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Idea to help (fairly?) balance SWF
I'm fully aware there's some angles of SWF that Behavior just cannot do anything about, such as 3rd party comms. (Also, how dare they let friends have fun with each other! What animals.) So instead of trying to punish survivors for SWFing, what we should do is allow the Killer to understand who all is in a SWF with each other. Since the maximum amount of SWFs per game is two (One threeman and a solo, double twoman, or a twoman and two solos) my shower thought suggestion my drunken ape brain came up with "Just color the icons when you hit them so soon after each other." It could even be an offering killers need to burn, I feel no need to push for this to be base kit.
So let's say you have a Dweezy, a Cheryl, a Feng and a Steve. Steve and Dweezy are duoing and Cheryl and Feng are duoing. You find Cheryl early on and punch her in the mouth, her icon goes red. You down her, hook her, and Feng comes in for the rescue like a good brother does. You punch her after the unhook, but now their icons are faded red on top of the blood smear. They both get away and the icons fade back to "normal" after a few sconds, regardless of chase; If you were to somehow wind up in a hitting 4 people scenario (Bubba? Conehead?) one color could fade red, one could fade another color (more faded red?), and the non-SWFs would stay normal. Absolutely nothing about the actual game has changed, and you can now identify they're in SWF without having to play mind games and watch reactions to dangling food.
As much as this sounds like it should be in feedback, I'm more interested in the community's opinion on this than I am offering it as serious feedback for the game right now. I just feel that with the current state of the game being advanced as far as it is, it would be nice as a killer main to know I'm dealing with a SWF. Specifically, I'm trying to craft a way to provide the information without having to make it a flashing neon sign, so that way the people who do want to know will see it but the people who don't care aren't being intruded.
[edit]
Refining the idea, instead of changing their icons, it could just be quick color fades around the monitor so it's less free information without being useless. You hit the Steve and Dweezy within ~15 seconds of each other and you get a two second red fade on the monitor; you hit all 4 within ~15 seconds and you get red and another color so you know it's two SWFs, but not who's with who.
[edit+]
The offerings could totally be tiered for intensity and/or length of time the information is available.
Comments
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Theoretically this is not such a bad idea. It would be bad if the killer knew that he is dealing with SWF in the lobby or right after the beginning of the game, he could just DC, but in the middle of the game it should be fine. SWF has an advantage that they can communicate information about the killer, why shouldn't the killer know that he is dealing with SWF and adapt accordingly.
I would actually do it this way: as soon as a survivor is downed/grabbed/hooked (because this is when team-play kicks in), all his SWF members become color-coded for example. Like if there are 2+2 SWF groups and you down a survivor, then his own icon and his buddy's icon are highlighted in the same color and stay this way for the entire game, there's no need to hide this information again. The killer still has no information about the other 2 survivors, until one of them is downed. This way the killer can adapt his strategy.
Sure, survivors will adapt to it, but the killer has the right to know, as long as it doesn't allow him ruin the game for others by dodging the lobby or DCing after the start of the game.
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I feel that keeping the information visible all game is too much. I was attempting to avoid the neon sign approach, so that it's another thing players have to look for and isn't just given to them. If you didn't care to pay attention when the information was given, then you don't care to know. It's not functionally much different than not paying attention to how much you've hooked which player.
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It's just bad design to force players to pay attention to gfx that disappears fast, it will be just luck based: did you have a chance to pay attention or were you in the middle of a chase. If we want to reveal that information, then it's fine for it to stay revealed for the entire game, since this is not something that's going to change in the middle of the game.
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I don't know if I agree. Right now this idea already half-applies to Nemesis players. There's been more than once that zombies have tackled some campers and I had no idea because I wasn't watching for it. If it was a longer than a few seconds thing, then maybe we could do different tiers of the offering? It could be intensity of the highlight or the length the information remains available. I'm not even opposed to like 20 seconds, but I still don't think it should be permanent. We do need to consider the survivors, too.
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Sorry for the edit, fam. I just had an after thought.
Basically, the thing is I'm trying to find the balance between extra information and you needing to actually look for it/want to know it. I don't think some information should just be free, especially in such an information-driven game. If I burned an offering that does a specific thing, then I need to go in with the intention of that specific thing is basically how I feel about it.
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You are thinking in a too complicated way. This is static information (unlike survivor location for example), like the number of gens left to be repaired, number of hooks. We don't play games with that information and reveal number of gens that is still to be done for 3 seconds right after a gen was just repaired. It's the same thing here. You are given a chance to see who is in SWF and once you know it, there's no need to check Killer's memory capabilities by hiding it.
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This is an unfair comparison. The generators are literally the objective of the survivors, and thus that information is absolutely VITAL to the killer's success. Knowing you're against a SWF is not.
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Why was this moved to feedback? I really wanted the community input, not to provide it to Behavior.
I'm not allowed to tag staff, but @Rizzo90 's name is in the edit timestamp. Legit question, not BSing you.
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That means there are even less reasons to hide it, once you already know it, because this information is static. It's just a matter of your memory capabilities and it's a good game design if this information stays. But we can agree to disagree, we don't even know if DEVs would implement this feature.
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I just think it's bad balancing to ignore one side outright when introducing new ideas. New information is being provided to the killer with zero regard for the survivors. They're players, too, and need to be considered.
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Yes, balance is important and survivors too, but this is not the right case to be worried of that and not the right way. It is an overcomplication of a feature that doesn't really have huge impact and can't be controlled by survivors in any way: once you know it as a killer, you know it and by hiding that information you don't tweak the balance in any way, it would be a false sense of "restoring the balance". Balance can be tweaked in other ways.
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What would you tweak to balance out knowing who's in coms, while also knowing the game is currently balanced around the intention of having no coms?
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This idea would be balancing out SWF and comms, there's no need to balance out something, that's already balancing out another thing.
But as an example, you can give the same information to other survivors, if they see that someone from an SWF group is hooked, they will know that they don't have to rush to a hook, some other SWF buddy will do it, so it's safe to continue repairing a gen. Just an idea, not a real suggestion.
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You're not taking into consideration the survivors not in coms, just on SWF. You're making it unnecessarily harder for them.
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That's of the problems with SWF that DBD is facing, you can't differentiate between such survivors, so you approximate. Your original idea doesn't make any differentiation too, it's just luck-based.
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But you can keep it into consideration and decide how you reveal information. You think the killer's memory shouldn't be tested. I believe the killer wanted the information it shouldn't be free. Should we start making scratch marks permanent, too?
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How can you test Killer's memory with scratchmarks? You can't differentiate between strategic and static game elements. Showing who's in SWF is a pure a QOL thing. It requires no in-game skill and it is static. Let's fool around with GUI and reveal everything for 3 seconds and pretend it's "balance". Makes no sense whatsoever.
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It's mostly the unfair aspect to the killer than anything that makes it "shameful." Personally, I find it frustrating, and some games are actually straight up infuriating, but I'm not going to tell some people they're not allowed to play video games with their friends. I just wish it wasn't all of them vs me.
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