SWF Debuff Suggestion and Discussion Thread

Meroko

The following is my suggestion for SWF changes.

Before I talk about it, I want to mention that I am a player on both sides of the game. I play Killer and Survivor at an even 50/50 and I have participated in many SWF games, where I've used communications. I've also gone against it, so my input is as valid as the next.

I put quite a bit of thought into this, and honestly I haven't read much of the forums personally, so if I've repeated or mentioned something already discussed, please forgive me, it wasn't intentional. I'm just trying to throw out my own ideas that came into mind and look for tweaks and discussion regarding it.

The numbers and percentages are just placeholder and are just thrown out there to give you the general idea. I would love civil discussion on this, and your ideas as well. Please be proactive to the discussion, try not to attack anyone or anything like that. The goal of this is to try and come up with ideas that developers can take account of. This isn't a debate about killer vs. survivor, it's about making the game more fun for BOTH sides of the game.

My suggestion is as follows:

SWF Debuff - When entering Survive With Friends, a small message will display that says something along the lines of "Playing Survive with Friends incurs a 20% base reduction (at two players) to certain action speeds such as generator repairs and healing. The percentage increases by 10% for each additional survivor in the SWF group for a maximum of 40%. Bloodpoints for this mode are increased by 100/150/200%"

Notes: The SWF Debuff gives players a "hard mode" but at an increased reward for each player. Once this is implemented and tested on PTB, the developers can balance around the number specifics. SWF's overall participation shouldn't suffer since there is still something to work for. You as a group are challenged more to work together, and you get rewarded for doing so.

From the killer perspective, this makes the game a much more enjoyable experience. Killers have an actual fighting chance, won't have to play as toxic. There would be less tunneling and patrol camping. Killers would be incentivized to actually play the game more fairly. all SWF actually get rewarded for playing a harder version of the game.

This won't 100% eliminate toxicity on either side, but in my opinion this could definitely alleviate a lot of it.

So what about killer rewards? - The game is already harder for a killer facing a SWF group, even with the debuff, so the debuff should only apply to the SWF side of the game, but the reward should not be the same since SWF are actually having to encounter a more difficult side to the game. The Bloodpoint increase would still apply to killers but at a reduced rate. For the sake of numbers, we'll say 50% increased bloodpoints if in a SWF match, no matter the size of the group. The killer will get a notification when the game actually starts (not in the lobby) that their blood point gain is increased due to SWF. The reason it would be a flat increase to killer and not based on the number of SWF in the group is explained below

Why not show the killer SWF is active in the lobby? - The killer is NOT notified of which survivors are participating in SWF, if it's all of them, or just two or three, but they will know a SWF group is in play maybe with an icon or logo somewhere in the game UI.

The reason for this is so they do not tunnel or focus down a player as retaliation or an attempt to make the game easier on them. That specific knowledge in my opinion would be too unfair, but just knowing in general it's in play would be fine

The only reason I wouldn't notify a killer of this before the match starts, is because of game dodging. It would be too much of a nightmare for game queues.

So yeah, sorry about the long wall of text. I'd love to see more input and ideas in this thread, just to see where everyone's head is at. Certainly would be good if we can get developers eyes on this and other threads regarding this. Let me know what you guys think.