In spite of my many grievances, I have had too much fun in the game to not recommend it. You can have a lot of fun in the game if you don't take it too seriously (embrace meme plays), find a cool group of friends to play it with (custom matches are the best), and are willing to put in the time to learn the game and unlock some good perks.



I really enjoy this game. The game play is simple and easy to grasp, but there is so much depth and nuance you can dig into as you learn the game, and the game rewards deep understanding of its mechanics. I'm not a huge horror fan, but I can only imagine how cool it is to play as your favorite horror icons and see the universes cross. I love that the gameplay can be what you make it: if you want a casual game, you can focus on supporting your team with perks, gen repair, and healing; if you want a heart-pounding action game, you can get the killer's attention to buy your team time. You can also play the game as a stealth game. And of course, you can play a power fantasy game as a powerful killer. I love the co-op aspect of the game: coordinating escapes with your teammates, pulling off difficult or outright dumb stunts, and jumping in the way of the killer to save the life of your friend. I am much more of a survivor main than a killer main, but I do enjoy playing killer. Playing custom matches and killing/being killed by your friends is a joy.

sigh

But I have a few problems with the game.

• The Tedious Gameplay: A lot of the gameplay as survivor is just holding left click and occasionally hitting the spacebar. This can make it really chill for chatting with friends, but can be a bit tedious. Getting chased by the killer is definitely the more engaging part of the game, but you can also have a lot of fun getting saves for friends with a flashlight or sabotage. Killer gameplay is generally pretty fun all-around.
  
  
• The Grind: This game has a ridiculous grind. In short, each character has a particular set of perks that you may want some or all of. Your dream build may require perks from 4 different characters. In order to unlock those perks to be used on everyone, you much spend about 1,000,000 bloodpoints (bp) to unlock the teachable version of each character's perks. That's 4 mil bp in order to unlock the perks you want, plus possibly an additional million or more in order to get those perks onto the character you want them on. The order you can unlock perks on a character is random, and contributes a lot to the grind. So, for your dream build on your dream character, you will need ~4 million bp. To give you an idea how much that is, I would say on average i get 20,000 bp per survivor match and 50,000 bp per killer match. If you are grinding for those points as a survivor, that's roughly 200 matches worth of points. If you assume matches of 15 min and ignore queue times (ha) you have roughly 50 hours to grind those points. Now there are bonuses, unlocks, perks, and offerings that can help mitigate the grind, but they all require your playstyle to bend towards grinding for points (running bp farming perks), and I think that detracts from gameplay. Assume you do all the farming tricks, and you play killer to earn faster, and we give a gracious assumption that you double your earning constantly. Then it is 10 hours to get the perks from 4 of the characters in the game ( there are 55 characters , as of writing), and set up a build you want, but that is just one build with little variety. Want to try another cool perk? That's another million bp to get it. Want to get all your favorite perks that you already unlocked on a new killer? That is an additional 1-2 mil bp. You can see why it is frustrating. And we haven't even talked about specific items or addons you might want to get. Custom mode is lots of fun because all perks and items are unlocked for it, but you need a group of friends if you want to play customs. TL;DR Really long grind, you can have fun before you get everything you want, but variety is hidden behind the grind.
  
  
• The Queue Times: If you want to play as survivor in the evenings with your friends, expect to wait 5-10 minutes between matches. Once you find a match, the game takes about another 3 minutes to load everyone in to be able to play. Don't be surprised if something bugs and you get booted from the pre-match lobby and you and your friends need to queue all over again.
  
  
• The Bugs: Tons and tons of bugs, sometimes game-breaking. You can expect the matchmaking to crap out on you at least once every few hours. I remember a Halloween event that made it impossible to load into the game occasionally, so everyone would have to completely relaunch the game. You will also find game items that you can't interact with (that you should be able to interact with), hit registration that is all over the place, and strange audio glitches.
  
  
• Balance: There is a very solid meta in the game that is really hard to break up. At the higher tier of the game, both sides will end up running 10ish perks each the majority of the time. Personally, I prefer to run meme builds/playstyles that vary from the meta, but they aren't as viable. There are just so many perks in the game that aren't very good, and could use a serious buff. In recent updates, this actually has been getting slightly better by adding the controversial boon totems, which many argue are OP. Personally, I am just glad to see some new perks being used, and some older ones becoming a bit more viable. There are many things that favor a particular side of the game: maps, killer powers, etc. Right now, I think things are generally more survivor-sided, which forces killers to bring slowdown perks that are not fun to play against, but are needed to have a chance. Personally, I think the key is to just not take the game too seriously, run a fun build, and laugh whether you escape or die. Sometimes matchmaking puts you against people out of your league, or someone playing with the meta while you are running memes. That is a reality of the game that you have to be able to accept if you want to enjoy it
  
  
• Community: A lot of the community can be really toxic and just bully the other side. I recommend finding cool people to play with. The DbD subreddit is a good place to look. Often times, the opposition side will run tactics that just don't let you play the game (tunneling, face-camping, disconnecting). It is helpful to not let these things trigger you, and just move on to the next match. Some of these tactics have counters as well.
  
  
• Hackers: There is a pretty big hacking issue in the game, and not all that much is being done about it. You seldom see noticeable hackers at lower ranks though.
  
  
• Development: This isn't a personal attack on the developers as individuals as I am sure the majority of them are trying their best to make a great game. The problem is that issues the community brings up take years, if ever, to be addressed. Big bugs are often not patched quickly enough. I really really wish the devs would give us 6-12 months with no new content, but actually address the issues with the game. For every new DLC, there is usually several new bugs with it. Also, the game events/season pass tend to be really lackluster.