How To Mentally Play Dead By Daylight

For the sake of your mental health, take a 5 minutes break and read this!

Not a balanced game

Have you ever got angry very quickly and easily triggered after playing DBD?
I'm pretty sure most if not all of us were once like that.
So how do you deal with the unhealthy emotions inside you and play the game without stress, anxiety, or anger?

Keep in mind all contents in this guide are about the mental state! I won't go into details about survivor sided or killer sided, what should you do or how should you play, and whatever nerf, buff, adjustment, tweak, add, subtract...

Let me get this straight: Dead by Daylight is not balanced.
It is not, not tomorrow, not next month, not in a thousand years, no matter what you do, no matter what the devs do, no matter what your president does.
The only thing devs can do is to try to relatively balance their game, but even so, it will never be a perfect split 50-50 for both killer and survivor, even if it is for some people, it is not for the others.


About DBD players and what can they do?
There's so much to handle, first off, you must accept what Dead by Daylight is, an asymmetrical 1 versus 4 game.

Here the simple math, no matter what you add to the equation, 1 is never equal to 4.
What I mean is that it will never be absolutely balanced.

Once you realize it, you are 1 step closer to ease off the problem.

Let's go into details before you start playing DBD

Survivor side
What do you expect when you start to play as survivor?
Let me try and guess what's in your mind: Escape right?
You might think this is an obvious question but there's much more to it.
If you think that way, you will do everything possible to escape, finish generators, open the exits, or waiting for the hatch. Surely this is how it should be, but it's also the cause of your problems.

What if you get tunneled and camped, what if your teammates won't unhook you... and tons of other what-if(s)? This is when people start complaining why this why that ("WhY nObOdY dOiNg GeNs!" sounds familiar doesn't it)



But let's do it the other way round, what do you expect when you start to play as survivor?
"I play as survivor to die"
It's also the name of the game: Dead by Daylight not Escape by Daylight (ha..ha..)
Sounds very silly but if you set your goal is to escape, let say 40% of the time you escape and the other 60% of the time you spend complaining, it's bad overall.
But if the goal is to die, then you will get to die 60% of the time just like what you want (and be happy with it) you know what is even better than that? The other 40%.

What I mean is that you're willing to die, not straight up doing nothing and give up the match!
Acknowledge that and do whatever enjoyable while still alive, try to finish the tome challenges, locker stun, mind game the killer...
The thing is, if you want to escape, it's a win-lose situation; if you want to die, it's a win-win situation.

Killer side
Same as the above, you don't want to set your goal is to kill all 4 survivors, think simple: "I want to play killer to smack people's butt, to give them a jumpscare, maybe troll survivors a little bit and make them look silly"... Some killers are more eager to kill than others.



For example, I've seen some camping killers look mad in-game but they are actually laughing their tits off, it's might trigger you if you see this on survivor side PoV but don't blame them, they just play what they want. Or even survivors that tbag killers, all they need is a little interesting human-to-human interaction, you don't want to play this game with all bots do you?

Think this way: you bring smiles to his/her face and (maybe) make their day better. Even if it's personal camping, that means the survivors did something to piss the killers off, it can be tbag, 360 jukes... Before getting camped, survivors have their smiles, their moment, and now it's the killer's turn to enjoy themselves, survivor should be proud and laugh it off when killer chooses to face camp. It's an unspoken compliment because they're the hardest-hit target that the killer is working hard for
...

There are more situations and circumstances, I personally don't and never encourage playing like that but learn to accept, shrug it off and move on to the next match if you find it's intimidating.
That is why Dead by Daylight never says which side is the winner on the scoreboard, win or lose depends on how you set your goal and what you set to do.
If your goal of the match is to locker stun: "BOOOM ♥♥♥♥♥ GET OUT THE WAY!" - Do it, challenge yourself, have fun and you're already the winner no matter what's coming next.



Reminder: Don't take the game too seriously or pressure others to play your way. You die in-game doesn't mean you die in real life, you're bold doesn't mean others should not be scared.

You play the game, don't let the game and other people play you!

Deal with your emotions after playing DBD

Another important thing you must know is that... DBD is a video game, what I mean is no matter what happens, in the end... it doesn't even matter, keep everything as it is, a pixel game, don't let it affect you mentally and physically, it's a really bad habit and I know it's hard to resist.



Split it into 2 different realms, the entity realm and the reality realm. Once you're done with the entity realm, delete everything that is in your mind about DBD (like your computer RAM when it shuts down), move back to reality, and vice versa.
Forget all about bad things (if any) happened to you like tbag, sandbag, slugging, camping...(the list goes on forever) and learn to throw it out of your mind like how you throw your tantrum about it at first.

Right? easy said but it's really hard isn't it, you must know this, human got a natural habit of doing bad things to those who did bad things to them. Learn to forgive, ignore and take it easy, it stings and stays in your mind for the time being but from time to time, you'll control your emotion just fine.

DBD players are not an exception, they do the same to others, thus the infinite loop of toxicity.
To break this loop, don't rely on others to do it for you, it starts in you and it ends in you.
Asking the mighty devs to punish foul plays to make the game "less toxic" does not solve the root of your problem no matter how hard the devs try. There's no one-size-fits-all and they can't please everyone!

You can't force everyone to be NICE, foul plays will still be there, the only thing you can do is to accept it or trick yourself into thinking it's not that bad and whatever. They don't have personal hatred toward you and obviously, nobody hates other people when they first meet on the street. And on top of that, it's just a game!
To make the matter better, inhale-exhale and keep telling yourself the phrase: JUST A GAME!



If none of the above lifts up your mood, consider quitting DBD for a while until there's a new content update, usually a month or two. The very nature of DBD is kill-or-be-killed, sometimes you are strong mentally, but nature always takes hold of you, and whether that is kill or be killed, it always a bad thing.

Winners don't complain, losers do.
In the end, what YOU enjoy while playing matters the most, not the rest.

Here's a more indept guild on how you deal with your emotions and toxicity at the core:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2657045761

In other languages:

Russian: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2398195606

[Daddy_Hawaii]

I was expecting some sarcastic short response like community posts usually do but I am pleasantly surprised to see that this is a genuine piece of advice on how to not let the game tick you off too much and to just enjoy it. Much props mate!

[Hyperion]

+rep me or -rep me for one back (Trolls will be blocked)

[★ FmNey ★]

Ty

[Scoops Robin for DBD]

2 year later, and I still post this guide for new players! You're an angel, FmNey!

[[Falando Português]]

JUST PLAY WITH MY CLONE IN THE GAME AND ENJOY TAKING AWAY SURVIVORS DEAD HARD OR KILLERS LIFE

[cheap beans boy]

put your mental health & wellbeing first; you shouldn't need this guide in the first place. no matter what you do or how you cope with it, at the end of the day it's still a negative influence in your life, even slightly. it's entirely pointless; why don't you just play league? it has the exact same intended effect...

[cheap beans boy]

i mean, wow. have you ever in your life, seen a game that's genuinely so worthless & toxic that it needed a fucking community-written guide for how to mentally deal with merely playing it & interacting with it's "community"?

my god.

you would all do well to excise this game from your lives. why in the hell would you ever spend your time on something as banal as a video game, if it were an abject source of negativity? it's the very antithesis of what a game's purpose is in the first place! it'd be like trying to write a book, but with a second person strapped to your back, consistently denigrating your work & telling you it wasn't good enough.

the fact you felt the need to write this, due to the community & environment of such a toxic game, is absolutely absurd. this guide's requirement to existence is an affront to us all as a whole. a community that leaves you with two choices; cycle with the worst of them, or just drop it & play something actually worth a damn. lmao

[Mope]

Thank you for posting this. Many players i have encountered definitely need this guide. The amount of insults i get from people taking this game too serious is outrageous.

[★ FmNey ★]

I'm glad to see many people find this guide helpful!

[ohheyitsyouagain]

as someone who recently bought this game, I'm very thankful for this guide getting me into the right headspace!
and to all the people whining about this guide: you are very funny. but in a bad and humiliating fashion.