My Suggestions On How To Finally Nerf SWF

Williamz

So it's been a long time coming but I think this is how they should balance SWF vs Killer.

During the SWF lobby if there are 3 or more players connected a debuff icon and sound will appear in the lobby before searching to show the penalty of playing with 3 or more players.

There is two debuff options:

Option 1:
If you are playing with 3 or more survivors in SWF the killer sees the auras of those SWF for 3 seconds every 20 seconds.

Option 2:
If you are playing with 3 or more survivors in SWF these survivors receive a debuff to generator repair speed.

I would say I'm in favor of option 2.

DeadByFlashlight

Option 2 definitely if I had to pick one

Also another option I consider really interesting is that within a SWF, all perks are unique, i.e. all SWF members can only use each perk once in their loadout such that 3x DS and that stuff acnt happen. Would force them to use other perks beside the meta ones and would act as balancing too

Grimbergoth

Swf is actually counter productive to the game . Originaly the basis was for friends to play together with the original design of the gam without voice coms . problem is they cant police voice coms and thus its snowballed into a very unbalance and toxic interaction most of the time . this also allows for a lot of perks to become useless . Empathy for example , why would you need that when you already know where your friend is .

they said in the beginning they didn't want to add voice coms to the game and I think we have a good idea why , look at where its taking the game . I think now they have to either decide to add it so all survivors have access to it and balance it around the voice coms and organization . this would then of course cause them to have to rework perks like empathy . the other option is to remove it , thus making people lobby dodge until they get their groups they want like the did in the beginning .

I honestly don't think they thought swf through with the original game design , otherwise why not just add voice coms in the beginning along with swf . Balance is the answer to why they didn't and they knew it then , they have just ignored it as long as they are still making money .

there is no real win here , if they remove it people will complain who want it , if they balance around it the solo player will suffer and complain , they leave it as is and the killers and some solo players will suffer and complain .

I do like the idea of a mechanic like option 2 though where if a group is in play they suffer some side effect for the organization and voice coms , at least that would be a short term fix to a growing issue .

Cymer

Ok let's face the truth: SWF is not going away nor will it be balanced as the game is right now.
You can argue that using 3th party programs to obtain a competitive advantage is cheating, but the dev stated, that communication is not bannable. On the other hand, if a killer communicate with a survivor friend you can report them.
So why don't we go all the way down the rabbit hole?
Let's make voice com a part of the game and balance the game around it.
The killer could get less giveaways like hearth beat, ect. and totems had to be reworked (but a rework of them is down the line).
Buff the scary part of the killers, not raw power 
Make the interactions between killer and survivor shorter but more meaningful.
Let there be real consequences for getting caught by the killer so the choices the team had to make are more sewer. (Sacrifice one survivor so the rest could accomplish something if necessary. No more taking free hits and then heal up, rinse and repeat for eternity.)
Put more pressure on, so stalemate, camping ect. isn't viable. Like with the crows when the survivor is too idle make them fear a debuff if they loop too long or no gens are done in a certain amount of time or a buff to the killer. After all we are in the realm of the entity and if you waste too much time in it, it will take a toll on you.
Put escaping on a clock. If you miss your opportunity to escape, let us survive for another 60s to try again. (Like the gates closing every 60s and after that you have to reopen them or they are spawning after 60s in a new location so you just cannot simply hide or camp.)

I really hope we could come together as a community and create a game that is fun to play for all of us.
Stop the debate over who is whining or toxic and let us look for solutions.
There are some issues right now and we have the opportunity to fix them or at least give constructive feedback and input to that wonderful and caring dbd-dev team and community manageres.

So heads up in the fog and happy gaming!

Cheers

George_Soros

One issue with accepting comm and balancing the game around it is that many players will still not use it, which would leave them in a disadvantage. Take Left 4 Dead for example: very much based on teamwork, yet less than half of the players use voice chat, despite the function is ingame and simple. 
I still think accepting comm is the better way, just voicing my concerns here.

Cymer

well if you chose to not use a game feature, refuse to communicate and play the game how you like it the most I don't see this as a problem. as it is right now 70% of the games have SWF in them so only 30% or probably even less are playing the game like you describe it.

Lagoni

I will admit that i dodge lobbies with obvious SWF groups when i play killer, but the first idea is nowhere near balanced. Just because people play together doesn't automatically make them toxic gods. Aura reads on 3 players would be far too overpowered.
I don't know about option two. What percentage would be fair? if its too much, you might as well not do any gens, and it would punish people who just play casually with their friends, but if its too low, why have it at all.
I think a nice way to balance gens out would be a dynamic timer. If the survivors are doing really well, the repair time goes up, if the killer is, the time goes down.
The problem with this is of course that it would create artificial skill, and punish people who does well.

DeadByFlashlight

@George_Soros said:
One issue with accepting comm and balancing the game around it is that many players will still not use it, which would leave them in a disadvantage. Take Left 4 Dead for example: very much based on teamwork, yet less than half of the players use voice chat, despite the function is ingame and simple. 
I still think accepting comm is the better way, just voicing my concerns here.

If you want to play casually thats up to you. There are tons of overwatch players that never touched the talk button for example.

However, when you climb into higher ranks, people will being to start using voice comms.

If you dont balance the game around voice comms, then what is the killer supposed to do? Just DC?

George_Soros

@DeadByFlashlight said:

@George_Soros said:
One issue with accepting comm and balancing the game around it is that many players will still not use it, which would leave them in a disadvantage. Take Left 4 Dead for example: very much based on teamwork, yet less than half of the players use voice chat, despite the function is ingame and simple. 
I still think accepting comm is the better way, just voicing my concerns here.

If you want to play casually thats up to you. There are tons of overwatch players that never touched the talk button for example.

However, when you climb into higher ranks, people will being to start using voice comms.

If you dont balance the game around voice comms, then what is the killer supposed to do? Just DC?

Nah, never ever DC, that's the single action that harms the game the most for everyone.
I see a lot of SWF survivors around rank 3-2-1, but I wonder how many of those are on comm. Anyway, I kidna agree to the main point: this has to be addressed. Comm is (almost) like a free Bond, Empathy and one-way Object of Obsession.
I just wish there was a way to counter this imbalance by not hurting solo survivors too much.