When will we see the next HORROR ICON ?

I would also actually appreciate The Miner from My Bloody Valentine, I love that you can easily categorize each chapter and the characters within them into a different subset of horror: The Hag and The Huntress are representatives of Folk Horror, The Blight would be Body Horror, The Doctor is Psychological Horror, you could arguably place Nemesis as a Sci Fi horror killer on account of being a scientific creation with the purpose of being a bio-weapon (but true sci-fi horror is something DBD lacks, and would probably best be welcomed in the form of the Xenomorph or Predator), though he's not a killer Ash Williams is a good representative for Comedy Horror, Bill Overbeck represents Zombie Horror which is apparently an entire sub genre on its own (although Nemesis does now have actual zombies so there is that) etc. so on and so forth all of them for the most part under the umbrella of slasher conventions and the slasher genre.

The Miner and My Bloody Valentine are another excellent representative of Holiday Horror, which exist in Dead By Daylight in the form of Michael Myers, and the Krampus legendary skin for Trapper.

But any additional characters that really fill the demand for other genres to be more greatly represented in Dead By Daylight (we've got a lot of "sort of" Sci Fi horror chapters but not really what I would call fully in that genre, nothing that I would really categorize as Gothic Horror [Think Dracula, the werewolf, or a killer with some romantic elements IE Miss Smithson cosmetic for Nurse], and obviously only a few representatives for Holiday Horror.

Bolstering up these genres with more chapters and characters that fit in their veins is an excellent way to diversify the kinds of stories within DBD. Long way of saying yeah, My Bloody Valentine would be cool.

But not as many people know about it so I didn't add it onto the list.

A topic for an entirely separate thread. The fact is that they're going to release new licensed characters anyway, and the community voices their opinions on what they want to see within the game.

As important as game health is it is just not relevant within the context of this thread, as its just not what this particular thread is about. I'd appreciate it if people would stay focused on the topic being discussed.

I'll never understand this line of logic because it's so reductive. It assumes that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the concepts and live balancing for original killers that they're more or less perfect on their own, and it goes a step further and undersells the unique aspects of the kits of various licensed killers.

Michael Myers was released in 2016 and was the very first killer to play around with the idea of a reduced terror radius and not a full blown stealth ability (though he would have access to this in Tier 1), a concept which many killers in the future would take note of: Huntress, Spirit, Deathslinger, Trickster, etc. so on and so forth. His ability would also do a great job of referring to the plot progression of the Halloween movies (and many slashers in general) the threat of a creepy stalking serial killer is established in the beginning, the threat escalates throughout the middle of the film as he begins to maim, injure, and kill people, until finally climaxing when the menacing presence of the masked figure bears down on the protagonist.

Freddy had the most significant overhaul to his power to date that was very much a complete success in its entirety, and still stayed true to the concepts of the original films. Referencing multiple different scenes and moments of the films and the character of Freddy Krueger within his kit: the oversaturation and exaggerated use of blood in the films comes across clearly in every part of his power, generators which spurt blood, pools of blood which operate as snares, illusionary pallets which explode in a shower of blood.

The dream projection is an accurate way to represent Freddy's omnipresence within the dream world, the illusionary pallets of the misleading nature of dreams and nightmares. His blinking in and out of visibility at greater distances a reference to his overall surreal nature and being invisible while carrying another survivor (using Pill Bottle Add-on) is a direct reference to the moments in the films when Freddy invisibly drags characters who seem to levitate up the walls and across the ceiling in gruesome deaths, that would be Tina Grey's death in the original film, Julie's death in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and Kris' death in the 2010 remake. The blood pools themselves are references to the stairways which turn to mush beneath nancy's feet in the original nightmare, the blood hallway in the 2010 remake, and the chest of souls in Nightmare 4 (the implication is that the blood pools contain the trapped souls of Freddy's victims).

The short of it is there is a LOT more thought and effort that went into Freddy's kit that people give the devs credit for.

And I could go on and on like this for many of the other licensed characters but frankly I burned myself out writing about Freddy, and I'm sure you get what I mean by now.

Licensed characters are not as limited as you'd think and just because we're familiar with them and can more easily predict what their powers are likely to be doesn't necessarily make them any less creative or unique within the context of the game itself.

There's a lot lot more to say about your comment but I've burned myself out on it at least for the moment and I'd like to respond to a few others.

Uhhhhh, the Aliens from A Quiet Place? The Blind Man from Don't Breathe? Wait- Stranger Things, I would say Stranger Things is iconic- a little bit.

It's an interesting question- but the point is that Dead By Daylight is more or less a tribute to the slasher genre most popular from the 70's to the 90's, and similar horror that grew out of that environment in those decades. It's why I and many others want to see characters that came from that place in time, there's a culture about it that is more memorable, authentic, and original. Not to say that culture was any better or worse then, just to say that slasher horror specifically was at its peak around this time.

It's also that many of these characters never got the proper opportunity to be revitalized in the interactive and immersive medium that is video games- on a level that films cannot achieve (again, not to say films are any better or worse in general- just to say that interactivity is the most successful purpose and aspect of games today). This isn't true for every character on the list- The Predator, Jason, the Xenomorph have all found their way into video games in some form or another (the quality of said games however, is entirely debatable) but Pennywise? Candyman? Pinhead? The Thing?? Chucky??? Not that I know of personally, although their legacies may have influenced future video games (The Thing - Deceit). But the characters themselves are what I'd like to I'd like to see translated into video games to be interacted with in a fundamentally brand new way that they never have before.

That's personally the reason why I value the presence of those characters more than other licenses- for example if Nemesis never came to Dead By Daylight- that's okay because I could still play RE3 remake and experience The Nemesis through that title. A better example might be Mr. X from RE2 remake, since he's not even in DBD and again that's okay too. Obviously this extends to other licenses like Fnaf, Slenderman, etc.

In the original post I never used the word slasher icon, since Dead By Daylight has kind of broadened its horizons from humble beginnings to encompass the horror thematic in a much more general overall sense. However, I'd like to point out that in order to qualify as a slasher you just have to use a slashing (cutting) instrument, ex: hag has claws which still "Slash" even if its not your traditional knife or machete or whatever. And indeed likewise, many of the characters listed have access to slashing instruments: Predator has his wristblades, Chucky himself most iconically uses a generic knife (he's seen holding one on some of the most recognizable cover art for Child's Play), Candyman has a literal hook in place of his cut off hand, Pinhead levitates hooks attached to chains, The Xenomorph has sharp claws, teeth, and a tail whip, and Pennywise iconically turns his innocently harmless white gloved hand into werewolf claws.

The only character on the list that doesn't have conventional slashing instruments is The Thing, but that's just too spectacularly well crafted of an iconic horror movie to not consider for Dead By Daylight. Also it'd fit the role of the requested shapeshifter killer the community has been requesting since 2016 (if the devs can just put the thought and energy into making it work- even if its a secondary power that isn't the sole focus of the kit) which is why people want to see The Thing.

Also also and more importantly, "iconic" is used very loosely in DBD simply for the fact that Horror itself as an entire genre (meaning everything, Slashers, Paranormal horror, Thrillers, everything) is in itself, a niche genre. Understandably, not everybody is into being scared (insert some whiney guy saying "dBd iSnT EvEn HoRrOr") and the target audience for horror is much smaller than say action or comedy films. So iconic is used more loosely, just because there are frankly many, many, many more people that don't watch horror than people who do. I could show pictures of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees to my parents who were both born in the late 60's and they probably wouldn't be able to tell you who the characters were except that they looked familiar but didn't know their names and are just "those creepy serial killer guys", just because they never watched those films and got into that kind of thing.

Also also also and even more importantly: Ghostface's position on that list is entirely well deserved and cemented as an iconic figure of horror- The Scream Films singlehandedly revitalized slashers through smart films that both parodied and immersed themselves within the well known conventions and tropes of a slasher film.

Mathieu Cote, game director put it perfectly in the Behind The Scenes video for Chapter XII - Ghostface uploaded to Youtube:

"If you take any random people out there and you ask what's their list of the top ten killers in the world of horror- Ghostface is gonna be somewhere in there."

And Creative Director Dave Richard said in much more blatant terms:

"Ghostface is a character that's been requested so often by the community, and we're so stoked that we finally have him in game. Ghostface is- is a legend."