Solo Queue Survivor Shared Info

Jakeroo

Hey there!

I've got about 3k hours in this game, and all but maybe 2 hours of that are evenly split between killer and solo queue survivor. It strikes me as a weird balance: While plenty of SWFs are just some friends casually queueing up together, a fair chunk of them are really good survivors making the most of their comms and the lack of need for certain perks... IE, if you're a decent SWF you don't need kindred, bond, empathy, etc, and those valuable perk slots can go towards meta perks.

This is not a thread meant to complaint about SWF from the perspective of killer - it's not even really a thread to complain about SWF at all - it's just a few thoughts on the situation we seem to be in wherein there's a MASSIVE difference in the capabilities of SWF teams and solo queue, whether they're amazing survivors or just have 40 hours in the game.

I'd like to suggest a minor change that I think would dramatically improve the solo queue experience: Loadout visibility.

While survivors are in the lobby and by pressing escape during the game, survivors can see the perks, items, addons, and offerings they've selected to enter the game with. Obviously no information change would occur for the killer, as this would encourage last-second swapping even more than it currently is... This is just to help reduce the total lack of ability to coordinate among solo queue survivors. Just the ability to see who's bringing BT, DS, Unbreaka-Bill, Breakout, etc would be tremendously helpful without giving survivors a tremendous advantage... and these are all things you could ask about in the lobby... But the problem is that you have a very short amount of time to talk in the lobby before the match starts, and many people are AFK/on other windows while they wait for the match to start.

While this wouldn't catch solo queue up to SWF so they could be balanced together or provide all the benefits solo queue survivors often seem to need, it would likely be a start... the gentlest possible nudge down the path of improving the solo queue experience.

I do think, with time, that killers will need some kind of buff to compensate... After all, this can only help survivors... But I don't think it'll break the game to have it active for a few months and see how it settles down before figuring out how that should be accomplished.

If you've made it this far, thanks a ton for reading my ramble! Let me know what you think: I don't want to put killers in a worse position than they're already in, but I think most of the difficulty in playing killer comes with SWFs, not solo queue. This seems like it could improve the skill curve at the very bottom as noobie survivors learn to figure out what to do when their teammates have certain perks/items without providing much of a benefit to more skilled/more intense survivors who can just assume that their teammates have certain meta perks or - more to the point - be on comms.

Ikalx

I'm down for the icons to be visible in the lobby.

Not sure about in game, though - I kinda feel like it might be detrimental if people are checking their ESC menu and trying to coordinate or strategise like that. Having an impression on what's coming in to the game would be good though.

Jakeroo

@Ikalx I get what you're saying, but a lot of people are AFK in lobby, or people might be switching out perks and items - and you're more likely to switch your perks and items when you can see what other people are doing... I think providing the option for people to quickly glance in the escape menu would be helpful... Certain killers already have to do this to play optimally, like Ghost Face: it's important for him to be able to tell which survivor is which name on the bottom of the screen when he's stalking... I think near the end of a match when someone's on the hook, hitting escape near the exit gate to see if it was a person who had DS would be really useful... and I don't think people are going to spend a significant amount of time in the escape menu memorizing who has what perks or anything.

Nos37

I would be fine with this if not for the fact that others may see me using No Mither and dodge the lobby;

or they may see me using Plunderer's instinct and go out of their way to hoard any chest they see before I can get to it (though the opposite would be handy, where others see my Plunderer's and leave more chests untouched);

or they see my Left Behind, Wake Up, Spine Chill, and Urban Evasion and decide to leave me on my first hook to die because they know I'm planning to play immersed and would do the same to them if given the chance.

Ikalx

I hear you Jakeroo, but I dunno. Ideally I'd like it in the loading screen, since that's a whole lot of wasted space otherwise, but when you mention using the escape menu to check if someone has DS etc, it feels more like strategising for that person. And to me, people in this game are really unpredictable. Some are really scared to put themselves out on a limb, others will throw themselves into death at just the chance to save you, and that rarely comes down to perks.

I'll admit when you've all been slugged, knowing if someone has unbreakable would be very useful. But I dunno, I just feel like if in the end what we're trying to do is normalise information between swf and solo, then what we'd really be wanting eventually is the set of perk icons around your character icon in game - since that's the most effective way to display information that doesn't take you out of the experience to check.

I guess it just comes down to whether what we want is the game to have a lot more information available to survivors by default.