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Why Behavior should add voice chat/ Comms, With a Twist! A serious and logical debate. :)

OblivionStardust
OblivionStardust Member Posts: 6
in General Discussions

The question goes as follows, Do you think voice chat can benefit DBD if designed in the following way?

I believe it's not outlandish to claim that Comms were not originally intended to be used in this game, This much can be observed by the fact that it makes lots of awareness perks like kindred become redundant. That said, Devs have indicated that they do not frown upon its use.

Ill first explain the concept, then any pros and cons.

The Concept:
All survivors have full lobby voice chat, They can hear each other anywhere on the map as if using discord. The catch however, Is that a Killer can hear survivors comms within about 3-meters(to be determined) of a survivor and NOT in chase. Killers CANNOT speak to survivors at any point.
The reason the Killers ability to hear is tied to being in chase is for the following two reasons.
  1. If a killer can hear a survivor's comms when not in chase, then they are disincentivized from simply playing loud music or having background noise that may bother other survivors because the Killer would hear them if they pass close enough.
  2. On the same note, because sound is so important in both roles, proximity audio for killer would be turned off while in chase to prevent survivors from drowning out steps/breathing with music for example. This provides killers a brief window to hear survivors reactions/strategies before a chase starts. Similar to death comms in other games but one way.


That's it, that's the concept. Now lets address why I think this will make the game better, and how we can make it actually work, as i'm sure you can think of a few issues already. First up, the Pros of this addition. I will number them so they can be easily mentioned in any comments. :)


Pros:

  1. As a Killer main(Play killer about 95% of matches), the number 1 reason I stop playing for the night is because I get bored/lonely. I sometimes win every match, but unlike playing survivors were I can socialize while playing, winning only brings so much fulfillment. This would introduce a social aspect to killer, as I would quite literally NEVER get tired of hearing survivors reactions to me popping out of nowhere and scaring them.
  2. The native ease of use and and ability to chat with all platforms would ideally bring all comms in game, albeit i'm sure there will still be SWF groups that will stay on external comms to not give killers the added bonus of proximity audio.
  3. Would create a social aspect where survivors could find new friends to play with. Ideally, Behavior would also add a after match option to "Add recent players" & "Continue playing with recent players".


Cons~ and how we can address them:

  1. This would greatly favor survivors. This is the main concern, but it's actually the most important reason it should be added, I'll explain. The current challange with DBD is balancing perks. Because there is such a large gap between new/random matchmaking survivor groups and experienced SWF groups, it raises the following challange. How do you make a perk effective to a new/low skill player, but prevent that same perk from being overpowered in the hands of an experienced player? By adding in game chat, you add power to new/random survivor groups, without increasing the power of pro players that already use comms to begin with. Reducing the gap between the bottom and top of the player base directly affects' the ability for devs to balance perks, as you now have a tighter skill pool across the board. In other words, when survivor win rates inevitably goes up due to this change, devs can then confidently buff perks to even the playing field. They can then rework perks that are made redundant by this change like kinderd. This will in fact reduce the power of high level survivors and bring the skill levels even more in line, as it stands now, SWF gives you the effect of perks like kindred on top of your 4 chosen perks.
  2. This can lead to toxicity where survivors can verbally bully the killer or even fellow survivors. To mitigate this, this feature must able to be toggled off for every match by default, or you can mute just the bad apples individually. Additionally, an in game group finder similar to overwatch were you could post an "ad" would also combat this issue. Think of a post reading "Looking for 18+ to vibe and chill" or "looking for competitive players with meta perks". This reduces the chances of playing with randoms, and actually finding and sticking with like minded folks.
  3. Behavior would now be responsible for harassment because the chat is in game. This would ideally be countered with a robust reporting & endorsing system similar to overwatch. Played with someone that was cool beans? endorse them and increase their score. Play with someone that was bullying and breaking terms of use like teaming with the killer? Report them. This would ideally improve the culture of the player base and improve good behavior over time.


Anyways, This is just a dream of a fan of the game that gets lonely from playing killer to long.

I will attempt to link a Poll for this discussion shortly.

Please provide any feedback, pros, cons, issues you see with my idea. :) Please stay respectful to each other in the comments.

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