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Is there an effective way to create segregation between Solo Survivors and SWFs?
A lot of complaints in DBD are primarily centered around SWF's and the Solo Survivor experience. Killers that are difficult to go against as a Solo Survivor are a walk in the park for even a mildly decent SWF team. This leads many to believe that BHVR tweaks buffs/nerfs the game based around the Solo Survivor's play.
Is there an effective way to create segregation between Solo Survivors and SWFs that wouldn't negatively impact the game such as turning players away or increasing queue times? I had some suggestions and was initially writing them out but it's too long.
Comments
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Yes, "casual" mode without mmr and grades where SWF is allowed. Ranked is for solos only
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This would negatively affect queue times since more players would play one over the other. This would impact Survivors more harshly.
Post edited by Desh on8 -
There is enough players in dbd for 2 game modes without noticeably longer queue times
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Why would any killer willingly go against swfs in casuals where you don't can even grind for rank rewards.
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maybe you want to try a new killer without worrying about your rank. Also no MMR means games are more like old dbd, less stressful
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right, but "against swfs" is the point.
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I just edited my post. No mmr means better games for the killer overall
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that is true, but unless they plan to change the grading to where you can lose number ranks, losing a few pips isn't a huge loss.
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^ This is probably the easiest solution and the most likely one to happen. Especially given the devs recent mention of ranked/unranked modes in the last survey. They could even add a scaling bonus bloodpoint system to wherever the longer queues are to dynamically keep them better balanced in wait time.
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No mmr means better games, so this will be like more killers in ranked at start of the season and then more in unranked in the end, when you already got r1 and don't want to sweat much
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The only reason why MMR matters or is highly contested is because of the SWF's you face in the higher tiers. If you can't play SWF in ranked, then it wouldn't be as much of an issue.
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BHVR can make something like bonus bloodpoints if there is not enough killers in unranked and people will willingly go against swf because grind is unbearable
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The boost would have to be enough to convince players to go Unranked since most Killers hate SWFs. Which would then mean they don't go ranked since farming on there would be terrible respectively. One side will have longer queue times then the other regardless.
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you can regulate this with amount of bonus bp. Just set numbers so it's enough to keep queues alive, but not big enough to make all killers play unranked
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I don't believe that would be effective. Another possible (and probably bad) solution is just having 2 unseen queue pools, one for Solos and one for SWFs. Then allow Killers/Survivors to check a box that allows them to choose whether or not they want to play against SWFs like you would check a box to enable crossplay.
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That will definitely kill swf queue times. separate mode with bloodpoint rewards seems like better option
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Where's your data? I'd love to see how you came to this conclusion.
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It's a terrible (non)solution.
Before swf people used to lobby hop to play with their friends. That would simply happen again.
And nobody would willingly play solo ranked where they would go against sweatlords who think they're at the DbD Olympics.
All survivors, solos and swf, would go unranked. All killers would go ranked. Nobody gets lobbies. The change gets reverted faster than the blinding the killer during pick up patch.
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lets say ranked for SWF, casual for solo survivors. The reason for this is that teams are competitive by their very design and swf will be able to trash killers way to easily. and then ban meta perks for survivors and killers in casual. Watch as killers say that both modes are unfair. SWF is not the issue, it's killer's reliant on bad players to win. I love when killers complain about swf, when they get looped for 2 minutes straight, that's not swf, that's just a good player. Killer's don't hate SWF, they hate versing good players.
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"Before swf people used to lobby hop to play with their friends. That would simply happen again."
I really don't think that happened that often to where it was actually much of an issue. Even if they do, I don't think that really matters much.
"And nobody would willingly play solo ranked where they would go against sweatlords who think they're at the DbD Olympics."
They absolutely would. This is literally how any competitive mode in any game works. People actively go in with sweat to increase their rank for ranked rewards. I think you also underestimate what people would play if it gave extra blood points. "Sweat" also probably isn't even the best word we should use here either seeing as you wouldn't have swf in ranked anyway. Without having SWF the sweatiest you could get in ranked isn't really that sweaty honestly. Especially seeing as then we could actually properly balance high mmr because of this.
"All survivors, solos and swf, would go unranked. All killers would go ranked. Nobody gets lobbies. The change gets reverted faster than the blinding the killer during pick up patch."
As mentioned before I think this is underestimating the competitive nature of players as well as the level of incentive in ranked rewards/queue time bonus blood point rewards.
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This is actually from a dev statement I believe where they made a comment about the community size being large enough to possibly support that type of system. They didn't mention an exact number, just the comment.
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In this scenario "casual" would be a sweatfest with queues that last for hours.
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Matthew Cote said that in last dev interview
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Let's not ban perks. Now if there was some cool design idea where certain perks would unsuable in a "season" of a ranked play, sure. OW did something similar with their characters HOWEVER, it was not well liked and they scrapped that idea.
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Oh. Do you have a link to the comment?
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I do not, unfortunately I just remember the comment. Can't remember where it was from though, it might have been the recent Q&A that McCote did with King. I would probably check there. The questions on the recent survey mentioning having two modes seemed to support this as well.
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If you've played survivor a good bit, you've seen killers dodging lobbies by now. They do this because it's 4 survivors, with items, and assume it's an SWF. If killers are dodging non-SWFs at the moment because they think they're SWFs, imagine what they will do when there's no doubt it's a SWF. It'd be essentially killing the SWF feature.
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Everyone can play this mod, it's not swf exclusive. And we discussed above bp rewards can be implemented for killers in this mode if queue times are long so they will willingly play if they want bonus BP
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Let's be realistic. No one wants to play against SWF even if there were a huge BP reward, it not worth it. If you could get auric cells or shards... that will be another thing.
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People will play against swf if you give them enough bp. Even me
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Nah, I don't think so you already get a lot of BP as killer. BP means nothing for a killer, play 10 games with bbq, a few puddings, and you get half a million in a few hours.
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Don't forget grind in this game is massive. There is never too much bp
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Queue with no SWF; queue with more SWF. This will be the killers choice. I don't think I've ever seen a post where someone asked to go against more SWFs. But there have been plenty asking for fewer SWFs. What can you foresee happening here?
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That's why killer should get bonus BP for playing this mode
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I mean the game does not need two games modes though. I personally playing killer do not really mind playing against swf or facing strong survivor players. what is upsetting is not being able to win or show any skill expression with said killer when playing vs strong survivor's from negative killer changes/killer changes related to poor survivor gameplay.
Solo survivor is not that weak either. Assuming equal skill among killer and survivor player, survivors are still largely favored to win even as solo. The only real pitfall in solo is lack of information and coordination. SWF are better able to optimize saves, better optimized to bodyblock and utilze team-oriented items/perks such as Flashlights. Their general efficiency on generator is also a lot better. If solo just had global bond, I think solo would be as strong as SWF. I do not see why it would not be. they would be able to know what survivor is getting chased, what pallets are being broken, which survivor is working on what generator, and whose going for hook saves.
I'd say there would still be some gaps for example, a large reason why some killer users think Trapper is worst killer in DBD is because SWF can call out his trap placements rendering his ability ineffective. This problematic issue for many killers where having coordination about their ability suddenly make them a lot worse. It is difficult problem to solve because for example, if you allowed survivors to point at the killer during special interactions such placing a trap where killer aura is revealed for 1 second, you would need find a way to rebalance trapper as his ability would lose a lot of power. This isn't even talking about all killers that either had or still have secondary objectives such as Pinhead box, Pig's reverse traps, Wraith, pre-weakened freddy, so on who have high killrates because these killers require coordination to defeat where solo lacks coordination and SWF has plenty of it.
on side note, If solo is like a little favored to win vs killers if playing well|, swf is very favored to win. I mean just look otz's experiment. He had 86% escape rate when playing 4 man swf with no perks with strong items. Some people said that otz wasn't at the top of his game but like average escape rate is like 47%, so he is almost 40% above average. If only he did experiment using perks with no items, we would be able to figure out how often does average 4 man SWF team win. I bet its around 65%.
I am not so sure that killers would enjoy playing auto-lose matches vs otz level swfs where their chances to win are like less than 15%. Not with current killer balance. This is why improving solo to the level of SWF is ultimate very scary. A lot of killers changes would really need to be reverted and many of them would need major improvements for such gamemode.
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Yeah it's called MMR
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I think the 2 modes would be the better route for solving the issue given the options available. That said, I generally agree with most everything else you said. People act like swf is the only issue, but even 4 good solos is vastly in the advantage to win matches against an equally good killer, I don't even think it's close. What makes solo queue weaker is the rng of if you get those good teammates, something that used to be an issue but not so much after SBMM. I've been tallying swf groups from my games and at high mmr it's 3 or 4 man groups greater than 50% of the games with 40% being at least a 2 man and solos or 2, 2 man groups. Less than 10% of the games are actually solo's...
For a game that is not even remotely balanced around swf that is a ridiculous number and one of the many reasons people detest SBMM at high mmr. We may see lower swf rates when we average all ranks, but they pile up at the high ranks from being boosted by swf. Games are way less fun since SBMM.
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He literally says like 10 seconds after saying that the community can support it that he doesn't because he thinks that the development time spent making the game suck less would be better for everyone.
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You have it completely wrong, man. Even a mediocre survivor can run a killer for minutes if they run from strong loop to strong loop and drop pallets safely. By the time you get your first down, 2-3 gens can easily pop. THAT is what killers have to deal with today at mid to high ranks. It’s a problem when mid tier survivors can waste loads of tile because maps are so poorly designed.
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Don't you see your contradiction? your saying that 4 good solos is vastly advantageous, yet your also tallying up your games and saying that like 90% of your games are you facing swf assuming your high MMR killer. doesn't that say something about solo survivor for how getting high MMR with solo survivor is not exactly easy? Few solo players can play as well as swf teams. My reason for solo being still advantageous over solo is poor killer balance and favorable map design, so much so that you can 1vs1 the killer if your a skilled at looping if the killer power is weak and the map heavily favors you. Too many safe loops that behave like god pallets for most killers.
"Games are way less fun since SBMM."
I would change that to games are way more challenging for killer to win since SBMM for high MMR. they ain't getting any easier with negative killer changes every patch, not helping.
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"Don't you see your contradiction? your saying that 4 good solos is vastly advantageous, yet your also tallying up your games and saying that like 90% of your games are you facing swf assuming your high MMR killer. doesn't that say something about solo survivor for how getting high MMR with solo survivor is not exactly easy?"
No, they are not mutually exclusive. In other words, 4 good solos can be vastly advantageous as we both said, as while as simultaneously not being able to reach the same mmr as swf. You can have both those things be true without being contradictory. Even when solo's reach "high mmr" they still are not higher than the swf, hence primarily getting them at top mmr. So solo's aren't necessarily unable to get to high mmr which is what you're referencing but more the results I'm mentioning are a representation of simply not being as high as swf. It's also easier to raise mmr on killer than it is survivor with their new system even if you didn't necessarily "win". We could also make the argument that the type of player pushing to high mmr is also generally speaking much more likely to want to swf as well hence less solo's in general from mindset.
"Few solo players can play as well as swf teams. My reason for solo being still advantageous over solo is poor killer balance and favorable map design, so much so that you can 1vs1 the killer if your a skilled at looping if the killer power is weak and the map heavily favors you. Too many safe loops that behave like god pallets for most killers."
I agree with this.
"I would change that to games are way more challenging for killer to win since SBMM for high MMR. they ain't getting any easier with negative killer changes every patch, not helping. "
I don't know if I'd use the word challenging per say as much as "unwinnable" probably. I'm obviously being a tad hyperbolic here but I think we, as well as most anyone with a large amount of hours on both sides would agree that there are matches in DBD with its current balance that are literally unwinnable for the killer. Pretty sure I've even seen most the popular streamers with heavy hours all agree to this at some point as well.
I don't mind challenging matches. What I do mind is losing matches that there was literally no way to win even if played perfectly. Now we can say these matches are rare, and they were, in the old matchmaking. However, SBMM has exacerbated this. You have these games much more often now once you're trying to push into top mmr with "nonviable" killers. This is the conundrum of SBMM as it is treating the game as competitive when it's not. The game is not balanced around this.
I also agree about weird nerfs to killers/perks/addons that are already unviable in the first place. Doesn't make much since. This isn't anything new though.
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I think it would be better to close the gap between solo survivors and SWF; a great start would be to give all survivors a map wide Bond, the aura changes colour when they are injured, and show the killers aura within a couple of meters of the hook. Then delete the perks Kindred, Bond and Empathy.
This at least gives solo survivors close to the level of information that an SWF might share over voice communications.
I think balance is already enough of a challenge in an asymmetric game with so many different variables of perks, items, addons, map and RNG etc; and there's so much of a difference between solo\SWF that any significant killer buff or nerf is going to inevitably be magnified. Any killer buff to help with SWF will hurt solo, and any nerf to help solo will make killer miserable against SWF.
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" In other words, 4 good solos can be vastly advantageous as we both said, as while as simultaneously not being able to reach the same mmr as swf. You can have both those things be true without being contradictory."
ahh but that is issue. You see, it is not reflective in stats and results. The average survivor is still dying too much. Even if we look at our survivor games, I am looking at killer players and they're like getting 3 hooks in 5 gens. Many of killer players are actually really good too from my interaction with them in a chase. Obviously, we know that the game for our survivor games is massively one sided as we play it, but dev do not. Most of the kills that killers are getting are in EGC when gates are 99% and its from survivors trying to unhook teammates when a killer is literally standing still at a hook. Sometimes they're successful, other times they mess it up. I hate to use term but you know the killer getting kills by facecamping hooks in end game.
I don't mind challenging matches either, Its lack of input in outcome of the match that can be unfun for killer. The lack of input is produced from manufacture unviable killer powers that dev keep purposely balancing against the killer towards survivor's fun.
Unwinnable games are product of poorly balanced killer powers. Losing should still be fun, but its not. Its just aggravating. Losing with old deathslinger was at least fun. now it is just painful and it makes you not want to play diverse set of killers. Negative killer changes like reduce killer diversity and incentive playing like same killer over and over. I am like only confident now a days in winning with Nurse/Blight and Bubba. I don't think that is how it is suppose to be but its like that for now.
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You know you cant stop people from playing with their friends or family right? Am sure on this or any other game people rather swf or play with family over randoms its life. Random usually means = your gonna not have fun vs even if you lose with swf or family its still not so bad cause the team work of swf/family is far potent than a random party full of potatoes.
Killers is gonna lose most likely no matter how they are godly at the game when it comes to swf/family, am sure however when its a party full of randums killers rate is probably like 90% win. The only way solo queue will improve is if bhvr puts a in game chat voice feature where survivors can talk to each other similar to resident evil resistance.
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"You see, it is not reflective in stats and results."
Which is why I hate when we see balancing based on that stats and data we are presented with as it's quite flawed.
"Most of the kills that killers are getting are in EGC when gates are 99% and its from survivors trying to unhook teammates when a killer is literally standing still at a hook." "The average survivor is still dying too much."
Yeah as you eluded to this is one of the many things artificially skewing the data. It puts kills on the stats that aren't reflective of balance.
"Obviously, we know that the game for our survivor games is massively one sided as we play it, but dev do not."
I actually think they do know, they just don't care. I think they know they are balancing for low ranks and it's intentional. I don't think I could imagine that at this point they actually think it's even remotely balanced at high mmr.
"I don't mind challenging matches either, Its lack of input in outcome of the match that can be unfun for killer. The lack of input is produced from manufacture unviable killer powers that dev keep purposely balancing against the killer towards survivor's fun."
Exactly.
"Unwinnable games are product of poorly balanced killer powers. Losing should still be fun, but its not. Its just aggravating."
As you mentioned with a lack of input in outcome for matches, that is where this lack of fun even in losing stems from. In a game with good balance you can still have fun even when losing because you can see where you played bad or got outplayed in order to improve your input for the next game to change that outcome.
However with poor balance as we have now you can lose without having actually been out played or making a mistake. You lose no matter your input and you didn't have fun because there's nothing to change the outcome next time.
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Unranked mode is not something that requires a lot of work. Smh. He was talking about something that is harder to make, like 2v8 mode
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How... How are you getting looped for "minutes." The whole problem with "genrushing" is killers down survivors in about a minute and 2 gens pop, making it impossible for killers to win. If you are legitimately getting looped for 2 minutes and only 2 gens pop (even only 3), then the survivors were actually really slow on gens, you are objectively bad. You clearly do not want to improve as a killer. If you really need help try running enduring, brutal strength to help you practice with pallets.
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I don't think that's true. People already use weaker killers, weaker perks, and weaker add-ons all the time, so the default assumption that everyone would always and only go for easier 4ks has always been erroneous.
People do like a challenge... just not so much when that's randomly dropped on them any given game.
Sometimes I really just want the default game conditions intended by the devs, and I'd easily wait 2-3x as long in queue... sometimes longer... just for that balanced game-state of solo queue.
Other times--honestly, most of the time--I just wanna play the damn game... and play right now. I couldn't give a crap whether that means it's solo/2/3/4 or mind-melded navy-seals on voicecoms. Slash and dash baby. Slice and dice.
There's security in being able to recognize/appreciate epic plays against me as a real matter of skill & timing rather than voice-coms, and I can better gauge my skills.... or lack thereof. One of the worst parts about the SWF/Solo blend is that you never even know which it is for sure. Even just knowing is a major a morale buffer for playing as killer... I think it'd help me as a solo survivor as well to be honest. I know I face the inverse where killers assume swf or take out their last games on we randoms from having to always expect the worst.
But if you were to actually toss in the BP bonus on top of all that all that too? Damn right I'm gonna be playing against SWF far more often than not. Basically every killer I'm remotely familiar with so I'm able to move into the next phase of skill there.
Post edited by Ecstasy on0
