Forced To Run Anti-Meta

I feel ya on all of this. Years ago when I first started playing DBD in 2019 I had such a blast playing it as a Survivor main. Then after around 40 hours, I decided I wanted to try learning Killer too, which was also a blast. It wasn't perfect by any means and given how bad the balance was for a while there were definitely moments of frustration, but it really had a different vibe to it back then.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly where it happened but I honestly wanna say it was around Sadako's chapter that things really took a turn for the worse. DBD has never been exempt from people who play meta, and the days when Dead Hard, Rundying, and those other meta perks ran rampant felt beyond grating playing against them but now more than ever I find myself having the least amount of fun with the game despite the fact that its arguably in its most balanced state, and I feel like it's just how the devs and much more specifically the player base has changed.

As you said, the whole point of Survivor for me is that I really love having games that are both intense yet also feel like they're winnable. I've always enjoyed using lots of different perks but nowadays it feels like I just can't do that because of how much of a sweatfest games are now. I hate using gen rush perks since holding M1 is just about the most boring thing I can do but it really feels like if I don't bring Hyperfocus/Stake and focus on nothing but gens then I'm going to lose. It is so unbelievably common for me and my teammates to die at around two to three gens remaining because of the perks the killer brings, the playstyle of the Killer, and the usual solo Queue unreliability.

Pain Res, Pop, and other gen regression perks combined with the fact that the Killer is either proxy camping, slugging a lot, and or hard-focusing a survivor makes playing Survivor just miserable. When I bring off meta perks like Second Wind, Flashbang, Leader, or anything else that isn't meta I will almost always consistently get a game where if I had just simply brought meta I could've turned the whole game around, or I'll just get tunneled/camped/slugged. If I bring an anti-tunnel perk, then I'll get slugged, if I bring an anti-slug perk, I'll get tunneled, and if I bring an anti-camp perk then I'll get slugged. It really feels like if you don't stack anti-meta the game will somehow always magically pair you with a Killer who will screw you over by doing something you didn't have a perk for. Regardless though, even if you bring full meta as survivor it doesn't mean anything if your teammates just aren't that good at the game. Nothing hurts more than looping the Killer for ages only to see your teammates doing absolutely nothing or doing a gen only to see your teammate go down in less than 10 seconds.

Apart from that this is something more personal but I really just hate going up against most of the Killers in this game despite having the opposite philosophy as Killer and actually enjoy playing most of them. Unironically the only Killers I can even say I enjoy going up against are Hillbilly, Oni, and Blight. Every other Killer I just can't find myself having any fun whatsoever regardless of how long I manage to loop them.

Killer is much better for me, but man it is so, so far from being a perfect experience. On one hand, it is a lot more consistent than Survivor as I don't have to rely on teammate RNG and I tend to play pretty good Killers, but it comes with the side effect of being so much more stressful/frustrating than Survivor. Nothing is worse than playing Killer and screwing up two or three times and then having to consequentially play a lot more sweaty to gain back any amount of pressure you lost. I hate having to defend 3 gens, but I can't do much if I'm playing a Killer like Knight who has no mobility against Survivors who play very safe, and most importantly efficiently on gens. Plus map RNG can feel so extremely terrible if you get unlucky with the Killer your playing, like Hillbilly on RPD, Huntress/Trickster on Lerys, or playing an M1 Killer and having to deal with a map with way too many pallets.

The point is playing Killer feels so much more stressful/frustrating nowadays and Survivor feels miserable and hopeless most of the time, and unfortunately I just don't see that changing. Sure new perks or new Killers can rejuvenate the game's fun for a bit or sometimes even a while but the game just isn't what it used to be despite being a much more balanced game.

Yeah I kinda feel this. I like running perks that aren't meta, but I take one game off running Calm Spirit and Distortion and I feel like I can't even move without the killer breathing down my neck.

Genuinely, I took Calm Spirit off for ONE GAME for the purpose of having a more fun build for a tome challenge, and get smacked with this garbage. https://imgur.com/ZxhPiV1 Not "meta," sure, but completely exacerbating the already anti-fun Ultimate Weapon that I keep it on for.