This issue needs to be addressed before top down balancing can take place
This is coming from over a thousand hours on both sides at R1 for years - exactly how little merit that brings is up to you as the reader to decide. I "have" played every killer, SWFs with discord, SWFs without voice with streamers, then solo queued a FAR greater majority of my games using aura perks like Bond or Kindred to "make due". I never run Moris, or bring a key into a match ever nor do I ever get emotional enough to face camp someone or bleed them out in spite.
Over the last 2 weeks, I've pretty much reached the point in killer matchmaking where I would rather have back to back matches against the sweatiest of 4 man SWFs running OoO and "smol pp" builds just because it becomes more of a coin flip or an uphill fight for me to secure a kill or two rather than a boring one sided 4K steamroll over and over and over again (or string of DCs/suicides). I also enjoyed games like Starcraft Ladder 1v1s and having to micromanage and track lots of things in my head (keeping map awareness) is a type of focus and stress that is engaging for me.
In fact, I think there is a less vocal undercurrent among killers who want these potato survivors to give better matches just not making SWFs more "unbearable" for them to play against BECAUSE they don't like feeling overwhelmed and having too many "suboptimal gamble" options that are their only real chance at winning (without other aids like Moris... a topic for another post on whether that is even winning in my opinion) but not wanting to have 4 potato survivors basically suiciding on the killer's weapon just by holding W and tapping M1 occasionally.
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"Top down balancing" is something that should be in DbD just like other games where a large pool of abilities, powers and items all have to interact with one another. Unfortunately the nature of this current game itself makes this suffocating impossible as there will be survivors feeling "too weak" while others killers also feel "powerless" in their role. Killers can't be buffed adequately because the solo survivors are actively denied that same vital ingame information that comes readily through 3rd party voice chat. Conversely you can't balance a game at the highest level "but" solo queue unless you're taking those absolute top players in the world and forcing them to play with zero voice comms in front of you in a controlled environment constantly against equally good killers and using those games purely as the reference point.
The baseline assumption that all survivors can communicate to some degree has to be there if they are being allowed if not encouraged to do that anyway through third party voice software currently.
To make an extreme allusion, its like trying to balance the approximate athleticism of each teenager to split into two basketball teams but giving half the players on one team very dark glasses and earplugs and wonder why they can't perform well on average.
Of course a full list of what perks and killer powers need to be addressed to be made stronger afterwards but it would allow those subsequent conversation to make far more sense when it finally takes place.
It comes down to that difference between Solo and SWF survivors and the ability to instantly and easily communicate with one another. It's impossible to balance for an organized competitive team on voice comms vs take those "same" insanely good team players and actively denying them information. They "should" perform well but not nearly at the same level and their teammates aren't immediately alerted to every little "risk" you might take as a killer to turn the tide in your favor. Since survivors by nature are reactionary in this game on the information they are gleaning throughout the match, if their information is too good then it compounds any amount of "individual" skill the survivors bring to the table by spliting the killer in too many different directions that the optimal play for the killer devolves into "Reduce those players by 1 ASAP so I have a fighting chance".
Now I'm not saying SWFs need to be nerfed, stuffed into yet another separate queue to split the community even more especially since most "SWF"s are just duos/trios playing with their wife, their sibling, their one or two buddies while casually talking about their workday, even a 4 man doesn't necessarily mean they are automatically skilled and won't give incomplete and bad information to one another constantly. Heck some aren't even on voice chat even if they party'd up as I've joined other "lonely" solo queuers who just want someone competent in the game with them and it's already reducing their chance of being trolled by teammates 25%. Why would BHVR want to hurt the customer base that is most likely keeping multiplayer "alive" by disallowing people from enjoying their game together... a HUGE part of online gaming. Also policing "3rd Party" voice software would be highly intrusive and basically impossible to block anyway - it's just not feasible even if they wanted to take that option away in todays world where it is readily available even by using Discord voice chat through your phones for example.
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Solo queue communication options that could be added to bridge the gap.
1) Ingame text chat or voice chat - with a glaring downside of sheer potential toxicity and the necessary options like muting that most people just default to "mute all" all the time anyway because they're "annoying" this isn't the ideal solution because the potential for abuse, spam and TOS violations to one another. It would also be harder for text to be conveyed and sent by console players so it would basically have to be voice.
2) Pre-written Text Wheel/Macros - Allowing you to choose a few favorites like "I'm going for the rescue!" "Please do the totem" "Killer is camping the hook" "Please do the closest generator" "Killer might be heading to" along with some way to make location pings appear in the chat by looking at it while pushing that macro. "Killer Shack", "Main building" "Northeast Tileset" etc. This one would take some work but it works in other DbD Clones that I've played and just limiting the spam time and 1 message at a time for the pre-determined messages stops much of the opportunity for toxicity and abuse. In these games, the balance is still leaned toward the "killer" or power role as they are also far more powerful than in DbD by comparison. The "survivor side" basically has far less options other than to hide and pray like it's a Garry's Mod Prop Hunt though, even with the communication options meaning killer basekit, chase and/or tracking perks would need buffs to compensate
3) Status Icons over every survivor on what they are currently doing - this has the potential to be manipulated or misinformation more often but it'll be a start. "In a Chase" "On a generator" "In a locker" "On a totem" "Healing someone" "Self-caring" "Medkitting myself" etc would be a godsend in solo play - all information that a SWF would be able to share instantly but an attentive solo queue player could make use of even if his/her teammates aren't actively using communication options. With this being the least intrusive option - it would also have the least effect on bridging the balance gap but it'll be something.
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As far as I know Option #1 was completely denied on one of the developer interviews and other options at "solo queue" communication was tossed aside for ruining "immersion". If done tactfully on the UI with even a lore excuse like the Entity or Archivist providing this ability to instill more Hope in the survivors before crushing them further - options 2 & 3 could be added without ruining the "atmosphere" of the game.
Anyways - this got long winded and will most likely get buried so here is a potato for reading to this point
Comments
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It sounds like your issue is with the ranking more than anything else. Red ranks have been full of potatoes for a while now. You get the people that are new to the game but play a lot, maybe 150 hours but still make plenty of bad decisions and don’t have a meta lodout and then you have the teams of 6000 hour god loopers. All of them within a few ranks of each other.
MMR would be the solution if they can get it working.
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It's a bit idealistic that a perfect matchmaking solution that can and will account for the numerous amount of discrepancies of people who can perform at a "base" level with their friends with info share just get thrashed by any competent killer. Even the absolute top players will see hits to their consistency and decision making if devoid of that extra information, it's just that they are currently balancing against the mindset that these players don't exist and that every survivor is playing completely like a solo queue survivor that creates a lot of frustrations across killers who haven't adapted to keeping track of timers to help them pressure stronger survivor teams into occasional losses... because that disparity is not required for a majority of their games whether it be against competent solos or pepegas due to matchmaking.
The scales will always feel unbalanced when you give half of one side very dark glasses and ear plugs and pretend the people playing without those restrictions don't exist. This goes beyond the asymmetric nature of a 4v1 with different objectives.
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The issue will always be between SWF and solo.
I have some crazy fun games against SWF players where I feel like a whirlwind going from one place to another and trying to manage 80 different things at once. Then the next game I stomp the survivors while employing the exact same tactic with the only difference being that they are not SWF.
I also hate SWF because I love using perks like Third Seal and Insidious and taking my time to isolate survivors from one another and delight in the deprivation of information. SWF ruins that just by the fact that they can communicate to one another where I am and where all of them are.
The most recent changes done to Nurse and Billy make the third kind of fun I have in the game (trying again and again crazy things to down solo survivors and catch them off guard) basically impossible. I have no fun when playing either of those two killers when I used to enjoy both of them supremely.
All of this feedback amounts to:
yeah, there's a big issue, and I don't know how to solve it other than maybe deny a large group of SWF one perk per player. I don't support adding comms into the game because of the paragraph about why I hate SWF, but I recognize that the comms aspect is what would make solo survivors equivalently powerful.
These reasons are why the developers haven't done anything significant to compensate for the power of SWF yet other than minor changes to aura reading perks.
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Top-down balancing really needs to start at the fundamental design of the game itself -- asymmetrical; this does not mean only that one side has more players than the other - but there are very clear and defined roles to those sides. The 'numbers' side have the benefit in there being more players - but individually they are about average in 'power'. The 'power' role has a significant advantage over the numbers team when they are not operating at full capacity.
In this game, the numbers is the Survivors and the power should be the killers - but very rarely actually is. What this means is that killers should be considerably more frightening and powerful than Survivors that are not operating at 4-players. As a match draws on and the 'numbers' side loses its numbers - the match should start favoring the power side more and more. However, in DBD there is very little swing because the Devs have given so much leeway and second chance abilities and perks and mechanics to the numbers side.
The majority of DBD players do not want a true asymmetrical balance to the game. That in itself has caused the game to enter a state where it will never become balanced. Survivors - particularly Solo players - do not want to have to rely on their teammates for success; when the asym. design should encourage that exact reliance. As mentioned, the balance between SWF and Solo players is a huge problem -- but you can't balance a multiplayer game around a single-player experience. At some point, you have to bite the bullet and stop catering to the single player, and start telling them 'okay look, I know you like playing alone, but this game is multiplayer so you will need to learn to at least start working with your team more'.
You also have the problem of Survivor mentality on what it means to 'win'. In an asymmetrical game, 'winning' is making sure you team survives -- even if you individually do not. The Devs have strived for a 2-kill, 2-live ratio as the 'goal' for balance. With this in mind, Survivors should be striving to ensure that at least two of them make it out alive -- but Survivors in general have the mentality that they have not won unless they personally survive, which only serves to go against the team-based reliance that Survivors should be balanced around.
Fixing that would require balancing emblems/pips (because the community cares more about having that measurable metric than actually winning the match) around team-gameplay; and rewarding bloodpoints based off the collective 'how well you entire team does' (which also helps prevent DC's because you would harm your team far more than you already do). The latter is as easy as awarding an additional 10-20% of the bloodpoints earned by your teammates to you during the post-match summary (requiring players to have to stay in-match to receive; encouraging less DC and quit; and sticking around once you 'die' if you're in it for the bloodpoints to begin with).
The game definitely needs to be balanced under the assumption that all Survivor matches will involve a SWF group of some scale - and while this will make solo-play harder, it is what is needed if the game is to ever be balanced. To this extent also - there should be in-game chat especially with cross-play implemented since you cannot rely on a singular third-party service to handle the chat anymore in many cases.
And once communication becomes the baseline standard of balancing -- then Survivors and their perks can be toned down significantly so that their power comes from team-gameplay; and the killer can be toned up so that their power comes from being the 'power' role.
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Something I replied to a post in gen discussion to add to what people are saying.
"It's basically a technical impossibility to stop people from using voice communications completely in today's world. Would you make it so no 3rd party programs could be run at all? Even at one of the most intrusive BIOS level anti-cheat systems (That Riot's Valorant uses) can't stop most system level comms not to mention being ineffective against hacking even in that game (Though I guess you could say its less prevalent than a lot of other popular games). Even if that was possible - what stops people from having their smart phones on their desk next to them running the Discord Application to get the same effective voice comms. Or just a very basic group call?
First Potential Bad Solution: Perfect Matchmaking system that can somehow perfectly account for individual performance, performance with a single other person AND if that skilled or unskilled individual gets into a group with 3 other survivors of varying skill levels. What's the formula that helps pick the "perfect" killer for that 3 man of 8000 hours, 1000, 5 hours + one 500 hour random to have a balanced game on a magically balanced map for the right killer / perks and addons (Basically a few billion possible factors).
Second Potential Bad Solution: Stick all SWFs into their own separate queues meaning you need to be Duos or 4 Mans only. 3 Mans "should" not be stuck with a single solo in this magical world queue either. Queue times would increase as the player base is split further (Crossplay vs Crossplay Off playerbases currently which sort of worked against their own purpose of making crossplay to increase queue times etc). What places that killers into this queue? Do they opt for it or are they just forced into this pool once they hit a certain rating? Either way those queue times will be horrendous again and you will see people leave in droves when the queues are 10~20+ mins consistently, not just for a few like when the hidden MMR system was activate (It's currently off).
The only potential solution in my eyes: Give some form of communication and infomation share to even the solo queue players and accept that it is part of the game instead of trying to ignore that it is happening. Rework perks, perks and addons with that as the baseline assumption instead of looking at "80% of solo queue survivors get rekt - better nerf killers".
For example starting with survivor perks like Object of Obsession and make it so the ability to see the killer at every range is gone. The killer can now see your aura at 50m or further but the other survivors can also always see your aura. The killer's aura is revealed to all survivors for 4/5/6 seconds if you are running Object of Obsession and the killer begins a chase with you.
Similar reworks will need to be made usually in the favor of killers once "teamwork" becomes inherent in the game through info share whether it be through preset text emotes (Text wheel) or communicative icons for shorthand to prevent "mute all" and "Toxic screeching" scenarios by giving the game open voice or text chat (though that would be the simpliest option).
Balancing the game starts at making solo queue survivors stronger through their ability to coordinate and info share with one another like voice chat - whether they can work together or cooperate or not is not important as long as they have the potential to. Then they can balance against SWFs in a meaningful manner instead of ignoring their existence."
This is basically becoming an echo chamber because the only refute to it would be that Killers would be even weaker against these survivors who are communicating if the perk/power balancing done after this change is not done properly.
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