Coming off their almost month-long anniversary celebration, Behaviour Interactive is releasing a new 5.1.0 update for Dead by Daylight, which will bring a plethora of changes to survivors, killers, and gameplay in general to all players except those on Nintendo Switch. For PC, Xbox, and PlayStation players, the update went live today (July 27) at 11 a.m. EST. Nintendo Switch users will have to wait a little longer for the update to hit their game.
Dead by Daylight has had quite a year so far, even before their 5th Anniversary celebration. This year, one of the new content chapters was a Dead by Daylight and Resident Evil crossover. The Resident Evil chapter brought iconic and fan-favorite characters to the game: survivors Leon S. Kennedy and Jill Valentine (Chris Redfield and Claire Redfield with cosmetics for those survivors), and killer Nemesis with AI zombies and can infect survivors with the T-virus. The chapter also introduced a new Dead by Daylight map, the Raccoon City Police Station. The map was immediately pulled due to causing in-game crashes but has since been reenabled for live games, though offerings for the map are still disabled.
Yesterday on Twitter, Dead by Daylight announced that the update would not be available for those with the game on Nintendo Switch. The reason is solely for Behavior Interactive to address performance issues that are still affecting Switch consoles even with the update enabled. Unfortunately, this will affect other aspects of the game for Switch players. They will not be able to use crossplay and will not have access to the new Tome/Rift until the update is available. However, Dead by Daylight is extending the duration of the Rift by one week to accommodate this, Switch players will be gifted Bloodpoints and Rift Fragments when the update releases, and Switch players will still get access to the upcoming Bloodhunt.
With the update being pushed today for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, players will see both gameplay changes, visual changes, and performance changes, which will hopefully mean fewer issues and crashes in-game. The biggest Dead by Daylight changes are coming to The Trickster and the visual changes of survivors Meg, David, Nea, and Claudette. The Trickster is seeing somewhat of an overhaul: the number of knives he now has to hit survivors with to cause damage is 6, not 8, his main event activation time is shorter and his main event can now last three times as long. That doesn’t include the reworking of his add-ons. Meg, David, Nea, and Claudette received updates to their character visuals to make their look better and more reflective of the current realism design Behavior is focusing on with characters. They are also changing tutorials, improving the HUD, and changing the system on how a hit/pallet drop is judged on each side in-game.
Updates are always welcomed in games but specifically in Dead by Daylight. There are a lot of bugs and crashes that have specifically been hitting console players hard. To compensate for this, the disconnect penalty for players was turned off. While this is beneficial for those who accidentally disconnect, it has caused a plethora of intentional disconnects, frustrating survivors and killers for multiple reasons. Hopefully, with these fixes, it means the penalty can be turned back on.
The 5.1.0 update is a strong effort by Behavior and Dead by Daylight to show they hear players, see the issues, and want to fix them. Though it is super unfortunate that players on Nintendo Switch are not going to have access to the update or crossplay until it is enabled, it can be assumed that players would rather have an update the fixes the issues of the game, not add more. Based on Dead by Daylight saying they’re extending the Rift by a week to accommodate this, it is a fair assumption that they are aiming for a week delay after the Rift starts.
Dead by Daylight is available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, PC, Switch, and Stadia.
Source: Dead by Daylight/Twitter, Dead by Daylight