Killer (and the game in general) is still insufferable 10 years in
Killer is in a simple permanent loop: Everything that works gets nerfed, you must pay to win on the latest not-nerfed content and everything else is screwed. The average survivor is insanely powerful compared to the average killer, with some specific paid killers being hilariously strong (And of course, nurse).
Survivors have literally absurd amounts of chase-prolonging, ways to punish you, and of course SWF continues to be a problem the devs will never face (Just put an emote wheel for info and voice-chat in the game and balance it around that…), as far as I can see, maps haven't gotten any better (pallet density is still absurd), problems with the game (like flashlight spam) are only countered specifically by a perk despite how ubiquitous they are. Every time survivors get a W, killers get 1% less than they had last time. Hey, at least you went overboard on anti-tunnelling, totally not addressing the symptom instead of the underlying issue that many killers are forced to tunnel to keep their kill-rates up.
Tried playing again after 4 or 5 years away, the monetisation is crazy (Silent Hill DLC where every quote is about Silent Hill 2 but James is a $15 paid cosmetic on top of buying the DLC's character that isn't even from SH2…), there's a million too many ways for survivors to duke you whilst every single perk I saw back when I played has been nerfed into the ground. Every single thing killers have as an option is "Yeah this was good but we've made it exceptionally mediocre, oh also you can't stack it with another perk despite them all being mediocre because we added diminishing returns".
You can tell the newer killers are still in their "Pay and you're more OP" phase. Houndmaster and Singularity are near unstoppable (Singularity can literally put surveillance on the chests that counter his powers, and houndmaster has joined pre-rework Billy as being god-tier if not around dense obstacles. Killers are absolutely p2w when used by an average player.
You still don't show the MMR system (assuming it even works), won't show if a match was SWF even at the end once it's over (We just get to see people knowing when to come help or when one person knows you're flashlight immune and suddenly all the other flashlight players never use theirs ever again), and you don't even have a meaningful graphics settings menu yet. It's been 10 years, there's no excuses beyond "We just really couldn't be bothered doing that / That's inconvenient."
Comments
Both sides are misreable to play as right now. Lets not pretend its just the killers who suffer. The only thing fun right now in dbd is using the quit game option menu.
Why is the player count at an all-time high then?
They're actively in a sharp decline and the 24-hour peak is less than half of the all-time peak.
the most requested licensed killer ever got added to the game. Pretty sure that played a huge part in that.