[Seiko300]

Originally posted by Machine Spirit:

I hope the xmas update is more than themed gens and hooks.

An accurate summation of what the Withering Blight was, I'm hoping for something much better for xmas too.

Originally posted by Machine Spirit:

Time was probably the issue. They had too much going on for one update with the engine upgrade, rift and a balance patch. Even the Halloween gens are lame, hardly any effort at all, but the bigger picture is we got one hell of an update with everything else.

This is all probably true but the decision to get rid of the Visceral Cankers I believe was something done way ahead of time in advance to quell the complaints from survivors last year. A decision I believe singlehandedly spearheads the whole problem with the Withering Blight, everything else kind of just adding more weight to the argument.

But you are right they did get plenty right with the update itself, the mid-chapter update for 3.3.0 was fantastic, it gave the undetectable status to stealth killers which was a change that those killers desperately needed, it introduced the archives one of the biggest features to hit DBD since the cosmetic store and the endgame collapse, and along the same time frame we got a bunch of amazing and very well made cosmetics like the new Halloween cosmetics which came from a successful renegotiation of the licensing agreement, the Dia De Los Muertos cosmetics all look amazing, Steve and Nancy look great in their new attire, and I can't wait for the OG Father Death robes for Ghostface to drop.

But it's important to separate the update itself and the event, the event itself was disappointing and simply poor in quality by comparison to an event last year. Though I do agree it probably was a timeline issue, just because it wasn't intentional doesn't mean the dev team doesn't deserve to be criticized for it. A teen who gets into a car crash for the first time doesn't mean to get into one, but they still get reprimanded and feel repercussions for it. In the same way the dev team should not have tried to tackle so many tasks at once, and shouldn't have made certain decisions which they did (the removal of the visceral cankers)