Should freddy be reverted

the black box should either do this as an addon, or get a big buff.

Truth

It's true, experience doesn't specifically denote whether you're right about something. Although it probably does give you an edge in terms of foundational knowledge in most cases- for example I believe it's ridiculous for people that have never actually experienced old Freddy for some reason are among the number of forum users voting to have that version of him back. That support doesn't seem dubious or misplaced to you in the slightest?

Equally though, if we're going to talk about actual evidence in regards to truth- I would point out that numbers (majority / minority) don't make something true either. You can cite any number of people in any number of circumstances to find that little piece of wisdom is also true, a basic examples: a majority of people throughout the first half of the 20th century didn't believe smoking / nicotine was related to lung cancer (or any negative ailments) until medical studies throughout the 50's and 60's came out. Or perhaps even more simple: a majority of children believe in Santa Claus.

These are perfect examples to say that even if you had a majority, that wouldn't necessarily make you right. I believe in philosophy they call this "Argumentum ad populum" or the Appeal to Popularity / Appeal to Numbers fallacy. So you can throw as many polls my way as you want, it all falls under the same pretense- it doesn't somehow immediately make the return of old Freddy a good thing.

"Foolish"

As for this whole fixation on my use of the word "foolish" I think you're taking it far too seriously. Whenever I'm on the forums I make it a point to criticize ideas, not people, I frankly don't know anyone here personally and equally nobody here knows me personally. I have no right to make any personal judgements nor does anyone else, unlike @SOMENINJANAME for example, who felt personally obligated to throw some libel my way, not that it had any particular relevance to the thread.

So when I say foolish, foolhardy, stupid, or any number of adjectives to that effect- they are purely in regards to an idea, notion, or suggestion. This idea that you can't call somebody out on a dumb idea because that's "not nice" or "there are no dumb ideas" is ludicrous. If I said right now that survivors should run at a base speed of 120% and have 3 health states instead of two, I would hope that you would call me out and say that's absolutely ######### absurd- and rightfully so!

"Now do you know why the devs reworked him?"

I feel like this is a very weird misdirect. I think you know exactly why the devs reworked him, I think you know that I know, we all for the most part know exactly why, and restating so almost feels redundant. To claim that it was some bold, out of the blue change that came out of nowhere that nobody wanted except some obscure guy with less than 10 hours, is well.. bold to say the least.

But I wanted to indulge you in that answer and before I go any further I want you to please appreciate just how long it took me to find this. You'd think it'd be easy, but apparently all of Dead by Daylight's dev / community updates are just wiped from existence, and their official Youtube Channel was extremely difficult to navigate since apparently you can't scroll down to anything posted more than 5 months ago. Took me upwards of 30 minutes of diving around the forums, google, twitch, and youtube, but I finally found something that finally satisfies me so I hope it satisfies you as well. Here is your answer:

The Official Dead by Daylight Freddy Rework Livestream. Posted on Jul. 4, 2019, either the same day or just before the PTB came out for people to test the rework changes. Before this, in the 2nd video, The rework itself was actually introduced in the 3rd year anniversary livestream which saw the announcement Chapter XII: Ghostface, and this was posted on May 31st of 2019. In both videos, Stefan Horvath (Game Designer) lays it out in plain terms exactly why they were making these changes.

The response is consistent across both videos (and in both I have the URL linked to the specific time that this question of why was addressed) although he goes slightly more in depth in the follow up video (the first link). He cites "frustrations" amongst the playerbase specifically in regards to Freddy. This is what he says exactly:

You cannot get any more explicit than this @GeneralV there is no beating around the bush here whatsoever. You can't equate the Freddy rework to the mysterious on the fly changes that DBD makes out of the blue, to something that required as detailed and as comprehensive an effort as the Freddy rework. Great changes require great inciting incidents and there is simply no way you can say that the devs went out of their way, to spend time and money, creating a brand new fundamentally different power, which essentially restructured the killer from the ground up and really only retained one aspect from the original killer.

I mean seriously, your analogy is that creating a brand new killer, for no extra money whatsoever because the chapter had already been released, is somehow the same as when they decided to change Rat Liver. An Add-on. Or why they nerfed twins / deathslinger. Please tell me how these things are equatable, I desperately want to know. I'm not being sarcastic here, I genuinely want to know your thought process, and the line of logic that takes you from Rat Liver -> to full blown Killer release for no extra money. Because that is what happened to Freddy, he became a brand new killer, and nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the game before then, or since.

Actual arguments that relate to freddy

Finally I left the most quality part of your post for last. The actual argument / substance which I can address, starting with "Old Freddy excelled in control" this was the only bit of your post that I found had substance, although it was interspersed with statements like "just plain wrong" which isn't an argument. (Again, not a knock on you- but on the arguments you presented, let's stay focused here).

Yes. Freddy excelled in control, but this was really it. Again, he sacrificed everything for that control, map mobility, chase potential, he was made even weaker than most killers because he famously couldn't attack survivors for seven seconds.

Now you point out that all this required on the part of the player was to play Freddy in different ways, much like how you wouldn't play Nurse in the same way you play any other killer. However, I rebuttle by saying that even against a Freddy playing in the way that Freddy "was supposed to be played" was uninspired, and could easily be dealt with. Primarily this basically involved Freddy bouncing around between targets, pulling one person into the dream world and then going to another generator, pulling another in, and then returning to the first person who is caught off guard pressuring them rinse and repeat....

I say this isn't unique because it's not like the whole Guerrilla warfare technique isn't something killers do already. In fact this is the strategy most Stealth killers use nowadays and how you'll find most Wraith players at the high level will play. A Wraith will catch someone off guard, hit them, cloak, run off and hit somebody else, cloak again and return to the first guy and swoop in for the down. Old Freddy might have been the predecessor for this strategy, but it's no hidden secret amongst the playerbase now, and again- you'll find most Wraith's, Ghostface's, as well as just killers in general hitting somebody and then leaving them to apply pressure on another segment of the map.

And for Freddy, this strategy wasn't always a working one, because if you left somebody alone on a generator and went off to pressure somebody else, they had 7 entire seconds and then some to have RNG throw them a random skillcheck which they could easily fail, and force Freddy to redo the cycle all over again. This was something you could not do anything to change, and I would think that a proposed Freddy main would remember that.

Freddy wasn't unique, and I maintain that opinion. He was an M1 killer without a single chase tool, and had a permanent passive slowdown and aura reading on all survivors affected by his power. But the one thing that WAS unique about Freddy, was the dream world- and notice that they KEPT that mechanic when they reworked Freddy! In fact, it was the ONE thing they kept from his old base kit, the invisibility and intermittent visibility is still present in his kit today.

Crusaders

All this talk about "a righteous cause" and "demanding to return what was stolen" really only further cements my perspective that you're romanticizing this whole affair about Freddy, and looking at this topic through biased, rose tinted glasses. I have no doubt that to your "majority" these powerful and rousing words of inspiration are quite the call they can rally around!

But they do nothing for your argument. Certainly they do nothing to convince me that your opinion is anything other than "foolish" in this matter- and again to say for a third time, I do this to criticize constructively, not out of malice. Unlike some people in this thread, who seek to vilify those with opinions that differ from theirs, the barbarians.

So! I will meet your challenge, because I am equally firm in my own belief that this is an absolutely atrocious idea. I will myself, leave a final message that I will never stop. I will continue to criticize this wild and unfounded notion at every opportunity, and call the of old Freddy a blasphemous notion that stands against progress, for it is time to look to the future- to better and brighter ideas that aren't blinded by nostalgia or steeped in controversy.

And I will make sure, that for the sake of my fellow players whether they know better or not, Old Freddy Stays dead.

Even if that makes me a villain to some.

Now, farewell.

TL;DR

• Agrumentum ad Populum - Appeal to Popularity / Appeal to Numbers is a fallacy. Even if you had a majority (which I argue against) it does not mean you are correct- in this case, it does not mean that bringing old Freddy back is a right decision or a good thing.
• I call ideas foolish because they are. I seek to criticize ideas, not people, and ideas that are deserving of criticism should be met with it, even if people don't like hearing it.
• We know exactly why the devs reworked him, and this isn't a secret. You're basically asking me to restate something I've already said, but I took a painstaking amount of time to find official statements from the dev team answering your question. Citing community "frustrations" with Freddy's old power that made him unfun to both play as, and against.
• Freddy was a weak killer who's margin for improvement had very little to do with how capable a Freddy you were, and more to do with how poorly prepared a survivor team was against a Freddy. Freddy's only benefit was his control and his slowdown, but lacked so severly in every other category that any other killer on the roster was a better pick than him at the time. There was little reason to pick him over any other killer in the roster.
• Freddy wasn't a unique killer. He was an M1 killer with a slowdown power and that is all- it probably took more thought and creativity to create the Twins than it did to make 2018 Freddy. His one redeeming quality was the interesting "dream world" addition which resulted in a visual mechanic where he was either invisible or could be intermittently seen before coming into full view. You'll notice that the one redeeming quality- was KEPT in the new modern version of Freddy.
• Romanticizing your argument and recommitting to it without actually having contributed much any substance is not good for any argument. Reaffirming your claim is not an argument, and it shows more of how lacking you are in terms of substantive points to debate with, rather than bolstering the strength of your rhetoric.
• Bonus point: There is more that I could have talked about! However you said this would be your last post, so I have decided not to expend the effort on discussing how an old Freddy would absolutely not survive in today's modern meta of Dead by Daylight, or how new Freddy actually does a better job of representing the unique aspects of Freddy from the films than old Freddy does- points that lacked context in this discussion.
• Bonus bonus point: I FOUND the video where the devs said they wouldn't keep both old freddy and new freddy / have old freddy make a return! Here it is, albeit it's slightly more open ended than I gave it credit for, but given they almost always say "never say never" to some degree- the point still stands that this is a deconfirm and would never happen in all but the unlikeliest of scenarios.

NOTE:

If anybody responds to this post with something that I have already addressed because they decided to only read the TL;DR, I am only going to refer to them back to this main post.

EDIT:

It's like you guys think I'm not going to respond or something 😂 😈

It's actually not a full inconsistency / contradiction because you'll notice in that first quote I never claimed that this was the correct thing to do. More accurately: I never said that because the majority at the time wanted those changes, that automatically made those changes the right thing to do.

In fact you'll see at the bottom there I addressed that population was "making all the right points with all the [right] evidence to back up their claims" so my justification immediately leans toward the rhetoric that was being used rather than simply the sheer numbers, a mistake @GeneralV fell into. To supplement this, I'd say I've never seen arguments against modern Freddy that are as justifiable as the arguments against old Freddy 2-3 years ago.

Although yes, I can see how you might read it as implied, given my stance. Although I can assure that is a misrepresentation of what I meant, aside from the previous point- it's also important to remember I was using "Majority" in a different context that was less argumentative, and more factual. It is a point of historic fact not up for debate or contention because this actually happened, the changes went through, and if they hadn't we wouldn't be talking about it. It is a factual statement that a majority of the community led the charge to incite changes to Freddy's base kit which compelled to developers to respond- and looking not only at the fact that they decided to respond at all but to the degree that they responded is very telling on the quality of those community requests at the time. People had Freddy figured out, it was common knowledge what he lacked, what his weaknesses were, what made people frustrated, and the developers responded in kind.

The same way, for example, people had DS figured out. We knew exactly what the problems with DS were, what insane advantages the perk provided which facilitated a much more aggressive playstyle killers couldn't do anything about, what made people frustrated, and the developers responded in kind. It took a lot of proper feedback and thorough investigation on the part of the community to make those changes a reality, but they happened precisely because of that thorough feedback and proper investigation. Something that I see lacking in this loud chunk of the playerbase that really talk more through nostalgia and less because of pressing issues regarding Freddy today.

It was a nice little distraction. 🙂

Although thank you for recognizing it takes more thought and energy to put that post together than what some others have been posting on this thread! Always appreciate the praise and acclamation 😁

I'll preface what I'm about to say with the fact that I loved playing old Freddy. He was either number 4 or 5 among my mains (can't remember where I placed Pig), was pretty damn good with him, and I hate playing new Freddy (he is so boring).

Having said that, old Freddy was one of the worst designed Killers in the entire history of the game. He was a Killer that couldn't hit Survivors for an entire seven seconds after hitting them with his power, leaving him powerless while watching that generator getting completed in his face (hell, I've had a Freddy sleep me, accidently failed a skill check, and by the time he realized I wasn't falling asleep and put me back for the 7 seconds, I had the gen done and was already out the building).

He was a Killer countered by the Survivors playing badly (the amount of times Survivors would just stand on the other side of a pallet and self-care to fail a skill check while you couldn't do anything about it is laughable in how frequent it was).

On the flip side, he was also COMPLETELY invisible to Survivors. You could hear he was coming, but you had no idea where to go to get away from him, since he could either be directly in front of your path or on the complete opposite end of it.

Again, I enjoyed him, but I'm not so blinded by nostalgia like a certain someone is to think he was even remotely well-designed. The new Freddy has his problems, but he is well designed by comparison.

Old Freddy was in a weird place where his games were ungodly long, but also hard for him to win. People see Forever Freddy build, but forget that Freddy in his original form couldn't play most of the game and his power was to just put people to sleep. Freddy's power basically relied on taking advantage of players who weren't able to understand his power. His power was to put people sleep and nothing else. If he didn't put you to sleep then he didn't even exist. New players couldn't cope at all, skilled players hated the extreme length of his games, and players who coordinated actually counter him so thoroughly that it made him effectively unable to win. He was weird in a way that wasn't healthy. He had a strong gimmick, but was extremely addon dependent. His power had no counter, but didn't really help him either. When he wasn't Forever Freddy he was just sort of there.

I loved how Freddy used to be original. I think it should be more of a mix because right now he’s one of the most boring killers to play as because of how simple he is. Maybe do something like you can use the nightmare realm to move your progress bar towards your m2 (like Myers) expect it could be something like a ranged attack that could insta down, i don’t know but at least he would be fun to play or at least different

I thought you supported my idea :(

Well, OP did mention my suggestion here.

Ah, I see.

That is good to read :)