Since Blight, Killer design went downhill

I think its mostly because of the difficulty of creating something new, in a game where what you do is chase survivor hit survivor hit gens there isn't a ton of space for character design after having 20 of them under your belt much less 30. Its hard to create something new without making it something complex and its hard to make it something simple that ends up being complex enough to be its own character that isn't just the same as something else. Id still rather have 10 more blights than anything else we have gotten besides wesker recently but yeah the well is tapped pretty dry for how simple the base game is.

I'm not criticizing the list, I'm saying that your entire argument doesn't even exist, that's how bad it is. Clearly you wanted people to share their opinions, kinda seems like you're getting defensive rather than discussing now that you realize your thread didn't turn into what you wanted

But criticizing the majority is good!

We should search for an objective truth. Not follow blindly what others say.

If there is no objective truth, the opinion of the masses isnt automatically made the objective truth. It's still just an opinion. An opinion, that, as you say correctly, can be wrong.

This is really all just a matter of opinion. I have a different opinion on a number of these killers.

I think he is actually talking about Old Billy, my friend.

For a very, very long time Hillbilly was widely praised as DBD's golden standart of killer balance. Older players like OP, myself and many others like to refer to that version of Billy, before overheat was even a thing.

And trust me, he was magnificent.

It's not so bad. I mostly get 2 hook stages.

But you're right that he wouldn't be considered that fun to play against, if he was actually strong. Or at least not quite so easy to counter.

What votes? The votes of how fun killers are to play or to play against? Billy is a perfect example of a killer that is fun to play against but miserable to play as for most players.

Why do you think, you don't see any Billy players other than total beginners and the few Billy mains out there? He is not fun for the rest. Indoor maps counter your mobility and have few curvable loops. Outdoor maps nowadays have so much clutter that his mobility is still pretty bad compared to other killers and curving requires at least 1 Engraving because the survivor always makes it around the next corner otherwise. Even with an Engraving all a survivor needs to do, is to step out of the way. They can easily react.

The only reason why many players like to play against Billy is because they can counter his ability in their sleep. I had an Adam not so long ago, that went on about how fun the match was for him and how the chase was so close, when in reality it was all a bluff. I knew I couldn't hit him, if he played somewhat alright (not even good). But he didn't. So he was under the illusion that both of us played really well and he just outplayed me, while I knew that I could not hit him around shack, jungle gyms, the main building and a good amount of filler pallets simply because my power didn't allow that. It's even worse when you have survivors that actually know Billy's weaknesses. Like how he can be countered at the press of a single button.

Billy is a killer that looks dangerous more than anything else at this point. His mobility is pretty mediocre, his chase power doesn't work without engravings, he feels awful to play (incredibly loud, no room for mistakes, addon reliant, perk reliant and map reliant), has about the easiest counterplay of any killer in the game (one step to the side and you're safe), he can't play around many loops, he can't play around dropped pallets and he can't do anything unexpected. But he does have an insta down, mobility and faster pallet break, so it feels as if you actually were in a dangerous position in chase.

Oh yes, definitely better than all of those you've mentioned. Typically, older killer designs are far superior than anything modern DBD has to offer.

However, I have to disagree about Billy still being fit for the "golden standart". He absolutely deserved that crown in the past, but now I don't think it can be associated with a killer that got unnecessarily changed. Billy stands side by side with Freddy, as killers who get reworks when they didn't need one. Oni seems to be a better fit for the title, at least for now.

I think Billy needs a full reversion.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I know what old Billy looked like. I do understand why people loved him.

But he was the golden standard of another time, another era in dbd. A time (sadly) long gone. Playing Billy right now is as much of a pain train as playing Singularity for the first time.

Nobody plays him for a reason. More multiple reasons, regarding the 10000 invisible hitboxes you can randomly bump into these days.

It's very sad. He is probably the one killer that has fallen the hardest.

I would definitely not call him a golden standard of killer design anymore. There's a reason that almost nobody plays him.

I absolutely agree with you. But at this point, Billy isn't the problem anymore, it's maps. Similar to Trapper, they'd need to rework how hitboxes on most maps work for Billy.

I would love to see that happen, but km not getting my hopes up.

I'm optimistic in many regards, but this is a bit if a stretch, even for me.

Agree with Oni though!

I got that it was a joke. 👍️

But I can say that I used to be able to get much better results playing M2 only Billy only a year ago. By now, you just don't have the time anymore. An insta down isn't worth much when it takes longer to land than 5 M1s. His remaining decent maps are few and far between (I miss old Red Forest), invisible collisions become more of an issue and most maps they released over the last years are terrible for him.

It really hurts because he doesn't just become weaker but also a lot less enjoyable. Why would anyone play Billy, if his power doesn't work most of the time anyway? You have many alternatives, that are also less punishing to play.

But of course many don't realise it because on paper Billy didn't change much since his nerf. He even got a nice buff, that in theory should make him a lot better to play. However, a killer with that many issues (in desperate need of qol updates, extreme map dependency and a power that on a good day is decent but not great) needs more than that.

I said that Billy is horrible to play as.

Who disagrees?

What holds water is actually talking about the design. Using popularity instead of the design, only talking about whether they're strong and whether people like them, is going to be pretty misleading.

Using popularity here has a few major flaws, in my opinion.

The first is that we don't actually have a good sense for popularity. The closest we've come is BHVR's most recent top-ten list for pickrate specifically, but that's only part of the picture and has pretty obvious flaws even for the part it shows, such as Xenomorph being new at the time and therefore represented very highly. Any popularity poll you point to is going to be a heavily restricted subsection of the actual playerbase, to the extent that it's not super fair to use it to try and represent that entire playerbase.

The second is that popularity is going to be very contingent on a lot of extra elements. Killers like Singularity, for instance, might rate low in popularity polls that have a lot of console players, because he's very hard to play on controller. That's part of his design, but it's not the whole story- much like your example of Artist, too, people will rate killers low if there's something annoying about them, even when the rest of the design is perfectly sound. Part of the story, but not the whole picture.

The third and most important is that literally nobody ever votes on a popularity poll for the design of a killer. They'd be rating the implementation of a killer. For this one, I'd point to the Twins again: a good and interesting design held back by flawed implementation and a whole ton of bugs, neither of which are necessary elements of that power. Another good example is Legion: if you'd polled people on how much they liked Legion on release, they'd be bottom of the pack by a wide margin, but their design was totally fine - which is why they still have that design now, when they're much more popular.

Trying to use popularity skirts around actually trying to think about and discuss game design, and it stalwartly refuses to acknowledge the difference between design and implementation. It's a shortcut that doesn't even lead you to the right destination.