SWF loadout restrictions
I have talked about this fairly often, but I figured I would shoot my shot and open a dedicated thread for this suggestion, because I think it is something that would be very beneficial for the game. This ended up a quite wordy submission, but I feel like everything I say here is important for the central idea. I have still decided to highlight some of the main statements in bold, so as to give more of an overview and orientation within the text and its topics.
The problem SWF poses is obvious: There is a tremendous difference in performance potentials between solo and SWF groups, and this gap makes it impossible to balance the game well for both scenarios - balance killers for the potential of SWF groups and solo survivors stand less chances to succeed against them; balance killers for the potential of solo survivors and killers stand less chances to succeed against SWF groups.
I know the devs' desired direction is to lessen this gap by buffing solo survivors, and then buffing killers to compensate. Specifically, they aim to provide solo survivors with more game info such that they are in a better position to coordinate and make decisions based on the group, in short to improve teamwork.
However, I see a few issues with this approach.
First, voice communications provide SWF teams with a degree of teamwork that no amount of info the game could feed solo survivors could ever match. Voice communications not only allow players to relay all types of game info across the entire team at any moment, but also for them to give commands, and thereby to truly make decisions and strategize as a team based on discrete timings and everyone's input and understanding. Plus the game info being communicated can even be selectively "filtered", such as by importance or priority, since it is players deciding what kind of information to communicate. Voice comms can also be used to give advice, directly helping players make better plays and decisions they themselves might not have even known or thought about, let alone in that moment.
Yet matching even just the amount and type of information being communicated via voice chats without voice chats seems sheer impossible. Take a simple bit of info like "I dropped shack pallet". Now everyone on the team, no matter where they are or what they are doing, knows to plan their chases with the absence of shack pallet in mind. To attempt to match even just this simple, benign call-out in a solo scenario would mean to show all survivors the auras of all pallets that are being dropped. And even then players might very well not be paying attention or just happen to look elsewhere during that moment, so you would also need a notification of some sort. It's obvious that this would get fairly ridiculous even just with simple stuff, and there is of course much more advanced info that can be communicated, such as the perks and add-ons a killer is using, chase patterns of theirs one might identify, and on and on.
Beyond the degree and type of coordination that voice comms provide with regards to plays and decisions, there is the loadout coordination SWF teams have. Premade groups can finetune and optimize their entire 16-perk, 4-item, 8-add-on, 4-offering loadouts down to the last slot, and they can also coordinate their use of these things perfectly ("Hey, activate my Kinship, and then use that time to get some more gen progress in!"; "Hey, you have Borrowed Time, you should be the one going for the hook save right now - and then none of us will have to spend time unhooking you, because you have Deliverance!"). Solo survivors on the other hand most of the time do not even merely know which perks anyone else might be using.
And then beyond the obvious in-game differences, there is the fact that premade groups can and regularly are players that know each other, play together frequently, and can all be advanced or even veteran players. This not only leads to SWFs not seldomly being stacked in experience and skill levels across all players in a way solo groups even with DbD's MMR system almost never are, but it also leads to a level of team cohesion that solos absolutely will never have, knowing each other's playstyles, having natural and intuitive coordination based on experiences as a team together, having set strategies, even having sort of dedicated "roles" for different players in different game situations.
All of this is to say that I believe the gap between solo and SWF potential is just too large to reasonably attempt to close it by buffing solos. I also believe the SWF potential is simply too great to leave it as is.
The next issue is that buffing killers to compensate will be a rather tricky and lengthy undertaking, because you are first having to gauge the impact of any changes to the solo experience, then come up with sensible and tangible buffs for a whole bunch of killers, and then again check how that fits in with the new situation for all of them. All the while also having to constantly gauge whether this does actually put those respective killers in good enough a spot in SWF scenarios. And if there are general, non-character-specific killer buffs, you have to check whether it won't make the stronger characters overshoot their target again. And this all is supposedly with months of letting things settle and evaluating between every notable change.
I just can't see that this is the way to go; it will take many months if not years, and it will be tricky throughout to strike the right balance between all of these aspects - and we would still be left with a peak performance potential of SWF that is quite frankly bonkers.
My suggestion is to instead bring the SWF potential down. With this, you obviously solve the issue of the SWF ceiling being too high. You also lessen the gap between solo and SWF, at least as much as buffing solo would. Nerfs are also much easier to come up with, to ship, and to potentially undo. And finally, you won't have to continually buff various killers to compensate, as we know that many of them are already in a good spot against solo groups. You would instead simply look at which of them are still having issues competing with SWFs and apply specific buffs accordingly. You could then also better nerf the killers that are overperforming against solos, because their performances against SWFs won't suffer as much as a result.
Here is my idea for an SWF adjustment that might already do the trick entirely on its own: Restrict SWF groups to only be able to equip any perk, item and add-on at most 1 time between them. So any member of a premade group (2, 3, 4 players) will have to have a unique loadout. Different items of like item categories may still be used (e. g. an Alex's toolbox on one survivor and a Commodious toolbox on another).
This simple change solves a lot of issues. First of all, it obviously decreases the performance potential of SWF groups a whole lot. Only having 1 copy of key perks such as Borrowed Time and Decisive Strike is a significant decrease in power levels of SWF groups. And it also automatically accounts for the issue that not every SWF is actually a 4-player SWF: in 2 and 3-player lobbies, only 2 or 3 players of the 4 are subject to the loadout restrictions of course, meaning that you can have up to 3 copies of any perk in duo lobbies (or 2 in double-duo lobbies), and still up to 2 copies in trio lobbies.
Next, it solves the issue that complete loadout coordination is just not something the game has been balanced in mind with or designed around, similar to voice communications. Having stuff like 4 Dead Hards, 4 Decisive Strikes, 4 Brand New Parts is completely overtuned. What's particularly problematic about this is that many perks and items that on their own and/or in uncoordinated loadout and group contexts are perfectly alright and if anything just about powerful enough to be worthwhile, turn into something completely unsensible in coordinated SWFs. And that doesn't only go for the meta perks either. 4 Power Struggles + 4 Flip-Flops can be downright oppressive: simply have survivors go down under pallets in their chases with another survivor shadowing them to prevent the killer from being able to pick them up, and once the downed survivor is recovered enough to have their Power Struggle primed, the other survivor can leave. And two survivors can still be on generators during this. Or what about 4 Streetwise with 4 toolboxes, 4 Built To Last and 2 Prove Thyself. Or 4 Vigil with 4 Sprint Burst. 4 Soul Guard with 4 For The People, as well as Exponential and Circle Of Healing, and perhaps throw in some Mettle Of Mans and 4 Styptics and Syringes of course. Solo groups practically never put together ridiculous stuff like this, they cannot really, and let alone then use it in coordinated and effective ways. SWF groups can do this whenever they so desire.
With restricting SWFs in their ability to equip multiple copies of perks and items/add-ons, you not only solve the issue of the ridiculous power levels coordinated loadouts can get to and do so without having to nerf the individual perks and items themselves most of which again are perfectly fine on their own or in solo groups, but you also open up much more design space because now you won't have to think about how a new or changed perk, item or add-on performs in a setting where there's 4 instances of it and being used in coordinated manners. It'll allow individual things to be more impactful while also being much easier to balance, without that caveat of them needing to still be balanced when present 4 times in a match.
Even more: With SWF loadout restrictions, you bring about a huge shift and diversification in the meta. When people won't be able to just bring 4 instances of the most powerful things, they will have to think about viable alternatives. Especially in full 4-player SWFs this will lead to the utilization of a much wider variety of perks, items and add-ons, likewise leading to a wider variety of playstyles and strategies, in turn then of course to more diverse gameplay experiences as well. In tournaments where teams actually are regularly limited to 1 copy per perk, some really interesting loadout choices can be observed. Lucky Break, Quick & Quiet, Wake Up, Balanced Landing, Smash Hit, We'll Make It, Mettle Of Man, Breakout, Dance With Me, Hope - these and more perks are all things you wouldn't expect to see yet do see appear in these tournaments.
You hand killers an important new tool in competing with the information advantage SWFs have: against SWFs, the killer if they are clever and aware enough can keep track of which survivor is using which perks, and they can then make decisions based on that knowledge as well as the knowledge that nobody else can be using those perks. (For this reason, I would like for the game to tell killers which survivors are grouped up in SWFs - however, it should only tell them this once in the trial, such as on the match details overlay, not already in the lobby.) And as a neat little side effect of this, individual survivors in SWFs will also become more distinct, because they will have unique loadouts and playstyles as a result. This gives survivor players more "personality", both from the perspective of the killer and from their own perspective of fulfilling certain "roles" within the team.
You implement this by showing survivors each other's loadouts in lobbies and highlighting any instance of a perk, item or add-on appearing more than once between them (if they are in an SWF). If they do load into a trial without resolving those instances, all copies of the loadout item in question but one are automatically disabled for the trial. This way SWF groups can easily adjust their loadouts, but they also do not necessarily have to. This would likewise help solo survivors a lot since they would also be able see each other's loadouts in the lobbies.
To make this even more comfortable for SWF players, loadout presets that people have been wanting for a while anyway would help. That way players that play together frequently could simply select their preset "SWF build" and not have to adjust their loadouts again if they were playing solo games inbetween or whatnot.
On top of all of this, I believe that buffing solo groups with regards to the amount and sort of information they have available will significantly change the character of the game. The quality of not knowing everything and having to make decisions in a more chaotic and dangerous environment is precisely one of the most appealing qualities of DbD's gameplay, and intrinsic part of its personality as a horror-type game experience. The SWF experience on the other hand is something rather different a lot of the time, revolving more around overcoming a more clearly defined challenge as a team. I personally do very much enjoy the team aspect of the game as well as its competitive aspects, but even I would mourn the loss of the more "thematic" and crazy game mode that is the solo experience (which, sure, can be crazy in a bad way too, but also in a good way, of being thrilling).
If you bring down SWF's power instead of lifting up the amount of available information and coordination in solo scenarios, you close the gap between them for balance purposes without making them more alike experiences - you get to keep the different, distinct game "modes" that are both so appealing in their own unique ways, but you also make them decidedly less disparate conditions to face for killers.
Oh, and I found another reason why this could be the more sensible approach: Every buff to "solo" could and in practice likely would collaterally buff SWF, to some extent or another. Whereas SWF nerfs would strictly only affect SWFs, without a ripple into solo.
Comments
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Just no. This is tournament level treatment, which just can't be used for most groups.
Like what the hell should new players do? They don't even have that many perks unlocked and you would just force them to use ######### perks even tho they don't know how to benefit from being SWF.
The way to punish SWF for playing with friends would be really bad for the game. Their approach is just better. With that everyone can be happy, soloQ will get info and we can get killer buffs.
Your change would piss off a lot of people and it would just be bad in general for the game. You don't want to punish players that bring friends to this game, that would be just dumb and bad for business.
There is not enough good perks for anything like this to begin with. You would have to make a massive changes for anything like this to work and you would mainly not do it for SWF only, you would have to do it for whole team -> soloQ too. Then probably restrict killers too, so they can't stack many slowdown perks etc. it would be hell to balance, which they just are not able to do. Anything like this would not be possible with patch every 3 months, just too slow.
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I'd rather simplify it to 4 survivors can't all use Dead Hard in a SWF. That is absolutley blood boiling and at times game breaking for killers to deal with.
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This is tournament level treatment, which just can't be used for most groups.
This is "tournament-level treatment" in the sense that we are limiting the top performance ceiling for survivors that can exist in public matchmaking just the same. And precisely because most groups are not tournament-level teams actually stacking 4 DH, DS, BT, Deli, Prove, BNPs is why it won't hurt most groups much.
Like what the hell should new players do?
New players are the least affected by this because they do not even know what the strongest and best perks are, let alone go for coordinated or stacked loadouts across the board. They'll just play with whatever they have. And players at this level actually even just intuitively know to benefit from SWF/voice comms much more than they know about perk power levels and whatnot. I for one really don't expect it will change much about the SWF survival rates at that level.
The way to punish SWF for playing with friends
Personally I really don't feel like this would be "punishing" people. For one thing, they still outright benefit from teaming up in SWFs, so it's still a net-positive to do so, both in terms of overall performance potential and in terms of just having fun with friends. For another, I know I'm not talking for everyone, but I personally would not at all mind having to adjust my builds in SWF scenarios. In fact, I would rather enjoy having to come up with unique builds and coordinate with my fellow players, deciding who gets to use what. Seems interesting and fun to me.
Your change would piss off a lot of people and it would just be bad in general for the game. You don't want to punish players that bring friends to this game, that would be just dumb and bad for business.
Now you're repeating yourself and just repeating "bad". Why are you so upset over me suggesting SWF nerfs?
I actually think most people would get used to this rather quickly, but fair enough, BHVR might also think this would be worse for business, if merely on the basis of being a "nerf" when solo buffs and compensatory killer buffs would be "buffs".
There is not enough good perks for anything like this to begin with.
Big disagree. Finding 16 more-than-good-enough perks to use in a coordinated manner in 4-SWF is super easy.
You would have to make a massive changes for anything like this to work and you would mainly not do it for SWF only, you would have to do it for whole team -> soloQ too. Then probably restrict killers too, so they can't stack many slowdown perks etc. it would be hell to balance, which they just are not able to do. Anything like this would not be possible with patch every 3 months, just too slow.
This part I don't get at all. What massive changes, and why would you have to do this for solo queue and killers too, exactly?
Like I said, one major reason why I prefer my suggestion to BHVR's approach of buffing solo and compensatorily buffing killers, is precisely that the latter is much more time and effort-intensive, and is sure to take years given past development cycles.
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They don't even pretend to be impartial to both sides. They heavily favor survivors and any suggest survivor change is met with huge back lash from the "community" if you can even call it that any more. The change wouldn't be that hard to implement, rather simple actually....for most developers that is. Tunneling and face camping are already punished by perks and less blood points earned for doing so (not that losing blood points over it is that big of a deal). A quick google search will tell you what the best perks are, don't pretend people don't look them up. Demanding them not being allowed would actually balance the game. You would put the weaker survivor with the strong anti-tunnel perks such as BT and DS while giving good loopers SB and DH. It blows my mind how survivor mains will find any and all excuses as to why it's ok for them to have everything while killers barely get scraps. You do know that the worse killer is to play the less killer players, not even mains, there are going to be. Hate to break it to you, but no killer means no game. Something needs to be done and sadly we're to the point of something this extreme might be needed for a while as they find ways to actually balance out the perks and make the experience enjoyable for both sides.
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All 4 survivors do not need to run BT, and indeed the game is not balanced around that being the case as otherwise matches would almost never be balanced because the incidence of 4 BTs in a match is likely less than 10% of all matches.
And in 4-SWFs (where people could actually only use 1 BT, rather than the 2-3 that can still exist in trio/duo scenarios, due to the other players completing those lobbies) it is even less necessary for multiple people to have BT, because they can just say "Yo, BT guy, do your thing!". Obviously it's not always that easy, but the point here is precisely that we are trying to nerf SWF, to make things harder there.
The appeal of playing with friends is still entirely maintained. I really don't agree with this idea that you would be "punished" for playing SWF due to being limited in the perks you can then use. That's like saying you are "punished" for driving a new Mercedes because it does not have... a USB port to connect your phone to the radio with, which your VW Golf 2 somehow did (disclaimer: I have no clue about cars, probably all Mercedeses (Mercedesi?) these days do have the "perk" of being able to interface with your phone, and Golf 2s originally of course didn't... but I think the gist of the analogy is clear anyway).
I actually agree that the effectiveness of camping and tunnelling should be addressed, and indeed with base game changes rather than perks, but that is general balancing that I separate from the balance issue of the gap between SWF and solo, and if anything SWFs can of course deal with those things much, much better at base to begin with, and as such also are less dependent on perks to do so.
That said, reading stuff like "They can't attack SWFs on behalf of the killers, not while refusing to attack face camping and tunneling. They need to atleast pretend to be impartial to sides." here has me shook. I see tiring amounts of very killer-biased takes and stances here, regularly to silly extents even, of saying stuff along the lines of "killer mains exist in abject despair and hopelessness and evil SWFs literally ruin their lives", and then when I create an in my opinion fairly reasonable thread outlining that I want to nerf survivors' top performance ceiling, I get this. The hell?
Obviously half-joking, maybe your complaint is valid and this would be overdoing it without also shipping certain killer nerfs. Apart from Nurse/Blight/some add-ons I really don't think so, but again, I do agree that camping/tunnelling/slugging deserve rebalancing (albeit not as straight nerfs, but compensated for with buffs to other aspects of killer gameplay).
Post edited by zarr on2 -
there's some fact for your "growing game" 3 months of pure loss on steam alone. Higher than ever you say? Clearly you're the one who doesn't want to deal in fact. No killer shortage? Killer ques are near instant while even solo survivor que can be minutes. It's obviously not something people like to "cry out" where there is in game fact.
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So I gave you facts and you gave me a rant with no actual arguments???????
It's clear that you're a survivor main based on how you responded to this post with nothing but aggression towards the original poster.
A year in decline is a decline, no amount of kicking and screaming is going to change that. Losing more than you gain isn't growth just because the current number is higher, it's a net loss.
You're clawing for epic game store and console players? Console players are constantly complaining about poor optimization, you honestly think a lot of them are sticking around? You know that the globe next to peoples name just means they're not running it off the same client right? Steam and Epic Games show as globes towards each other. On top of that I even stated "on steam alone" meaning I'm very aware that it's not showing all but if it's declined in one, logic dictates, it's probably declining over all.
This game is NOT at it's highest, you even proved that in your own statement.
Once again, you refuse fact and only chose your own views to be right. Which honestly is the biggest problem out of all of this.
SWF is a huge issue. It needs to be dealt with. The decline will continue if it's not.
Simple as that.
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Mind linking me to a thread like that, genuinely curious to read some of the discussions around this suggestion.
I really don't think 4-SWFs need more than one BT (and one DS) to be able to combat camping, not least because they can also make super good use of perks like Kinship and Deliverance with regards to that, on top of course again of just using their superior basic coordination. Doesn't mean they'll have no issues with camping, camping can be a very strong strategy... but we are of course not trying to delete camping, that would require much more rebalancing work, and might arguably not even be an overall improvement for the game. So it should still be a viable strategy anyway.
Not to mention that we are still talking about the public matchmaking environment; I guarantee that a competent 4-SWF would have high escape rates even when going in perkless, campers or not.
Again, I do agree that camping/tunneling/slugging are issues to extents, and that they should be addressed, but this thread is really not the place for that discussion I don't think.
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Again, you said nothing useful. You're just trying to argue now because you have no ground to stand on. I'm sorry that you fail to see facts on the table I laid out for you and you cherry picked 3 numbers stating that is shows growth with out showing that they lost more than they gained. I get it you think the game is fine and should continue to lose over 1k people a month for almost 3 months straight now. Shows the game is perfectly fine and that killer mains should just accept the fact that they are nothing more than punching bags for you and that they should be honored to do so.
Enjoy pretending Survivor by Daylight is growing and perfectly fine.
Post edited by EQWashu on0 -
I would do it for everyone so it doesn't feel like "punishing" change, but it would bring diversity instead, which might be actually good thing with enough buffs to weak perks.
It would be issue to implement something like that for a killers tho...
Another problem is that you would have to make exceptions for some perks like it is on tournaments for BT for example. I wouldn't limit all perks to 1, some core perks might be better for 2 per team instead imo.
For example We'll make it, BT, Kindred etc. just support perks should be limited to 2 instead imo. But this would be hard for new players when it wouldn't be just simple rule = everything once perk team.
But if this was implemented they should actually fix tunneling / facecamping imo, it would be kinda issue without BT / DS.
Can you please tell me how do you that quote thing on left? I have never found out how :D
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I avoided your guys' discussion so far, but let me butt in here I guess, if only to try and steer it more closely back to the topic of the original suggestion.
First, with regards to the player activity stats, you are both kinda right. XStormyXDayzX is right that on average, the game has been growing over the years, including the past year. There are surges and dips in activity throughout years, and many of them are entirely to be expected as pointed out, as they coincide with holidays, content releases, and such. But the growth when you look at year-round averages is there, and with DbD now being on pretty much any platform you can game on as well as multiple PC clients (and soon perhaps even Linux), and with there being crossplay across all of them apart from mobile, it would be silly to talk about the game being in any danger of losing too much player activity.
On the other hand, player retention is important of course, and as you point out, DbD does not retain enough players to make up for players that play less or not at all anymore, otherwise we wouldn't see averages settle as much lower as the peaks. That said, the player retention rate might very well not be at all concerning for BHVR. Not only did we have some of the biggest surges in player activity yet last year from which a more steep downtrend is to be expected, but we've also had Covid affecting things throughout the last two years in unusual ways. Maybe BHVR is more concerned about the continued if slight decline in average player numbers (on Steam) throughout the last 4 months, and maybe particularly so because not even their Christmas event and log-in rewards brought numbers out of the reds, and the existence of Propnight and VHS is probably not entirely "unconcerning" for them either...
But ultimately, I don't think player activity is really an argument here either way. It would be speculation entirely on our end whether player retention is an issue affecting one role more than the other, and if anything, if BHVR is not doing big things that would boost killer player retention, we kind of have to assume that killer player retention is not actually a big problem or at all a problem, because BHVR does have the data to draw conclusions regarding these things, and indeed a big interest in solving such problems if they do exist and do threaten the game's popularity and longevity, because they of course care about those things (which is: profit) more than about... "killers" or "survivors".
I also have never bought into anecdotal arguments regarding queue times. This is something that has always changed between ranks (now ratings), regions, times of day and night, events, rifts, and so on. My personal experience is that survivor queues are in fact not very long, and indeed faster than my killer queues at certain times, such as in the early mornings to late noon. And having played this game for years, my experience with per-role queue times has been such pretty consistently: earlier in the day, survivor queues are faster; during much of the day, queue times are comparable on both sides; later in the day, killer queues are faster. That as a general experience. I also think queue times are a self-regulating issue to a certain extent, because there are actually a lot of players (me included) that will switch roles based on queue times, thereby obviously helping stabilize that issue around more reasonable averages. And anyway, whenever I have asked people for evidence of their claims that survivor queue times are actually so super long and killer queue times so super short, they haven't taken me up on that. And when I provide evidence from multiple streamers showing their survivor queue times averaging around 1min and regularly even being shorter than their killer queue times overall, that apparently doesn't matter. I think queue time arguments are indeed more often based in bias than fact. And this is again something BHVR can easily see and in all likeliness do very much look at, and so when people are sounding alarms about long queue times that BHVR can see is just not the case, that is not helping whatever case the people making those claims are concerned with, I'm sure.
So, let's ignore player acitvity and queue times and whether those would indicate anything that is relevant for my suggestion.
I have to say you seem too intelligent to be as unsensible as some of your statements regarding this game are. "Survivor by Daylight", "killer mains [...] are nothing more than punching bags" - I mean, come on dude. I appreciate the fact that you are the first and only person here posting so far that doesn't fundamentally dislike my suggestion and rejects it, but I will tell you that my suggestion is not based on the idea that survivors are super OP and the game hell for killers. In public matchmaking, I actually believe the game is favourable for killers, and even the average escape rates of 4-player SWFs even at higher MMR brackets are likely not very problematic either. That said, the performance potential of SWFs, the ceiling, is absolutely problematic, and while it is far from the average SWF experience, it is absolutely an experience that does happen, and it is a ridiculously imbalanced experience in the public matchmaking environment. That is the conviction my suggestion is based on. There are also killer performance ceilings I would like to see adjusted (mostly Nurse/Blight/certain add-ons, but also the effectiveness of certain strategies), but I do think SWF is a significantly bigger balancing problem that has more of a negative effect on the game, and as such I consider SWF adjustments to be more important and urgent, especially now with MMR in place where killer players at the top-end will be matched against SWFs with a notably increased frequency as compared to the rank-based MM past.
I would do it for everyone so it doesn't feel like "punishing" change, but it would bring diversity instead, which might be actually good thing with enough buffs to weak perks.
Fair enough, but then this point is of course not a critique of my suggestion or its validity, but you are expanding its rationale over more of the game. And I can agree that it could be good. Maybe introduce a sort of point system for loadouts, we've seen suggestions like that in the past and I'm not fundamentally opposed. I would certainly agree with buffs for perks. While there are totally more than 16 that are more than good enough to make for a very well-equipped 4-SWF team, I do obviously agree that too too many perks (on both sides) are just not nearly good enough in the total pool of perks. That's a big gripe of mine with the game too, in fact.
Another problem is that you would have to make exceptions for some perks like it is on tournaments for BT for example. I wouldn't limit all perks to 1, some core perks might be better for 2 per team instead imo.
This is also fair. In tournaments, some key perks are indeed sometimes allowed 2 times, most of all of course BT. If the availability of multiple copies of certain survivor perks turns out to be too integral to the game's balancing even in 4-player SWF scenarios, then that should be something to further tweak the system according to.
That said, for one thing I actually am not convinced there are any perks 4-player SWFs require multiple copies of to be able to compete against most killers, let alone in the public matchmaking environment, and for another I would prefer if perks that are identified to actually be that integral to the game's balancing would instead be reworked into base game mechanics. And that is especially the case regarding the balancing around camping and tunnelling, which I do also think warrants being addressed.
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Post edited by zarr on1 -
Hey, I don't have issue with your idea in general, it's just that I don't like SWF only changes. So I would rather expand your idea so it can be used for all survivors. As I said it would bring diversity to the game, which is something lot of players would like to see, but tunneling / camping would have to be adressed.
Nerf to camp / tunnel would be actually better alternative than try to limit killer's perks and it would improve overall health of the game.
What we could do se give soloQ a priority for perks in lobby. What that means is that everyone just setup build and when they get into a lobby identical perks would get removed starting with SWF players, otherwise random player. SoloQ players would be more likely to use perks they want and SWF would have to adapt. So it would be change for everyone, but it would affect SWF more.
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Yeah, sorry, your original post was rather dismissive, but you have since clarified or expanded on some of the points. I was just typing my response to Synzicle before addressing yours, and was then too lazy to go back and change the tone of that statement. 😅
I do think this loadout restriction system being applied to survivor groups at large and being balanced against adjustments to camping and tunnelling could turn out rather well. But that is obviously a much more complicated undertaking, for one thing making the loadout restriction system work for random lobbies that only have a minute to adjust perks, and for another of course dealing with the entire microcosm of the gameplay element that is camping. Not impossible, and with regards to the latter definitely something I want to see in the future regardless, but it's less readily-workable than the SWF loadout restrictions I suggest, which I do think would do a lot of good for the game and do it fast.
Here's a few more arguments I randomly attach to this post (they are tangentially related to points we discussed earlier, but they are not strictly directed at you):
I think buffing solos with SWF balance in mind power-creeps the game in a way that if anything leaves new players behind even more. New players often won't be able to make good use of the information the game gives them, hell, in many cases they will if anything be overwhelmed by the information while they are trying to still maneuveur the very basic principles and mechanics of the game. I know that's been the case for me whenever I entered a Tom Clancy game (just that it turned out like 90% of the information it gave me was inconsequential to my succeeding, lol). And so we create a situation in which newer players in the best case are not benefitting from this info all that much, while in the worst case even being negatively affected by it, and we then also buff a lot of killers to "compensate" so they will face even tougher opposition.
I think in general (so also with regards to all skill and experience levels) it is more reasonable to acknowledge that SWF's ceiling is too high and to balance SWF with the rest of the game in mind, rather than try to balance the rest of the game with that unreasonably high SWF ceiling as a standard in mind. That would lead to a power creep that is problematic well beyond the "new player" brackets. I mean, are we really looking to buff all killers to be as strong as Nurse and Blight, who can compete with that absolute top ceiling?
Tournaments show that quite a lot of the killer lineup can actually compete even against highly-skilled and coordinated 4-player SWF teams in an environment where those teams have loadout restrictions in place. Average kills fall slightly above 2, wins for either side are completely commonplace. So we already have evidence that these simple SWF nerfs would get us to a much more reasonable state of balance for a lot of the game, without having to buff a dozen killers in elaborate ways that would have to be both notable yet still sensible when accounting for solo environments too. It's just a much easier, faster and already proven way to get closer to our goal of closing the gap and making the game more balanced as well as easier to balance from there on out.
And I mean, BHVR has been talking about wanting to bridge the solo/SWF gap for more than two years now, and little to nothing of note has happened with regards to that in that time. And then there's killers like Legion that for years have been more than deserving of buffs even regardless of SWF/solo concerns and are left in a rather sad state for seemingly little reason. Why do we believe that BHVR will suddenly start shipping multiple notable solo buffs that actually improve that experience tangibly and consistently, and also then ship multiple such buffs for a whole range of killers too? They are still nerfing add-ons of mid-tier killers in an update that is yet to hit live, in what year would we ever expect such a wild reality of a tangibly more competitive solo experience and a more powerful killer lineup across the board? To that I say: "Just nerf SWF already, lmao."
I also want to note that most good SWFs don't really need perks to succeed in the public matchmaking environment, let alone multiple copies of the strongest perks. In fact, I think it is much more reasonable to assume that way more survivors are propped up by SWF loadout coordination to succeed against better killers, than good survivors are helped by it to compete against equal killers. Good SWFs would still comfortably do well, lesser SWFs would stop being favoured as much by the mere stackedness of their loadouts. And since most SWFs fall more on the "lesser" side of this, the killer experience would stand to benefit a lot. And I also don't think "lesser" SWFs would start losing to equal and worse killers a lot more due to this change either. They would have a harder time naturally, it would do a whole lot to bring more balance into those scenarios, but nerfing SWF is of course precisely the point.
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I think a loadout restriction is a really good idea that could bring a good chunk of balance and by all gods no killer needs to go on nurse level I would say nurse and blight need to come down a bit but some killer could use a few buffs or even a rework ( I'm looking at you legion) but overall the loadout idea is one of the best things I've ever seen here and together with a bit general balance work on perks and maybe the maps the game could grow to be a game where I am excited to go on my pc to play again
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I was also thinking about it and I would probably like to take back the part that one perk only system I was talking in my last comment.
Thing is that system changes I talked about would actually make it even worse for SWF. SoloQ would probably take all meta perks and there would be nothing you can do about it, so SWF of 3 players would get punished more even tho they benefit less from being SWF.
So actually make it SWF only thing would be better in this case. I have always liked how you have team roles on tournaments, so it would be interesting to have this in normal game too.
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Read the whole thing it's well thought out and fair. I tend to say survivor by daylight because based on a lot of what him, and many others say on the forums, when ever a change is suggested against them it's met with an instant shut down regardless of how reasonable, thought granted many unreasonable, suggestions there are. It also seems by a lot of their suggestions that's all they want killers to be, a punching bag for them to meme against. Mainly it's said with satire and of course some delicious salt. I always thought it would be cool if they treated survivors like killers and gave each one unique abilities such as DS and SB based on their lore. This would also lead to knowing how to play against each survivors strengths and weakness similar to how survivors face off against killers .Granted that would take an entire survivor rework, your idea is a bit more feasible. I do agree that more killers need to be brought up to speed and behavior just won't....why that is I can't say.
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Not all SWF groups are the same. Some of them aren't sweaty try hards. When I do SWF, we never super coordinate anything other than trying to deal with a toxic camp/tunnel killer. A lot of people who do SWF aren't there trying to give the killer a hard time. In fact I imagine you probably only see super try hard SWF in red ranks anyway. If they ever put any kind of restrictions on SWF I honestly think you would see a dramatic decrease in players. It isn't fair for people who want to play together. The other thing to consider is don't take the game so seriously. If you go up against a SWF then do your best and move on. You won't get SWF every time. A lot of SWF teams are actually fun to play with.
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That was a lot of reading to do including the comments but I of course have pieces that I agree with and pieces that I don't.
- As someone mentioned, if you limit a team of a 4 man SWF to having no perks in common, that will encourage many killers to tunnel out players who have perks that they deem problematic. You can see it all over the forums anytime Dead hard, unbreakable, DS, BT, CoH, etc are mentioned. It's as simple as "I saw David get the save and the person I hit had BT. That means if I get David on hook, no one can safely save him if I proxy camp him because no one else has BT." or "Feng hit me with D-strike. Now I don't have to worry about tunneling anyone else because no one else has it" There are certain perks that are pivotal to countering the tunnel/camp meta and having them immediately snuffed out because only 1 person gets it throws the balance completely out of whack.
- I agree that the potential and the ceiling an expert 4 man SWF has is really high. I think my only issues with your suggestions is I don't think there's enough expert 4 man SWF teams out there to justify this level of change. The majority of SWFs I encounter (and this is both ones that I've played against and ones that I've played with) are comprised of maybe 1 or 2 at most good players paired with some babies who haven't even learned to look behind them when they run. To limit a team like that to never having more than 1 copy of BT (which is really made as an anti-camping perk for altruistic people) doesn't seem justifiable imo.
- I don't really have a suggestion of my own except maybe only limiting certain perks to 2 people instead of 1 and leaving the rest of the perks alone (Because why stop a team from running We'll Make It on 4 people if they want quick heals off of hook saves or 4 people running head on to try and meme around and get a few cheeky stuns which will only work like twice before the killer catches on)
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Now that's a more reasonable take.
Online outlets for this game and multiplayer games in general can and do tend to bring out some of the more narrow-minded views of players, as well as heated arguments in the context of which even more ridiculous stuff is regularly being said. But I also always keep in mind that, for one thing, a lot of people are most likely actually using these things as outlets, to vent their frustrations with the game, often even in the actual heat of the moment after having just come out of a match, and for another, they often most likely don't even really mean the things they say as literally as they frame them. In a non-text-based discussion, they would probably be more reasonable, concede more, contest less, be less disagreeable.
And oftentimes players don't even really know what they want. The players that say things along the lines of wanting their opponent to be a "punching bag" would quickly grow bored if they actually didn't face opposition they can feel good about having performed well against due to it having been a challenge, killer or survivor. I've seen a lot of complaints where I'm reasonably sure the person in question would likely not even be playing the game anymore if the things they are complaining about didn't exist.
So yeah, my advice is to take such stuff less seriously, because even for themselves it is often not as serious as it may sound, whether they realize or not. I for one try not to engage with stuff like that much, not least because one can be reasonably confident that it won't have much of any sway on the devs' decisions anyway.
Unique abilities or perks for survivors could indeed be cool, and there have been various suggestions for stuff like that from what I've seen through the years, but it doesn't seem to be something BHVR is looking to do. One understandable reason is that it would likely lead to a meta of using certain characters and team compositions. One of the cooler suggestions I've seen and that I doubt would really tank player character diversity (if anything it would positively affect it) is that survivors get special benefits on their respective teachable perks that other survivors using those perks do not. The same would work just as well on the killer side, of course. I'm all for perk buffs, so many of the perks in the game are blatantly subpar and barely see use, and this teachable-specific way to buff a ton of perks could be an interesting approach to do that, since it strengthens the "personality" of different survivors and killers alike, creates soft gameplay "roles" for different survivor characters, and encourages more diversity in the selected characters. And it does so without even affecting global balance all that drastically, since those perk buffs being tied to specific characters of course means there can only be a limited amount of those buffs having an effect in any given match.
Either way, yeah, stuff of that nature is not really something I can see happening, as opposed to this comparably simple SWF adjustment.
This is well and true, but with regards to this SWF restriction specifically, it also shouldn't really matter. Precisely because many SWFs aren't using or looking to use the most stacked and coordinated loadouts it's not a very painful restriction for them. And precisely because they don't take the game so seriously they will if anything even come to enjoy this restriction, because it encourages them to experiment with builds more and think more about individual perk and item choices, and do so specifically in the context of playing with friends, where people will develop "trademark" perks and items that the group has decided they get to use most of the time, and stuff like that. Will be sort of a SWF bonding experience making their loadouts work and deciding who gets to use what, ha.
I think for "casual" SWF this should if anything make things more fun both for themselves and their opponents, and it won't really feel like a "punishment".
Besides, there's totally enough of a pool of viable perks (and items/add-ons) to choose from to still be able to have solid builds even if they have to be distinct.
Adrenaline, Balanced Landing, Circle Of Healing, Borrowed Time, Dead Hard, Decisive Strike, Deliverance, Iron Will, Kindred, Lithe, Lucky Break, Prove Thyself, Resilience, Spine Chill, Sprint Burst, Unbreakable - that's a 16-perk lineup of some of the most popular and best perks, so we aren't even forced to break into "tech" perk territory to equip a team with this restriction in place. We just won't be able to stack 4 of the absolute best things.
Thanks for reading it all!
- As in earlier arguments, while I do concede that there's merit to this and that adjustment to the restrictions could be made specifically with camping and tunnelling in mind (so pertaining BT and DS, basically), we also have to remember that we are talking about a 4-player SWF team playing in pubs here. They will still be in a super good spot even with just 1 copy of each of those perks, not least because they can also make better use of perks like Deliverance, Kinship, Renewal to deal with camping and tunelling, on top of course again of their coordinated ways of dealing with them better, by sticking to gens if someone is being camped, or attacking the hook together, bodyblocking for a teammate that is being tunneled, and so on. They will of course have to be more cautious, it will be more difficult, but I don't think the balance in public matchmaking is really such that 4-player SWFs would suffer without multiple BT and DS.
- As outlined in my reply to KateMain86, SWFs will still be able to put really potent loadouts on the board. So the more "casual" SWFs not only won't be hurt much by this because they aren't usually stacking the strongest stuff times four anyway, but also because they will still have solid builds, in many cases likely not even all that different from the builds they used to have. But for the also existent SWFs that do stack DS, DH, IW, UB, BNP, and all that good stuff, things will change, and many of these SWFs are also not expert-level players but "boosted" by these loadouts to differing degrees, winning against killer players they perhaps shouldn't be, or at least doing so much more comfortably than they should be.
- Exceptions to the restrictions are possible, though as I've also pointed out earlier, if it should actually turn out that even full SWF teams still need multiple copies of certain perks in order to be able to compete against camping/tunnelling, there should be base game changes regarding these things instead (which there should be anyway, in my opinion). For everything else, I would still insist on the hard limit of 1 per player, because it would encourage more perk diversity, and come without the baggage of having to decide for every single perk whether it warrants being restricted. You are of course right that there are perks that aren't problematic even when present 4 times in a match, but I also don't feel like it's a problem that SWFs won't be able to use them 4 times.
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I didnt read it all, since I already spotted too many issues with the suggestion, so here's all the counter arguments:
- what about SWF's who dont use comms and just play together?
- what about SWF's who are just screwing around a bit with random builds?
- nerfing SWF is only going to make balancing killers harder.
What you really want to do, is buff Solo Q up to the potential of SWF.
If you do nerf SWF closer towards solo q, you're going to have the following issue:
Lets say optimal SWF is a solid 10 and a full Solo Q squad is a 6. If you were to design any killer right now, they would need to fit between 7-10. Meaning any killer has still somewhat room for nerfs and buffs, even if the numbers are already small.
If you were to drop SWF to 8, you would need to drop all killers that are between 8-10 back to 8. This would mean Nurse, Hag, Spirit, Artist and Blight too. But how are you going to nerf those to now compensate for the lack of potential power on SWF without absolutely gutting those killers?
The smaller the number already is, the harder it is to adjust. If something is 0.5% too fast, 10% is easier to nerf to 9.5% with less impact, than 1% has to 0.5%. You would want to buff survivors, so you can make balancing killers a lot easier.
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For 1., and 2., these restrictions shouldn't really hurt much. People playing in SWF have various advantages, even without voice comms, and taking away the ability to stack the best stuff or coordinate some broken combinations on top of that is only sensible, even for SWFs that are not looking to arm themselves to the teeth (who of course will be less affected to begin with by restrictions to the ability to do so).
Your argument would have to be that it's actually fine to have a group with 4 DH, DS, BT, UB, BNP and whatnot. I think that's an imbalanced set of loadouts regardless, and SWFs are the only groups that can actually consistently put together loadouts like that.
For 3., I don't think I agree. I think there are much fewer killers that currently can compete with the SWF performance ceiling than killers that cannot. So if we close the solo/SWF gap by nerfing the SWF ceiling, we only have to adjust those few killers to account for this. If we close it by bringing solo closer to the SWF ceiling on the other hand, we of course have to adjust those many killers that currently cannot compete with that ceiling.
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Except, it does hurt a LOT. Not being able to run certain combinations for fun is quite harmful and makes the game boring. You would have to neuter combinations like Ruin/Undying/Tinkerer/Pop too.
"People playing in SWF have various advantages, even without voice comms, and taking away the ability to stack the best stuff or coordinate some broken combinations on top of that is only sensible, even for SWFs that are not looking to arm themselves to the teeth (who of course will be less affected to begin with by restrictions to the ability to do so)."
This entire sentence is true, for solo Q. You can still stack everything and coordinate very broken combinations in the pre-game lobby. That's why there is a chatbox in the lobby.
"Your argument would have to be that it's actually fine to have a group with 4 DH, DS, BT, UB, BNP and whatnot. I think that's an imbalanced set of loadouts regardless, and SWFs are the only groups that can actually consistently put together loadouts like that."
If 4 solo q people can play it without many issues, then 4 people in a SWF lobby can too. The average 4 man solo q(assuming matchmaking didnt replace someone with a potato) is more threatening than a 4 man SWF, because 4 man solo lacks the incentive to play altruistic. Altruism is your best friend as killer.
"I think there are much fewer killers that currently can compete with the SWF performance ceiling than killers that cannot. So if we close the solo/SWF gap by nerfing the SWF ceiling, we only have to adjust those few killers to account for this. If we close it by bringing solo closer to the SWF ceiling on the other hand, we of course have to adjust those many killers that currently cannot compete with that ceiling."
Or, yknow, maybe something silly: ADD SOMETHING TO THE KILLER BASEKIT THAT DOESNT AFFECT THE HIGHER RANGE.
Like Fire-Up. Fire-Up being basekit helps all lower rank killers quite significantly, while it barely even helps higer ranked killers. Blight, Nurse, Spirit, Hag, Artist and even Huntress barely really need to increase pallet breaking or window vaulting speeds, while killers like Myers, Ghostface, Clown, Pig and Trapper would massively benefit from even the slightest increase in both, especially later in the game.
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Except, it does hurt a LOT. Not being able to run certain combinations for fun is quite harmful and makes the game boring. You would have to neuter combinations like Ruin/Undying/Tinkerer/Pop too.
I agree that not being able to coordinate fun builds as liberally anymore as one can currently is a downside (though I also don't think it hurts "a LOT"), but it's a small price to pay for getting rid of the ability of groups to abuse completely busted loadouts and combinations. It is particularly small a price because groups can still coordinate various fun builds with this restriction in place. Which builds that rely on perk stacking even are there that are actually purely for fun and pose no risk of getting abused? I would not even classify 4 Head On as purely for fun, since it's not fun for killers to keep getting stunned. Of course some things come to mind, such as stacking Slippery Meat and Up The Ante, but it's a compromise I for one would be more than willing to make, not least because it is very rare for people to actually run stuff like that, from my experience through the years; even most casual SWFs usually run useful perks and play normally. So I don't really see it hurting a lot of players either.
Besides, as I've mentioned, these restrictions would open up design space for the devs to make individual perks more impactful in their own right, further decreasing the necessity of being able to coordinate to get use out of certain perks.
I don't get why you would have to change anything about combinations like Ruin/Undying/Tinkerer/Pop. How does this relate to fun builds? And if it's that you think 4-player SWF teams would not be able to compete against builds like that with these restrictions in place, I simply have to disagree.
This entire sentence is true, for solo Q. You can still stack everything and coordinate very broken combinations in the pre-game lobby. That's why there is a chatbox in the lobby.
I rather deal in realities of the game. People in reality as good as never coordinate anything in pre-game lobbies. People practically never even tell others simple stuff like "I have DS", which would be easy and crucial loadout information to share... but suddenly they will coordinate entire harmonious perk setups, and do so in a mere minute?
In reality, only SWF groups actually coordinate builds, and in the 0.X% of lobbies where solo groups actually attempt to coordinate builds, they not only will not be able to do so very effectively because of the time limit even if every single survivor just so happens to be on board with changing their build, but they also will still not be able to use those builds in coordinated fashion like SWFs can even if they would succeed in making the builds happen. This is a non-issue.
If 4 solo q people can play it without many issues, then 4 people in a SWF lobby can too. The average 4 man solo q(assuming matchmaking didnt replace someone with a potato) is more threatening than a 4 man SWF, because 4 man solo lacks the incentive to play altruistic. Altruism is your best friend as killer.
Sorry, this doesn't really make sense. Even apart from it being common sense that SWFs have various huge advantages over solos, we have hard data on SWFs in fact being more successful in the game, that's the very reason the devs specifically are addressing the problem of the solo/SWF gap to begin with.
I don't disagree that SWFs can be overly altruistic, but not only do I think that solos are usually comparably as altruistically minded, and not only can SWFs be altruistic in coordinated manners and as such regularly succeed in their altruism as opposed to solos who regularly fall apart due to it, but one shouldn't really balance the game just on the expectation that people will be somehow inclined to play in unoptimal ways rather than abuse the advantages SWF provides as much as possible. That doesn't mean SWF has to be balanced for the idea that every single group will do so, but we are not bringing the ceiling that much down here either.
Or, yknow, maybe something silly: ADD SOMETHING TO THE KILLER BASEKIT THAT DOESNT AFFECT THE HIGHER RANGE.
While this is a more or less fair point in and of itself, I don't quite think it's as easy as you make it out to be to find things that actually only benefit the killers that aren't already more than strong enough. Not least because there are also pretty considerable differences in strength between those non-S-tier killers still, so even if you were to find general killer buffs that don't affect the top-end killers and put some of the other killers into a good spot, they could at the same time be too little or too much on yet other killers.
I will say that the sentiment behind the Fire Up idea as a general buff is good. Weaker killers are generally those that have to kick pallets and vault windows, so buffing those things would be a fairly sensible route. Then again, not only would a killer like Blight still tangibly benefit from this as well, so it's not entirely "clean" either, but this also limits design space for future killers, since they will then always have to be created with these base buffs in mind, another problem that doesn't exist if we just nerf the SWF ceiling and its killer equivalents.
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Sorry mate I got to disagree with this one.
Your treating every swf as if they are a full team of veteran players. Lower ranks (where the game is considered killer sided) shouldn't be restricted whenever they aren't good enough to use the benefits of a swf. In tournaments they have these sorts of restrictions because they know everyone is a veteran player.
Lastly I believe it kills the variety that of this game. Sometimes swf teams get bored of just looping the killer and doing gens and want to do something differently. Usually this involves them running very similar builds.
They will never be able to buff solo q to the level of swf no matter what happens but I like the direction they are trying to take. Same way no matter what happens they can never have all killers viable at high ranks, no matter how much they buff them. You'll always have the top 5, basically everyone in the middle who'll win most of their matches and the bottom ones that just won't be good enough.
Apologies but I've read plenty of discussions before on swf perk limitations like this and they've never been able to convince me it's a good idea.
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It's not treating every SWF as an elite group because the restrictions still allow for teams to use really good builds. The 1-copy perk/item/add-on limit does not actually decrease the ceiling of SWF so much that non-elite groups would suffer much. Do you think those teams need 4 copies of the strongest perks and items to succeed? I don't, and I actually think many of them never even do use such builds. As I've pointed out earlier, a 16-perk setup could consist almost entirely of proper meta perks (Adrenaline, Balanced Landing, Circle Of Healing, Borrowed Time, Dead Hard, Decisive Strike, Deliverance, Iron Will, Kindred, Lithe, Lucky Break, Prove Thyself, Resilience, Spine Chill, Sprint Burst, Unbreakable), and then you can still add on top of that a toolbox with a BNP, a med-kit with a Styptic, a different med-kit with a Syringe, a key with Blood Amber or a Rainbow Map. The restrictions will bring down the top of stacking the absolutely strongest things, but it won't mean that SWFs are forced to bring weak builds, whatsoever.
I think SWF teams can still have a ton of fun and a lot of different fun builds without being able to stack perks. And for the much more common case that SWF teams actually use normal builds, it will of course actually lead to much more variety.
But it's fair enough that you prefer the direction the devs are trying to take of buffing solos and killers. There are arguments for and against both directions, but personally more than anything else my conviction is based on the fact that the devs have already been talking about wanting to pursue their direction for more than two years now, and practically nothing has happened in that regard. Moreover, their direction would require significant changes to the game, for survivors at large and a lot of different killers. Given BHVR's pace, I just can't see that this would be feasible. It would likely take years, years during which the game is still of course constantly getting new additions of more killers, perks and who-knows-what changes to complicate the process. Nerfing SWF on the other hand, with loadout restrictions like these, is something they could implement within 1 patch cycle of one and a half months.
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Some people still calling comms "not unfair" and "not game changing" even if it's an external tool that gives many advantage without any disadvantage. The worst thing is they even see any attempt to fix this obvious problem as a "punishment to people playing with friends"
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