This should be a red flag to developers (Freddy OP!!!)
thesuicidefox
Member Posts: 8,227
The fact that Freddy has a relatively low pick rate but a SIGNIFICANTLY higher kill rate should be a major red flag to BHVR that he is too strong.
IDC what you want to say about Nurse or Spirit, but Freddy is objectively one of if not the strongest killers in the game and there are multiple reasons for it.
I must preface this with...
- I was an old Freddy main at rank 1. I played him without Ruin or NOED and was still quite effective with him. However I would acknowledge that he was, at the time, the weakest killer in the game.
- I play new Freddy regularly at rank 1 and I find him to be hands down the most oppressive killer to play. Consistently. Like I win games regularly with 3 or more gens left, AND I rarely have to camp or tunnel.
So why is Freddy so strong?
First is his teleport. He has the best map pressure in the game because he can instantly go to the gen you are working on. No other killer can do this, save for Demo and Hag but they have to set up first which greatly reduces their pressure. Every single gen slowing or gen tracking perk is borderline God tier on Freddy. BBQ, DIscordance, Surveillance, Tinkerer, Thana, Ruin, Pop (especially Pop). Yes these are good perks for many killers, but on Freddy they become exponentially more powerful.
Second is his snares. He has an anti-chase that is very similar to Clown. Say what you want about Clown, but a good Clown will catch you CRAZY fast. Freddy is just a slightly weaker Clown in this aspect, as he can't plant a puddle in front of you during a chase. It is damn near impossible to run a good Freddy for very long around most loops just as it can be a good Clown. This is a minor issue however.
Third is Dream World, or rather the fact it automatically gets Oblivious. This means that he gets a free BT counter, or any perk requiring a terror radius. Sure this hurts him too, but the perks he can't use aren't that great anyway (Unnerving, Insidious??? LOL). Infectious is probably the only TR perk that is good, but guess what? IT STILL WORKS FOR HIM! Yep try it, Infectious will make dreaming survivors scream. Oblivious doesn't stop that for some reason but it negates a lot of good survivor perks.
Fourth is stealth. He has built in semi-stealth due to him being INVISIBLE to awake survivors outside his TR and even sometimes in his TR. This means he can get really close to you while awake without you having a reasonable way to react. He is basically a Wraith.
Finally, he is the ONLY killer in the game with add-ons that affect gen speeds. This is the big one. He has 3 add-ons that do this, and while they were nerfed that is not good enough. They shouldn't exist, period. Don't get me wrong, at first I loved them because my main tactic with old Freddy was to use range add-ons and tracking perks like Surveillance and Nurse's to permanently keep survivors asleep for that sweet 50% action penalty. It was a strong tactic, however since I had to put them to sleep myself it was fair since I had to be active to get that reward. But now you just fall asleep in 60 seconds OR when he hits you. You are going to be asleep more than 50% of the game easily, and usually without any action on the killer's part. Basically he just gets this stuff for free by equipping an add-on.
Let's summarize... Freddy is basically a combination of Hag, Wraith, and Clown with built in BT counter and passive slow down that no other killer has access too.
My entire point here is that Freddy just has WAY WAY too much in his base kit, and that is why he has such a significantly higher kill rate compared to other killers. You can say "don't draw conclusions from data alone" remember that I told you I play new Freddy at rank 1 and my experience is that he is oppressive. Furthermore, as survivor, a good Freddy with a strong slow down build is one of the most difficult killers to beat. Literally your only chance against a killer like this is to run in a 4 man SWF, which anyone who plays this game could tell you is already broken, but I digress.
So what is the solution? How do we fix this? I'm not just making this post to complain, I'm making it to offer a suggestion. Now I have been writing down my ideas for changes to Dead By Daylight I would like to see that I believe would improve the game. It's a lot, I will just copy and paste what I wrote for Freddy. Let's take a look...
NIGHTMARE
- Survivors no longer passively fall asleep at the start of the game and do not see the sleep clock until they are hit and put into the Dream State at least once.
- Dream Snare radius reduced by 20%.
- Oblivious removed from Dream World.
- Nightmare can be always seen by awake survivors within 32m.
- Remove stacking penalty on Snap Clap wake up action.
- Cat Block, Z Block, Pill Bottle, Paint Thinner, Outdoor Rope, Jump Rope, and Swing Chains reworked.
- Cat Block inflicts Haemorrhage on sleeping survivors. Healthy survivors that are asleep will bleed.
- Z Block inflicts Mangled on injured survivors that are asleep and blocks the aura of their dream clock outside of 32m.
- Pill Bottle makes the Nightmare; disappear intermittently to awake survivors; invisible to sleeping survivors outside of 32m.
- Paint Thinner reveals the survivor's aura for 4 seconds upon falling asleep.
- Outdoor Rope greatly increases interaction time for each successive Snap Clap.
- Jump Rope causes the survivor's dream clock to move to a new location every 30 seconds.
- Swing Chains causes Dream World to inflict the Oblivious status effect.
- Garden Rake and Prototype Claws Dream Tokens reduced to 8.
- Prototype Claws aura reading removed. Prototype Claws inflict Hindered for 10 seconds on survivors that interact with Dream Pallets.
- Kid's Drawing adds 5 Dream Tokens.
So let's unpack this.
The first line is actually a slight nerf and buff to Freddy, as one of his only drawbacks is that you KNOW it's a Freddy right when the game starts. This would give some leeway at the start of the game for survivors, and also give Freddy more element of surprise opportunities. Though of course once he hits someone they would see, but the point is he would have a bit more spook at the start. Once you hit them the clock appears and it functions as normal.
Making Dream Snares smaller means it would take better planning in their use. I feel like I can just spam them without care and they do more than what I need them to do. At least require me to use to skill here.
Next. we basically take away all the "fluff" from Freddy's base kit. The goal is to shift most of them to his add-ons. Pill Bottle is a bad add-on IMO, it does nothing for him. This new version would do something for him. Notice how for most of these things while I offer to take away something from his base kit and move it to an add-on, I'm actually buffing it in the process because it now requires an add-on and therefore can be a tad better.
This all opens up new builds for Freddy. I enjoy add-ons that change how a killer functions over straight up making something they do faster or stronger. It leads to more interesting emergent gameplay.
The dream pallet add-ons I feel are redundant. You don't need 3 of them, hell 1 is enough. So let's take Paint Thinner and do something else with it, what I suggest is reminiscent of old Freddy and I would enjoy this as both killer and survivor. I only kept 2 dream pallet add-ons because I honestly couldn't think of another thing for Claws to do.
All the slow down add-ons are gone and in it's place are add-ons that are still really good but not stupid to play against. Giving Oblivious in Dream World as an add-on is acceptable. Base kit it is not.
Finally we make his lame BP add-on a bit better. This is just to offset the fact his snares just got worse.
These are just my suggestions, obviously they won't be implemented but something like this would be a good change for Freddy. If you guys have suggestions you are free to put them here.
Be aware I'm not looking to argue with anyone about whether Freddy is too strong or not. He very much is and the chart above confirms it. We need to discuss ways to fix this.
Comments
He very much is and the chart above confirms it.
Didn't BHVR say not to draw any conclusions based on the chart?
It's not a conclusion, it's a confirmation. I already knew he was too strong without any data, just by playing as/against him at rank 1. The chart merely confirms what I've been saying for a while now.
Hence I provide a detail breakdown of what exactly makes him strong. Unlike the usual "Spirit not counter play what can you do?" nonsense that is IMO is just theory crafting, what I present here is none of that. This information comes from experience, and while it is subjective, the fact I can articulate EXACTLY what it is about him that is too strong and I can identify very specific and simple solutions gives more weight to my argument.
Hmm, according to the stats we should buff Nurse a lot
Nerf Pig I guess?
Figures. This place is such an echo chamber. Why do I even bother.
Except I'm not purely looking at the chart and drawing that conclusions.
I ALREADY MADE THE CONCLUSIONS FROM EXPERIENCE. The chart merely confirms it.
But whatever you guys can put your thumb up each other's posts instead of engaging in a reasonable conversation.
take all of their stats with a plate of salt, unless you also want to make the argument that Nurse is the worst killer in the game and Pig is 2nd best.
It's not a conclusion, it's a confirmation.
What's the difference?
Conclusion: I look at the chart and go "Oh hey Freddy too good plz nerf".
Confirmation: I already came to the conclusion Freddy was too strong based on other evidence, the chart just further validates my claims.
You lost me as you said: "he's basically a wraith".
there's written very large "ALL RANKS". this alone tells us how worthless are stats, especially considering, as already said, how nurse results as the worst killer in the game and pig one of the strongest, along with [BAD WORD] doctor, like why are we even considering this again?
Great, threads about balance based of kill rates are already appearing, just great.
I admit the thread is well done but I don't like the fact that the foundation for it are kill rates which only show that feddy is strong and easy to play so that even bad/mediocre players can dominate your average solo survivors very effectively and consistently with him unlike with nurse.
Freddy can probably use some small number nerfs but his kit is overall fine, there's nothing wrong with having strong killer who's basic and easy to play. I wish people stopped focusing on nerfing good killers and focused more on buffing the weak ones so that we have more diversity.
In both cases, you are using the chart to validate a claim being made, which is what BHVR is actively discouraging.
Because Wraith is invisible. Freddy is invisible to awake survivors outside his TR, so you can neither here or see him. On top of that, he disappears at random from 32-16m for awake survivors. This means in order to see him coming you need to be asleep. And in fact his stealth at that range is superior to Wraith because you can still kinda see Wraith. You can't see him at all until he gets within 32m, at which point you have much less time to react that for literally any other killer as you could see potentially them coming BEFORE they got within 32m.
No I'm using the chart to support something I have other evidence. What they are saying is to not purely look at the chart and draw a conclusion. EG. don't sit there and say "Nurse needs a buff". However if there was precedent for that claim, then you would use this data to support your claim. That's literally what they are doing on the back end. Coming up with a hypothesis about something in the game, looking at what is going on, then using data to validate the hypothesis and then make a change. Don't tell me they don't, I worked in game UX for a time this is exactly what gets done.
Using data to validate a claim is not the same as using data to draw a conclusion.
I’m not sure what to think or feel after the QandA tbh.
It’s ok for Nurse and Blight to be low on stats because they’re harder to play, but it’s not ok for Freddy and Spirit to have high stats because they’re harder to play against.
They always tell us take the stats with a grain of salt and not to draw conclusions from them, but then say Myers doesn’t need looking at because his stats show he is doing fine.
OoO is fine according to stats but the bigger picture is that only 1 person in a team needs it lowering its pick rate, and even if the OoO dies often; the stats for the other 3 aren’t considered at the same time.
It’s so confusing and contradicting, I wish it was clearer as it seems like picking and choosing when things like stats matter, and when it’s ok or not for something to require skill to play or play against.
Yet for a previous stat release, where they gave both all ranks and red ranks, Freddy was STILL on the top for both.
This consistency suggests that yes, Freddy is indeed too strong.
"People aren't agreeing with me. ECHO CHAMBER!!!!"
seriously dude?
Freddy isn't OP, he's just easy.
If you play Freddy, are reasonably skilled, and are against a team that is possible to beat, you're going to beat them.
I feel the only thing they should rework about him is his teleport and BT counter. No killer should be able to teleport to survivors' objective so easily. Countering BT is also stupid, just give him terror radius even while asleep.
Just look at the people replying. You literally ALL have the same opinions on the game. Anything that suggests a killer is too good every single one of you are the first to jump in and say no. I see it all the time. This place is 100% killer biased, you can't dare say a bad thing about killers here. Take a step back and read you will realize.
For the record, yes some places like reddit are heavily survivor biased.
Furthermore I even acknowledge that yes, survivors in a 4 man SWF are the strongest thing in the game. But no one cares for that, they see "Freddy OP" in the title and IMMEDIATELY take the bait.
Hook. Line. Sinker.
yes, without any informations about the realms, the map layouts, the perk loadouts, how rank is counted (if every player in the lobby have to be red rank, if ranking up after the game counts in this calculation), we can totally draw conclusions from this chart.
BHVR discourages people from using that data to go "Aha! This chart confirms XYZ!" because this data does not take a number of factors into account. They've said this time and time again whenever they put up stats like this and in fact have even questioned whether or not they should keep putting up these stats for this exact reason.
Freddy is M1 killer that can be destroyed if you are not in the dream world. I'm not saying he is weak, but he isn't op either, difference between him and Clown is that Clown can slow you down anytime if you are in range of his bottles, Freddy can't, plus you can see when he is placing snares so you can change the loop, plus if you are awake he has no power over you.
I'm not saying he is OP, I put that in the title to get attention.
He is too strong. This I'm saying from experience AS and AGAINST him.
If you don't believe he can be super oppressive play with any gen tracking perk of choice, Ruin, Undying, Pop, Swing Chains, and Jump Rope. You will 4k almost every game. The only survivors that will actually be a challenge for you are 4 man SWF.
Being awake doesn't stop his gen teleport. It reduces the recharge but the difference is minimal. It also means that he can more easily sneak up on you are I point out with his built in stealth. All it takes is 1 hit to put you to sleep, and if he can get close enough either because of teleport or stealth he should easily be able to get that first hit on you, easily negating any effort you put in to stay awake.
I'll be the first one to say that Freddy is way too strong for how easy he is too play. He has too many tools that are similar (and in some cases, better) than what other Killers have. I just don't like the use of the stats as literally the first thing you see in this thread. I have bad memories of all the internet fights I had with people trying to use the last set of stats to ask for nerfs or disregarding other's opinions because they didn't line up with said stats.
Do I think Freddy needs a nerf? Hell yes.
No, according to the stats, nurse is one of the few almost balanced killers who's kill rate is around 50%, which is what "balance" is
He still has power over you though.
The title says "red flag" as in "please investigate this with more scrutiny". I'm not claiming it as definitive proof, but with the very detail breakdown I gave of why he is so strong PLUS the chart I have a good argument. You even agree he needs to be toned down, so why come into the thread to disagree with me? If it's true does it matter where it comes from?
They know he is the strongest killer in the game. They do plan on looking at him later. Just they don't want to touch him because he was recently changed in a big way. In addition to that - the fact that the only reason he is so strong is because he has exactly the tools the killer needs to do well in this game. They need to use him as a mold to buff ALL the other killers to be on the same playing field as Freddy.
Probably gonna blow your mind that Freddy is actually balanced, and you're just bad at the game. All the killers in the game should be as strong as Freddy, and have the same utility he does. Gap closer, anti-looping, can quickly traverse the map, and force survivors to ignore primary objectives. These are all things Killers need as essentials.
Your cry for another m1 easy to loop killer is just going to be ignored by the devs.
Swing chains and jump rope aren't even that good, look at the numbers.