I think the problem is not actually the roles themselves, but rather modern hosts' lack of understanding of WHAT the roles are supposed to be doing, how they wind up interacting with other disruptives/lower-speed roles, and most importantly, the void that currently exists where "an understanding of how to make a functional priority system for a high-disruptive game" should be.
Let's take IPL's interpretation of bus driver vs redirector:
Bus Driver: outsped almost every other disruptive, could not be blocked, could disrupt every other disruptive, is useful defensively (though it carries some risk) and offensively (to circumvent defenses) based on knowing a target of value and/or non-value
Redirector: was outsped by almost every other disruptive, could not disrupt the others, could only redirect lower-speed, is useful defensively if you know a protective role to redirect (that does not outspeed it, such as self-BG) to your target of value, is not very useful non-lethal offensively because so few disruptives can be redirected by it, is only circumstantially useful lethally because you need to know/guess who is killing
Now, what are the problems here:
1. Bus driver is very versatile, particularly when used offensively to bypass protection
2. Bus driver is also very strong, since nothing can disrupt it
3. Redirector is more situational without info on what you are redirecting
4. Redirector is slower
5. If Redirector outspeeds and targets Bus driver, what happens? Does USER1 become the Redirector's redirection target, does USER2, does the bus driver "only" target the redirected target and thus is essentially hooked because half of a bus isn't going anywhere fast? What is the interaction between these two disruptives?
6. If bus driver can self target, are they able to bypass redirector targeting them if RD and BD are the same speed tier?
I think the issue that all 3 bigs have encountered is that hosts are just plain not spending enough time in the weeds of their roles. All 3 games were rushed out in their finished state. All 3 needed more time. People want more and more disruptives and flashy roles that can MAKE BIG PLAYS without ever considering what these roles' niches SHOULD be, and how to make them be balanced within that niche.
If bus driver is meant to bypass bodyguards to let teams kill around protection, or to prevent someone from being inspected, THEN it should not be impervious to other disruptives.
If redirector is meant to allow a team with well-placed info roles to abuse the opposing role they found, THEN it must outspeed other disruptives.
Is safeguard meant to disrupt bodyguard, or is it meant to block hooks and info roles?
When you cannot decide what safeguard is meant to do in your game, you get a crappy, bloated setup where safeguard doesn't actually do much, is bypassed by too many things, there are too many disruptives because you think SG needs more things to block since you have too many ways around it, and the person who is the SG feels like they couldn't help their team.
The other big problem is people just don't understand how to make a priority system for these high-disruptive games. Generic "tiers" do not work, unless there is an established tiebreaker like IPL's game where the triangle dictated who won speed ties. Someone ALWAYS has to go first. ALWAYS. They cannot operate at the same speed as each other without you planning out PRE-GAME to avoid influencing the outcome who will win the tie.
For example:
Mekkah is a hooker. He hooks Blazade. Blazade is a redirector. He redirects Mekkah to Yeti.
What happens? Is Blazade hooked, or is Mekkah redirected and Yeti is hooked?
If you cannot answer this off the top of your head about your game, do not post your signups. You are not ready.
If your answer is "they are both disruptives they operate at the same speed" well no, they darn well don't, because if Blazade is the kill carrier, either he's hooked by Mekkah and his kill fails, or Yeti is the one hooked, and Blazade kills someone. Which is it? This isn't a decision you should be making midgame.
There is also the matter of "the act of bus driving" and "being bus driven" operating on the same speed. When Sam did this in MM3, everyone was upset. His logic was that BD must always act before hooker if it's meant to swap hook targets. The problem was, this made "the act of bus driving" immune to other disruptives, and set it to be OP. I propose that roles don't operate on such a strict system, but instead the two separate pieces operate at different speeds.
"The act of bus driving" is the slowest disruptive. Everything else in the game can stop it, if the BD is targeted by one.
"Being bus driven" outspeeds the other disruptives. Everything else in the game is subject to targeting the swapped users.
Is BD still OP? Is it still broken? It's pretty darn easy to counter it now. Maybe the team uses their SG on the BD so it can't be disrupted. Well, then the SG is sunk on the BD and not on anyone else, so you've forced another role to be used to secure the drive.
The tier system works in a NOC where the only two disruptives are town BD no self-target and mafia hooker, because either town BD is hooked or they aren't. When you overload your game with disruptives because you want more more more and this team needs a flashy role and that team needs something to counteract it, and now the third team needs something cool too, that system falls apart. Because again, one of those roles needs to execute first.
Part of designing and balancing your game is, in fact, charting out the priority system. Maybe the village's hooker is faster than the mafia's hooker, but the mafia's redirector is faster than the village's in exchange. Maybe it works in a triangle like IPL's. Maybe two disruptives disrupting each other simply cancels out, and both users fail.
One other thing is like Mekkah said, the roles like Jumpluff and Ninjask/Blaziken where they were just unstoppable killers and there was nothing anyone could do about them. Bad design. There should always be something TO do about roles like this. What is the counterplay? What is a team meant to do? Boosting above a BG or a bus drive or a jailkeep/kidnap should require investment by the other team. There can be a prio booster who boosts for the following night, but if they are hooked, or the boost-target is SGed, the boost fails. Now, you need to choose your boost target better, or SG your booster, requiring investment to pierce the BG.
There's also a bad emphasis on modifying roles to "make mine better" by simply... compounding power onto the role. For instance, people used to grumble about full inspectors being too good. In one game, I made three roles (I think these were the inspectors' sanities, anyway, maybe it was 1 sane 1 insane, it's been a while. Point is they did not receive 100% truthful results):
1. A paranoid inspector
2. A naive inspector
3. A role that, when used on one of the above 2, gave them sane results and allowed them to pierce godfather/dickens type roles
The village is still able to get accurate information to scumhunt with, but perhaps the inspectors will need to take a moment to figure out what their sanity is before just merrily voting or trusting someone. And, there's a villager who instead of being vanilla has a low-power but impactful role. Nobody respected the Bamboozle Insurance at the time but I maintain it was a far better solution to modifying standard roles than some takes are, which just push the role in a less interactive and more frustrating direction.
tl;dr I think that hosts need to slow tf down with rushing their large games out and consider first:
1. What do I want this role to actually do in my game?
2. How does this role interact with others in my game, mainly opposing roles that counter it, or it should counter?
3. What happens if X targets Y, and Y targets X? Do I know whose action goes first?
4. Do I have every single role assigned a priority? Note that stuff like info roles doesn't really need a separate speed for each individual roles, but for roles that do interact with each other in the night, you should know which team's X will act first
5. Do I want this role to be unblockable, and have I budgeted the power properly FOR it to lack counterplay? Does its team have a weakness elsewhere, is it a one-shot and will be a vanilla once blown, or will people just find it cheap?
6. Do I just plain have too many dang disruptives in my game and I am sabotaging myself by overloading my game with conflicting roles? 40 or 50 roles is a lot to fill, but are they best filled by letting 17 mafia members hook in one night or giving every team a two-target jailkeeper that also inspects?
