Developers' Thoughts on Tomes and SWF

knell

10/26/18 Developer Stream:

"I would say that it does affect our game design now... where we are not going to put in any designs that hinge on some survivors knowing something and other survivors don't. And now when we work on other mechanics, we always have to ask ourselves, how is this going to work for a solo group versus how is this going to work for a coordinated group, so that's the question we have to ask ourselves now. So we do keep this in mind these days."

8/1/19 Q&As:

"We have been keeping SWF in mind as we design new content to make sure that solo players aren't left behind, and we would like to revisit existing mechanics as well to make them more accessible to solo players."

Just to be clear, despite their mentions of 'game designs' and 'mechanics' above, both of these statements from DBD developers come in the context of when they were discussing game balance between solos, SWF, and killers. Given that 'The Archives' and 'Tomes' are an entirely different concept than game balance, their intentions behind the statements would not have applied to them. But the question is, should it be?

I'm curious as to whether the difference between solo players and SWF was discussed when coming up with the challenges for these new Tomes. As in, should it be easier for SWF to go through the challenges than for solo players? If so, WHY should it be easier for SWF to complete the challenges than solo players? Do you feel that challenges are fairly made for solo players who can't, or don't want to play with other players in comparison to SWF who can of course coordinate better? Since the only things that solos would have more difficulty are obtaining Lore parts and extra cosmetics (and has no consequence on the result of actual gameplays), do you believe it is justifiable to having different levels of difficulty between solos and SWF?

Of course, all of the above may not even apply if developers feel that there is absolutely no difference in the experience of solo players and SWF going through the Tome Challenges.

To keep this topic from being sidetracked, I'm going to go ahead and state that I'm not talking about how difficult the challenges are in and of themselves, but the differences of these challenges between solo players and SWF.

@Peanits

@Patricia

@not_Queen

Exerlin

I'm not sure if it's even possible to not make survivor challenges easier for SWF groups. Every single survivor challenge (other than maybe the self care one) can benefit from having people take more hits, not get chests, make sure you're on gens when they pop, ect...

shalo

It will always be easier with a SWF group, what the Devs can do is make sure you don't need a SWF group to complete any challenges.

Gravnos

SWF is always going to be easier/better than playing solo unless there's in game communication added. Communication is an important and useful tool in damn near everything.

We shouldn't want to delete SWF like people can call for. Instead make every game the equivalent to SWF by giving them in game voice chat and then rebalance some core mechanics like Gen time, change up hex totems and stop trying to balance against SWF and solo because that's a bonkers impossible task.