Analysis of 150 Trials
I’ve been playing Dead By Daylight (DbD) since its release and it’s one of the few games I always come back to.
Combine that with my profession as a user researcher for the last 20+ years, with more than half of that at EA and Oculus, it only felt natural to runderstand the game on a deeper level through research.
I measured a plethora of elements, like timings, deaths, wins, maps, enemies, etc. for every round I played.
These are the results.
First let’s look at some overall metrics.
After 150 trials (rounds), escape (wining) versus sacrifice (losing) evened out for me.
Trials lasted between 2 - 25 minutes.
51%
OVERALL ESCAPE RATE
10m
AVERAGE TRIAL TIME
There were a few realms (maps) that tilted my chances one way or the other.
Most often I escaped from the Red Forest, though based on feelings alone, I would have said it was way lower for that map.
BEST REALM SURVIVAL RATES
I sucked at Autohaven Wreckers and Withered Isle, but I loved playing them.
I also felt my luck drain when I played Raccoon City. The layout was not friendly to my play style.
WORST REALM SURVIVAL RATES
Before we look at the killers in detail, I wanted to point out that it wasn’t uncommon to have an inactive killer.
And when the killer was inactive and just stood around, it was always the Doctor.
14%
OF TRIALS THE KILLER WAS INACTIVE
Insofar as killers, whenever I was paired with the Doctor or Artist, my chances of survival increased.
Chucky’s size and rush ability made him tough for me, but it was only a little less than 50/50.
Btw, I removed all of the inactive-Doctor trials from this analysis and he was still the easiest to survive for me.
BEST KILLER SURVIVAL RATES
I would almost always be sacrificed when facing the Hillbilly or the Trapper.
Legion and Ghost Face were rough too. Ghost Face’s ability to hide his terror radius. Ouch.
The Hag was always a toss up, but she usually got me.
WORST KILLER SURVIVAL RATES
Next let’s discuss winning and losing. These are all the times I escaped.
I tracked how long into the trial I was sacrificed or escaped and rated how fun I found the trial overall.
I tended to escape most often if the trial was between 5 and 11 minutes. And I tended to have the most fun around then, but also when they went longer – though that was less frequent.
The larger the circles mean more times fun and time correlated to that exact point.
And these are all the times I was sacrificed.
Fun, regardless of escape or sacrifice, stays pretty consistent, with shorter trials being less fun.
Now let’s lay over the escapes and sacrifices .
The three sacrifices past the 20 minute mark I rated very fun. To that point, statistically, there was a positive correlation with longer matches and higher fun.
As long as I feel I had a chance, I had a good time.
Survivor success relies on savvy cooperation.
I rated cooperation in every trial based on healing, working generators together, distracting the killer, and/or unhooking others.
The vast majority of the time, players worked together.
82%
OF THE TIME THERE WAS COOPERATION
Let’s look at my run of wins/loses, with the green rectangles being escapes and the red being sacrifices.
They’re pretty evenly distributed throughout, with streaks of wins and losses and islands of wins in streaks of loses.
It was rare that I went too long being sacrificed continually without an escape.
The largest winning streak was 5 in a row. The largest losing streak was 6 in a row.
Healing others is crucial to success, but for me, the more I healed the higher likelihood I would die.
This was proven out by a logistic regression model that strongly suggested that very thing. Plus, the effect was more substantial if the heals were 3 or more.
These power behind these 150 trials, also suggest similar experiences across other players.
If the survivors are too focused on healing because the killer is too good at slashing, there’s little time spent on generators, thus a higher chance of failure.
I always tried to balance healing with generators and unhooking, knowing if we didn’t do both, we were screwed.
I averaged 2 generators per trial, doing them about half the time alone. That was the mode and median too.
14%
OF TRIALS I DID 3 OR MORE GENERATORS
In conclusion, I found that for me—and possibly survivors in general—to be the most successful and to have the most fun, I have to have:
Teammates that work together, with some working on generators while others heal and unhook.
Matches that last longer than 3 minutes, preferably more than 10 minutes—even if I lose.
Luck enough to play in Redwood Forrest, Springwood, or Coldwind Farm.
The Doctor or the Artist as the killer.