The Forged in Fog DLC and DBD update 6.4.0 feature the new environment Shattered Square, purportedly introducing massive numbers of pallets to the BHVR horror game and giving DBD survivors an unfair advantage. Dead by Daylight killers are reportedly feeling “miserable” as a result.
At first, it felt like DBD update 6.4.0 was going to tip Dead by Daylight decidedly in killers’ favour, as it allows virtual murderers to practise their slaughtering whenever they want against new, AI opponents. Shattered Square, however, the new map bundled with The Knight in the Forged in Fog DLC, is apparently confounding Dead by Daylight killers with its abundance of wooden pallets, which can be knocked over by survivors to block a pursuit.
In order to maintain the fairness and momentum of a DBD game, and not tip the balance too greatly in favour of the killer or the survivor team, the positioning of pallets around each map has to be carefully designed. If there are too few, killers get an easy ride. Too many, and the survivors might escape without a scratch on them. Shattered Square, however, is reportedly far too pallet rich, causing chaos for the horror game’s bloodthirstiest players, as DBD’s semi-randomised map generation allows for the map to potentially spawn between 20 and 36 of the wooden obstacles.
“Killers are already miserable and struggling on most maps,” one DBD player writes, “and with the addition of this map they’re not doing any better. Please BHVR, surely it is only a bug and will be fixed very soon.” “Doubtful,” another responds. “Most of the latest killers are pretty hard anti-loop and must be fed pallets non-stop. Kill rates were over 60% when the map was released. Got to bring it back to the 50% average somehow.”
If the kill rate on Shattered Square truly has been too high during its test phases, simply introducing a lot more pallets may be considered a too heavy and too obvious method of reigning virtual murderers back in. Double pallets, whereby two pallets spawn next to one another in the same narrow corridor or escape route, have also reportedly been spotted in Shattered Square, perhaps signalling a potential issue with the logic underlying DBD’s map generator, which is supposed to prevent double pallets occurring.
If being overwhelmed by pallets is putting you off DBD for the meantime, you might want to try some other multiplayer games instead. You can also team up with your fellow survivors, albeit in an entirely different realm, thanks to some of the best co-op games on PC.