Fifth Year Anniversary Stream

The Fifth Year Anniversary Stream took place on May 25 2021. It revealed the Resident Evil Chapter and the Roadmap for Template:IconLink sixth year.

Sections

• 5 Years of Dead by Daylight
• Resident Evil Chapter Reveal
• Year 6 Roadmap
• The Realm Beyond Update
• Live Design
• 5th Anniversary Celebrations

Opening Message (Mathieu)

Welcome, everyone, to the 5th Year Celebration of Dead By Daylight! The Dev team would like to give a huge thank you to the fans that have supported them over the years, from humble beginnings to being re-reviewed by IGN and Gamespot 5 years later, being given a 9/10 and titled the best asymetric multiplayer out there.

5 years, from those humble beginnings, to today. Thank you everyone, for sticking around, and welcome to all the newcomers. Grab a log by the campfire, relax, and enjoy the show.

5 Years of Dead by Daylight (Mathieu)

We're gonna take a stroll down memory lane here. BHVR have been making games for give or take 30 years, though mostly outsourcing their work to other people, licenses, publishers and developers. However everyone on the team had, and has, their own stories they want to tell, and one of those stories was a fantasy about playing the antagonist in a horror movie.

A decade ago, people would tell them that horror doesn't sell, and not to bother. Unless you're one of the big ones like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. So, of course, they bothered.

The first attempt was a game called Naughty Bear, with a comedic twist on the idea. In Mathieu's words, "It's magical". A little later on, one of the game designers created a prototype. A simple game of hide-and-seek, with someone trying to hide and complete an objective, and another trying to find them and end the game. Thus was born the concept of DBD.

It was, apparently, "pure thumb candy", and they figured that by slapping on the skin of an '80s horror flic they were onto something remarkable.

They got the Naughty Bear team back together and began development with around 30 people. And in June of 2016, along came Dead By Daylight.

One of the first key moments came the first Halloween before launch. The game was shown to the other teams at BHVR and they loved it. They realised that, not only would it make a good game (which, despite your opinions on the game you cannot deny it is incredibly successful), but also a great show, leading to a great relationship with lots of content creators around the world. They've helped make DBD as successful as it is today.

The halloween after launch came Michael and Laurie from the original Halloween film, which was monumental. The game shipped with 3 killers and 4 survivors. 5 years later, we have 24 killers and 27 survivors.

Dead By Daylight, 5 years later, has become "the Hall of Fame of Horror". From 30 people to 300, from only those at BHVR to international partners. The game has become massive (as has the list of inside jokes.)

And it's here we get the iconic line.

"I think we have done a pretty good job so far."

And were you to ask him now, he would still say, "I think we have done a pretty good job so far."

Resident Evil Chapter Reveal (Dave)

Here's the bit we've all been waiting for- or, not really because this is later than the actual stream but you know what I mean. The reveal of the Resident Evil chapter, and it combines the RE2make and the RE3make, with Template:IconLink and Template:IconLink as Survivors, the Raccoon City Police Station as the Map, and The Template:IconLink as the Killer.

Chapter Trailer

As we all know, the DBD team have been working on graphically updating old Maps and so we haven't had any new maps since Midwich Elementary School. Thankfully this is now changing, and we can visit the RPD!

The team put a great effort into recreating the map from the remakes of RE2 and 3 (and honestly I think it paid off- as someone who's played both it does actually feel a lot like it with the Entity's twist, though obviously here it's significantly more open than in RE2 + 3. It reminds me of RE:Verse, actually). So, you'll obviously see some iconic locations like the S.T.A.R.S office, the main hallway, and the library. The third floor thankfully doesn't exist, because the map would be far too large if it did, though I can't help but feel like there would've been one hell of an easter egg in the clock tower. If you've played through the remakes, you can actually naviage through the map relatively well.

Time to talk Characters. There are quite a few iconic characters in the franchise, from Mr. X (the T-002 Tyrant) to, obviously, Nemesis', to newer Characters like Jack. Choosing just one Survivor was almost impossible, so they chose two.

Dave also announced that CHAPTER XX: Resident Evil goes live on June 15.

Year 6 Roadmap (Gerault and Banks)

This Roadmap will lay out plans for the next year about DLC, the four Tomes and plans for The Archives, and will finish with 'The Four Pillars of Dead By Daylight'.

Obviously, the first chapter releasing will be the Resident Evil Chapter in 5.0.0. No spoilers for the rest of the DLC coming this year- that's top secret, though Justin promises they'll spill the beans later. However, Aurélie can promise a total of four Killers and five Survivors this year (meaning we'll probably be getting the normal 3 month cycle). Also, we'll be getting two new maps (including the RPD).

We'll be recieving one new Tome every mid-chapter patch, bringing stories for new characters and the Observer. Furthermore, there are going to be events this year (and hopefully much better than the Blight event of 2020), including the Anniversary Event that we'll hear about later on- Justin promises a return to stream. There will be a halloween event, and these are the two they'll try to focus on being big. Justin promises that we'll be getting a "really big" halloween event this year, as well as smaller events for winter and the Lunar New Year. Again, here's hoping they learned their lesson and the 2021 event is better than the 2020 one.

Now, what on earth are the Pillars? There are four of them- obviously, because every good plan always has four things about it- and they help form the Roadmap of DBD. The first one is known as 'The First Steps into the Fog.' This is all the features immediately available to you as you enter as a new player.

The second one is Game Health, something important to the developers. This includes bugfixing, balancing, optimisation, and stabilisation. Hopefully there will be a noticable, permanent improvement on last-generation consoles this year, then. We can dream, at least.

The third pillar is 'The Realm Beyond', which we all know about and has been updating the game to look more modern.

The fourth pillar is Live Design, which is basically designing the game, well, live. Updating it as it goes to help better suit the vision the developers have for it.

Now, with 'The First Steps into the Fog', they are well aware that a lot of newer players will be coming to the game. So, they've taken a look at the entire tutorial process and have given it a lovely overhaul. DBD is very complex and the current tutorial is... less than satisfactory at times, however it has been improved pretty drastically which will help out newer players. Not only is the tutorial better, but there are also now bot matches.

Yes, you heard that right! Newer players will face off against bots to get a small idea on how the game functions before being thrown into the deep end. And as they go along this tutorial, they'll also be providing more rewards.

Alongside this tutorial overhaul they took a look at certain barriers, which prevent players getting deeper into the game, including matchmaking being too long. And they're trying to find ways to fix it, by not only working on better matchmaking (fingers crossed MMR works this time around), but also by finding ways to incentivise players to have matches as the role that needs members. For example, from about 5pm-3am in EU servers, killer queues are almost instant while survivor queues take a long time. They would be looking for ways to have more killers play, or survivors switch to playing killer, during this time, and when the opposite happens from about 4am-3pm they would incentivise playing survivor instead.

Now, here's the bit which has caused a bit of concern- the auto-ban feature.

The devs are looking for a way to help combat toxicity, and they are considering an auto-ban feature. Thanks to @DeathByGiggles for confirming that it isn't completely programmed and is an idea in the early stages of development. So, at the end of every match there is a tally screen, where you can applaud a player for doing well or report them for playing... not so well. This all goes to BHVR support who manually sort through these reports (and due to the necessity of video recordings a lot of the time, most reports are currently pointless unless you follow through with a support ticket). This change would instead send the reports to an automated system, which either would take action if a player recieved a certain number of negative reports within a certain time, or forward the issues to BHVR's support team who would manually review these reports.

A far less contentious feature is the changing of the News feature- currently it always appears in English regardless of your language settings. This will change soon, and instead will show up in whatever language you have your game set to.

The next step after that is to stomp bugs and look at game health

According to Aurélie, for a game that's lived as long as DBD has there must be a precarious balance struck between creating new content, and improving existing content. For the first few years, the priority was on new content, because the goal was to create a richer and better experience for the players. However, due to a large amount of content currently in the game, they have decided to reevaluate their Roadmap and factor in the necessity of improving what we have. Which, you know, pretty important to make sure all of this content works together properly.

The two ways of doing this are through optimisation and stabilisation fixes, but also through taking care of both the inner game systems and internal production at BHVR to make sure they're working properly for current content. This includes updating the User Interface (UI) to a technology known as UMG, the UI manager of Unreal Engine, which is what DBD is built on. The idea here is to stop working on outdated technology, and so they took this opportunity to redo their screens to make sure it looks more modern and concise.

Obviously it's a long process, but they hope we'll be able to see stability improvements in the next few patches.

Coming up next for the Realm Beyong updates we have graphical changes to The Trapper:

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There's gonna be more for this, as well as Live Design, in the later segments too.

The Realm Beyond Update (Mathieu, Ivanovic, Hellin)

Now, we've all seen the graphical updates being done over the last few months, from the less drastic change of Clown's bow-tie colour to the complete overhaul of maps like Ormond or Crotus Prenn.

The first question is why- why do this graphical update and why now? Filip says that the question of a rework was always in the back of their heads, however there was never the right moment to begin due to multiple reasons. However, with the release of next-gen consoles (PS5 and XBox series S and X), they thought it was the right moment to bring the game more on-par with what's the current industry standard. With a larger team and better technology, they believe they can now bring DBD closer to the original artistic vision.

However, what was the vision or goal behind this? The main goal was to have a more immersive experience, like in mood, animation, or environment. A good example of this is the updated generator repair animations, which change depending on which side of the generator you're on, complete with different sound and visual effects. They're very much so looking forward to other people seeing what's coming next.

So, what are some of the main issues with this? One of the main challenges with DBD is that it's a live-game that's 5 years old. So while trying to rebuild and change old data and fix performance issues, there's also the newer data that exists and likes to cause problems sometimes, so making sure they don't clash is important. This wouldn't be as great of an issue as it is, were it not for DBD being a live game, and so they have to keep moving forward no matter what.

The Realm Beyond involves the entire team at work to rethink and evolve old animations, textures, environment, shading, shadows and models to create something new. The goal here is to build atmosphere and mood, because they envision DBD as a horror movie. Obviously, it's a video game, and so it will still be gameplay driven, however it largely lacked immersion. They're trying to create a feeling that while playing the game, you almost forget that it's a game.

Something cool they're working on is terrain. Currently DBD land is pretty flat, and they're working on trying to add more relief. It should add a bit of spice to the gameplay and change the perspective of how maps are played. Another thing they're working on is character animations, another key part of immersion. All these seperate parts will combine together at the end, or should, to help create a much more immersed experience.

Also, good news, lobby changes! They're gonna keep on messing with the lobbies and hopefully they'll look better and more diverse to help with the immersion.

Are we gonna get more maps?

Yes.

Live Design (Matt)

Matt works together with a bunch of other divisions to bring new content, Killer and Perk updates, Balancing, Accessibility and more.

For a game that's been out for the past 5 years, Live Design has become a pretty crucial part of the experience, allowing them to deliver new experiences, fix exploits, improve quality of life features, and generally just make the game feel fairer. Design decisions are generally based on 3 main factors:

• Community Feedback (through surveys, focus group testing, and the forums)
• Data recieved from the Game itself
• Design intuition and experience

It's difficult to be entirely transparant on what goes on, as during the design phase many ideas are still being prototyped, playtested, discussed and developed. That said, there are 3 main things that can be shared today:

• New Killer updates, and their associated timeframes;
• A new Perk type for Survivors;
• An update to Moris (yes, and Keys too);

Over the last few years, minor tweaks have been made to every Killer in the roster. Some, like the Hillbilly, have had a sort of inbetween tweak where it greatly impacts them but isn't a full kit rework. And some, like Freddy, have had complete power overhauls. And while they feel there are many smaller adjustments that can be made, the main focus for year 6 will be to make changes to the newest additions to the roster. For every new killer, within the next 2-3 major updates there will be some tweaks based upon feedback and data, on top of any hotfix adjustments that may be made along the way. This allows them to generally stick to a clearer timeframe.

Another thing being worked on is a new type of survivor perk- a Boon Totem.

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Obviously we won't be getting much information on how it works, however it'll give interactions to Survivors who are near Dull Totems and most likely will give powerups to the Survivors, at a cost. The first of these Perks will be releasing in an upcoming Chapter.

Also on the list is looking to see how moris are triggered by the killer. Currently they're an offering that can be burned, and they allow the killer to eliminate a survivor from the trial by their own hands. Currently in discussion is a new way to trigger a mori that isn't an offering, but instead a core part of the Trial.

And yes, they are also looking at keys, which would tie in directly with the Mori system update.

5th Anniversary Celebrations (Mathieu, not_Queen, Banks)

It concerns how we're gonna celebrate the 5th Anniversary.

not_Queen would like to make a note to start with- everything being discussed in this segment, from community challenges to a Pride event, will end up on a calandar on social media. Follow the DBD twitter account here, or join the Discord here. I don't use any other social media but I'd hazard a guess that if you searched "Dead By Daylight Facebook" you'd probably find something.

There will be more than what is talked about on stream so make sure you stay up to date (though to be honest the forums are pretty good at keeping people in the loop).

Before talking about the activities around the Anniversary, not_Queen would like to ask the community to, nicely, welcome the newer players into the game. There will be a lot of tips and tricks advertised on social media and veterans are more than welcome to add to it.

Now for the actual celebrations. For any community artists out there, there is a challenge to design a new community line on the merch store. This is not a contest, this is them asking you to show your portfolio and they will hire you to create a new line.

Let me repeat this isn't a Karen move, they would be paying you for this.

Also in the month of June, we have Pride Month. This year, they want to add something to the game to help celebrate it, even if most of the celebrations (like the pride crow emotes on BetterTTV) occur outside of the game. So we're getting an event called '#intoTheRainbow' outside of the game (we do not have details on this), as well as a Charm.

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Also, the pride emotes will be expanded, so more crows.

Now, moving onto the 5th Anniversary Celebrations. To celebrate the Anniversary, they're asking us to share our DBD related stories using "#DBDCommunity" on Social Media. Moving onto in-game celebrations, because don't worry these exist too, we have the Crown Event back!! That's right, you can find the golden crowns around the trial and collect them from the pedestals to get cosmetics for your original Characters, as well as some bonus Bloodpoints. They'll spawn for 2 weeks (July 1st - July 15th), and they look like this:

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And Survivors must escape the Trial, while Killers just have to not DC with it in their posession.

Now some may notice that these look different from the 4th Year Crowns, and that's because they are. It's theorised that you'll be able to still unlock 4th Year Crowns from completing this event, however also be able to get these 5th Year Crowns for all original Characters too. Nothing has been confirmed in regards to the 4th Year Crowns.

Also, more good news. There's going to be confetti- lots of confetti. Toolboxes, Medkits, Flashlights- things that make confetti rain!

Also coming are Bloodpoint offerings and going by previous years we can take a guess these will be 105% Bonus Points to all Players in a Trial. Also, there will be balloons.

Furthermore, because yes there's more, we're getting Community Challenges back. For anyone around for the First Year Anniversary you may remember the Communtiy Challenges to unlock Maps such as Groaning Storehouse. The Howling Ground Event, too, had one of these where we unlocked the Phoenix Feng Min shirt for all. Basically, the Community works together to unlock Items within the Game.

There are Rewards, like Outfits for David King and The Wraith, which will be given out from these.

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And two exclusive Charms:

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As well as "other really cool things".

How do you find out how to unlock these? Oh, simple- it's all on the Socials! (Go follow).

During the first week of the Anniversary, they will give away enough Iridescent Shards to unlock one full original character. Doesn't matter if you arrive one or two days late- so long as you show up during the week you'll get enough Shards.

On top of that, there's a little thing going on with the Template:IconLink too. Instead of rotating perks weekly, for two weeks it shall rotate daily, and they'll cost 500 Shards less.

Ending Announcements

Thank you from the devs for the continued support. DBD wouldn't be where it is today without everyone here.

Resident Evil PTB is Live.

Oh and Funko Pops releasing soon.