The soloqueue experience from a personal perspective (U.S Region)
WARNING, this post is probably VERY LONG so skip to the TL;DR if you cbf to take the time.
I'm not going to try to speak for all people out there as many people have different soloqueue experiences and it seems to also vary depending on region, but this is my personal experience in solo queue post-patch. We all know what patch I'm talking about.
Ten seconds of extra generator, 10% faster killer animations, perk overhaul all sounded great until it translated to how the game feels like now. It's not just ten more seconds of holding m1 on a gen; it means whoever is engaging the killer needs to run them for ten more seconds to get the same amount done as before, which would be fine by itself if it also didn't included survivors generally going down quicker from lost distance over time from the faster animations. The perk overhaul seemed fine to me as I rarely ever used "meta" or second chance perks as survivor anyway, but it feels as though while many survivors are getting creative with builds, a majority of the killers I face are running the "new" meta of 2-4 gen slowdown along with the already increased 10 seconds.
So, how is the solo queue experience? Pretty poor.
All of these things add up so I get things like increased survivor d/cs or opting out early, people who throw because they literally don't care anymore, having to splitgen to even get gens done often times, having to be more efficient overall rather than prioritizing bloodpoints or fun. I don't know if it's just the U.S region where I'm located, but killers generally have been playing more aggressively with camping and tunneling. The five-second basekit endurance has literally done nothing to prevent it as they now just wait five seconds instead of fifteen because let's be honest, very few people run actual BT anymore. These days I feel like I'm actually forced to locate the new survivor meta and equip those perks to even have a reasonable chance of living past 3 gens into the game without getting straight up tunneled out. End-game risks to try to get the person on hook out is actually much more difficult now if the killer doesn't move from hook at all, so many don't really take the risk and just leave; those who do just give the killer an extra sacrifice. That's just not fun. And I've pretty much gotten the same feedback from a majority of friends based in the U.S. Swf is doing fine ofc if everybody's a decent looper and are actually touching gens like their character's life depends on it.
I play both survivor and killer, and it's the same general correlation on the other side. I usually expend less effort to get a 4k and still don't need or want to tunnel to get it, even less so (although, I can't say the same for sweaty 4-stacks when my first down is 3-gens in ofc). It's actually more fun for me to handicap like playing pallet freddy with zero gen slowdown for an actual challenge. I don't have to, but I personally feel obligated to give hatch to any game with a d/c or early opt out just because I know how it feels to have to try to get things done with 3 people (nothing wrong if people just want the 4k though). My intention is not to trivialize the killer experience; I recognize that even with my personal experiences, anything can happen in a game and there's always the potential for things to go either way. Survivors are not necessarily easier to down, but if I run my normal builds then often they aren't as willing to work on gens or they literally can't get them done in time for me to get there. Many hatch games at 3-5 gens left and it doesn't feel good on the other side for me either.
I didn't play the game to against a killer who is really meant to be "an unstoppable force." I played because I had a relatively even chance of escaping or having a decent game where it's close, not getting either tunneled out or getting 4k'ed about 4/5ths of my solo queue games without having for it to be a sweatfest every game. It's pretty common now to get sub-10k points because I'm working on gens alone before promptly dying on first or second hook while my teammates are aiming for a soft reset and prioritizing gens/others on hook/not getting found. I absolutely do think that something should've been done to shift the balance a bit and the idea of a killer buff would've be great, but this patch ain't it, chief.
TL;DR, I'm based in U.S region and solo queue is garbage. People D/C more, killers tunnel more with the same perk meta, I need to actually slap on the new meta perks to live longer than 3 gens. RIP meme/fun perks. I have to handicap myself as killer for a real challenge playing nicely, don't take offense if that's not the case for you. 3-4 stack sweaty SWF is literally still the same though.
Comments
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I play on NA East. This patch really forces survivors to play optimally if the killer is. The problem is that at least 70% of survivors in that region are hyper casual. They just kind of do stuff. The window is even tighter now for countering tunneling and camping since hook timers didn't change relative to gen times. And 3 gen strats are crazy powerful with CoB/Overcharge. It's a perfect storm to make life difficult on that server. Survivors suddenly have to really think about their positioning and what they're doing every second of the match. Many are failing. And that's frustrating as a solo player with no control over my teammates.
Games have been tough in my 4 stack that I play with. We actually had to run our old comp builds last night because we were getting really tough games. We're used to being able to 4 man escape with meme builds. Matchmaking is definitely giving us tougher games now. Not sure what changed there.
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You're right... It is very long
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I have to say something every time I see it. 3-genning is not a cure-all, even with "OP" Call Of Brine/Overcharge. The map will either be split, or the survivors will overcome the 3-gen. The only risk they have is needing to hit the Overcharge skill check, or else they lose extra progress. Otherwise, they can just tap the gen a few seconds and run away repeatedly, and the killer only progresses his objective by downing and hooking someone (who clearly wasn't playing safe), in which case a gen probably gets done, because it's not as if a 3-geb always starts out with all 3 at 0%. The survivors should* win the war of attrition, and they often times do.
How you can talk about survivors needing to play optimal now to beat optimal killers, and then go on to say that killers can simply get a 3-gen and win, is beyond me. BHVR needs to stop factoring bad survivors into game balance, because it creates an unbalanced game.
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So, you're thinking about this scenario in the sense that the killer is average and the survivors are perfect, which killers often do. Sometimes the killer is really good and the survivors are average. Sometimes the gens are super compact and the first chase isn't ideal. And yes, sometimes the survivors are great and the killer is average. There's a lot that can happen.
But realistically, if the killer is any good, they aren't crossing the map when they have a preferable gen split, and they're going to hook near those gens. It's beatable, but I don't think anyone is looking to play a 20 minute public match. Remember that good killers weren't struggling before the update. And now those players have more tools.
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Since we're sharing personal experiences, here's mine
Context: Left for Elden Ring in February, came back for a few days on the Anniversary Event then left until this week. This are my first impressions after the balance updates. I been playing with the same casual build I've used before: Sprint Burst + Clairvoyance + Inner Healing + Small Game. I play SQ.
TLDR: games have been really unfun.
Most killers I've played against continue to double down on slowdown perks despite the increased gen time. What seemed to be an incentive to rely less on those types of perks and bringing forward builds focused on different playstyles became just another motivation to delay the late game us much as possible.
Thanatophobia is the worst offender IMO. While most regression perks were nerfed to compensate, Thana became much better not because of its 0,5% per stack increase but due to base gen time going up. Combined with the cumulative nerfs to healing we've been seeing, survivors have to stay injured for longer, increasing the perk's value and indirectly the killer's lethality.
On the survivor side, my experience probably biased as I was possibly deranked due to my time out. That said, teammates were what you can expect of SQ except they seem much more prone to disconnecting which caused most games to derail. Not sure what the motivation was until I started seeing the same boring experience of working on gens and barely seeing any progress. I suspect that before the update, one motivation to stay in a game was seeing that you managed to run the killer for 1 or 2 gens, but that is mostly gone in low ranks of SQ, so people just DC.
Personally, playing SQ has been difficult. Less and less frequently I've been seeing myself enjoying a match and I don't play to win, I play for fun. Gens are taking forever and in the most boring way. Most matches feel like barely any progression was achieved before the first down it's like every killer I face is as boring as unengaging as old Forever Freddy or pre-nerf Ruin/Undying Blight.
I really miss a more casual experience. I do not want to be forced into Second Chance or Repair Speed perks every match just to be able to live long enough to have fun interactions with my team or the killer.
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Good killers always struggled before the update, and they still do. The only tools they have, the only difference is, that hitting survivors and kicking is now worth it (barely). Survivors don't have to be good to win, as long as the gens fly. The killer usually isn't in a position to stop a gen split, no matter how easy you think it is.
Even if you get a 3-gen and you've broken every single pallet on that side, the survivors can still overcome it. It's not just getting hit and running away, healing, and then coming back, because they can mix it up between holding forward as soon as they see the killer, and tricking the killer that they're doing that by actually hiding nearby. Sure, the killer can look around and check, but not without wasting game-losing time. The pressure is on the killer in a 3-gen, not the other way around.
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Then keep losing games until you're low MMR where you should be. You don't get to play casual but also try hard to win. It's an oxymoron.
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I was hoping you at least had read the post before addressing it directly. I'll make it easier for you:
Less and less frequently I've been seeing myself enjoying a match and I don't play to win, I play for fun.
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You're talking about perks and balance, and you're talking about being unhappy that you're not winning, but you're playing for fun instead of playing to win. You're not just sharing your experience. There's an underlying message that you're not happy, so therefore killer should be nerfed or survivor be buffed.
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Okay. This one is complicated.
As I mentioned in another post, there is a Chicken/Fox/Corn riddle playing out in real life here, in that BHVR have to try and balance both SWF versus Killer and Solo versus Killer, and any change to one influences the other.
Someone is going to lose out.
For a long while, that someone was killer. Now it's solos. This is not ideal, but it's a little bit fairer.
I'd love to see solos get some love, but it's extremely tricky to do in a manner that is both meaningful (I'm not convinced the status icons will do much, and voicechat would be a complete disaster) and won't bork the balance of these matchups further.
DCs and suicides? Yes. But this was just as much of an epidemic before the changes - you aren't going to get people to sulk less when a game is going badly. The only way to fix this is to flag and penalize people who constantly give up.
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so much this, just about every match has 3 slowdowns. it feels like forever freddy and is super boring.
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Killers didn't have a Casual/Fun Mode it was MOSTLY Killer VS 4xMETA Perks,*one Chase to long, and the game was lost* all I read in here from Survivors was "git gud"
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