Dead by Daylight Update Is Bad News for Campers

Dead by Daylight’s latest update has landed on the test servers with a new feature in tow, one that’s going to hopefully be a pain for campers. As teased previously by Behaviour Interactive, Survivors who have been hooked by a Killer will soon have an automatic escape method if the Killer sticks around them for too long. This change will first be previewed on the test servers before going live for everyone, however, so there’s a chance that it could be changed further before it heads to the live servers.

This change follows another that was implemented not long ago to combat “facecamping Killers” as Behaviour called them. The first change was received well enough since it was something that Survivor players had been asking about for awhile at that point, though it remains to be seen if the new feature will follow suit or if Killers will find a way to abuse it.

Dead by Daylight’s New Anti-Camping Feature

As detailed in the patch notes for this week’s PTB update, Dead by Daylight now automatically lets Survivors jump down from a hook if the Killer won’t leave them be. The way this works is by giving Survivors what’s effectively a camping meter that gradually fills up whenever the Killer lingers in close proximity near the hooked Survivor. The meter fills up quicker based on how close the Killer is, though it fills up a bit slower whenever Survivors are nearby to leave time for players to make coordinated saves.

Once the meter fills completely, hooked Survivors need only to press the unhook button and they’ll get a guaranteed dismount off of the hook. That Survivor is then granted the Endurance buff for 15 seconds which allows them to tank a hit from the Killer who’s obviously still camping there next to them. 

Behaviour did add a couple of caveats to the new feature to get ahead of some of the concerns players might already have in mind after hearing about it. Once the exit gates are powered, this feature is removed completely, so Killers who only have one Survivor on a hook at that time could, in theory, camp them all the same at the cost of letting the remaining Survivors go free. For Leatherface specifically, a Killer who’s known to be a camping pro, Behaviour also made it so that “the Cannibal can no longer hit a Survivor who has Endurance twice in the same 0.5 second timespan.”

“To ensure that this cannot be abused by aggressive Survivors, the rate at which the meter fills will decrease – or potentially even stop entirely – when other Survivors are nearby,” Behaviour said in part to explain its reasoning for the new feature. “Additionally, once the exit gates are powered, this feature is disabled entirely. This is because at this point in the match, the Killer needs to do whatever they can to secure one last kill, so we can’t expect them to graciously leave the hook. This new mechanic is intended to address the most egregious camping scenarios, discouraging Killers from standing too close to a hooked Survivor for an extended period and creating opportunities for the other Survivors to make the save.”

Dead by Daylight’s new anti-camping feature is on the test servers now ahead of its wide release.