Dead by Daylight 5.1.0 Mid-Chapter Patch Review (Game Patch, 2021)
Last week, Dead by Daylight released mid-chapter patch 5.1.0. I’ve said it a lot in my writing on the game, but there are major optimization issues right now. This is especially true on the console versions, where the performance was so bad that the 5th Anniversary Event was extended to give them more time to play. Performance was so bad the new map for the much-anticipated Resident Evil chapter only just got put into rotation with offerings enabled on this mid-chapter patch.
Forget about the other features for now. Has the performance actually improved in Dead by Daylight? Kind of. It depends on where you’re playing.
On PC, there’s a worsened stutter issue. The game will stall briefly in a strobing pattern—working, not, working, not, working, not—but otherwise runs smooth. This issue is far more noticeable as killer and will cause you to miss hits or lose chase when it happens. It’s more common on the larger maps, especially Hawkins.
On console, the game is running again. The new Resident Evil map can crash the game still and console also has the stutter issue, but the consistent lag and more games than not ending in game-breaking errors are mostly fixed.
On the Nintendo Switch, the game isn’t even worth playing right now. Behaviour had to forcibly decrease graphics quality to get Nemesis to run at all. The fixes they applied to the other console releases did not work for the Switch, delaying the release of the patch a full week. Even temporarily disabling cross-platform games did not improve the experience.
The game is so dark by default now on the Switch with the reduced graphics that I cannot brighten my TV enough to play on most maps in the game. For context, I usually play the Switch version on the console’s screen as a little break throughout the day. I can’t even see the menu options anymore with my vision unless the console is docked to a TV.
There are some genuine gameplay improvements in the patch when it comes to server interactions.
Pallets feel fair for the first time in years. For well over a year, killers have had an unfair advantage at pallets. If you swung, you got a hit even if you were stunned. Now, the pallet drop takes priority, allowing survivors the opportunity to actually use them as intended. You can hit through a pallet, but now you need the proper timing.
On the flip side, killers now have priority on grabs. If a grab does not register properly, the game will automatically hit the survivor with your basic attack. That means if you’re denied a grab by some kind of error, you’re getting a hit at a window, pallet, generator, chest, or locker. This is huge. There have been false grab errors created by server lag since they switched from P2P to dedicated servers and now, they are fixed. That’s an incredible improvement.
For the survivor side of the game, unhooking a survivor is now prioritized over Self-Care. I don’t typically run Self-Care so I hadn’t experienced this, but I have seen survivors mysteriously healing themselves in front of a hook instead of unhooking someone before I down them. Now they will unhook instead. If I’m that close as killer, I’m getting a hit on someone, but it’s the thought that counts.
Lastly, they changed how sound perks work in the game. The effects are now multiplicative. That means Stridor does not magically give you the ability to hear a character running Iron Will who is supposed to produce no sound. Zero times whatever the buff is for Stridor is now zero, as it should be.
Almost all the survivors have new models in the game, which bring them in line with the cleaner, more realistic models of characters like Felix, Elodie, and Zarina. This includes the long-awaited remodel of poor Quentin to be a human, not an unlicensed tribute to Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. While not announced, they did fix the slightly odd proportions on the Claire Redfield skin for Jill Valentine. I’m a huge fan of the newer character models as their faces and hairstyles now match the level and style of detail found in their cosmetics.
The big character change in the mid-chapter patch is the murder of my beloved Trickster. Behaviour was not happy with how poorly Trickster was performing, going so far as to tease the rework by mentioning the top players (myself included) weren’t doing as well as they expected. I don’t know how much better I could have done before the rework, as I was consistently getting 3Ks and 4Ks about two weeks after Trickster’s release.
I digress. Trickster only needs to hit six knives instead of eight to injure or down a survivor. His ultimate Main Event power can be held for 30 seconds instead of not held at all. Some add-ons were adjusted to be more powerful. In theory, these were fair changes.
In practice, on the PTB, the new Trickster was overpowered. He was not fun to play as or go against, as his 60 knives and reduced difficulty guaranteed a 4K very quickly if you stayed by your first hook. That was awful.
In response to that, Behaviour reduced the knives from 60 to 45. Trickster also throws the knives a little bit slower. The laceration meter recovers significantly faster for survivors. While not announced, I can say with confidence that hit boxes on objects were changed to favor survivors on loops comprised of assorted objects like cars and crates. I didn’t spend all that time finding the right angle to hit a crouched survivor in a loop to have the knives go nowhere near them after this patch.
The only way I can 4K as Trickster now is to use either his ricocheting knives or exploding knives and play very aggressively around hooked or downed survivors. That’s…not fun. It’s the equivalent of face-camping Insidious Cannibals, Pigs tunneling the active trap out of the game, and Twins parking Victor by the hook for a guaranteed down. I don’t have fun in this game when I think the match isn’t fair for everyone, and the only way to consistently “win” as Trickster is to play in a way that makes survivors want to disconnect.
Trickster is so bad right now that I’m back to play Plague and Trapper as my mains. At least there’s some level of strategy involved there. I’d rather “lose” while having fun than “win” in a way that makes the game miserable for everyone.
The mid-chapter patch is a mixed bag, for sure. They need to fix the Switch version with more than bonus bloodpoints for the inconvenience. The stutter needs to be investigated on all platforms as it feels horrible to lose momentum as killer because the game decides to turn you into a stop motion puppet just for kicks. The Trickster rework is encouraging an incredibly toxic gameplay style to guarantee the kill rates they want. However, the adjustments they’ve started to make to server interaction and prioritization of actions are going to make a huge difference in the long run.
In conclusion, Behaviour, please keep your hands off of Plague before her Purge is the equivalent of launching missiles at survivors to buff her kill rates. You’ve already stolen old Freddy and old Trickster from me; let me have the fun challenge of Plague’s slow-build playstyle. However, if you want to give Trapper more traps by default, you have my blessing.
