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Balance Discussion: Limiting SWF
I had this random idea and I wanted to just hear the communities opinion and to be open minded to each others points of view on it.
What if we limited SWF to 2 players per group and left SWFs with 4 players to a kill your friends. It seems to me that a lot of balance problems with the game revolve around 4 top tier survivors going against a single killer because survivors have such a high skill cap, aswell as the amount of communication survivors have with one another.
For example, if in a 4 man survive with friends one person is using object of obsession and communicates where the killer is at all times then its 4 people constantly knowing where they are while the killer can only see one of them. This level of communication gives a big edge.
In my own personal experience as queueing in a SWF with just me and one of my friends who are decent players at the game I've felt like the games were more fun and balanced. (We also don't communicate with mics). We are both red ranks. I could tell the killers had more fun playing against a balanced team and we all got an equal amount of points.
To conclude I also think if this change were made it would make sense to balance other aspects aswell to adapt to this dynamic, considering it essentially puts a skill cap on a survivor team.
I dont feel insanely biased about this being implemented I was just curious how other people feel and wanted to put my personal experience out there.
Comments
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restrict people from playing with their friends and this game dies. ur idea is cool but its unrealistic for a video game thats marginally competitive. look at leauge for example, ranks are split between duo/full squad because its competitive. as of right now dbd is not so it just cant happen
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As much as people think that this game is supposed to be competitive ranked is a match making tool nothing more and DBD is a party game in my opinion. You kill SWF you kill DBD sadly :/
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Yes!!! This would work perfectly
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We should also have a mode called Kill With your friend, so you can team up with another killer to kill a swf team. Wouldn't that be cool?
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People want to play with friends, if they can’t, they’ll play a different game.
As far as I’m concerned the best route is increasing non verbal coms for Solo survivors to better match SWF, then balance the game accordingly.
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I would argue that this game is borderline competitive and has a lot of competitive aspects to it when it comes to skilled survivors.
Party games are generally meant to to be just 4 people playing against each other in a friendly way rather than against one person. While this game isnt centered around competition, when people treat it that way a lot of killers dont have fun playing the game.
I also want you to consider that I don't want the entire concept of SWF to be scrapped, and KYF is always an option for people who want a 4-man SWF. That way people who want a challenge can have it and those who want a casual game with 2-man max can play regular games.
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@thatguyinktown Honestly I dont know. I just thought having less strong team compositions would make the game a lot more enjoyable for people who play casually rather than having the chance of being stressed or having to put forth insane amounts of effort to achieve their goal of winning.
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I would actually like them to just buff solo to the SWF level of play... because then the team is free to create strong killers...
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im 100% solo player but controlling numbers of swf is just being selfish and stupid
because they just tied up with friends theres nothing wrong
just nerf their repair speed 10% at 2,3,4 members
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What? NO!
That's even worse! By a lot!
You can't stop the issues because the SWF button isn't the cause of the issues. So tying a solution to the button won't solve anything no matter how convoluted it may be.
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why you think like that? yes it is, swf is op button right now
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No.
Communication is what is OP. You do not need to click the SWF button to get it and clicking the SWF button does not itself give you comms.
You can reque until you are with your friends
You can send the other Survivors a discord invite
You can start a voice chat over steam with the other Survivors
The only reason why no one does these things right now is that there would be no point since it's just strictly better to use SWF if you want comms anyways. However if the SWF button starts giving direct mechanical disadvantages to those that click it the players that want to take advantage of comms will just not use the SWF button to get there.
The only thing the debuff would do is make things more annoying for everyone, since now you have more lobby dodgers and random invites from people using these strats while the people who play casually and would still use SWF anyways are being punished for no reason.
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Or we can just buff solo players and not have to deal with SWF at all.
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thats good idea, but there is no way you can have equal lvl when you compare playing solo with random that randomly die in 5 sec to a wraith or DC because he got downed 1st or just lick walls for 5min (it happens in every single rank) to playing with someone that youre pretty much sure will give killer good chase, will unhook you, wont afk in map corner
most of the time when i play swf it is without comms (im ex surv main that nowadays plays only killer except when i see some friends online) ingame because playing solo is worst experience ever and i play a lot of self sandbag wraith (with add on that makes me retain TR while cloacked, insidius that doesnt work on wraith, beast of prey, distressing) and its still way more enjoyable than soloQ surv
and there is other side when on soloQ you meet 3 other good survs (which is rare nowadays) and killers are calling us SWF just because 4 good survs met each other in same que and know how teamwork works (3 survs with bond is enough to make killer think youre SWF on voicecoms)
and there is other side youre calling SWF as sacred power lvl but in reality those survs are joking around, sandbaging eachother, meming and youre not even sure if they are on voicecoms(at least on PC) its just feeling i can count on them, they wont camp hatch when 1 gen and 2 survs left, he will unhook me and we will try to make last gen (but random will camp hatch) and often killer gets 4k because we're altruistic not just doing gens while watching "random" die on hook
i would rather make other Que where rank doesnt matter, you can have 4swf, and other for sweaty ... i mean "competitive" players that yet didnt realised rank doesnt matter or ttv/YT for "R1" content with solo/max duo surv
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knowing each perks and hex is op and steam chat while hooked also can make different
i never had a teammates in swf not using "any" communication and i had casual players in my team and still they done better with swf format without any cost in game, because they knew im gonna chase first with OoO and they ran borrowed time even before i joined their team, and i knew they using borrowed time and that made major different
if swf members promised something like map offerings theres even bigger gap between solos
your negate without logics didn't made improved to more ideal but just annoying
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And then buff killers.
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Yes, please buff my baby weak killers ?
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@NoFace @CrowFoxy These arent bad suggestions either and I hadn't considered buffing both sides which may be more feasible. Making every match a SWF but giving killers a buff to match that is an interesting concept.
Coordination in this game is really strong and it makes certain perks obsolete which gives survivors additional slots. For example, being able to tell your teammates where you are and if someones coming to save you from a hook makes all survivor aura reading perks useless (bond, empathy, kindred) which are good perks, especially for solo queue.
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Id rather buff solo players to swf level and then buff all the killers around swf. I dont think downgrading will do something good.
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Nnnnn- nooooo… I think you killers can do it. So, you can just suck it up and try your best… It’s not IMPOSSIBLE to beat a SWF squad.
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Another idea is that you could also make it so that all survivors in the lobby see each others perks.
Most SWF know what what friend has what perks, so making Solos see eachother's won't buff swf much but will benefit the solos players more.
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None of that is actually tied to the SWF button.
It's all from voice chat, which while associated with SWF is not itself SWF. You can get all of those OP effects without the button and it's equally OP as if you used the button.
You could even test this yourself fairly easily:
Step 1: Play a Solo game normally. This is your control
Step 2: Play a SWF game, however once you've invited them immediately cut off all communication until the game is over. This is the strength of SWF once we've removed comms. The benefit you get from this is the actual effect of the button and nothing else.
Step 3: Play a Solo game, however invite the other players into a voice chat of some kind. Keep dodging until they actually join and are talking. This is the power of comms with the SWF variable removed.
Step 4: Repeat steps 1-3 for a larger sample size because just 1 game each isn't good data. Preferably get multiple people doing this for as much data as possible.
Step 5: Compare your in game results between scenarios.
I predict you will do best in the Solo games with comms. This is because SWF is not itself what is OP but the comms that you often use SWF to streamline. You take that out and you're a glorified solo group. And the otherway around applies too, if you give comms to solo's then they may as well be SWF.
Since you can get comms with or without SWF, that means people who use SWF right now will just use Solo que with comms anyways for the same effect thus bypassing whatever system you are using to punish SWF.
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Absolutely this. SWF is the best thing to happen to DBD, without it you wouldn't have enough players to keep the game going. Yeah it really sucks going up against some tactical commandos on comms, but without them there's no game.
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solo players can't chat and most swf players did wheres your logic boy please not tell me your imagination its different with reality
swf with random join? who does that to get a single match with friends
do you think they accept waste so many times to get every matches lol
thats not even happen in a system, why you bring minor uncontrollable situation to defend your non logical story?
prevents "common" balance at least as i said, matchmaking is not a god as you think lol
you are not talking in common sense, why excuse things if its not even realistic
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I suppose the one advantage of making a SWF group match to a killer based on the SWF member with highest rank is I have played some challenging matches recently. It would be rare for a rank 15 to go up against a rank 6 killer but its happened, and I was quite impressed I got a black pip instead of instant demise. A close friend is currently rank 8 to my rank 14 and I find those matches can be stressful. But it does force me to learn to play better. That sort of rank difference is very unforgiving to simple mistakes.
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No people would leave lobbies to find the other 2 swf members.
You can not change that, you have to make balance adjustments for survivors as a whole any diffrence and people will pick that up and search each other resulting in awful lobby wait times.
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I wish the devs would balance the game around SFW but instead they act like it doesn't exist because it originally wasn't supposed to.
I don't see why the killer doesn't at least get more BP for since it's very obviously a big advantage for survivors. If they just did that id be happy.
As far as playing SWF honestly i feel like it makes the less interesting side even less interesting since the better you get the faster the games goes. I really don't get why full SWF groups bring all meta perks and toolboxes because i mean you have to try to lose at that point. I haven't played with friends i got into the game in awhile because actually doing the objective is boring. Obviously it's not the same for everybody (though i kind of think a lot of people just like "winning") but what me and all my friends want is duo killers. I know the fear in the community is that there aren't enough players but i think that it would actually grow the game because i know at least 5 people alone that don't play but would if it had duo killers. Plus it would just be fan service galore having 2 killers come together.
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There should NEVER be a punishment for wanting to play together with your friends, but there needs to be an incentive for other players to play with/against SWF groups.
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Add a solo queue for killers...
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They need all the help they can get honestly, a good killer can shred a SWF group, a good killer can do a lot of things but they're very rare to run into, besides most "squads" are just a group of friends goofing around and having fun, if the killer can't deal with that they have bigger issues.
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Maybe in brown - purple. I'd say 70% of SWF in red ranks are super sweaty try hard.
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Solo players can absolutely chat, they just need 3rd party assistance to do so. SWF need 3rd party assistance as well.
Anyways why would I talk in terms of common sense when common sense is incredibly unreliable? Lots of wrong things are common sense because they fail to account for uncommon scenarios or unintuitive consequences.
Regardless though I'm not talking hypotheticals when I say people can use means other than the SWF button to get voice chat. People straight up did that before SWF was a thing. No one does it now because it's pointless, but if SWF is altered to punish those who use it then it won't be pointless anymore.
Even now it's really not that hard to get into a lobby with someone you know via the solo que. And again even if it wasn't I can tell whoever I'm matched with to join a discord server in the pre-game chat to the same effect.
BHVR can't stop these things, even if they removed the exit lobby button and the pregame chat there are workarounds to both.
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@NuclearBurrito pls dont make me chat with 14y old child that thinks killer is on him while im chased or some 4Head that doesnt speak english but thinks everybody in the world is speaking his language, its easy for killers to say "just give them voicecoms and ballance around it" + do you think blendette will ever listen to you?
they wont add voicechat for survs that will just kill game or 80% will have that turned off but game will just be harder because it would be ballanced around thing that you wont use
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The main problem is the current player base. I hate playing against 4-man squad with voicecoms but if devs do this ... it may kill DbD 😥
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I didn't suggest that.
I want more mechanical methods of information sharing such as action icons for a similar result but without relying on everyone else to play along.
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DBD can definitely go towards a competitive route it's just up to the devs to support the idea and work with the community to make a set of rules for a competitive side. Just look at smash it's not a traditional fighting game and it has a large casual and competitive side both sides can exist and both parties can have fun but in thier own setting, mixing the two will cause one side to have an unfun time (casual player) while the other side will just demolish the other (competitive players).
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Do that and the game will instantly lose the majority of its playerbase. Great idea.
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I Strongly Disagree, communication between players is not OP, what's OP is a pre made squad. This has been proven time and time with games that have voice chat enabled during gameplay between solos and you'd be surprised how many don't communicate and if they do they're not as coordinated or efficient as a pre made.
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Direct restrictions and/or handicaps applied to SWF parties themselves will never happen, and shouldn't. As said people can just lobby hop as solos to circumvent it if they really want to, or more than likely just quit the game if they play it to play with their 2-3 other friends.
Only changes with a non-zero chance of happening are changes to survivor in general which is why the "buff solo + killers" and "give survivors more ways to share information" ideas are often brought up. Neither way is perfect and they have their own issues, and personally I believe some sort of Deathgarden-style context sensitive button to send simple messages like "I'm on a gen", "Killer is chasing me" and maybe some preset messages like "I'm going for the unhook" or "The killer is near me, be careful if you try to save" would massively lessen the efficiency gap between players using VOIP and the ones that aren't using it. Obviously this should come with buffs to killers that need it, especially when it comes to mobility and map control/pressure.
Even then it's not perfect. SWF also has the advantage of knowing eachother's strengths, weaknesses and playstyles, which can't be truly emulated in any way. But you can't perfectly emulate it, and it would be an incredibly bad idea and a waste of resources to truly try to remove/restrict it (removing SWF, trying to block VOIP applications), so it's really the only paths I can see the devs consider whatsoever.
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That idea is equivalent to killing the game. It's a GAME and playing with friends is part of it's lifeblood. I can't tell you how many people I've heard say that they won't play solo survivor whatsoever. If you want the game to die, this is a great idea. Another good idea is to just stop being so sweaty about something that doesn't matter once you turn it off. I play against swf all the time. It's fine. If this is ever enacted, prepare for killer lobbies to take forever. Devs have already displayed that they have no issue with voice chat. Fog Whisperers do it all the time to the knowledge of devs. Just like the perk Better together proves that gen rushing is a legitimate strategy.
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Yea, I don't think you can do much. You could however allow killers the option to turn the feature off or limit it to duos. At least above a certain rank. Maybe rank 10 and up you can mute anything above a duo?
I'm sure plenty of killers wouldn't care but it would give some the chance to not get destroyed by simply hitting ready. I know I have fun as killer until I run into a few good SWFs. But I'm a survivor main and usually only hit killer up for a change.
I actually play solo and have done SWF a little bit but find it super annoying comms-wise. Getting a play by play is just bothersome. But I'm sure there are plenty of people that are opposite and only play with friends.
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Can't deny that SWF breaks the game the same way we can't deny that SWF has helped the game gain its popularity. Without SWF the game probably wouldn't have gotten off as well as it did.
The only real way to balance out the mess that SWF brought into the game is by acknowledging that IS an easy mode that allow friends to share information together that someone who plays alone has to load multiple loadouts worth of perks for something they can get for free using a third party program. Not to mention the amount of killer perks and tactics that can get easily called out and made null by giving each other this information.
This makes games very swinggy and dramatic enough between swf and none swf mtces.
The game's made strive to reduce the gap between the two by "buffing" one survivor perk a year lol, when a more easy solution would just to let everyone try out to MANUALLY OP-IN to voice coms. Off by default, but you can turn on if you'd like. Like in Destiny 2. Games would be more consistent between the two and we can actually make perks work for both sides. Instead of it being useless for the killer if survivor has them.
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Then limit them, this idea that having perks built in is balanced is ridiculous. In a swf you have every survivor information perk built in, and this means you have 4 second chance perks or game clutch perks. Imagine if killers had built in bbq, whispers, discordance or nurses just because of how they qued up.
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3-4 person SWF groups are only a problem if they are truly all good, coordinated, and smart on when to make plays. These are honestly rare. A lot of times there is at least one weak link that's either low rank or boosted by SWF in the group. All of which often makes it easy with ultra altruistic plays.
So, no, limiting SWF would not help balance the game much, and would hurt player base.
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how about you stop crying amd get good
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well how game can be competitive with:
1 bad ranking system when on red rank are so bad players (but i guess youre red rank and youre happy with free wins vs living bots)
2 no casual Que (you cant make 100% playerbase to play competitive) because its fair when 4 soloQ survs without items(or with brown stuff) are playing vs killer with green+ add ons (or/with mori)
3 map rng, map can rekt you, or just wins you a game, you can have 7 pallets on coal tower or 13, in most competitive games(and almost every big) map rng isnt existing or is small. (but if you make same maps all the time, this game will became boring for casual players, because they will know every single route etc)
4 competitive 1vs4 hmmm
5 this game is party game (to have fun with friends) xd
6 servers are LuL, too many hits are hitting and missing because of servers (on P2P it was issue too but a little bit smaller)
7 this game will die if it goes into esport
solve every single thing then we can talk
"just make rules" jokes on you
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There is a problem with this. Not every SWF teams are sweaty. Even if they are full of meta perks, some of the SWF teams are not even good.
What we need is:
Map reworks so the killer won't be stuck in infinites anymore (a change in the killer shack coudl be good, perhaps removing the pallet and the window there).
Rework or buff/nerf some meta perks like "Adrenaline".
Voice comms are not what makes SWF good, is knowing each other, their strenghts, their personal skills is what makes it great.
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@poli That's a really toxic and unnecessary comment. This is a discussion not a heated argument. I don't play a lot of killer games, it's just my experience as a survivor and seeing videos of people playing against highly coordinated SWFs that make the game unbalanced and unfun.
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Sadly it’s pointless. If the killer is good enough. Then SWF no matter how big the team. Doesn’t stand a chance.
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