Game is getting worse for people who just want to have fun.
I have close to 1,200 hours on this game which I know is dwarfed by some peoples playtime, but that is still a pretty substantial amount of hours IMO. and I am getting more and more frustrated with an apparent total disregard for players that play this game because its marketed as a game where people encounter and run from killers that has no real place in uniform competitive play. its the only game that has such an expansive list of killers in the asymmetric genre and it dwarfs the other titles and has outlasted them all. like yes, I do love the slasher series and DBD remains the only setting that has managed to bring so many of them to life. I think the concept of running from killers as a game idea is and has been great, unfortunately what we have in the current game state is less of that than it ever was.
One by one cool parts of this game are being thrown out, when I started playing a long time ago I really liked myers because Halloween is my favorite of the slashers and at least at some level he felt to be himself in playstyle, I didn't really care about him being "Perfectly balanced" he was michael myers. but apparently he was too weak as a killer or too strong when given certain addons so they torched him entirely and now he's a soulless killer that doesn't even seem himself. there's almost no resemblance to the michael myers from Halloween in DBD lost to some bizarre drive to try and make a game perfectly suited to competitive play without a proper framework to even be competitive.
I am the kind of person that just throws perks on that don't require much of a niche or driven gameplay style [Vigil, Lithe, Dance With Me, Fixated] and things in this vein and I do the objective and help teammates where I can. The game is fun with this mindset, someone is going to try to kill us and we have to survive this scenario is, as I said a compelling concept. what It has become is.. not that. its people who are furious they cannot get a high enough kill rate for their own liking or people on both sides going out of their way to BM, no clear direction in game besides Do Gens and Hold W away from killers.
what kills me most is that its a constant balance war. Circle of Healing is too strong, it has to be nerfed, Pain res is too strong, nerf it… Please do something about this thing or that thing thats annoying. Perks are ruining this game. I would rather zero perks and a fun experience than a constant forced meta that is seeing perks that are actually fine gutted to being unusable or niche value compared to what they were. it was Circle, then it was Sprint Burst, DH, DS, ETC ETC and now its Vigil… i am tired of that being the focus. who CARES if one perk is stronger than another or one killer is stronger than another. why has this game become that and not the embodiment of a slasher/survival video game? even after all these years and all these licenses killers feel like a drag to even go against, and survivors are either horrible or great with almost nobody in between, one bad survivor ruins a whole matches chances, one bad chase and 5 gens pop… the whole "This and that isnt balanced we need to alter pallet amount and slugging and tunneling, etc" is killing this game. Yeah the entire current gameplay loop is toxic. if a good SWF is playing against an average killer it feels like driving nails through your brain, if a good killer is playing against an average SWF its a stomp, if a good killer and a good SWF are matched is the only time this game remains "Competitive" otherwise it almost never is, solo queue is usually a stomp, survivor feels soulless and samey, perks are getting thrashed one by one, the original gameplay loop is getting voided by newer killers with powers made to void the entire point of loops existing.
There's just so much that could be great about this game, I would rather a total stop in the release of new content until they take a step back and actually look at how bad the all around experience has become and fix it. Maybe I just want to play a game that doesn't exist… but DBD remains the only consistently surviving title in Asymmetrical Horror, its just a shame it's a nightmare to play anymore. I just want the feeling of a slasher scenario that has to be survived through teamwork and ingenuity, instead its got nothing to do with that and everything to do with some bizarrely conjured PvP mentality when there's no rank to compete for and no listed winrate just a kill rate and escape rate. the game rewards you more for mixing it up than actually playing it to "win".
Comments
Who's fun do we base the game off? Bully squads? New survivors? Comp killer? Low teir killer? Everyone's fun is different and the best way to make the game fun for the most people is to balance the game. Its not fun to play dbd when you like ghost face because hes just so weak your always stressed and its not fun for survivors seeing the same 5 good killers over and over again if we can balance the game the ghost face player can have more fun and thw survivors can see more killers to have more fun. You have to remember there is another person on the other side and it seems both sides seem to forget that.
Focusing on the glaring problems with core gameplay which benefit everyone is a better strategy for this game than trying to consistently please vocal minorities and then repeating the process over and over again of questionable change directly into outrage. Killer gameplay is stale, survivor gameplay is stale. the game is stale. I purposefully left this post outside of the survivor sided/killer sided various arguments because I am trying to drive the point of there's no reason for DBD to be so uniform for a game that is marketed from the outset as non-uniform. I explicitly listed Myers, however, because I used to love old myers, I do not care if he was objectively weaker than high tier killers at all, because I think capturing who a killer (or survivor is for that matter) in this game is far more important than whether they can get kills efficient enough in a linear sense.
The game isn't big enough for a "win" based on individual basis. what I mean by that is basically if you play a game like Sea of Thieves its this huge open world game where PvP is an option both competitively or casually, so is just hanging around with people or sailing and fishing, amongst endless other things, that is a game engineered for people to "decide what winning is" DBD claims this but doesn't have this. you win when you escape for survivor and you win when you kill the survivors as the killer, that is what "Win/Lose" has come to mean for the community. so my problem is that Behaviour has decided to fence ride instead of choosing what this game is supposed to be. If the game is supposed to be competitive then where is proper matchmaking and rankings and literally anything else that comes with a competitive game? if the game is supposed to be casual why are they endorsing strategies that make casual players who play for fun and not to win every time angry.
I would personally rather play and lose a match as survivor where I end up dying but nobody is tunneled or slugged than I would play the same game but people are tunneled out and slugged, I would personally rather play a killer game where I play more closely to how that killer should play based on who they are drawn from and lose rather than picking the best perks and playing obnoxiously so that I get a 4k. but that's just me. the problem with fence sitting is that Behaviour is trying to capture these two playergroups both into one which is by extension causing an extremely toxic environment. Tunneling and Slugging ARE bad for the game if the game is to be played with the sense of a continually flowing slasher experience rather than a competitive match where stomping your opponent(s) into the floor is more preferable than a game that sees both parties enjoy it is what Behaviour is trying to achieve (equally true of bully squads, these players from the outset are of the mind to abuse the killer rather than play the game in a way that both sides can engage in and have fun). but if the game IS supposed to be played purely competitively and it really is all about stomping whoever you're against when possible then Behaviour needs to go all in on that and make the experience reflect that. there are currently no ranks, there is no valid MMR, solo queue is a nightmare, there isn't even proper communication (although I know a chatwheel is coming soon)
So to determine "Who's Fun" they are even trying to appeal to, Behaviour needs to take clear steps to move the game in that direction because all I see is that comp killers are pretty unhappy across the board, comp survivors are pretty mad across the board, and nobody anywhere or in between is particularly happy with almost any change that is made. I play a lot of DOTA 2 and when patches come out people are obviously dissapointed when their favorite characters are nerfed but its nothing like DBD, people act like they are entitled to a power trip and that goes for both survivors and killers. that's the core of the reason behind this post, I loathe it, I want the game to be less toxic and more enjoyable for everyone and it feels like the first step to that is admitting it really does need a direction or its just going to keep bleeding players, and as new players come in retention will be lower because at this point the learning curve is incredibly high for a game like this and you are severely punished whether playing survivor or killer by a wacky MMR putting you against people who are just better and will stomp you.
Completely agree.
I really wonder if people have dealt with Broken stuff when they say that "balance makes the game boring". Have anyone faced a Old Starstruck Nurse with aura reveal? Or a Spirit with Mother's Daughter Ring + Amulet? Old Medkits + Botany? Old Dead Hard? Prime Ghoul?
Most of the things that are not in the game anymore are gone for a reason. If they didn't balance the game then we really would see what "unfun" is.
I think you misunderstood the point I am making, I am not implying that there should never be a balance or a change made to the game. I am saying that It has reached a stale point of people complaining about one change or another regardless of what the devs push forward and I would like to see the Devs be decisive and vocal about what kind of game DBD will be going forward. I believe there's plenty of room for some unbalance in DBD because it just isn't setup to be hardcore competitive, but that doesn't mean that there should just be a whole bunch of nonsense either. It's just that it feels like we get very little in the way of actual gameplay expansion and that plays into the general feeling of frustration a lot of people (myself included) are voicing.
I will also add the following because it is probably the most relevant problem in the game right now: I have played between 15 and 20 games after 2v8 left and its immediately an oppressive difference. a hard tunnel in about 80% of these games, and this is the result of exactly the problem that this game has, everyone is too worried about whether this or that perk is perfectly tuned (they aren't, and will likely never be) while the gameplay loop is skull crushingly bad. most of the tunneling is coming from P100 Killers too, P100 Myers Tunnel, Ace quits but doesn't DC, Just stands there at basement hook, game is ruined. Jasons face camping on purpose with power and making sure to hit a survivor who goes to unhook the person being tunneled and then immediately going for the tunneled person again, Legion defending the hook from the beginning and just knife spamming with power anyone who goes for an unhook. It's like incredible almost how oppressive and negative the feeling is after playing into this over and over and over and all we get back is "working as intended" P100 Artist earlier as well, Hard Tunnel from the outset, using birds as a way to hit people immediately after a rescue and then running down the person they want to tunnel.
Genuinely how is this good for the game? Nobody wants this experience (except the ones doing it to other people), at this point Behaviour needs to add a Forfeit function (which just about every competitive game has by the way) and I think the Forfeit numbers against a hard tunneling killer would Immediately speak for themselves.
Why would the following be appealing to somebody new coming to the game: Queue for a game, mess up a skill check or walk into the killer by accident, get caught immediately due to lacking game knowledge, get hooked, get taken off of hook immediately, killer returns (Not your fault your teammate came to divebomb the hook), you get chased again, hooked again immediately, happens again… okay maybe thats just a bad game, load into another one… happens again (everyone says it's your fault for being the weakest link), decide to stick it out anyway, learn a little more about the game, teammates are crouch walking around the map, you get put on hook, nobody is doing gens, people are hiding in lockers and crouch walking at 5-4 gens, why? they don't want to hang on a hook only to get taken off and run down in 15 seconds and go right back onto the same hook. "Skill Issue" (apparently) and its just over and over and over again. even if you play at mid level MMR after playing for a long time but preferring fun builds as opposed to what's strongest its relentless, just denial of peoples ability to play the game they want to play…
I've been playing DbD for many years now and imo a lot of fun from the game has been deleted from the game. A lot of the the fun stuff was beyond broken but that was part of the charm, and generally that stuff encouraged killer-survivor interactions. As killer if you managed to beat a squad of insta-heal medkits you felt great after, even though the survivors often weren't trying that hard to win because they wanted to insta-pick their teammate in the killer's face. OG Dead Hard was stupid broken but damn was it fun to use and outplay, at least until everyone started DHing for distance rather than interacting with the killer using it. Old prayer beads Spirit was something on the other side that was insanely broken where you could get multiple grabs off generators every match, although it wasn't much fun getting grabbed this way. 5 blink Nurse was terrifying but the fatigue she got if she whiffed was insanely punishing, but you felt like an ascended being if she failed to down you. Trapper on old Haddonfield with traps that could not be disarmed. Of course there was Sky Billy which was broken but just lead to fun for everyone involved.
The problem is all that fun has been deleted from DbD and still nothing has been added to DbD to replace that fun. DbD seems so formulaic now. Do your gens, get chased, downed and hooked, do your quests repeat. Chase, down and hook survivors, locate next survivor, repeat. Back in the day most games were exciting, now they are much less so. Chases aren't as interesting now that there are more pallets but paired with weaker loops.
I've become really jaded. I keep doing the events, rifts and collecting the stuff but it all just feels like a grind, hoping that one day the fun will return.
I get what you mean. I did an extrapolation to explain why balancing is important.
When you've said "room for some unbalance in DBD" i disagree. This game won't be perfectly balanced ever, but it doesn't mean the devs shouldn't aim to balance the experience as much as they can. Keeping broken stuff will just make everyone experience worse.
There is a current discourse on this community that we should have "imbalance in favor of fun" but i hardly believe that this is said considering only one side. For example, Old Eruption was fun to use as anti-gen since it held the match for longer but it was far too unhealthy to maintain, specially with some killers; Old Undying would made totem builds fun because it turned hexes into a lottery, but it made survivor experience horrible - and Jason wasn't a thing when Undying released; Made For This was far too free and made some specific killers power pointless (Knight, Doctor), etc etc.
All i'm saying is that balance is something done to preserve both sides fun and trying to keep imbalanced things in favor of fun is the wrong move, specially considering the assymetrical nature of this game.
It's all very well saying the game should be balanced, but who exactly are BHVR balancing for? I sure as hell don't feel like they are balancing for casual Survivor players like myself any more. Looking at my escape rates for Sprint Burst (34%) and Vigil (36%), from my point of view these perks are perfectly balanced as they are. They don't need a nerf. I'm not even hitting the intended target of a 40% escape rate with either of these perks. Even MFT only got me to a 38% escape rate (pre-nerf numbers, since I barely use this perk these days).
I do think the game has become a lot more enjoyable (or balanced, if you perfer) for casual Killer players in recent years. With respawning hooks, customisable scratch marks, individual hook counters, multiple Killer buffs and some strong, easy to learn Killers added to the game (among other improvements), Killer is easier and more enjoyable now than it was when I first started playing 3 years ago. But it increasingly feels like improving the Killer experience has come at the expense of making the game quite a lot worse for casual Survivors.
The most frustrating thing about this push to "balance" the game is the fact that the content creators pushing so hard for nerfs to perks like Vigil and Sprint Burst already achieve kill rates in excess of 75%. They're overperfoming even with the current strength of the Vigil/SB combo. I'm convinced that no absurdly high kill rate would satisfy these voices in the community. They'll keep on calling for Survivor nerfs and BHVR, it seems, will keep listening to them.
These days I only play Survivor in events because getting to play around with some overpowered mechanic is the only time I feel I can get one over on the Killer. I'll still die in the majority of my Trails, but at least I'll have a fun moment or two in the match and I won't feel like the completely powerless punching bag that I do in my regular 1V4 games.
Average kill rates are around 60% and often lower than 60%, my kill rates are around 60%.
What's different on survivor side?, survivor constantly ask for nerfs like killers do like blight got nerfed, clouraphobia got nerfed and nowhere to hide got nerfed.
Survivors got massive buffs like the pallet density update and bhvr still adds pallets each update, vigil is insanely unhealthy for the game and sprintburst was a meta perk for 10 years and insanely strong against 4.4 killers so they needed the nerfs, you can use lithe instead of sprintburst and I personally think as a killer main that lithe is a fine perk not needing to get nerfed. Vigil now only affects exhaustion by only 30% but bhvr said it's a "nightmare to balance" and they are planning to buff it later.
Hyperfocus + stakeout + de ja vu or resilience is insanely strong currently so try using those if it's so hard for you.
The problem with survivors is that everything that is "fun" is typically just straight up broken, and anything designed to be fun for survivors ends up seeing less than 1% of play. Killers don't really have this problem as they have unique gameplay mechanics that cater to every type of player per each killer.
I really dont understand the new Myers hate. I have him p100 and played him long before the change. Even then i had a 80% winrate (pwyf-build). Im really interested why people dont like him anymore. Can you explain?
New Myers has an awful dash-bug, but if you take one addon he has the old exposed lunge. And with that he feels like a straight upgrade.
Mode changing: changing between T1 and T2 gives you more options. Personally old T1 felt not like Myers. Being forced to use it, being no threat for the survivor and if you make it to T2, you can never use T1 again.
Basekit buffs: better lunge, break and stun recovery is nice and feels like Movie Myers.
T3: i dont like that i cant 99% T3 anymore to use the stealth to get a free instadown. Jumpscares are kinda gone from his basekit.
Different playstyles: Mirror Myers is better. Higher movement speed and basekit lunge, i think. What kills him is the change to map offerings. But i still think map offerings are bad for the game. Mirror myers is more fun against friends anyway. Hearing them scream is the most fun personally. And tryharding with mirror on Lerys with proxy-camping was also a problem.
Tombstone myers was never my favourite. Iridescent was just a noob stomper. Just a power-fantasy and zero fun for the survivor. And yes, thats kinda movie-accurate, but wanting to play a game and winning with no effort, makes no sense to me. And against good survivor you get maybe one kill. Piece was really strong, but just another way to achieve a 3vs1 as quick as possible aka the same as tunneling. But is that really Myers identity?
The game has really shifted away from the slower, creative playstyles that used to define it. The loudest part of the community kept pushing for a speed‑focused meta, and Behaviour tuned the game around that feedback. Now everything feels like a rush with constant info perks, nonstop mobility, and matches that play out like a race instead of a horror game.
The old fun stuff like stealth, weird perk combos, and experimental killers pretty much got erased. What’s left is a shell of what the game used to be, with almost no room for the slower, more atmospheric styles that made DBD special.
It feels like the grind is getting worse and worse. Chasing new players off. I just wanted to play killer and it took me two million BP just to get one pink addon. Who the heck is designing this?
If average Kill rates are at 60% (or there abouts), that suggest we've already reached a pretty healthy balance already. Sadly, BHVR are not very forthcoming with breakdowns of individual Killer performances, so we're left guessing if every Killer is close to hitting that 60% target. Still, it seems like Killer is doing OK to me.
I didn't agree with The Blight 4.4 nerf. I didn't it make any difference to his most skilled players, it only harmed his pick rate with players who are more casual or still learning the power and I don't think that's the way to go. I'm not saying Killers never get nerfs, obviously they do. But I am saying that the direction of travel has been to buff Killer and improve the Killer experience overall. It's hard to think of a Killer that didn't get any recent buffs. Heck, even Pig got buffs. In contrast, we saw the first new Survivor item for years get nerfed right out of the gate. Strong Survivor perks don't stay strong for long enough to allow new ways of play to develop or challenge the current meta. That's what's different. Ironically, I only moved onto Sprint Burst after MFT got nerfed and now that in turn is being nerfed as well.
I think the pallet density update is not as much of a buff as some people make it out to be. Yeah, it is a buff because there are more pallets but lots of them are filler pallets or pallets that can be played as Killer. I'd argue it's only really made SWFs much stronger, who tend to co-ordinate for pallet saves more often (this almost never happens in my SoloQ games). Besides, in exchange for more pallets on the map we've had some main buildings and formerly strong set ups turned into death traps (e.g. Gas Heaven). So it's not all in the Survivor side's favour.
As for Vigil, it's been gutted so badly that it won't see much use in the future. Killing a perk entirely isn't healthy for the game either. I don't like Lithe but I think that will be on the chopping block next anyway. You might think Lithe is fine now, but I remember people saying the same about Sprint Burst not too long ago and look where we are now. Besides, SB isn't a magic bullet against 4.4 Killers, most have a ranged attack that can close the gap. I liked SB because I enjoyed the tension of working on a gen until the last moment. It made it feel safer to work on riskier gens, but it wasn't so strong that it could always get me out of trouble. Post-nerf, it won't be worth the perk slot imo and I'll just have to adjust my play style to pre-run anytime I see a Killer head in my direction. All very dull, but playing more cautiously is something I'll have to do in future without an exhaustion perk to fall back on.
I can't believe you'd suggest Hyper Focus + DeJa Vu + Stake Out + Resi as an alternative. What Killer wants to see more gen rush builds? Isn't that just swapping out one commonly complained about build for another? Gen rushing is such a boring way to play and I can't exactly do every gen by myself, anyway. That doesn't work in SoloQ.
But it isn't working. I could be outright rude about it and say "Behaviour has no idea how to balance anything" but I don't think thats very fair or true. I think the reality of it is actually that from the outset this game is not, and never was capable of being a streamlined competitive experience like LoL, DOTA, R6, Overwatch, ETC because its Marketed as Asymmetrical. It isn't only a 1v4, which is a unique and constant balance problem it is also a roster of killers who are not the same and don't measure up the same at all in most respects. so what you get is balance hell… If I try to play huntress and get Hawkins or RPD as the map when I am trying to learn the killer I will probably do worse, but if I get Coldwind or Ormond I will probably do better, Map VS Individual Killer VS Survivor success rates is already a balance nightmare, so are perks when you consider like Vigil right now people are arguing that it's too strong against Freddy and Clown because they rely on Hindered to gain distance.. Okay but on the flipside The Plague can totally ruin an entire build, items included for survivor players out of the gate with no warning… there's all of these moving parts that are impossible to balance because it isnt fair by design. the game was made with RNG heavily intertwined with it, RNG becomes much more of a balance issue when it isn't RNG that affects both sides equally.
That's why you can point to things that obviously changed for the better because it was so egregious that everyone knew it was bad for the game, but on less obvious issues, assuming they are even issues, there is going to be an overwhelmingly negative response because right now the gameplay loop is suffering badly as a rush to maintain a sort of competitive balance has outpaced what the game was designed for. people are forced from a formerly more wide open gameplay style that favored creativity into an attempted "Ranked" like gameplay where killers are running the best builds to find you as fast as possible and kill you immediately and lets face it, most survivor players are dying immediately unless you're in high MMR. It has by extension removed the feeling of DBD being a horror game, and most of the general ambience that originally came with a game like this and it has become no different than loading up the next match of Rainbow Six only without any real feeling of success whether you win or lose because there still is no established win or lose conditions and there is no ranked system and reasonably nothing to work forward to except scoring bloodpoints which becomes irrelevant to long time players.
This is why I believe Behaviour needs to just stop trying to make this game "always fair" 2v8 is NOT balanced, and most people do not care, they have fun playing killer with their friends or running around playing as survivor because the same old monotony of "Someones being tunneled, now we have to sit on gens and get them last minute and its going to be a slow 3v1 where the killer doesn't chase me in earnest he just defends a hook over and over until we all die or escape without much validating interaction" Why not make the killers more themselves as opposed to worrying about if they can play pallets to proper standards all of the time, that was my point about myers, I used to love him, I hate his rework and don't play him anymore. I would rather an F tier killer that feels like a faithful recreation of who they should be than an A tier killer thats optimized around kill rate.
I will also add that "balance" has accounted for the remaining prevalence of strategies (for both killers and survivors) that SUCK to deal with, and nobody likes them. Nobody likes tunneling, its immediately a game ruining experience so much so that people get cussed out and berated in post game over it almost every time, Nobody likes being slugged all game, if its going to be a twins game (rare as they are) and Its just going to be a game of get slugged and stood on while someone else gets slugged with viktor, nobody wants to play that game, people DC every time. and on the flipside, No Killer player wants to get hit by head on 300 times and flashbanged in the face over and over again while survivors neglect the primary objective to make the killers day worse. but these things aren't "too out of balance" to get behaviours notice so they continue to ruin games and I think a LOT of people are tired of it.
I don't mean to say that nothing good at all came from the rework, I think there are some good changes for sure but its pretty undebatable that he doesn't at all feel like michael myers, the stalk is barely relevant and extremely easy to get and doesn't require a different playstyle than just walking people down from the moment the match starts when Myers has ALWAYS been a building force in the movies. I like Myers from Halloween, and because Myers from DBD isn't at all a convincing version of that Myers, I don't have any interesting in playing as him, and absolutely hate going against him.
this is what I am saying, years ago when I started playing I was hopeful that DBD would continue to be creative and expand to become something able to better bring to life these horror giants but instead its balance and efficiency hell, I don't care how well Michael Myers measures up to The Blight in Kill rate, I care how much Michael Myers measures up to Michael Myers from Halloween. I don't care about balance to the point of being angry when someone gets perk value when I play either survivor or killer so long as the match is fun. I never have tunneled or slugged except when its common sense to do so (people who won't ditch the idea of a flashlight save or hook sabo, etc) and Have always enjoyed the theme of the game over the competition but the Theme is dying and its getting less compelling to play, but I want badly for it to return to that feeling of being a horror slasher setting over a reskinned PvP comp game that doesn't measure up to any real comp games.
"I would like to see the Devs be decisive and vocal about what kind of game DBD will be going forward"
They used to be like that. I don't know when it changed, but they used to update things as they wanted and just let people ######### about it. That's not to say they didn't adjust according to feedback, but they'd have an idea about the direction they wanted to take the game and they'd take it. Somewhere along the line they stopped making the hard decisions themselves and just decided to be led.
Yeah, I am hopeful with the upcoming release of Halloween that it will give them some solid competition (although most asymm games tend to fall away largely because of lack of diverse options) and things to think about… there are several ideas in that game that are extremely beneficial to the Asymm genre like keeping people involved throughout the game even as it shifts towards the survivors losing. In DBD I just see awesome concept characters reduced to statbots at the end of the day… I get that at some point its a different game and not DBD anymore but I don't even think that it's necessary for the exit objective to be the same… Why wouldn't the matches be more designed around the killer who survivors are stepping in to face? Why are survivors no more than perks…
I remember a while ago when they did a "why do you main one survivor and not the others" survey, and it seemed to totally ignore the fact that they're all the same… there's actually no reason to play more than one survivor once you have unlocked the perks… you don't even need to play them to unlock the perks. at least Killers offer a bit of a switchup in gameplay… If you get tired of Bubba then play Deathslinger, or Oni, or whoever and the playstyle will be at least somewhat different but play Fan Favorite characters from various horror settings and its just the same thing with a different skin. further, you're almost incentivized to play only one survivor… the bloodweb is extremely disrespectful of peoples time and why would I switch my survivor when all of my items are on one?
Why isn't there anything Unique about playing Ash VS Quentin? Why doesn't Laurie bring anything unique to the table? you could say "yeah they have unique perks" but they don't and you can use them on anyone and most of them aren't worth using anyway…
DBD has the unique ability to mesh these settings together to create something great, and for all of the problems the game has now it still has something special… Hopefully we will see more of a shift to a revitalization of the entire game rather than continuous balance hell and a slow degradation of the individuality of the very characters and setting that make this game so standout.