What are your hot takes?

I am not.

Actual facecamping was removed when Freddy released (October of 2017) and actual infinite loops no longer existed outside of Haddonfield with Balance Landing.

I'm sure that was part of the difference, but the downsides you're calling out really aren't that bad in my opinion. Face camping affected exactly one survivor and often only came into play in the endgame, where killers can still face camp if they really want to. Every survivor suffers the whole game against most of the recently released killers, though. True infinites were BS for killer, but only some maps even had them, and if you knew about them you could just refuse to chase on those tiles; it's not too different than refusing to chase in a main building with a completed gen, say, just even more of a hard "NO".

Back then, these issues were not that big of a deal, because people were not sweating to win at all costs. There was no MMR, rank rewards, etc., so unless you were grinding for the Rank 1 achievements, rank was completely meaningless, and you would get a much wider variety of skill in your teammates and your opponents. That random difference in skill made more of a difference in day-to-day games than aspects of the game high-level survivors could theoretically (but infrequently in practice) exploit.

Even back then kill rates were reasonably high, probably in large part because survivors were not sweating! I used to love to do totems and chests in part precisely because I didn't feel like I was likely to be dominated in a chase. It was never optimal, but optimal play did not matter back then. Now it does, even if you don't want to be competitive, because of how many killers are dominant in the chase now; the only counterplay is to rush gens. Back then, there was enough inherent room for counterplay in the chase that you didn't need to glue yourself to a generator to play a fun match. And I thought that was more fun on both sides; less stress as survivor, more memes, etc. and less despair when you have a long chase as killer because the survivors are less likely to be absolutely slamming gens.

In terms of the sheer tools at the disposal of each side, the game was very survivor sided at launch and has gradually gotten less so over time, yet kill rates have always been similar. This shows up in the gameplay, as now against many killers survivors need to pound gens or they'll get 4k'd. This isn't particularly fun for either side.

I love touching bones.

👁️👄👁️

Survivors are where a lot of the hostility in the game originates. And I say this as someone who plays a lot of survivor. I'll put it this way, I've never gotten a hateful message from a killer the whole time I've played this game. What I have gotten is survivors who, even though I'm on a console and don't have the chat, will go out of their way to personally message me outside of the game. That difference, between how killers vs survivors act after the game, is indicative of some of the stuff that goes on IN game.

I've had teammates side with the killer to sandbag, which is a million times worse than literally anything a killer has ever done in game. After all, killers aren't my teammates and I don't expect them to be very nice. And I've seen teammates seemingly playing the game solely to taunt and follow the killer around, tea bag, etc. Truth be told, I suspect that some killers start the game playing normally, and eventually turn into slugging, camping sweatlords after too many run ins with teabagging, toxic flashlight clickers.

What makes DBD different than some other games is that it's divided into two sides, survivor and killer. But I think some people take the morality aspects of being survivor too seriously. It's not good vs evil, guys. It's a video game. With human beings who want to have a good experience on both sides.

Huntress is both the most fun killer to play AND the most fun to play against.

The only other killer I would put on par or (maybe slightly) higher would be playing against a Billy that only uses Chainsaw.