I think this game is nearly impossible to balance

Warning: This is long as it was something I was thinking about for a while that I wanted to get out of my head.

I see a ton of posts about what people think the balance should be and there's a lot of disparity between what people think is balanced for this game and its made me realized that balancing this game is honestly really hard especially since it constantly has to add new content and meet a multitude of expectations. Killers want to feel powerful and scare/kill survivors but to do that survivors have to be weaker than killers which isn't fun for survivors who are also wanting to feel like they're powerful and have outsmarted the killer. And when 80% of your player base is ideally survivors you tend to cater to them as they're also 80% of your income and this is a business. That being said there's no game with no killers so there has to be something in it for them. Plus the game when I joined was marketed as "Be the killer and torment the survivors or be part of a team of survivors and work together to escape" which I think has been poorly delivered since so many killers and survivors feel frustrated by the state of things. So here are some balancing things I've thought about.

Starting with killers vs survivors. If you make the killer consistently capable of being able to juggle 4 survivors working together (working together should be the key premise for survivors) without to much effort why wouldn't he just kill one as fast as possible (tunneling, camping, mori) and the other 3 survivors would be screwed. If he could juggle 4 then 3 is going to be no problem and it's going to be that much harder for the remaining survivors as tasks will take longer (another advantage for the killer) and they're gonna feel cheated as the killer gains more of an advantage. 

In the flip side making it so one survivor can stand against the killer by himself makes no sense either cause then it's one killer being bullied by 4 survivors and the survivors start with all the advantage. It would take a miracle for the killer to get it down to 1v1.

For the killer to be about as good as 2 survivors in terms of skill, the killer would likely be at a disadvantage for to long as the gens get done and the survivors cover for each other. Be more likely he'd lose I want to say 70% of the time before getting to level the playing field although I have no evidence to back that up.

Then we consider if 3 survivors working together is about equal to the killer skill level. The killer still starts at a disadvantage as there's 4 survivors to begin with but there's a fair likelyhood he'd get them down to 3 survivors if even one of them is selfish or incompetent making that equal playing field and if he does it in a decent time the killer won't spend the whole match frantically trying to level the playing field so less likely to resort to tunneling and camping. (All of this is theory. I know toxic players are gonna be toxic no matter what kind of incentive they're given not to be)

Now none of this even mentions perks. Perks add a whole new problem cause a killer that's balance for its base perks could end up unbalance with other killer perks and playtesting every combination of perks with every killers unique powers is a huge amount of work. Personally I think killer perks should be less about direct time delay (though how the game flows is another issue) and more about splitting survivors in a way that favors the killer (given traditional horror movies its the isolated ones that die first) The same goes for survivors. The meta perks are pretty consistently used because they blend together so well that using anything else seems pointless. If they introduce something that breaks the meta then they'd have to playtest all the combinations to make sure there isn't a new meta which as previously mentioned is a huge amount of work.

Now for that bit about how the game flows I mentioned earlier. I think gens were a good start but there needs to be more and increasing gen times is not the answer. Increased gen times is boring and sucks for the survivors. There needs to be something fun and engaging that survivors can do that pads out the run time of matches more evenly while still fun for the survivors. I don't know what that is but there has to be something.

Now I haven't even considered how to factor in add-ons which is another headache cause how much of a buff should they give, does that add-on break the game, is that add-on even worth it. Can we make an add-on less game breaking by adding drawbacks. Are those drawbacks to severe for the add-on to be useful. Its a nightmare.

Matchmaking is also hard to do adequately cause some people want as many games as fast as possible where others want balanced games. I saw someone say their should be two different modes. Quick play and ranked. I personally like that idea.

Which brings me to rankings. Rankings in this game are honestly hard to determine because if you're a survivors and your team does well you do well. If your a killer and the survivors do badly you do well. If your a survivor and your team does badly you do badly if your a killer and the survivors do well you do badly. I could go on and there are exceptions but the point is there's no good measuring stick because each match is different because everyone is a player with different builds and as a result a good move in one match can be a terrible move in a different match or even a different point in the same match. Building a system that can accurately determine how much value you added to a game like this sounds like a nightmare to me.

So in conclusion balancing this game is hard and we could all cut the devs some slack. Yes there are things they could do better. Listening to community feedback a little more, having a dedicated playtest team that plays the whole game in and out of production phases, and numerous other things but let's face it. This came out when asymmetrical game play was popular. They probably never dreamed it would get this big. Also thank you for anyone who reads this. It's much appreciated.