Dead by Daylight is a pretty popular title. First releasing in mid 2016, Behavior Interactive’s horror title quickly gained the attention of gamers through its accessible and addictive gameplay. Players may choose to be either a survivor, of which each match has four, or the killer: The survivor’s goal is to start up five generators on the map and escape, and the killer’s is to… Well. Kill them.
Having been aware of the title for quite some time, through friends, general internet memes, and media that’s spilled out into the internet’s general pop culture, the recent free weekend was my first chance to get a look at the title proper. And, like so many others, I fell in love – You can find a video of my thoughts on the game embedded at the end of the article.
But throughout the free weekend, which was largely filled with other newbies and helpful vets, I didn’t encounter one particular issue until the more recently. The Hex: Ruin.
Added early in the game’s life, in December 2016, the Hex: Ruin was introduced alongside the general totem mechanic. The idea is that, as long as the totem – a small structure, about half a meter high – is somewhere on the map, its affects are active. If a survivor happens to find the totem, they will be able to destroy it over a short period of time, nullifying its effects.
This sounds quite fair, but the Hex: Ruin’s abilities are a little too powerful for it to actually be so. The Hex: Ruin affects all survivors on the map and makes it so that successful skill checks – quick time events that pop up every few seconds – regresses your progress fixing the generator by up to 5%. Hitting the sweet spot in the skill check merely allows you to keep the progress you made and continue on.
This can make generator fixing incredibly tedious in a match. As the totems are generally small and hard to find, they are most often left in place, and survivors just have to deal with the issue. Except a lot of newer players just don’t. In the Hex: Ruin matches I’ve experienced, its not uncommon for other people to just disconnect not long after starting, or just after being hooked the first time. Disconnecting is a pretty shitty thing to do to other survivors, as it puts them at a severe disadvantage.
But the Hex: Ruin, it seems, is just too much for some of them. I had heard about the Hex: Ruin from my Dead by Daylight friends even before I started playing, but I never imagined it was that much of an issue as it was seeming to be.
The Hex: Ruin has been contentious in the Dead by Daylight community for years – Survivors argue it’s not fun to play through, and killers argue that without it, survivors can power through generators too quickly, and in that regard, killers do have a point: particularly coordinated survivors can easily bring two generators to life in under two minutes.
It seems, perhaps, that a middle ground would be ideal – Perhaps make it so only some survivors are affected? Or tether it to, say, three generators on a map instead? They certainly couldn’t make the Hex harder to get: Outside appearing as a random perk for sale in the Shrine of Secrets, the Hex: Ruin is part of The Hag’s level ups, and after unlocking it on her at level 35 it becomes open to all killers. In other words, it’s already locked behind a DLC and a high level.
It’s just that good that people are putting the money, time and effort into getting it. And it might be cool if the devs looked into just why that is. The free weekend is a great way to attract players, but if you want to keep them, you need to try to make all your modes enjoyable. And the game really is – It’s just got something that some newer players, myself included, aren’t especially fond of.
You can see some of my gameplay, and thoughts on Dead by Daylight in the video below.