Please revert the game to 2019 and start over
- To elaborate with the title: Please revert the game to it's mechanical state in 2019, keeping all killers/ survivors added since then, but redo every single perk, addon, item at the same time so we can get a sense of consistency.
- This post is mostly closure for me. The issues in this game run very deep and I don't genuinely think they can/ will be sincerely addressed. BHVR has gotten too large as a company and doesn't have the same development process/ values it used to have, and a lot of the new/ inexperienced players (who by far outnumber the older/ experienced players because of how fast the game has grown) dogpile on you for the most basic opinion (being facecamped isn't fun or fair for either team).
- This feedback is mostly presented as negative because it's far more effective and easier to point out something bad than to just talk about what's good, ill talk about what I like about the game more in first couple paragraphs to compensate against this.
I've been playing this game since late 2017, I have over 3.7k hours as a non-streamer and I have been consistently playing (at least 8 hours a week, barring breaks) since then up until early-mid 2023 where I essentially retired from killer, and then survivor soon after. I have a lot of experience in both killer (to the point of being able to competently play the majority of killers) and survivor (mostly as a solo but I SWF up sometimes). I fell in love with this game- the atmosphere, the lore, the gameplay; it quickly became my obsession and I would play it in my dreams. End Game Collapse was one of the best updates in my memory to the game. Not only did it fix long standing issues (survivors holding the game hostage by opening gates and hiding for 30 minutes), but every detail was beautifully executed- the animations, the sound design, the lore implications, the mechanical aspects, there was no part about this update that felt unfair for either side. The art, the soundscape, the premise behind the game universe, even with how green a lot of realms used to look, I can't think of a time in dbd's history where I thought anything was ugly, and this is mostly what kept me in the game for so long despite how repetitive the gameplay can be sometimes.
I fell out of love with the game because killer gameplay is no challenge 99% of the time and when 'playing' survivor your actions have no impact on whether you live or die, as you exist only for the killer to toy with before killing. I tried playing perkless killers for a while and I'd still 4k every match (giving hatch to most fun player) by 2-hooking every survivor and not killing anyone (last hook -> leave slugged) until the last 1-2 gens. Only a sweaty swf group was challenging, and I'd lose to that 1-in-100 group only because I had nothing.
I will remind my fellow vets that this used to be a fun and casual game where you could play funny meme builds and not tryhard, but today you can't play a single match without sweating it out with a full meta build where both teams play like robots. I fear newer players will never be able to experience a casual DbD.
BHVR isn't the only ones who changed, the community changed too. We went from a small niche game that was the first of it's kind to a massive industry that inspired it's own brand new genre, but with everything, adding more and more people to a community too quickly tends to dilute it and destroy the unspoken rules and customs built by the community, including the eventual sterilization of "offensive" aspects of the game. Bubba's survivor masks were important to bubba's lore, you can't change it just because a few people use it while they do bad things because it didn't actually address the bad behavior; changing the Dead Dawg offering to remove the noose was pointless considering people are hung from meat hooks multiple times a match; and introducing new aspects to the lore of established characters, like David. If you wanted to do this, do it at a character's introduction or shortly afterwards, the way this was done at the time never felt genuine to me, especially not when people were banned (including gay people) for saying it was in poor taste.
- THIS IS YOUR TL;DR:
If you're going to take anything from reading this, understand that the quickly expanding community ironically brought in more toxicity than anything else, and the huge influx of inexperienced players made it much harder to properly balance the game. This caused more and more backlash against BHVR- fair or unfair- and this is why I think they stopped communicating with the community as there's no way of telling who is a dedicated fan to the game and who is a tourist with 25 hours that acts like an expert. BHVR isn't exactly a new company but I assume that, as the team working on dbd expanded, the new people had a different vision than the original team.
Here's a loose list of some specific issues in the game's history I can remember off the top of my head, top of the list is most important and less important as you do down. it's not exhaustive as I could write a book here if I wanted to:
-6.1.0 was my personal last straw. Not only did it buff a lot of aspects of killer gameplay, but it directly nerfed survivors at the same time, at a point in time where the game was heavily balanced towards the killer's favor. Reducing successful hit recovering times AND at the same time giving survivors less distance from being hit drastically increased what should have been a slight adjustment. This whole patch was the mother of all bandaids on top of a mountain of bandaids. If you're going to do a massive adjustment like this, do it 5% for one side at a time, not what was essentially a 20% buff for killers to both gens and chase. The base kit borrowed time change was in the right directly but even today it still doesn't fully address the tunneling and camping meta.
-Crossplay was implemented poorly. The option *needed* to be disabled by default to ease the community into it and allow new players to play on a level playing field. Console players, both killers and survivors, are not as capable as a pc player with the same level of experience, and this difference can still be seen to this day. Blame the differences in hardware between the platforms, blame the accuracy and how many more keys a Mouse & Keyboard has over a controller, but no one can argue the difference doesn't exist. As it stands now, no one can disable crossplay without a 5x wait time, but this wouldn't have been an issue if crossplay was disabled by default because the crowd that opt into it across all platforms at least consent to the skill difference and would make up a decently sized group on thier own. Here's the game's totem pole, from top to bottom: Coordinated SWF team -> Experienced/ Veteran killer player -> Uncoordinated SWF team -> average killer, more than 50 hours -> solo queue pc survivors -> -> -> solo queue console survivors. I have to stress that this is based on years of experience and I'm not "just hating on console players".
-Balance updates feel detached from the game. There are "numbers" changes and there are "new mechanic" changes, and the trend is that the adjustment to numbers were too heavy to do what they aimed for, while new mechanics added to the game were usually too underwhelming to do what they needed. I know it has to cater across the entire game at all skill levels, but what the game needs is major mechanics that fix major flaws in the game design, and what we consistently get are Bandaid adjustments that change a stat by 1% or 2% without addressing why these were an issue in the first place. Take the lastest jan 2024 STBFL nerf for example, 1% less effect per token doesn't fix the perk, even after remove the "m2 obsession" loophole. The new "8 regression events" mechanic is only good in theory because it would have to be set to 4 to affect 3-genning, and it have to only come into effect when there are 3 or 4 gens left to prevent coordinated survivors from abusing it.
-Misc changes: The FoV change that going into the dying state caused during that one ptb was really cool and added to the game immersion, the "finisher mori" system from over a year ago would have fit perfectly into the game as it was and would have had fewer issues than most normal updates. People don't really use Moris much anymore so this would have been a perfect time to update the moris for some older killers too.
-A constant focus on more killers over new content. The content cycle for a while has been New perks/ killer to become the new meta -> number change patch but rarely any deep meaningful changes -> new perks/ killers to become the new meta. New content is good but not when it splits the game apart.
-I think the last tome I read the lore for war Tome 8. I'd still do all the challenges, to 100% before the next tome, but it took so long to unlock the next part of the story that there were too many cliffhangers. 1 tome per trial was always annoying and it artificially extended how long it actually took to do them, most survivor challenges take 2-3 matches where most killer ones can be done in a single match.
-Perks being made useless or absurd for no reason. "Deadhard for distance" was always overshadowed by just using sprint burst and using the perk for it's intended purpose never worked because 1) being right behind a survivor gave killer priority for a hit, even if DH was times for the same frame the killer attacks and 2) was always easy to counter by waiting it out. Current DH is entirely non-viable because most of it's utility is gone, it's activation requirement realistically restricts it to 2 times per game max, and the original issue with the perk "just not working" still exists". Current DS is also trash as 3/4 of killers can hard-counter the 3 second stun, part of which the survivor is stuck in an animation. Botany/ the medkit nerf was done dirty because of how overbearing most anti-heal perks continue to be, Mangled's "passing healing reversal" stat was a horrible idea, killers can still easily stack anti-gen perks to hold the game hostage. Boons were always overrated because killer player didn't understand they had to be kicked asap when you pass by them and that doing so mid chase was never an issue. Not really a perk but Sabo'ing/ flashlights are so far out of the meta that you could remove both and no one would really notice. I could write a section here about perks alone that would be longer than what i've already written.
-same gameplay loop for 8 years. DbD Mobile is getting a prop hunt game mode, we're stuck with the same reskinned seasonal events year after year.
(🇮🇻🇪 🇧🇪🇪🇳 🇼🇷🇮🇹🇮🇳🇬 🇹🇭🇮🇸 🇫🇴🇷 3 🇭🇴🇺🇷🇸 🇳🇴🇼, 🇹🇮🇲🇪 🇹🇴 🇼🇷🇦🇵 🇮🇹 🇺🇵)
Comments
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Your post is very long, my friend, and there is a lot to impact here.
Some of the things you've said I agree with. I too remember fondly the game I fell in love with back in 2018, and just how amazing it was. The maps, atmosphere, perks, powers, my beloved Old Freddy and many other things. That was a game that I truly enjoyed and I know how terrible it felt to lose it piece by piece.
Some I do not agree with. The DH nerf I believe was a good thing, and so was the implementation of crossplay. Nonetheless, this is natural. There are always disagreements when opinions are expressed.
Then, for the actual suggestion...
It is not uncommon to see those who say 2019 DBD was the most fun this game has ever been. The game's peak. This is a valid opinion, of course. I can see the arguments for it as long as it refers to anything before patch 3.1.0, because that one I cannot stand.
However, your suggestion says to:
redo every single perk, addon, item at the same time
And that I don't think I agree with. There is a very small list of things that are better now, and there is a giant list of things that were better back then. If everything is to be redone, then I fear good things will be lost.
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You might as well say "give me a billion dollars". It is just as likely to happen. People looking through rose colored glasses always forget about the things that sucked. There have been so many great quality of life changes made to the game over the years. Guess what wasn't in the game in 2019? Shared progression on perks unlocked. You want to go back to grinding out every perk on every character again? Not me.
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No.
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dead hard for distance was significantly more powerful than sprint burst.
I can't imagine how someone with this many hours who says they win "99% of the time" can possibly think the game is killer sided. Have you watched a tournament lately?
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It's what happens when a dev teams listens to a tiny, loud minority that has optimized the game perfectly. I've seen so many games die because it is inaccessible to new and casual players and DBD is that game now. The proof is solo gameplay or casual SWF as you said. BHVR doesn't care. Their response to solo game sucks is basically the players fault. No responsibility.
2019 was a perfect year because the game grew until that year, but has been dying ever since. The new update is repeated pattern of killer buffs and survivor nerfs.
DBD needs a new dev team that understands what made it popular years ago.
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I vibe with you… not all of it, for sure, though I completely understand it all, and definitely had the best, most fun experience playing DBD back in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
I’ve seen many similar posts over the years (not nearly as generous in length😄🙃) and I’m sure you know that the majority of those who would respond to you here on these official Forums will not agree with you or post anything pleasant for you to read, overall, for what you’ve written.
I will say tho, that the GenDisc population isn’t nearly the majority vibe of all Dead by Daylight players, although the group here is a good sample size, and so much moreso a great community of resourceful minds and pleasant personalities to engage with.
So fwiw, I’m happy you at least got some enjoyment out of DBD, however short lived the peak of the exhilaration May have been.
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and definitely had the best, most fun experience playing DBD back in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
I agree completely. Back then, the game was fun.
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isn’t DH for distance one of the reasons Coup De Grâce was created, or was it never a viable counter?
Totally not being a arse… I never used Coup, or DH more than a couple handfulls of times, and never tried, so I actually don’t really know. I just thought that was supposed to be the answer, but it never really caught on, or worked against old DH or whatevz?🤷🏼♀️🫣
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Anyone who spouts that the game is Killer sided obviously has no clue what they're talking about..
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I mean, I wouldn’t say they have no clue what they’re talking about. Some people just have a much easier and, arguably, even stress-free time 3-4K’ing seemingly effortlessly… but it’s most likely those in the small group of the DBD anomalies who actually, honestly, find Killer easy and who are vocal about it.
I can get stressed out too, but I know not everyone does.
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Yeah, I’m super intrigued if the game could or would ever be able to get close to that early vibe it had. It’s like trying to get the same euphoric feeling from bungee jumping to base jumping to skydiving n so on… super exciting thinking about it, tho most likely jus wishful thinking.
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I believe it could and still can, if more emphasis is given towards the horror atmosphere and overall feeling of the game.
EDIT: It is never too late to revert things and bring the old game back.
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Yep exactly. The largest audience will always be casual players. Listening to the vocal minority just makes people quit and move on.
Catering to the casual players and keeping the game fun for both sides is the key. I agree with OP, it's very easy to win as perk less killer, I can do it on Chucky and I only played him now and then since his release. It's just too Imbalanced.
Every game for me in solo q is the same. Get to last two generators and get owned. It's getting boring because it's exactly the same. Or I get left and everyone else gets out. Same junk different day.
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Coup is literally DH for killer. It's unbelievable that it exists when old DH had to be removed.
If killers can lunge a great distance unexpectedly to shorten a chase, then survivor should be able to lunge for some distance to extend a chase.
I agree with OP, 2019 is the last year I enjoyed playing this game and I would go a step further and say Knight, Skull Merchant, and Singularity are all awful killers and the game would be better if they didn't exist.
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I've worked all day and I'm tired, so I'll keep this short. I miss the old Green and Ebony Moris 😥
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your request is impossible. Even if they got the entire company to work on this, it would take them months and what revenue do you think they will make in the mean time? Who will work for free? The game is a company and they will do what ever makes money the easiest, and that's acquiring new licenses and releasing a chapter every 3 months.
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That's not what "dead hard for distance" means. The purpose of dead hard was to dodge a hit, which, when used like that, coup could sometimes work if timed perfectly. But "dead hard for distance" meant that, someone would go around a loop, and then dead hard to get to a pallet or window that they otherwise would have missed, but they are still out of range of the killer attack. This was uncounterable basically.
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There are some inconsistencies in your post, you say that playing killer is now easy 99% of the time yet claim in the following paragraph that both sides must now play like robots, I take playing like robots as being equivalent to try harding. I also notice that you lament that the looping gameplay has remained the same for years now, yet also lament that the game has changed too much since it was created, and I correlate this too quick of a change with the looping game mode that you brought up as there has only ever been one game mode in dbd, so any drastic changes that were made to the game would have been reflected on that one and only game mode.
I don’t really know where you are coming from tbh, the game has either changed too fast to the point where newer players cannot keep up with said changes or the game has remained the same since its creation.
You long for the return of the good old days yet point out that some of these aspects should be changed, like the looping gameplay. I am not sure if you are aware that the developers have released a survey where they asked the community whether they would be interested in playing different game modes, the names of these game modes escape me as they were pretty generic, placeholder titles it seemed, so I think that you can put that issue to somewhat of a rest because the developers are aware of it and they may be working on new game modes in the future.
You also decided to bring up some issues that are entirely unrelated to the gameplay mechanics, and are more so aligned with the representation of a portion of the dbd community. I personally don’t really see a problem with any of the changes that were brought for the sake of representation and even remaining sensitive to some issues like the whole bubba face mask thing, as this shows that the developers are willing to be mindful about sensitive issues that affect a portion of the community. I am personally glad that the developers are not using fictional media, i.e. lore, as an excuse or justification so to be disrespectful to a group of people. I think that the history behind such vile practices so to mock a group of people that were already being dehumanized is of greater weight than some made up lore.
Let’s also recognize that a lot of these killers were created in a time period where society held different stands/ values, and so they will naturally need to have some adjustments if they are going to be presented to the modern crowd, as many people now do not subscribe to the values of old, so to speak.
I don’t know what else to tell you other than things change over time, not much that we can do about it really. Perhaps you should reconsider whether this game and community is even for you anymore, as you find yourself making unreasonable requests like undoing years of work.
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Yeah it's difficult to convince my friends to play this game these days. Like:
Being new they found looping difficult against a killer that shares my mmr.
Didn't find sitting on a generator entertaining. (No surprise)
Didn't know how to run tiles.
Dbd isn't a party game anymore. You can't just pick it up and have fun.
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I watched a video (https://youtu.be/fbG_U2x3sW0?si=YGvzL9koSLdPyWuP) last days, where a YouTuber talked about some old fun mechanics like space Billy, being able to climb on rooks, run on walls of swamp and making huge jumps with demo. It looked so cool and we could have it, but invisible walls. Also you could push the killer away from you in a hole, by jumping out of a locker (I don‘t know whether it got removed).
I agree, we should get cool old strong perks back. I would be so happy to jump over holes with dead hard and do other things fun things.
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Do you want old DS, old insta heals and med kits, old BNPs, old dead hard, the old perk grinding system etc back again?
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Clearly they don't, as the post itself states "redo everything".
Which is where the problem lies, in my opinion, as not everything has to be redone. Few things are better today, many things were better in the past.
They have to be adjusted accordingly.
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I started the game some weeks, before COH got killed, so I definitely want that perks back from there. I don‘t know except of COH what else got changed and the jump/sprint DH was very cool.
I don‘t want to loose the good parts and good changes, just the fun things should return, that this game isn‘t so stale and more random.
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A lot of survivor specific things in that list. How about old mori's, OG Billy, OG Nurse, old ruin to name a few. My answer would be absolutely as the game used to fun years ago and dare I say less toxic. My guess is because the game had so many broken things people took it less seriously and actually embraced it.
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I would accept everything, except of old nurse.
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Old mori's? You want to be able to get mori'ed after one hook? That was fun times being tunneled off first hook for the mori. OG Billy is the only thing you mentioned there that is worth having back and honestly its moot as we just got Billy back in great form.
Nobody embraced those broken things. People asked for years for them to be changed.
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Really, i REALLY wish to know what are affecting people in this forum saying "playing killer is too easy", while they say they hook everybody twice before killing and never ever use gen regression perks. Like, i've seen 10 different people saying this and makes no sense to me. Even comp/very experienced players struggle to play some matches (people with 10k hours+, specially on tier B killers) and then there is some people in forums claming that they can win EVERY GAME playing brainlessly. Are these people straight up lying to try to make a point? It seems like it.
For me, its impossible to that someone who have played more than a couple of matches in killer had not to struggle a little bit at least after winning some matches, specially when you start to face the meta perks + map offerings almost every match. I remember when i started playing DBD, i had like 60 hours in the game, and then i've faced 3 matches in a row 2k hours SWFs with 2020' Decisive, BT and DH.
With MMR being such a mess as it is, how can people say that playing killers is easy????
CoH was the Hell on Earth for killers, specially after the initial release of Mikaela. Even Legion couldn't get people injured when someone brought Circle of Healing; DH was basic a free health state + extra distance from killers at will. Also, there was the gen kick meta where almost every killer could stall the match almost forever with Eruption + Call of Brine + Overcharge.
@topic The game is a much healthier state now. I just i could play like, 8 matches with 2016 DBD, but then go back to current version and never play it anymore.
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My point was the game was more random, and IMO more fun years ago even with all that broken #########. So yeah I'd like to enjoy the game again. I'd take old mori's over ever having to play against another Skull Merchant again, but that's just me I guess.
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I would like to see Freddy buff, or reverted to his first or second versions of him in the game.
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Ideally, the very first one.
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imagine thinking the game was in a good spot when every survivor was running DH + DS when DS was 5 seconds and didn't go away when you worked on gens and DH was the biggest get out jail free card there was and you didn't even have to do all the gens you could just wait for someone to die and then get hatch with a gen left and get a 3 man out while meanwhile killer had things like iri huntress with purple belt for 3 instadowns and Spirit in general had little to no counterplay.
Those are some extremely rose tinted glasses.
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I don’t miss things like prayer beads spirit with stridor
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So true. The randomness was necessary to keep a game with ONE game mode interesting for years. Now it feels like I'm playing the same match over and over with no agency.
At least before the recent map reworks into shrunken dead zone fields you had a chance to punish a killer for tunneling with actual skill expression from the survivor side. Now you might have 1 decent tile to loop and then a filler tile where you're guaranteed to die.
These dead zone, barren maps effectively cap most chases to 30 seconds against an experienced killer. Maybe this would be arguable if there was anything that prevented the killer from just tunneling someone out in 1:30. But we can't even get 2 seconds added back to DS after 2 years of hard tunneling meta.
I miss moris, hatch, running weird survivor builds without 90% chance of throwing the match (Sabo, item plundering, full healing, totem cleansing, etc), using Deliverance+Sprint Burst to escape as the last survivor while the killer looked away to kick a pallet.
The game is stale and the player base having no growth after years of new licensed content exemplifies it.
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Not everything about COH was bad. First it made the rounds for killers longer, so that he had enough time to get a lot of pallets down. Also for survivors it was by far more fun than now, you had a chance to heal yourself, after you got away from a tunneling killer. If they wanted to kill COH they shouldn’t have nerfed medkits to be that bad. There is literally no difference between grey and purple ones.
I had no big issue with the gen kick perks, but with the new system, that wouldn‘t even be a problem now?
For COH I would have introduced, so that killers can damage boon. Then survivors would have to repair them and bless them.
DH should go back to his jump/ sprint version. It just was such a cool perk, which aloud you a lot of fun plays.
Post edited by jonifire on2 -
NO.
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Everything you said about hardware and difference between MNK and console is facts
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Sorry to ask, but you play mostly survivor or killer?
CoH was mess because you need to get into a chase until the end - down the survivor - or your time spent just hurting the survivor would be lost in a matter of seconds. Medkits had the same problem. I remember using a build before medkits got nerfed that i could heal myself in 8 seconds twice in a match, or even more times if used build to last. Not that tunneling is not a problem now, but tunneling was the "rational choice" back then, because taking chases with another survivor was a mistake - people healed lighting fast and it didn't matter if you hit them or not.
The new system of gen kick limit comes into play in current version of the game; applying it into an older version would be a great problem. And trust me: you would not want to face the Old Eruption + Overcharge + Call of Brine combo, specially if you play Solo.
I still think Boon need some tweaks today like a faster placement but with the possibilty that killers break the totems if they snuff the boon.
DH was a problem for a couple of years. It might looks cool seeing in retrospect but it rewarded players for playing badly, since you could easily save yourself from a hit without
Really, the game is a in much better state now than before. Broken stuff is "fun" until the other side start to only bring broken stuff or give up from the game entirely.
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I started with playing survivor back then and now I play mostly killer.
I just think COH nerf was bad and made the perk terrible. There would be many ways of changing it for the better, but removing the self care aspect! Also it helped a lot in solo q, which I played at the time. Right now solo q is just😭!
Medkits; why is it a problem to heal fast, when I make a build around it, Killers can do the same too with a lot of perks. I just think there should be an useful difference between grey and purple.
After those two changes were made, tunneling got by far a bigger problem in my rounds. Maybe just because healing got nerfed that badly, which makes it easier to tunnel now. Maybe.
I would suggest boons to have a cooldown, you need to repair them, before blessing them again or you can here from which direction the blessing sound came Map wide as killer.
The kick meta; no idea how it was, but overcharge, call of the brine and eruption are to weak now.
At least DH should come back as perk during event game modes or somehow else. It‘s just such a cool perk.
Right now most survivor perks are just bad and don‘t make each game feel different, engaging and fun. Most times the killer just plays sweaty af and it‘s just not fun! On the other side survivors don‘t have anything to compete with the killer, they are just fresh meat (I don‘t talk about top 5% of players).
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Anytime someone claims that, what i do now is ask them for a video of a game. I tell them to download OBS, record a simple video, no need for fancy editing, just post it directly to youtube. Its a win/win/win scenario, because the outcome is one of the following:
1) They post a video, and they aren't nearly is good as they thought they were, proving that they are wrong
2) They post a video, and the survivors they are going against, are not nearly as good as they thought they were, proving that they are wrong.
3) They don't post a video, in which case they were probably lying and don't want to be exposed
4) They post a video, the survivors are top tier, and they prove themselves correct, then we all learn something from them and get better at the game.
Can't really go wrong with it.
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How Call of Brine + Overcharge + Eruption was: A 90% gen progress would lose all of its progress in almost 60 seconds of regression +-. If you got downed and eruption was active, the gen lost 10% and you would be Incapacitated for 25 seconds. 25 seconds of doing nothing.
The problem with "killer making a build to counter something" is that killers have only 4 perk slots, while survivor have 16 perks altogether. Killers can't rely on perks to counter something strong - the game should be balanced on that.
The game is in a much healthier state now, believe me.
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It's not "dying" if it's been 5 whole years of growth. You're just personallly disinterested or bored. You're also cherrypicking to an insane degree if you believe there has been no survivor buffs since 2019. Solo que icons, no face camping, base-kit and more anti-tunnel tools, no 3 genning, killers have to be very aggressive and hook everyone for slowdown, and even more. All while Spirit, Blight, Nurse have gotten nerfed. That's why the updates are great. They're not anti-survivor or anti-killer, they're anti-crutch.
I think the problem is that you have nostalgia and have dulled out all the obvious problems from before. But if you sincerely miss old Legion, old Spirit, old Moris, facecamping Bubbas, lagswitching, killer favored validation, no solo icons, etc. (and that's just from survivor POV) then play a different game as I and many others don't want to play that.
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I would like to see the combination of both of his previous iterations. I played started to play Freddy on his second iteration before he got nerfed. I would like to see more of his first iteration, whenever he gets buffed, more stealth gameplay & his lullaby plays everywhere in the dream world & he can’t be seen in the real world.
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Before I begin, I want to make clear that I didn't experience this game in 2019. I joined during Binding of Kin, and whilst it didn't quite grab me immediately, coming back later did and I have since been playing this game very consistently (over 10 hours a week averaged out) for the last 18 months. I also seem to lack the nostalgia many DBD players seem to hold for the game, as I whole-heartedly think the game has never been more balanced (as in, the side more dedicated to win, through experience, loadouts, and mindset, is the side that sees better results).
I also want to quickly discuss your pre-TL;DR paragraph, because it struck me as odd. Your noted evidence for the community changing was not balance discussions, wasn't opinions you see the community hold, it was responses to the way minorities are treated and the changing of a symbol from a noose to a broken bottle. And my question really has to be why those things? Black people, gay people, and people made uncomfortable by nooses aren't the groups that are advocating changing the mechanics of the game in ways you find unhealthy. Hell, the devs that changed those aspects of the game aren't even the balance team. It's, overall, entirely irrelevant to your point about the game's balance philosophy changing over the last four years, and yet you felt it relevant enough to mention.
That aside, I want to discuss 2019 as someone who wasn't here to form memories of it. It appears that, back in 2019, BHVR's goal was "if everything is OP, nothing is" as perk impact seemed to be in general much, much higher then than now, but the issue is that everything wasn't OP. The meta was monstrously stale. Even ignoring BT, which you'd likely want to keep in this turning back of time, everyone had to use DS in another slot because of how potent it was. Beyond that, everyone either ran Dead Hard or Sprint Burst, Iron Will so they were quieter injured than healthy, and then their choice of a small handful of meta perks (albeit Self-Care seemed to be the pick). Nerfing those perks, then, is the logical outcome. Better to bring down a few strong perks than try and bring up every weak one - rather than risking buffs causing power creep ad infinitum, risk nerfs causing a lack of perk impact, which is more easily fixed.
And if we went back to 2019 the new additions would be unhealthy for the game then too. Red skill check ruin during the 3 gen strategy meta (which doesn't appear to be going away with the PTB changes) in a world where Pentimento exists? No thanks. Forever Freddy coming back in a world where Pain Resonance exists? Again, no thanks. There's more - BP BBQ&C coming back, meaning literally everyone runs it, further bolstering the Distortion vs Ultimate Weapon pickrate tug-of-war? Thana being a general action speed penalty again in a world where Skull Merchant exists? I could go on, but at risk of coming for your throne on DBDForums post essays, I won't.
We can't ever truly turn back time, and I don't think it'd even be good if we did - a rose tint is a powerful thing, after all. I still fully believe this game has never been more balanced, even if some perks paid the ultimate price of irrelevancy to get there. Sure, metas come and go, but not like they used to - you don't have to run BT to be able to unhook survivors anymore. You don't have to stand there mindgaming yourself in case the survivor you're looping has Dead Hard anymore. And going back to that wouldn't magically make the game more fun for anyone involved, and it'd possibly alienate a whole bunch of people who like the game we have now.
If that doesn't include you - if you don't find the game fun, I could tell you to maybe try out Civilisations, but it's probably better if we find ways to make it fun for as many people as possible instead. I look forward to your next essay on balance changes if you decide to write one.
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I'd like to quickly address a few of your points here, as someone who experienced this game in 2019. Joined a bit earlier actually: late 2018, during Darkness Among Us. My opinions regarding this game are vastly different than yours: I genuinely believe the game was far better in the past than it is now. No matter the metric used to judge it.
The design philosophy in 2019 wasn't to make everything OP so nothing was, it was to make things fun and overall better for the game. This is mostly restricted to the early 2019, and there are outliers: Freddy's rework that I consider to be the worst change ever implemented into this game, and Mettle of Man on release is also a good example. But overall? Things were good.
DS changed from anti-momentum to anti-tunneling is a very good example. Adjustments were made for Legion, and Nurse lost 5 blinks / Omega Blink add-on combinations. The meta wasn't four slowdowns as we see today, and the maps hadn't been ruined. That doesn't mean everything was perfect, but I would go back to it without a drop of hesitation if I could. There is a reason why many people think 2019 was peak DBD.
I don't like the argument of "rose tint", it has always been a massive pet peeve of mine. Many of us have a very clear memory on everything regarding the old game, both the good stuff and bad.
However, OP states they would like to see most things redone after the reversion. So many of the problems you listed you be addressed following this post suggestion. A full reversion that would keep everything intact is rarely ever suggested here.
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The design philosophy in 2019 wasn't to make everything OP so nothing was, it was to make things fun and overall better for the game. This is mostly restricted to the early 2019, and there are outliers: Freddy's rework that I consider to be the worst change ever implemented into this game, and Mettle of Man on release is also a good example. But overall? Things were good.
The implication that the devs decided that they just shouldn't make things fun in 2020 and onwards is very clearly untrue. What game developer would sit down and say "I don't want this to be fun anymore" other than in the case of ultrahard game mods (and arguably even then).
My other main takeaway is that I think we disagree on what OP is saying.
Please revert the game to it's mechanical state in 2019, keeping all killers/ survivors added since then, but redo every single perk, addon, item at the same time so we can get a sense of consistency.
Revert to a mechanic state in 2019 by redoing ever single perk, addon, item at the same time was how I read it - take us back to Red Skill Check Ruin, take us back to Forever Freddy, take us back to the land of pre-nerf Spirit. Otherwise this post delves into the territory of "just keep all the good stuff and discard the bad stuff" which isn't a suggestion.
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