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Toxicity is complex. Online, without nuance and context to clarify intention, naive or even friendly gestures can be misunderstood as toxic. Asymmetrical games like Dead by Daylight can sometimes become true toxic environments due to their lopsided nature, but with a few tips and some empathy, any player can avoid toxicity and have fun with the game the way they were always meant to.
10 Don’t Taunt
One of the oldest forms of digital taunts, repeatedly pressing the crouch button is a trolling tactic likely familiar to anyone who has played an FPS. Ghost Face, Pig, and survivors can all crouch, and this is a common sight in Dead by Daylight. Unfortunately, because the game lacks emotes with the exception of pointing and waving, spam crouching is one of the only viable methods of communication amongst characters, and is thus used to express friendly sentiments like “hi” as much as negative ones, leading to frequent misunderstandings. This can even impact one’s chances of survival if the irritated killer decides to tunnel the survivor as punishment.
9 Don’t Wait At The Exit Gate
After the final generator has been repaired, the exit gates open, and the survivors can escape. Some survivors, however, choose to wait at the exit gate to taunt the killer by waving, pointing, flashlight clicking, and spam crouching. Aside from the already problematic use of these emotes, waiting at the exit gate wastes the killer’s time by preventing them from ready-ing for the next match. Yet here, too, there is ambiguity, because some survivors wait to give the killer one final hit, thus granting them more Blood Points. Waiting at the exit gate is not inherently toxic but can be, and it is a dangerous practice since some of the best killer perks let them trap and kill survivors as they try to leave.
8 Don’t Farm Off Hook
When the moment comes to unhook a survivor whom the killer has captured, survivors can choose to selfishly farm Blood Points by unhooking their teammate when the killer is nearby. Farming off the hook typically results in an immediate re-hooking for the survivor, because they are already injured and can thus be downed with a single strike. Even with the best survivor perks, a farmed survivor is at tremendous risk. Farming off the hook is common amongst new survivors who simply don’t know better, but it is also done by toxic players who simply want Blood Points and don’t care that their action may end someone’s game early. A good survivor tries to help everyone survive and prosper, not just themselves.
7 Don’t Sandbag Teammates
Seeing a monstrous killer loping through the cornfields can be a terrifying sight, and some survivors understandably panic when the killer approaches. One common and unfortunate response is to sandbag other players, purposefully leading the killer to others to ensure their own escape. Some even body-block other survivors, preventing them from vaulting, dropping pallets, or escaping through a doorway in time, thereby enabling the killer to strike them down. Even on the best maps for survivors, getting sandbagged by a teammate can mean a quick death. In a cooperative game, sandbagging is the antithesis of good teamwork. Survivors should stand together, not fall apart.
6 Don’t DC On Hook
Sometimes Wifi crashes, and someone is jettisoned from the game through no fault of their own. Other times, someone rage quits. Dead by Daylight survivor disconnections are treated as deaths, leaving the remaining survivors to fend for themselves. The absence of the DCd player means one less survivor to draw aggro, work on gens, heal, find items, and otherwise contribute to the team’s survival. Some players will DC upon being hooked, even if it is their first time and there are survivors in the area to save them.
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Because of how much it impacts the other survivors’ chances of success, and everyone’s fun, DCing on hook is toxic behavior. Being hooked, especially early in a match, can be frustrating, but it is always better to play it out.
5 Don’t Tunnel
Tunneling is the practice of focusing attacks on one survivor to quickly eliminate them, and in many situations is a sound strategy. Sometimes, however, a killer will tunnel a survivor even to the obvious detriment of their own game, chasing them around the map, camping them on the hook, and exclusively pursuing them once they are unhooked, even as the survivors repair one generator after another. Even the best killers sometimes tunnel to turn the tides in their favor, but when the tunnel serves zero strategic purposes, it is toxic bullying. True tunneling is also no fun for teammates who are now playing a game of cat and mouse in which the cat has essentially gone to sleep.
4 Don’t Slap On The Hook
The killer hooks a survivor, but then instead of leaving to pursue their teammates, they strike the hooked survivor over and over again. Slapping on the hook serves no mechanical purpose, and its only useful psychological purpose is to distract or irritate the survivor enough that they fail skill checks, which only applies after the first hook stage. Slapping can be found amongst the hardest killers and the easiest alike. Some killers even defend slapping on the hook as a friendly or celebratory gesture, just as some survivors may defend crouch spamming or pointing. In most cases, slapping a survivor on the hook feels unnecessary and abusive, whatever the killer’s intentions may be, leading many to consider it toxic.
3 Don’t Leave Survivors To Bleed Out
Hooking survivors grants Blood Points because the Entity desires sacrifices, and so hooking is theoretically the killer’s goal, though Moris also enables outright kills. Survivors can also die if they are struck by the killer and left to bleed out on the ground. Taking four minutes, bleeding out while slugged is deeply unpleasant (not to mention boring).
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Slugging survivors long enough to kick a generator, break a pallet, or get a hit is in no way toxic, as it serves an obvious tactical purpose. Slugging all four survivors and letting them bleed out when the killer could instead hook them and end the match in toxicity for toxicity’s sake. If the match has been won, the right thing to do is end it.
2 Don’t Face Camp
Camping (remaining in one place rather than traveling across the map) is one of the most controversial tactics in Dead by Daylight. On the one hand, camping the hook, especially during the Endgame Collapse, is a viable tactic. Face camping, however, is a special breed of camping in which the killer stands directly in front of, sometimes literally staring at, the hooked survivor. There are plenty of things survivors might not know about killers, but knowing Bubba likes to camp in basements isn’t one. Face camping, perhaps because it feels like a genuine invasion of personal space and therefore bullying, is toxic and often coupled with other toxic behavior such as slapping on the hook. Fortunately, survivors can easily punish this behavior by finishing gens, escaping, and denying the camper points.
1 Be Kind In Post-Game Chat
The lobbies of many competitive games are known for abusive conversation, and while Dead by Daylight post-game chats in no way resemble the toxicity of many FPS lobbies, they can still be hotbeds for negativity. For many, the simplest solution is to never look at chat, moving on to the next game without worrying about the trolls. Unless a player was being toxic out of sheer naivety, a few sentences are rarely enough to change anyone’s behavior. Either say a quick “gg” and move on or ignore chat altogether. The last lesson is the simplest: have empathy. Games are meant for fun, and that’s what they still can be.
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