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What was wrong with original Freddy?
So I wasn't playing when original Freddy existed so I looked up what old Freddy's power and addons were and I don't really see much that was wrong with it? It definitely could have used a more in his kit but it seemed actually creative and unique as opposed to what we have now. Was it just the meta at the time screwing him over or was there something else I'm not aware of?
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When you found a survivor, you had to tag them with your power, and then wait 7 seconds before you could interact with them in any way, including both hitting and bodyblocking. So by the time they were in the dream world, they were almost always safely next to a pallet, or at a strong loop. From that point, your power did nothing, so you were the most basic M1 killer, just on a long delay.
Outside of 1(?) add on, survivors didn't go to sleep by themselves, you had to manually find all of them and apply it, though it tended to last more because they HAD to fail skill checks to leave.
Outside of a chase, your power was just a debilitating slowdown. It was powerful, but made playing against Freddy tedious. Even if you were doing well, it wasn't particularly fun, like every game with a Legion, but seeing the killer less often.
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Several things.
He was pretty weak, because you could not hit Survivors unless you pull them in the Dream first. And this took some time (a few seconds). And Skill Checks would wake Survivors up, so a Survivor could fail a Skill Check on a Gen while being pulled in the dream and you would need to do it again. Or they could fail a Skill Check with Self-Care (which was very, very popular back then because it was not nerfed into Oblivion) mid-chase so that Freddy had to pull them into the Dream again.
He also provided a lot of Slowdown, making it really unfun to go against, because you had to wake up 100%, since otherwise you had a Slowdown of 50% on everything. Nowadays it is still better to be awake against Freddy, even tho being awake also feels kinda pointless because you can be set back to sleep pretty quickly.
And another thing was that many Freddy-players just used Endgame-Builds. Because in Endgame it was way harder to wake up (no Gens anymore to fail Skill Checks on and if everyone was asleep, they could also not wake you up). And IMO this was pretty lame back then, because most players would play Freddy perkless until Endgame and then just try to stomp during Endgame with NOED and other Endgame-Perks.
The Rework moved Freddy to a better state strengthwise, but made him too easy to play and too rewarding. Which resulted into Nerfs to the current Kit. And nowadays, he is not really strong, still easy to play, but also very, very dull.
And in retrospect, I am pretty sure that they could have kept the original Kit and add a few things to it (e.g. Clocks and Teleport), remove other things (big Slowdown) and work from that point.
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There were a few major gripes people had with the original Freddy. I'll try to name as many as I can remember in no particular order.
- Survivors had to be put to sleep manually before they could be attacked. This took 7 seconds. In practice, this gave Survivors loads of time to get somewhere safe, causing people to lose a lot of easy hits, so it was a major point of frustration for people playing him at the time.
- Adding to the above, Self Care was very popular at the time (still is in some regions, but nowhere near the extent it was then). Failing a Self Care skill check would wake you up, even during the Dream Transition. This gave you a reliable source of skill checks (even in a chase), letting you wake up at will as long as you got lucky with skill checks.
- He was a slugging machine at first. He could see the auras of sleeping Survivors outside his terror radius, making them easy to keep track of. Survivors who helped the person being slugged could not take protection hits if they weren't sleeping, making it almost impossible to rescue the person on the ground. And to add to all of that, sleeping Survivors had a 50% action speed penalty (and had their aura revealed), making it incredibly difficult to pick up a slug before he could return.
- Forever Freddy. Sleeping Survivors suffered from a 50% action speed penalty by default. There were no alarm clocks to wake up either, the only way was to fail a skill check (removing progress from whatever you've been working on and slowing it down even more) or finding an awake survivor to wake you up. This was also at a time where old Hex: Ruin was the meta, and hitting good skill checks would knock 5% off your generator. Cleansing the totem also because difficult because sleeping Survivors had their aura revealed and cleansing speed slowed by 50%. This, combined with the Dream Transition issue, made matches very long and drawn out. More often than not, the Killer would put Survivors to sleep and walk away if they weren't able to secure an easy hit.
The slugging issue was partially addressed shortly after he released, but the other three were the main reasons he needed a change. Stats aren't everything, but it's worth noting that his pick rate was also extraordinarily low at this time - even by today's standards, and there were far fewer Killers to choose from at the time. I know he's often remembered fondly, but the sad reality is that hardly anyone was playing him. (Not to dismiss the OG Freddy lovers out there! He definitely has his own cult following.)
The other thing to keep in mind is that he didn't have a lot of the QOL stuff that he has now, like teleporting to gens, Survivors passively falling asleep, and being able to hit awake Survivors to pull them into the dream world. This isn't necessarily a problem with his old kit, but they certainly make him feel better to play.
In short, the meta at the time may not have played well with him, but there were other problems that would have been an issue even today.
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7 seconds of survivor god mode from what I've seen.
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But wouldn't the 7 seconds of god mode be counteracted by the fact that the survivors do gens really slow or giving a 10% regression to wake up? I didn't read anything about freddy's power that said it had a cooldown so I'm assuming you could have just done a sort of hit and run style and put someone to sleep and go to someone else.
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I can definitely see the game not being fun for the survivors, but was it really that bad that they had to rework Freddy? It just seems like they could have just given him more in dream world, like faster breaking or vaulting for each survivor asleep. Obviously they would have to give reduce the slower gen speed.
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Back then, Ruin was meta and you couldn't stop them from cleansing the totem. Survivors could also heal in your face or simply cancel falling asleep infinitely by missing skill checks. This made Self-Care a hard counter to Freddy because it meant pretty much on demand skill checks when you were injured.
You can argue that it wasn't very effective because you wouldn't finish healing but this still meant that Freddy wouldn't even be able to hit you. So he couldn't down you either.
I think he could also be safely bodyblocked from hooks but I'd need someone else (@GeneralV, I summon thee) to confirm this.
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Ok so I didn't know that the survivors could fail skill checks DURING the dream transition. I figured that they wouldn't be able to do anything during the transition besides movement stuff (walking, running, vaulting, etc.).
Like I said to another person, The slowdown part definitely was a lot.
Isn't endgame builds fine though? I get why noed is a pain but no other endgame perk is that strong, especially cause no way out or terminus didnt exist.
That's what I didn't understand. It didn't seem that hard to make him better and the fact that they changed him to just have slowdown and a teleport seems kinda... boring.
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Couldn't they just have made it so dream transition prevented interactions besides vaults and pallet drops?
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Endgame Builds are fine. I just think they are very boring. And I am sure that the Devs agree on that, since they also changed other things in Endgame (e.g. Pigs Headtraps used to be active after the last Gen was done, so someone who get a Headtrap while gates were powered, had it active and needed to remove it before escaping... The Devs changed this because you are supposed to use the Headtraps during the game and not just save them until Endgame... Aligns with the thought process to make Freddy weaker during Endgame and stronger during the rest of the game).
And for why they changed him that drastically - I can only speculate, but Freddy being the worst Killer (F-Tier back then, or even Freddy-Tier) was going on for as long as I can remember. So they probably wanted to do a lot to make him different so that he would be as far away as possible from the pre-Rework state.
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Possibly. Although this might cause different issues.
Overall his time management would still be pretty terrible. A M1 killer that first needs to invest 7 seconds to even get you into a state where he could hit you. That's definitely not ideal. Neither is passive slowdown like he used to have. Nobody likes staring at that red progress bar for what feels like an eternity.
I want old Freddy back too but they'd need to make quite a few adjustments to bring him in line with modern killers. He would need a somewhat good chase power (no more snares, please), the clocks would need to be implemented as a secondary objective and his teleport would also need to remain for mobility. All of this however would still make him pretty weak, if they didn't turn up the numbers.
Also, I think missing a skill check shouldn't wake you up. Freddy is the only killer that is countered by messing up. Dream hooks could also be a thing. They'd force a survivor to fall asleep for an unhook, not wake survivors up that are asleep and only work against sleeping survivors.
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I think there was an iteration of Freddy that wasn’t so bad as the F-Tier one everyone remembers. Apparently the Release version was stronger and nerfed because of feedback heavily.
I haven’t been around then so can’t really tell if that actually would work/fix some of the issues but I think everyone agrees that the F-tier version shouldn’t come back the exact way it was.
imo, a version incorporating the best of all iterations would be great: Pulling survs to sleep, but also having them fall asleep on their own on a more randomized timer (that also shouldn’t reveal who the killer is at the very start), alarm clocks and awake survs being able to wake up sleeping ones, teleportation though I think that could get some QoL adjustments as you are way more limited compared to better tp killers , etc.
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surprised @GeneralV didn't get here before me honestly.
but what was wrong with him is being made early. so the 7 sec transition was basically free time for the survivors. now you can just give them a status that stops them from doing stuff besides vaulting or using a pallet.
freddy was fun to play. and being in the nightmare MATTERED.
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Nerfing him in first week, that was biggest mistake they did.
But he was not weak as people are making him. He was fun and decent killer. His playstyle was hit and leave. You could track survivors any time when they are in Dream World.
But people called him weak because they were not good with him. And instead of good buffs, BHVR reworked him so badly.
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Old freddy wouldn't survive in today's game, especially with perks like for the people, buckle up, were gonna live forever etc.. every time you downed a survivor someone would have them up in secs and fully awake again restarting the sleep process and if multiple survivors are around you could wake each other up and it was faster back then , he needed the rework but they could've kept his power somewhat still similar to what it was
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As someone who wants him back more than anything else in this game, I'll try to answer that.
Freddy had one bad weakness: the fact that the Dream Transition didn't interrupt any actions. So there was essentially nothing stopping a survivor from finishing a generator or getting an unhook right in your face.
But in terms of design problems, this is as far as it went. Complaints from the killer side mostly came from players who didn't bother to properly learn how his power worked, and tried to play him the way people played Wraith back then (focusing the first person you found).
But if he is to come back, and I sincerely hope he is because I miss my favorite killer, I am sure we won't have those problems anymore.
If he was taking someone to a hook and you weren't asleep, it was impossible to bodyblock. Freddy would just phase through you.
As funny as this is, I was actually asleep. Sometimes I miss these early morning posts.
But I'm here now, my dear friend! There can't be a Freddy thread without me.
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Another point that I don't think was addressed above is that after 2018, the devs moved away from aura reading as a basekit component. Legion was originally going to have an aura reading ability but they decided against it, hence why Killer Instinct was created instead. So when the Freddy rework came around, the aura reading part of his power was immediately out.
^ relevant part 39:40 - 40:30
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A lot. Peanits summed it up pretty well. OG Freddy was my main, but I can acknowledge that he'd be almost as despised as Skull Merchant if he was around currently.
He had a crazy amount of slowdown and nothing else. He could get hits from dream transition mindgames, but survivors are better now. They'd W to a god pallet or window and pre-drop before he could get a hit in current day DbD. OG Freddy would sweat out a 1k in high level lobby current DbD.
I think they could find find a halfway point between new and old. Make him flicker when survivors are awake/micro-napping. Give him the ability to put survivors to sleep. Removes his flicker but gives him tracking back. No slowdown. A huge part of what made him fun was manually putting survivors to sleep and tracking them in the dream world. They basically removed all of the fun from his old kit along with the bad.
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While the slowdown does make waking up more of a priority, it wasn't difficult to do. Awake survivors can wake up teammates in no time. Self care was actually Meta back then, so ppl could fail healing skillchecks mid chase even. Failing a skillcheck during the 7 second transition period would also just cancel falling asleep. If multiple ppl are asleep on a gen, 1 missed skillcheck wakes up everyone. Doesn't help that adrenaline wakes you up too... Last gen pops and those exit gates WILL be opened because you can't hit the survivor opening them.
Freddy also had no movement ability back then, so he had to walk across the map to do hit and runs, while HOPING the survivor wouldn't wake up before he got there. Basically reduced him down to feeling like Wraith with a 7 second uncloak and no increased speed.
They introduced the incapacitated status effect later, which I feel would've helped him drastically in preventing survivors from finishing gens, waking themselves up via self care, cleansing totems, etc during the 7 second transition. Seriously... give this to old Freddy and maybe a traversal ability and he'd be fairly solid.
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(Not to dismiss the OG Freddy lovers out there! He definitely has his own cult following.)
I take it I'm part of that, am I not? I'm happy to know that the love for that killer many players here expressed has been acknowledged.
I'd like to address the points you made here, as someone will never stop advocating for his return to the game. It is important to look at it from all perspectives.
1- The Dream Transition itself is not something I consider a problem. Not only could you make it shorter with add-ons if you wanted to (although it messes with your 7 seconds muscle memory), but there was also potential for striking a hit, either with the Transition mindgames with glimpses or the on-release version having a shorter movement speed penalty after using his power. What I do believe was an issue was the Transition not blocking certain interactions, like Madeness 3 did.
2- Self-Care meta had a little danger to it that I don't think many players realized: if you get a Skill Check during a chase and you wake up, then he can put you to sleep again and there is a chance you won't win another Dream Transition mindgame, if the Freddy player is going for those (or using Pill Bottle). Of course, that stopped being true after Self-Care fell out of the meta, but it was a reality for some time. Still, I believe the Transition should have blocked all forms of healing.
3- Slugging is a double-edged sword after his first nerf. Originally it was very powerful as you had to manually wake someone up before trying to get them up from the dying state, and that is huge for a player who wants to slug. But being automatically woken up after healing from the dying state I believe was far too damaging for him. Especially because if the survivor was awake and went to pick someone up from the ground, sometimes it was impossible for you to interrupt the action. Slugging with Freddy could be powerful, but it could also fall apart quickly.
4- The action speed penalty was something that contributed heavily towards his strength, as it was one of the Dream World's dangers. The penalty has to exist because it is an incentive for you to wake up, and it contributes to Freddy's map control, which he used to be excellent for. In today's game I often play against survivors who don't bother to wake up the entire game, mostly because there is no real danger in staying asleep. I think the slowdown could be reduced if he is to return to the game, but at least some of it was needed.
The other thing to keep in mind is that he didn't have a lot of the QOL stuff that he has now, like teleporting to gens, Survivors passively falling asleep, and being able to hit awake Survivors to pull them into the dream world. This isn't necessarily a problem with his old kit, but they certainly make him feel better to play.
The closing remarks would probably be to address this sentence. Because I am still playing him, and all of this doesn't make him feel better to play. To me he hasn't felt good to play since July of 2019.
Don't get me wrong, the teleport is good, but everything else just makes him... bland, boring, not special. Freddy is in a state where many players are considering him to be the weakest killer in the game. I know some people said the same about Old Freddy, but this time it isn't a matter of not understanding the potential the killer had, it is a matter of his power not being enough. Not in terms of strength and certainly not in terms of fun for both sides.
It is not a coincidence that he is remember fondly while many ask for his current version to be reworked again.
The recent Onryo changes aimed to restore her old kit while improving it, and I sincerely hope Freddy gets the same treatment.
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"The recent Onryo changes aimed to restore her old kit while improving it, and I sincerely hope Freddy gets the same treatment."
EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED.
I wonder when we will see the adjustments for Freddy. In a recent AMA some months ago, the devs told us, that Freddy is "on our radar for killers to update".
His last update was in patch 4.7.0. Minor number tweaks like Unicorn-Block from 60 to 90sec or Z-Block from 60 to 90sec mean literally nothing and are not important at all.
Thats literally 3 years ago.
A lot of players say that Freddy is probably the worst killer in the game AGAIN. The "Sadako-Way" with a combination of both Freddies could be the way.
1.) Freddy tags survivors for falling asleep
2.) While in Dream Transition, survivors suffer the Incapacitated-Status-Effect
3.) By pressing CTRL, he can switch the "Pull in dream"-ability into Dream Snares/Dream Pallets.
4.) Dream Projection will stay, but the Channeling-Speed is increased (or you can increase it with addons).
5.) Addon-Pass.
6.) Make the Dream World a place you want to leave.
7.) Alarm Clocks stay in the game (to restore his old aurareading in a weaker version cause you have Dream Projection, you could let Freddy see the Auras of the Clocks turning from white to yellow when used or something like that, but no more Aurareading of survivors outside the TR - just an idea)
8.) Passive falling asleep gets removed.
Just an example how you can get OG Freddy together with the current one.
OR
just go back to OG Freddy with the Incapacitated-Effect in Dream Transition and restore his old self at all.
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Precisely, my friend! It is good to see ya here, on this topic that matters so much to us.
I will admit to ya that even if he came back without a single QoL improvement I would still love him as I did back then, but there are many ways to improve his kit while keeping him fun and unique.
Especially the Incapacitated status effect during the Dream Transition. This one would help so much.
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I miss the old freddy. I did not knew he was a slugging machine back then because I was new to the game. I did love the idea of putting survivors asleep manually. Was there other ideas to fix his old self? Say decrease time to sleep to say 6 or 5 seconsd? Everyone fall asleep as soon as all the gens are done and no longer can wake up? I would love to hear ideas that you guys had before the rework, if that make sens.
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He sucked at starting and ending chases
He was good at starting chases, mostly because you couldn't see him until you were put to sleep. If he did it extremely close to you, then he could catch up quickly.
Alternatively, you could try to use the glimpses to mindgame survivors. It was very fun to do (having a 5.5 or 6 seconds Transition worked best for that, I still remember).
The rest of the chase was a regular one, but everything else he had available more than compensated for it.
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Not gonna lie I miss the old paint brush addon mixed with M&A that'd give you 0 terror radius in the dream world. Also that being said I miss the old black box addon that'd just put somebody in the dream world forever. They just need to make the dreamworld a place you want to leave, like making it Silent Hill levels of fog and blocking out aura reading beyond a certain distance?
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