Main Problems and possible Solutions
So first if you don't want to read the Introduction and just my ideas in how to solve the problems, just Skip to 1).
0) First of all: I'm German so please don't mind my grammar mistakes, thank you ^^ I'm playing DbD since July 2016 and I played it for over 1100 hours, but I quit playing it a year ago for no special reason. Now I played it again for some time and I want to give my feedback and my evaluation in what state the game currently is, what the biggest problems are and what I think could be a solution.
The Killers are in a pretty good state right now. DbD is in it's fairest state of Survivor/Killer balance right now (imo). In general im playing both, Survivor and Killer, Survivor only in solo and not in SWF. The biggest problem right now in this game what I experienced is the diference between playing solo survivor and playing in SWF. The devs once said, that their goal is to have in average a 50% chance of surviving (so two kills and two escapes) per match. Maybe this is in average the case right now. But I experienced as solo survivor, that my escape-rate is only about 33% - 40% I think. Yeah maybe I'm just bad as survivor - may be the case - but then I should be in a rank where my escape-rate is higher, right? I think as SWF the escape-rate may be like 60% - 66% so that in average the escape-rate is at 50%, but the gap between solo and SWF is tremendous - SWF escape nearly double as often as solo survivors. (This is just my estimation not real numbers, but it could be close to the real numbers, I think.) So to get the fun back for Solo survivors I think the best solution would be to buff solo survivors without giving Survivors more power in general and than, when the escape-rate is for solo and SWF equal (at 60% or something like that), nerf Survivors a bit, so that the escape-rate is at 50%. A suggestion for a solution for that problem at 1).
The second problem imo is that the games last a little bit too short. Making the gen repair longer is a boring solution. I'm not a huge fan of that, so just look what I suggest in 2).
Survivors got buffed in 1) and they have to be nerfed a bit to compensate that. Additionally many Survivors say, that repairing a generator is just "M1-Simulator" and boring. My suggestion in 3) is making generator repair a little bit more challenging and is nerfing survivors a bit as well as stealing survivors a little bit more time.
An important note to that: I know BHVR likes to solve problems with new perks or killers, but this problems and suggestions I'm mentioning here are mechanics that are for the base game! So these suggestions only work if they are implemented in the base game and not with perks, etc. .
1) Solo Survivor and SWF balance
Communication is a huge problem in DbD. I know BHVR doesn't want to implement a voice chat and that is good imo. A voicechat in this awfu... I mean wonderful community would not be the best idea I think. But the huge difference in communication between SWF and Solo Survivors is having a huge impact on the game experience for solo survivors. My suggestion:
Every Survivor has the possibility to mark one Object or a dying or hooked Survivor on the map every 30 seconds and the marked objects aura is revealed to all the survivors.
Sounds like a huge buff, right? Totally OP right? No it isn't. SWF have exact this power the entire game. If in SWF someone finds a hex-totem, even if the survivor is chased, the whole swf group knows the location of the Hex. So why not just implement a mechanics, letting everybody know where it is. This mechanics would give SWF no advantage, but would balance out the disadvantage for solo survivors. In a SWF group it never happens that two people go for the rescue, because they didn't know someone else is rescuing. In non-SWF-games I sometimes experienced all other 3 survivors going for the same rescue. This costs just so much time and is a problem that only Solo Survivor have. And with this mechanics someone marks the hooked survivor and everybode else knows that someone is rescuing. Indeed there has to be the option to remove the mark, if the rescuing one gets chased. This marking could be done with the secondary action key, which survivors don't use (or is it used for BNP and syringe? Not sure about that ^^). This would be a huge buff for solo Survivors but it wouldn't change anything for SWF. And since you can only mark an object every 30 seconds it can't be spammed or misused. And yeah I know, that the devs want that there is not that much communication. But SWF has communication and you can't do anything about that. So the only solution is to give solo survivors equal communication.
2) Gens go too fast
The Games go just too fast. Even after the gens were slowed down (60 seconds to 80 seconds) and working together on a generator was nerfed, repairing a generator is still too fast. As Killer you often see 3 gens pop in 3 seconds. But really nobody wants to have an even longer M1-Simulator, making the gens 10 seconds longer is not really a solution. But with the new mechanics of blocking generators there is a good solution for that problem:
Every time a generator is finished ALL other generators get blocked for 20 seconds.
This sounds like a HUGE nerf to survivors but hold on, it's not as strong as it looks. With this mechanics it wouldn't be possible, that 3 or 4 gens pop in like 5 seconds. After the first of the gens is done the other survivor on the other gen has to wait 20 seconds to complete the generator. With this time a trapper, or a hag or a freddy can set their traps for example. But in a normal game you don't have 4 people working on 4 different generators, because someone is chased, someone is hooked and so on. So if only one survivor is working on a generator, one survivor is hooked, one survivor ist rescuing and one survivor is getting chased, this mechanics would change nothing in gameplay. Because the single survivor, who finished the generator has to go to a new one anyway. So this 20 seconds noone was working on a generator and noone had a disadvantage from this. But when there are 3 generators done simultaneously, because the killer is chasing someone but noone is on hook yet, the survivors lose 40 secons of time. In summary, with this mechanics a killer who needs more time for e.g. setting traps, gets a time boost, because survivors can't work all the time. But a killer who is doing good and has always chasing someone, one on hook, one on rescue gets no time bonus from that, because the one survivor doing a gen loses no time, when he has to find a new one.
If you want numbers for that: Now if 4 survivors are working on one generator they work with a speed of 280% of one survivor (since every survivor gets a malus of 10% for each other survivor on the generator, 4 * (100% - 30%) = 280%), but if they work all alone on 4 different generators they have a repair speed of 400%, because everyone has 100% repair speed. With this change I just descriped after one generator is finished with 100% of speed, all other survivors have to wait 20 seconds, so the other 3 gens are only at 80% (100% for 80 seconds + 0% for 20 seconds => 80% on 80 seconds). The next gen is done. Now there are two survivors who can't work for 20 seconds so the 80% go down to 66% for them. And the last survivor has to wait 20 seconds again, so the speed is from 66% to 57%. Now add that together and you get: 100% + 80% + 66% + 57% = 303%! (I'm not 100% sure about the numbers there may be a mistake in it :D) This presupposes that the Killer doesn't chase someone and that noone is doing anything in that 20 seconds besides waiting at the gen. And another bonus for the Killer: If the Survivors don't want to wait at a gen and go away, the Killer has the opportunity to kick the generators and slow down the progress even more.
3) M1-Simulator
So sitting on a generator is boring right? Having this Skill-Checks coming now and than, but in high ranks is even hitting the great Skillcheck with ruin not a big deal. Are Skillchecks not meant to be a SKILLcheck? My suggestion:
Bring back the 0.25-Skillchecks.
Do you remember them? In early days there were these difficult Skillchecks, very hard to hit and you failed them very often. The reason: The Skillcheck zone start didn't have a minimum at 0.33, but at 0.25. These Skillchecks were awful and annoying. And you had to concentrate on the Skillchecks to hit them. They were removed from the game for a good reason - they were to hard back than. But the game is in a totally different state right now. Could you imagine, that the survivors would hit every Great Skillcheck back than? Ruin would have been totally OP, but nowadays it's just a bit annoying. Survivors are more skilled at Skillchecks than in the early days and bringing back the difficult Skillchecks would make it necessary to concentrate more on the Skillchecks and the survivors would fail more often, revealing their location and slowing down the progress of generators, etc.. (And it wouldn't be that hard to implement ;) )
I hope you like my suggestions, feel free to comment and bring suggestions yourself. Have a nice day =)
See you in the fog!