This should be a red flag to developers (Freddy OP!!!)
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
Bring back the old Freddy and improve that kit and playstyle.
Only thing that they need to change about him is BT not working when you're in the dream world. Everything else about him is fine.
So, we have one group saying hes fine, maybe needs a small tweak. And the other side screeching because HeS sO oPpReSsIvE OP PLZ NURF. And when questioned "I HAVE OTHER EVIDENCE!!!" But its all circumstancial. No details on items used against and survivor skill. Just that hes easy for you to play so hes op.
Survivor was easy for me to play and I sucked at survivor, should they be nerfed because its easy for me to do well as a low rank survivor?
Pretty sure the one that’s just red ranks is very similar with Freddy.
It irritates me how much people take "don't take the stats as law" to mean "saying anything that the stats agrees with is INSTANTLY FALSE."
They've shown us he has the highest kill rates both at all ranks, and at rank 1 only. That should be enough to show he's problematic.
Also almost everything OP said is true, he's a VERY low skill cap killer with VERY strong powers, plural. And on top of all of it he has basically no drawback that every other killer has built in. I honestly can't see how he made it through this rework without being 110 when he has cross-map mobility AND slows in a chase.
I feel like I'm the only person who has read your post properly and not instantly 'but muh killers' responded.
Forever Freddy builds still exist and are absolute cancer to go against. And drawing conclusions or not from these charts, it IS clear that killers do not perform as badly as this entire hilariously biased forum seems to think.
so you have anecdotal evidence, and stats that shouldn't be used to determine balance. ain't that such an open and shut case?
Pallets are ridiculous too, compare his pallets to doctor's. Doctor's pallets are still effective because a survivor might think there's a pallet but then it disappears, I still get survivors down thanks to illusionary pallets but with Freddy's pallets survivors have to interact with them which is ridiculous
The evidence not being brilliant doesn't mean that the opposite of what he's saying is true. Plus half the time the devs just say "don't draw conclusions from stats" because they don't want to be told how to make decision more than they already are, and adding that disclaimer gives them an instant free out on any conversation.
the evidence not being good, means what he's saying is not supported by good evidence, therefore shouldn't be viewed as such.
is that such a hard concept to grasp?
they say to not draw conclusions from the stats, because the stats do not take into consideration several variables that would need to be taken into account before they can be properly used to draw conclusions. again, is that such a hard concept to grasp?
If you watched that Q&A stream my question was the very first one that was answered. The one about updating/buffing Myers. The answer I was given was they looked at Mikey's stats and saw he was in the top half of performing killers. Just like on those charts. So based on that they don't feel he needs any changes to his base kit.
So why can they use those stats to make a judgement like that about Myers but not Freddy?
They have internal stats that give a much more detailed picture of how things are faring with regards to balance. It's not just "oh, he's got X kill percentage? He's fine."
They didn't mention any internal stats. The rationalization was Mikey is bringing home the kills based on his stats so he's in a good spot and doesn't need changes.
With the Nurse's stats they explained her high skill cap and how so many people try and fail with her because she is hard to learn. That's why her kill rate is so low. Especially for console players who make up the majority of the player base. That makes sense for her stats even though she is the strongest killer.
They offered no such insights into Mikey's stats when denying him a buff simply because the stats say he brings home a high kill rate. They also said his power is unique (so are most killers even the weak ones). They said they always get positive feedback about Mikey from the community. That I believe is true since most people seem to love playing as or against Mikey. Cannot say the same for Freddy.
The pattern comes from the PREVIOUS data dump where Freddy also had the highest kill rate by a wide margin, both in all ranks AND red ranks (there were 2 charts). This coupled with my experience playing as and against him I can very easily point out the problems, as my experience is pretty consistent with the data dumps.
The straight up fact is that Freddy has too much in his basekit. @TAG and @Weck can say "don't draw conclusions" all they want, they fail to understand, somehow, that such a statement does NOT mean the data is useless. They are strawmaning nothing else, and unless they have a counter point to my actual arguments they are just being spiteful.
Freddy OP ? how about SWF ?
I Use Freddy often since already P3.. But, If I Met SWF and they are using good communication + coordination. They still escape 3 or maybe 4 people, if I am not focus enough. and u said Freddy is OP?
How long u have been here ? Ever seen old Freddy, Buddy ?
To be honest after playing new Freddy a bunch I would have been fine with this. I could identify exactly what the problem was with old Freddy and give ideas how to make it better. Namely his biggest problem was that he couldn't do anything to you while you were awake. A simple solution to this would be to make the transition block interactions other than unhooking perhaps. Then he could force you off a gen or a totem and into a chase. I would also have kept the dream clocks that give you another way to wake up. Among some other small things, but these would be the big 2 that would make the biggest positive difference.
It kinda does, though. I'm not strawmanning at all because I am telling you what the devs are saying, and you are kinda just ignoring it. I'm not presenting a tangential argument and using that to refute your primary claim.
I told you a different way of looking at the stats, where you cannot read "freddy" is op and doing so would be silly.
but yeah...just keep living in this universe where people aren't giving you perfectly reasonable reasons as to why the stats are unreliable at best. totally not disingenuous of you
Those ARE the stats they are referring to, though. They're not just using this very basic chart that lacks a lot of factors as their measuring stick for balance.
You are strawmaning because you are focusing entirely on my presentation of a chart despite the fact I barely reference it in my points. Like continuously even when me or others have pointed out that "do not draw conclusions" is different than "the charts are meaningless". They are in a vacuum. They aren't when coupled with previous data and other evidence.
The mere fact you have been saying the same tired nonsense for 7 pages now without EVER actually talking about the topic just proves your goal is to strawman and derail the topic. IDGAF what the devs said, these charts have meaning when you can see a very clear pattern with Freddy (highest kill rate by a significant margin for all ranks AND red ranks previously).
Stop trying to derail the thread maybe actually address my arguments. You know full well what you are trying to do, and you keep repeating yourself as if that will make you right and completely negate my entire argument. News flash... it doesn't.
Saying "devs said blah" is not a perfectly good reason, especially when I can point to the previous data dump and demonstrate a clear pattern with Freddy. THAT IS THE RED FLAG. My argument in the OP was drawn from not the charts. You claim I am doing that when I am not. That is exactly what strawman is. You draw attention away from my actual argument to make the (false) accusation that I am drawing a conclusions solely from this one chart. Not once do either of you actually address my points or try to refute the evidence other than to say basically "this is completely inadmissible as evidence of anything because the devs said so".
This is your point of view so please explain it to me with some examples. What kind of internal factors are they neglecting to mention for Mikey when utilizing his kill stats as a reason to deny him a buff?
Yeh Freddy is way OP. If he had snares OR teleportation then it wouldn't be so bad but no other killer can do as much as he does. I find majority of Freddies sweaty anyways. Also that reach is unreal.
That's not strawmanning. I'm not using the chart bit to argue that your overall points regarding Freddy are wrong. I am saying the chart bit is not good evidence and that's it.
Just off the top of my head, Dc rates, perk builds, add-on usage, SWF, offerings, maps.
No the general public are trying to make this game competitive and want to be able to 1v1 the killer all the time. That's just not going to happen. It's not what the game was based around, and if you need that kind of competitiveness go play a different game.
They don't count dc matches when compiling these stats. They didn't mention perk builds, swf, offerings, maps etc when justifying Nurse's low kill rate. They just talked about her high skill cap which makes her hard to master.
So I don't believe any of those were factors.
Those have to be factors with regards to balancing because when determining whether something needs to be re-balanced, you need the context to figure out HOW it might need to be rebalanced.
Also, source on "They don't count dc matches when compiling these stats?"
While yes I agree he needs changes I wouldn’t base a lot of why off stats. Those same stats also say nurse needs buffs, ds+ub is fine, as well as OoO not being an issue in swf groups. One last thing is these could all be based off 1k games as we don’t know what the win condition is for these stats.
If those are significant factors then they would have mentioned them when justifying why a killer doesn't need a buff. Because just about every killer can be affected by all those factors. Michael is no different.
The devs said so. @Peanits @MandyTalk can confirm this. They never factor in dc matches when compiling in these stats.
"I'm not using the chart bit to argue that your overall points regarding Freddy are wrong."
Yes you are. You continuously default to this and have not ONCE actually addressed my argument. The fact you keep replying to me or anyone that challenges your false interpretation of the dev's statement just further demonstrates that. Saying it once would have been enough, but you keep bringing it up, despite me or anyone else pointing out that hey, actually there is something to this data as is correlates strongly with previous data, that should at least be enough for the devs to say to themselves "we should investigate this further".
"Just off the top of my head, Dc rates, perk builds, add-on usage, SWF, offerings, maps."
DC rates - First I think that DC's weren't included, IIRC they said that about previous charts, but even if it was that would just suggest there is a problem with the killer because lots of people don't want to play against them.
Perk builds - Irrelevant as we can assume this for other killers yet Freddy is still ahead by a sizeable margin. Plus when we DO consider perk builds, Freddy literally has one of the most oppressive builds in the game via Ruin, Undying, Thana, Sloppy, Swing Chains, and Jump Rope (which you don't even need all that to make it work you can swap out some stuff too).
Add-on usage - Again irrelevant but that's because the only add-ons worth using on Freddy are chains/ropes and paint brush. I bet if we looked at add-on usage for Freddy those add-ons would be clear and above all the others combined. I am positive of this.
SWF - Already said how a 4 man SWF is more broken than Freddy, literally no killer can compete against this. But if we just assume for a moment that all killers have equal numbers of SWF games then Freddy is still ahead.
Offerings - Again I remember them saying mori's didn't count this was just sacc's, but I could be wrong. Despite that, the only offerings that affect the game are mori's and maps.
Maps - Irrelevant because we are looking at an average.
We want to look at the WHOLE. Anyone can point to a super specific setup and say anything they want. "Wraith on Lery's with Ruin, Noed, silent bell, aura read while invis, Undying, and Sloppy is OP against solo players using adept perks." That's literally your argument right now. We can't look at specific types of games we have to look at the whole, and as such the chart is actually the best representation of the average Freddy performance. If his average performance is clearly above all other killers for 2 data dumps in a row, you seriously don't see anything wrong with that? Really? You are going to sit there and tell me that means nothing while saying that this exact specific setup does? It is illogical.
"Yes you are."
...no, I'm not. The reason I am not addressing your other arguments is that I don't take issue with your other arguments. Literally the only thing I take issue with is you going "See, the chart confirms I am right." The reason I keep bringing it up is that you are pushing back against that point specifically.
What if I told you that I am not against the notion that Freddy is too strong? What does that change as far as this argument I am having?
What I am saying is that those factors ARE looked into when discussing a Killer's given kill rates. If Michael is deemed to be in an acceptable position, then sure. But it ain't because of this one chart. It's because of far more specific and detailed data that they have to draw their conclusion from.
If they straight-up said that, then that's certainly fair and I'll concede that part.
"Literally the only thing I take issue with is you going "See, the chart confirms I am right." The reason I keep bringing it up is that you are pushing back against that point specifically."
The fact that it is consistent as it is WITH PREVIOUS DATA means that yes, it does confirm something. Couple with my experience and my points then it is very clear that the charts suggest something, that something being "Freddy is too strong".
You are fighting back to derail the thread and nothing else. Don't sit there and tell me otherwise there is literally no reason for you to reply as much as you do repeating the same statement that several of us now have pointed out is just flat out wrong.
No reasonable person would sit here and say "yea I agree with you but that chart means nothing".
No because they've said the exact same thing about the previous data for the same reason. Unreliable data matching up with previous unreliable data doesn't suddenly make both sets of data reliable.
I keep replying arguing about the same thing because you (and others) keep contesting the one thing that I take issue with. The fact that several people agree with you doesn't mean any more than the fact that several people agree with me.
The chart is not reliable data. I don't need to believe Freddy is strong, weak, balanced, or anything in between those things to believe that.
half of Freddy's kills are survivors DCing because they want a killer they can loop and slam gens out in 4 minutes.
Still can't believe that no one is talking about Pig's 2.88% pick rate in correlation to her HUGE 62.09% (!!!) kill rate!
genius idea. Wraith would be much stronger if you could only see his shimmer from within where his terror radius would be otherwise. Blood lodge would no longer be a DC map.
Again unreliable data is not the same as incomplete data. There is nothing unreliable about these charts, you just can't draw a conclusion EXCLUSIVELY from them is what the devs are saying. However if previous data lines up as does my experience then that should be enough to convince a reasonable person that Freddy is too strong.
I'm gonna go make some alt accounts to vote this up some more.
Mods I'm joking don't ban me.
Still can't believe you strawman this hard and still can't make an actual argument.
Also where is the other evidence to support your claim? You have none? Yea that's what the devs talk about when they say "don't draw conclusions from the chart." My conclusions were not drawn from the chart, the chart merely supports my conclusions.
This place is kind of the opposite of an echo chamber. Sometimes I see opinions so far-out and ridiculous I wonder if the OP has even played the game, or is just making conclusions based off their favorite stream or something.
Disagree. One can certainly make arguments over whether a character is balanced or not using evidence. The charts being presented are simply poor evidence and don't really help the point being made, regardless of what that point may be.
"Poor evidence" because the devs said "don't draw conclusions from the chart"? No sorry, the conclusions weren't drawn from the chart, the chart merely supports what I said.
If I said "Nurse is really hard to play, and the chart supports this" would that still be wrong?
the charts are completely unreliable. They don't take into account trolls, afks, DCs, wildly mismatched matchmaking, killers farming, killers giving hatch, etc. There's a reason the devs themselves said it was garbage data.
What do you mean?
I already said I played as and against Pig at red ranks and talked about her powers and add-ons in a previous post.
And first down hook suicides?
To which I say your arguments are incredibly weak and poorly thought out. I actually go into great detail. Not to mention I have a second set of charts to further support my claims. You also never made this claim previously, whereas I could go back and show you where I said Freddy is too strong before last week.
Again I came to the conclusions that Freddy was too strong on my own. My very consistent experience as/against him and then 2 sets of data is a lot more valid than your clearly facetious post.
1 variable accounted for, 14 more to go.
Which one would be safe to assume that all killers get relatively equal amounts of this stuff. It's not like Freddy gets more troll or AFK or bad MM more than some other killer. All things equal and he is still ahead.
Also they said they don't count DC's.
Thank you for this. Exactly what we have all been saying.
"A high kill rate does not mean there is a problem, it suggests we should look at it."
Which we have a previous set of data that correlates strongly with this one, and then all my arguments in the OP as to what is going on. All of which just further suggest there is a problem.
I can tell you from experience that Freddy DOES get more a significant amount more trolls, afks, and suicides. Same for other powerful killers. I experience survivors giving up frequently against killers like spirit, nurse, Freddy, nd pyramidhead. A lot of survivors just don't want to play against a killer with slowdown, so they let you hook them and then suicide so they can be onto the next match. I experience the same thing with legion frequently. Survivors dick around against "boring killers" so they can go bully a clown or something in the next match.