Honestly? I feel like a comparison between Overwatch and another game needs to be made. So I’ll make one.
I’ll be comparing Dead by Daylight with Overwatch, primarily looking at the difference in each game’s development team, and how they communicate with their community.
Alright, as a synopsis, Dead by Daylight is an asymmetric Horror Game (for those who don’t know). It’s a 4v1, with 4 Survivors, hoping to repair 5 Generators randomly placed around the map, put against 1 Killer, who’s only goal is to stop the Survivors and place them on Hooks, sacrificing them to please the Entity.
Now, let’s go into a bit more detail; the game has a progression system. There are currently 13 Survivors (with a few Licenced ones, such as Quentin Smith from the Nightmare on Elm Street remake and Detective Tapp from SAW) and 12 Killers (again, with a few Licenced ones, like Freddy Krueger, and Amanda Young), with each having 3 Unique Perks that effect gameplay, and through progression makes their Perks available to all Survivors/Killers. Each Survivor and Killer can use 4 Perks at one time, so it encourages you to mess around with a variety of combinations.
Each Killer has a unique power that only they can use, which can be altered to make it better through addons. Survivors can use a variety of items, like Toolboxes, Medkits and Flashlights to help each other in the trial.
That’s about it, really.
Now, I find this game quite enjoying. The concept itself is quite enjoyable, and the Gameplay is solid and it’s kept fresh, with every few months bringing new Killers/Survivors with their own unique Perks, and even balance changes during the weeks between, but what really makes this game stand out is it’s developers.
Their development team, is amazing. Let me tell you why;
- Every Thursday, the developers sit down, and talk to the community.
- They discuss things, such as upcoming reworks, balance changes to perks, and new content, such as Killers and Survivors they’re going to release into the game.
- Ontop of that, they showcase art, and answer community questions (and topics from their forums and stream chat).
Hell, they even had an event that let you play WITH the Developers. They’re amazing.
Now, let’s compare these Developers, to what we have here;
- They rarely answer forum posts now.
- The only time we’ll ever get a developer update, is when things like major changes are discussed (e.g - Mercy & Symmetra’s reworks) or Events.
- The only time they’re willing to answer fan questions, it at conventions. They never seem to want to discuss, or answer anything with us anymore.
This baffles me. Because the Dead by Daylight dev team consists of around 45 people.
But here we are, with Overwatch’s dev team, which are pracitcally twice the size of Dead by Daylight’s (having 100 people (wow)), and refusing to communicate with us.
I think I speak for us all, when I say it’d be nice to have more communication with the developers here, as we never EVER get to ask questions outside of conventions.
Being left in the dark on so many things isn’t nice. It’s about time Overwatch’s dev team realize this and start talking to us more.