Can we look back and have a serious discussion about the past, current and future killer reworks?

I almost agree with you but Freddy won't be the worst killeral anymore.

He never was ;)

Weak? Yes, undeniably. But never the worst.

Skull Merchant, if the changes aren't reverted despite all the feedback, will be a contender for the title. Playing her in the PTB was miserable, they really left her with almost nothing to work with.

Tbh current Hillbilly is a blast to play against. But in good hands, he is the god of destruction.

Calling the Twins rework as "sad case" is uhh, certainly an idea to have.

The PTB where Twins got reworked, they were beyond busted. No counterplay in chase and could down Survivors in literal seconds, all while having the ability to remain at two places at once. On top of all of that, it destroyed the gameplay that Twins players had formerly enjoyed, leaving her in a state where the people who played Twins were not happy and people were not happy to play against Twins either.

They didnt leave "Charlotte and Victor in the bin," after their rework they received a lot of buffs and were in an amazing spot, and a lot of Twins mains I know were already expecting Twins to get nerfed following the whole "rework" since some of the changes made were just a bit too much. Twins is in a good spot now, definitely not a popular pick, but a Killer can still be good and healthy while remaining unpopular.

"Also Twin's power can become disabled permanently thanks to a bug," a bug is a bug. They will get fixed. This quite literally has nothing to do with the rework itself and just feels like a moot point.

The Twins rework was a massive failure, because the main point was supposed to be making the killer MORE FUN TO PLAY AS. Instead BHVR made the killer feel even worse, by raising the amount of time survivors can hold their power hostage… and then later they added more nerfs that made Twins feel even more clunky to play.

The Twins rework was a massive failure, because a team of game developers took over a year to come up with that PTB, and honestly they thought they did a good job, and that PTB Twins weren't going to be a problem. The entire new theme of PTB Twins had to be completely reverted… that's a failure.

And still…. years later, Twins still feels bad to play as, because BHVR can't figure out how to make them fun to play as, without making them massively overpowered. That is a game design failure. Some of the Twins streamers don't even want to play them anymore because they are so unenjoyable to play as. And that's how you know the Twins rework was 1000 times worse than the Trickster rework. We often see people complain about the Trickster rework….. but they are still playing Trickster a lot! So we know the Trickster rework really wasn't "that bad" or they would stop playing Trickster, just like how some of the Twins streamers have switched to barely ever playing Twins anymore.

Freddy rework got nerfed for same reason. "Forever freddy is unfun, killer is stacking anti-heal+game delay, nerf please". Old freddy had forever build as his base-kit. I suspect the entire reason why freddy is still unchanged is because they don't want to buff his "unfun" play-style perceived by survivors.

every part of freddy was perceived as unfun by survivor mains

→ Snares slowing you down at loops, continuously with no drawback → see skull merchant drones that just received said nerfs

→ waking up clock as secondary objective, wake up using teammates, failing skill-checks

→ Unlimited wall-hack reading.

→ Undetectable+invisibility

→-50% repair penalty or 20%+ -repair and heal in iteration #2.

When every single part of killer kit is complained about, there isn't anything for bvhr to buff. So we have freddy for 2 years with crap ability because what his abilities are suppose to be are lock-in vault with a key.

Well it is true for all of those except of Billy and Sadako. Billy was nerfed and most people disliked the change before the first rework and Sadako might be true with the second rework, but the first one was majorly a buff even tho I disliked the rework. Sadako was also not majorly played with slugging. Skull merchant on the other hand needed changes. The sad thing is this Sadako is only good against people who have no clue what’s going on now.

the only reason I even play knight in his bad reworked state is cause he’s the closest thing to having a Black Templar in DBD

I really hope they revert him, so I can test him my self. His former self looked so much more interesting

When looking at Sadako I’m not that confident. They will probably make a new version of him. The best you will probably get is a mix of both versions or they give him a complete new power.

I hope they give him more skins when he returns.

Yeah, there is always a chance it won't end well.

But I've been doing this for over five years, and not just on the Forums. I'm allowing myself to have some hope this time, because I think I need it.

Haven’t you lost hope at some point? 5 years are so long. I have almost lost hope after asking for a Sadako revert for a year or longer.

Where else are you asking for Freddy changes? I might try it there for Sadako too.

Do the devs go through discord and steam?

Hopefully you get your Freddy, you are the person that deserves the most being happy with him.

I’m waiting for a post where you show us your feddy ideas.

I will read through it the next days, maybe I can help you out with your addon

Yes, his post-rework power is really unhealthy for the game.

Back in 2021 I was against the idea of nerfing him because I knew it wouldn't fix his actual issues, like the fact he is boring to play and is missing his identity, but he really couldn't be allowed to remain the powerhouse he was. Just wish they had gone for the "dework", instead of leaving him in a terrible state for years.

All good mate!

Jesus was that me 10 months ago? How did you have the patience to listen to my crap? Lots of talking out of my rear there, but at least one thing was useful xD

I wasn't around during the years Freddy was around so I don't truly know how he played/was played against... but now I look back at it the RNG of skillchecks is not really a big deal. I would prefer something different but for lack of a better idea, it's not really a problem.

However looking at the wiki, his old power seems to have been removed...

So for anyone wanting to know Freddy's original I thankfully copied it down, though I have a feeling it had some mistakes/is missing some details, so do please correct me:

Original Power

"Death won't accept him and thus he remains, a calamity, indisputable master of his victims' nightmares.

Dream Demon allows The Nightmare to pull Survivors into the Dream World."

Survivors who are awake:

• Do not see or hear The Nightmare.
• Once targeted by The Nightmare's Power, Survivors enter the Dream Transition for 7 seconds.
• During the Dream Transition they can see The Nightmare intermittently.
• When the Dream Transition has elapsed, the Survivor is pulled into the Dream World.

Once in the Dream World:

• Survivors' Auras are revealed to The Nightmare whenever they are outside of his Terror Radius.
• Survivors suffer an Action speed penalty of -50 %.
• Must find other non-sleeping Survivors to perform a Wake-up action to exit the Dream World
• Failed Skill Checks can wake up the Survivor.
• Getting hooked wakes up the Survivor.

Original Power Trivia

• Terror Radius: 16 metres
• Lullaby: 24 meters
• Dream Transition duration: 7 seconds
• Power range: 10 metres
• Power cast movement speed penalty: <95% (3.95m/s)
• Dream World Action Speed penalty: -50%.
• Aura-Reveal delay: 1 second after leaving the Terror Radius
• Glimpse Minimum distance: 6 metres
• Glimpse Maximum distance: 24 metres

Update 1.8.1

• Nerf: increased the time Survivors must have left the Terror Radius for to have their Auras revealed from 1 second to 10 seconds.
• Nerf: increased the Terror Radius from 16 metres to 24 metres. This change was motivated by a desire to allow Survivors more room to manoeuvre around The Nightmare without having their Auras revealed for being outside his Terror Radius. This change brought the Terror Radius to the same range as his Lullaby.
• Nerf: increased the duration of the Movement Speed penalty after tagging a Survivor with Dream Demon from 1 second to 3 seconds. This change was motivated by a desire to allow Survivors to put more distance between themselves and The Nightmare before they fall asleep and become vulnerable to his attacks.
• Nerf: dying Survivors who are healed to the Injured State are automatically woken up.

Patch 1.8.2

• Quality of Life: increased the Movement Speed while casting Dream Demon from an unknown value to 95% (3.95m/s). This change was motivated by the Developers deeming the old penalty as too intense.

I used to think so, but you just miss a skillcheck and away the penalty goes as you come out of the dream… this was what made old Freddy pretty darned bad

You also need to remember that if you're not in the dream, Freddy can't injure you until he spends 7 seconds pulling you back into the Dream.

That said I do have concern about Hex builds in this regard. Considering Freddy can incapacitate a survivor by pulling them into the dream, and totems take 50% longer in the dream... I imagine a Hex Build with TotH, Undying, Devour Hope and Pentimento would be rather evil....

So you're well aware that original Freddy got a lot of complaints, that a lot of people really hated original Freddy, and he was nerfed because of the number of complaints?

What changes did you make to original Freddy, that you think are large enough for him to be accepted by the community?

The wiki didn't remove the old power, it moved it to its own page: deadbydaylight.fandom.com/wiki/Dream_Demon

I'm guessing it'll do that for other killer powers too down the line.

That Freddy will lose the game. By pulling only a single person into the Dream World, that Freddy would deprive himself of the slowdown, and aura reading. Besides, he lacks a chase ability because his kit is not meant to be used that way.

This is the same as playing Singularity and only using your power against a single survivor. A good killer wouldn't do that. At best you get one survivor.

Edit:

How will an awake survivor know where to run, to avoid being pulled into the dream?

By paying attention to the lullaby, which is heard by awake survivors.

That seems a bit excessive.

Dracula and Spirit have powers that can be used in chase. Freddy doesn't, and he shouldn't have.

It isn't the same situation.

Can we add Chucky to this list too? Removed Manual Scamper as a whole to kill a playstyle that could've been 86'd by adding a 2 second delay between Manual Scamper and Slice and Dice. Annihilated half his add-ons in the process and the cooldown change makes him mostly reliant on his dash attack rather than encouraging trickery like before.

The reason why survivors automatically get pulled into the Dream World, is because that feels a lot more fair, than getting chased by an invisible killer with a non-directional lullaby. The dream pulling mechanic was frustrating and non-interactive for the survivor, and it will never ever come back in its original form.

If Freddy gets his dream pulling mechanic back, it would 100% need to be interactive on the survivor side, so survivors would feel like it's a fair mechanic. Invisible Freddy would need directional audio, and the dream pulling range would probably get shortened to grab range. That would allow some sort of chase to be involved, where both sides of the game could feel like they are participating.

Sadly more often than not the Reworks done are pretty bad. I am happy they are willing to fix it when they see it but more often than not it takes way too long to make the changes needed.

If BHVR reworked Freddy to be closer to his original version, but gave invisible Freddy directional audio, would you be happy with that compromise?