THE SIMPLE AND MOST EFFECTIVE SOLUTION TO SOLO QUEUE
Solo Queue is a problem
Solo Queue right now is the weakest side of the game atm, originally you had to deal with incompetent survivors who are either new, or misguided players who may think they know or who may not know what they are doing. Now however, you have to deal with the recent killer buffs stacked on top of that.
Many people (including Dowsey and Scottjund) have recently posted videos stating the fact that solo queue survivor in the state it's in right now is the biggest problem in Dead by Daylight, Dowsey gave his idea of what kind of buffs solo queue should get in order to fix this problem, which are his own idea, not gonna go into it, but the main takeaway that I 100% agree with is that the only way to fix this problem is to provide the same level of cooperation that you would get with a discord swf, and bring it to the game.
What if I told you there’s a simple change that could fix all of these problems with one single added mechanic?
Well… it exists, and it’s probably what you’d expect.
The Best solution to the Problem
The solution to this problem is a voice-chat system
Don’t click away just yet! I know it sounds foreign adding vc to DBD, However if you consider the hidden benefits the game would receive from this implementation, you might be on board with the idea.
Adding a vc would not only fix the problem with solo Q, it might also add to the health of the game in general.
First of all, I just want to clarify that a vc like discord might be a bit overpowered for solo queue, I think the best solution to this is making a proximity chat instead. And also the Killer shouldn't be able to communicate or hear the survivors, THAT would be toxic, but maybe disable vc when in TR or something idk.
- Think of how many times you’ve solo queued in dbd and come across a Claudette hiding in a bush, a David unhooking you when the killer is right next to you, or a Dwight who is completely clueless and doesn’t know what to do.
Not only would a proximity chat allow you to make the game more survivable, it would also help these new players get into the swing of things, and feel more comfortable playing the game, adding to the overall health of DBD.
- When a trapper has set a trap near your hooked body and the Nea coming to rescue you is on a direct course to step on the trap
In this situation, the only thing you need to do is warn the survivor that there is a trap, but you simply cannot. Adding a proximity chat would help survivors learn to be more aware of killers power within the game, and avoid stepping into a trap that would more than likely put the game in jeopardy.
- Think of the times where you had a perk such as deliverance, or the “try to hook me build” (flip-flop, boil over, unbreakable), but the survivors you were playing with had no idea, so you try to use these perks against the killer, they try to unhook you when they could be doing a gen, they don’t body block for you because the hook seems too close. Ultimately, these perks become useless and get no value in many situations.
If you were able to just simply tell a survivor next to you, or while you’re on the hook, what build you are running, not only would new survivors be able to learn about different perks in the game and what they do, it would allow for a plethora of coordination where originally it would be absent. Also the argument that you could tell people before the game is kind of dumb, as there are so many inconsistent variables, such as, they may be a console player, or they are afk and not looking at the screen.
The Immersion
One problem with a vc that some people may have, is that it might ruin the “horror” aspect of the game, but here's the thing, players can choose to turn it off if they wish to experience the horror. The thing you also have to remember is that most of the time, people don’t want to deal with new players who don’t know what they’re doing, or players who are misguided or don’t know something, with this proximity chat, people can CHOOSE themselves if they want to keep dealing with infuriating clueless survivors, or not.
Also can we just be real for a sec and admit that no one who plays this game on the regular is ever immersed? Like EVER?
Yea… no
Toxicity
If you play survivor you might tend to think that a prox chat would increase toxicity within games, I however, completely disagree and believe it would help reduce toxicity within games. Please read below to see what I mean.
First to clarify I want this to be addressed to a average survivor, you know the people who might be really good and nice survivors in one match, but also salty and toxic in another (you know, normal humans), as this is the majority of players in dbd. What you shouldn't do is compare what I'm about to say to players who are ALWAYS toxic and no matter what will always be unhappy and pissed off because they suck. On to my point.
First of all, I want to say that if a prox chat was added, a lot of people would already stop being toxic, because if you think about it, more people are comfortable talking ######### through line of text, rather than through actual word of mouth, with the addition of a prox chat, many people will be kinder to others purely because that's how people work socially.
Second and lastly, I want to address what causes toxicity in DBD, this toxicity imo is a lack of communication, in the game right now, when you have a couple teammates who are kind of bad and are a little lost on what to do, you have to deal with it. This alone causes infuriating games to play, and is what I believe to be the main cause of toxicity atm. Adding a vc would COMPLETELY change everything, because once survivors gain the ability to effectively communicate, they can get out what they need to say in the moment to tell survivors what to do, rather than having to bottle it up, watch the survivor go down, and add it the pile of rage they plan on unleashing at endgame chat.
Conclusion
I believe that many people are not for this change because it feels foreign to add something like to this to a game of dbd where the concept of a vc was never discussed, mostly because it was never needed. But now I'd like to say IT IS needed, and people need to start talking about implementing it. Dowsey gave his ideas about implementing a system that floods the screen with a bunch of text bubbles and hud changes, let me tell you, adding a vc is way more simple and way WAY more effective. It teaches new players how to play the game, some perks that were once useless on solo q will now have a purpose, and IMO will help reduce toxicity in games.
P.S.
Many of my friends who play on console played this game one time, they said it was fun and liked playing it, so I asked them, “Why don’t you keep playing it?”, the answer is always something along the lines of “oh, there's no way to talk to people” I truly believe that if players were able to talk to each other it would bring a surplus of new and interested players into the game.
Please comment below whether you agree or disagree with a proximity chat, I would love to hear different opinions on this and see if this idea can go anywhere.
Edit: Responses in the comments have changed my mind, and I believe it should be both a scroll wheel and a prox chat, Scroll wheel to help streamers who can't have a vc turned on, or people who have it turned off in general, and a prox chat to help the new players and whatever I said before.
Comments
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Please add voice chat, and let the killer be able to talk to the survivors, and the other way around. I get it would increase toxicity, but it would increase so many funny moments. Plus, if they're toxic, just mute them.
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Some kind of ping system or quickchat option and icons showing what you are doing would probably be better, some people wouldnt use the voicechat even if it was there.
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or just add kindred without the killer aura reading as base kit
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Maybe then it should be both
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Sure thats fine too as long as i can turn it off. The problem with that is you have people using voice chat and thinking the person is ignoring them and getting annoyed instead of using the other system.
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These are small problems when taking into consideration the huge benefits a prox chat will provide
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Def not lmao
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Have even seen how bad survivors treat each other in end game chat? If they game had voice chat I’d mute 100% percent of the time.
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Zero benefit to the people who have it turned off, and a ping/quickchat/icon system requires no extra support. Whereas a voice chat system needs quite a bit because you cant slap a censorship algorithm on it, they can barely handle the post game chat as it stands, and because of the crossplay factor it all falls on them.
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No thanks, like other dude said just give us kindred and small tentacle for everyone like obsession, to see who is chased
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Voice chat would be fun tho. If people don't like it, just make the game have it auto turned off in the settings when you first open the game, and you'll have to manually turn it on if you want it.
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I will have to say no to prox chat for a few reasons, games that have it or had it a lor off times you will someone screaming and telling you what to do and its not a i.e 25 year old person al of times it was some in the 10-20 range, take F13th for example it had voice chat and the amount of kids i ran into that were screaming all the time and called me and the other player a lot cursed words and even racial ones.
Also streamer's will need a option to lower or turn it off to protect there stream for people yelling stuff that is against TOS like Kingcarl2012 Some kind of ping system or quickchat option and icons showing what you are doing would probably be better and it will be.
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Yeah can't wait to hear a thirty year old man screaming at the Claudette in the bush, who is a small child. Great idea.
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Again, I get that alot of people would have it turned off (which is why Im starting to think it should be both vc and ping), but you have to understand that having it in the game would do more good than it would bad, and when it comes to end game chat, I talked about how prox chat would reduce toxicity to post game chat because people who get mad in endgame chat are mad because parts of the game were out of their control, with the vc it will be in their control, so survivors won't get as mad as before.
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If its screaming kids and 25 year old men you are afraid of... guess what? You have the ability to........ [TURN IT OFF]
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Sound is such an important part of this game, and i dont mean idle chatter. I like being able to hear the terror radius as soon as it starts, or the gurgle of Wraith approaching, or the flap of Ghostface's cloak, or Myers breathing. I'd hate to lose all that to kids (and plenty of kids play this game - I like to remain blissfully unaware of that fact also) carrying on, or people who love the sound of their own voice, etc. Not to mention the ineffective reporting system is a common complaint from players. Imagine adding voice chat to Supports workload - we all know the sorts of verbal abuse gamers are capable of, we see it in endgame chats enough. And I know, I could just turn VC off, but then I also potentially make myself a target by being seen as non-cooperative with the team. I dunno. I'm just not a fan.
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I really don't think anyone here (including me) really knows what would happen if vc was implemented, sure people have examples of toxic vc from other games that they'll refer to, but the same is true the other way around, there are many or more situations of people working together in games like overwatch, valorant, tf2 that I have seen since I also played those games, I'm telling you guys a prox chat would work wonders for this game.
Please stop trying to find things that are wrong with this idea, there are always flaws, none of you are trying to find any good in this idea at all, and its almost like you didn't even read the post to begin with
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I think an easy fix to solo would be if your solo you get a 5th perk slot but only for solo and only for aura perks, but if your in a group of 2,3 or 4 5th slot gray out
the 5th slot can only be use for aura perks and you can only pick one
what you guys think?
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It's not so much the screaming but more about what they say while screaming that's the issue, if your trying to chase a survivor and all you can hear is 2 people yelling at each other then there goes any chance of being able to hear sounds from the survivor you just chased.
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If you actually read the post you would have seen that i suggested that killers can't chat, THAT would be toxic and dumb, maybe instead surv VC will disable within TR or something
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I understand where your coming from I do but it's gonna play out like voice chat does in every other game
A percentage of people are going to use it, A percentage of people aren't going to use it, And a percentage of people regardless of how small it is, is going to use it to be Offensive and garbage human beings in general.
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why
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those who want this why not just try it organically within the survivor base? set up your own chat server.
survivors have pre-game chat lobby, just drop a message "hey join my chat: someurl.com/xyz1234". If it's actually a thing that works and people want, it'll pick up usage by itself - one survivor starts, gets a few to try out then those (assuming they enjoyed it) do the same thing in their next lobbies, and so on and so on until pretty much every lobby is setting up their own voice chat. that way you'll have a good argument to add it into the game if everyone's already using some 3rd party system.
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I did read the post and making it so killers can't talk to survivors makes the idea even worse as the killer could have all 4 survivors around them and being toxic, racial slurs, told to end themselves etc, They want proof when you put in a report so if your not recording well then tuff lick thats why some games don't have VC and for the added bonus of someone telling the team whats going on.
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What if the Claudette in The Bush is an almost 40 year old man?
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In my opinion the only real fix for solo queue is not something BHVR can do anything about. A large percentage of solo queue players are only playing this game very casually. There's nothing wrong with that. They obviously have that right. However, that also means a lot of times they're not even necessarily playing to escape, and even if they are they're not looking to implement any real strategy to that end.
So those of us that play solo queue are going to get put on a lot of teams with people that just aren't playing the game strategically. I would be all for things like making Kindred basekit if I thought it would help. In my experience at least though I don't think it would make a difference. They could give solo survivors a million different ways to play strategically, but unless they want to utilize those strategies it's irrelevant.
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OMG, okay, when i say the killer cant chat, I mean they can't talk OR hear the survivors, does that change anything for you?
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I have never heard of this and neither has most of the dbd community
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You understand that not everyone can speak or even READ English? The game is localized in many places to accommodate this. Also I wouldn’t want to have some person in my ear when I am trying to figure out from where the spirit will phase at me. In my opinion more Gestures and pings would be a most welcome change for solo queue.
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How you think it would go:
Dwight: David can you not unhook me in front of the killer please :)
David: Sorry man, I’m new to the game and don’t know what I’m doing. Thanks for the advice!
How it would actually go:
Dwight: JESUS ######### CHRIST DAVID WHY ARE YOU FARMING WHEN THE HUNTRESS IS STILL RIGHT HERE? DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW TO PLAY THIS GAME?
David: SHUT THE ######### UP I CAN PLAY HOW I WANT! MAYBE DON’T DIE IN 5 SECONDS NEXT TIME! WHY DO I ALWAYS GET DUMB ASS TEAMMATES???
Also the majority of people I get matched with don’t speak English so this doesn’t seem like it would have any value for some of us.
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The fact we don't have voice-chat for this game years after the release, is pretty funny. But in a sad way.
If you don't want to use it, then opt out. But overall, its the strongest cure to SWF vs. Solo.
Evolve Stage 2 had it (which was a 1v4 Asymmetrical game), R6 has it, OW has it, Valorant has it, pretty much every team oriented game has voice chat.
I'm not really surprised though, we have the same developers who hide player ranks as well as MMR.
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Voice chat in this game is a powder keg just waiting to go off. The amount of toxicity in this game is already through the roof, especially in the post-game chat, and I unfortunately could only see VC adding to it further. A few rotten apples spoil the bunch sadly.
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Might as well.
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That's interesting. I've suggested that giving voice comms to all survivors and then balancing the game is the best solution.
However, they haven't listened to that suggestion and I've been saying it for years, so my best suggestion to get them to listen is to flat out stop playing. Take a month break, maybe a couple months. If the die hard killer mains that vehemently deny that anything is wrong are the only ones playing then you will see fixes come.
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Adding VC to the game would allow the devs to actually balance the game around SWF vs. killer since solos with VC would be almost the same thing.
i think it’s worth trying.
It already exists in other games,so why not dbd ?
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devs watch and learn
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Adding a vc would not only fix the problem with solo Q, it might also add to the health of the game in general.
"First of all, I just want to clarify that a vc like discord might be a bit overpowered for solo queue, I think the best solution to this is making a proximity chat instead. And also the Killer shouldn't be able to communicate with the survivors, THAT would be toxic, but maybe disable vc when in TR or something idk."
That was from your first post about this topic you can see that you have put killers shouldn't be able to communicate with survivor's.
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dude, are you here to debate about adding vc to DBD or misunderstandings in word usage? Sure, maybe what I said originally in the post may have been a little misleading, so I clarified it for you, and instead of taking what I said and trying to think of something productive, you sit there and and point out a slight mistake in my post that I ALREADY CLARIFIED FOR YOU. Maybe debates in forums is too grown up for you.
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Here let me do a edited version to help you understand better.
OMG, okay, when i say the killer cant communicate, I mean they can't talk OR hear the survivors, does that change anything for you?
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You said something in a post and i just pointed out to you that you were wrong and that you had said something different in your OP, so there is no blame or fault on my end when i copied word for word what you said.
Me and many others in this discussion have pointed out many flaws with what your suggestion and other ways that to solo survivor's to communicate in the game and
If VC is simple and most effective then why have they not put it in the game they have had 6 years to add VC so there must be a reason why BHVR hasn't put it in, the better way would be a icon next to you name plus brief description of what your doing i.e working on get, in chase, going for save. Then you have the wheel you can bring up and tell people what to dp.
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The problem isn't that you pointed out something that was wrong, it was that I already clarified the problem for you, im sorry i made a mistake with my wording, but at this point you should know what I was trying to say in my post, why aren't you talking about what you think about the idea now that its been clarified? I know why, you feel butthurt because I insulted you, so you have to defend your stupid claim that was already addressed so you can feel better about yourself, bozo.
Also you know why BHVR never considered put it in, because they never cared for 6 years, now they care more than ever and its up to the players to make suggestions that will add to the health of the game, and if you think a scroll wheel will do more than a vc you are mistaken
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Why am i butthurt over pointing out something you said in your OP which allowed you to go back and fix/change it so future people that read this topic there will be no misunderstanding of what your trying to say?
I'm pretty sure BHVR has thought about putting VC in at some point into the game and must of had reasons not to put it in, there is couple reasons why a scroll wheel would work better then VC 1'st is your not having people say racial slurs among other things on VC now this might not be a problem for a lot of people but it will be for streamers and there is a fair few that stream DBD, one could say just turn VC off but then they are missing the reason behind VC and that is info from other players,
2nd is with a scroll wheel there can be a lot of options in it and also give the ability for survivors to change what's on it, i.e one on the default ones could be "gen at 50%" but you might want to swap the to "gen at 75?. You could even assign hot keys for them so with out bring up the wheel you could hit i. 5 and it will say "gen at 90%"
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Okay, i took your advice, and changed the post, now there can't be any misunderstanding.
I will admit that there are issues with just implementing a vc, as with anything, so the solution i thought of in one of my comments is to add both a vc and a scroll wheel, this would fix the problem with streamers not getting any information out of other players.
I just want to emphasize that my post wasn't necessarily about being able to relay information to other players, I tried to emphasize other points such as how we would be able to teach newer players what and what not do, some may be toxic towards other players, sure, but I would say that even being extremely rude to the claudette not doing gens, and telling her "you fricking dummy, if you don't do gens we're gonna lose the game" (obviously not cussing because of mods) is a lot better than what we have right now, and is also better than what any "scroll wheel" or pre-made line of text will ever do for them.
I'm just saying that if a vc was added into the game, soooo many problems would be fixed, newer players would find footing, we'd be able to tell each other what perks we have, like deliverance, autodidact, flip flop, power struggle and the list goes on. I also don't see how the other teammates knowing what percent a gen is at is really going to help, yea, ig the information is nice but what is that really going to do for you? How will you be able to act on this information, Ig if the gen is 99'd, people know to go to that gen, but thats really the only thing, but for a vc, the list goes on and on.
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because what are useless survivors who don't know what they are doing going to do with that information? The problem with dbd solo Q isn't that nobody knows what every one else is doing, its that many people are doing boons rather than doing gens, or going for saves when they should be resetting, or hiding in a bush/locker when they should be doing gens, and the list goes on and on. Tell me, how is kindred base kit going to help any of this?
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I see your point, but this is one situation out of thousands of possibilities, i know that there are people out there like me who won't scream nonsense at a survivor whos new, and actually try to help them, and I know there are people who understand they are bad at the game who will take advice from people who aren't. DBD isn't 100% all screaming children like you think it is, I've played with a lot of really nice people in this game to confirm that.
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They need to fix the matchmaking system. There are way too many games where a survivor gets downed in 20 seconds and I can run the killer for 2 minutes. I have no idea why the skill level in these games are all over the place.
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The DbD discord supports SWF, if people really feel they can't play without voice comms then they should all group up there.
Big streamer discords also have voice channels for SWF but for some reason it's not commonly adopted. It's almost as if there's a deterrent, like some people are toxic to others in comms.
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I played in those vcs in discord, you are so wrong about that, every single time its really nice people who are just looking to play swf, maybe you should do some research and go see for yourself. The 'deterrent' isn't toxicity lol
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Except I have been in those discords, thanks. Why do you want random voice comms when you have access to SWF comms?
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Before the last patch SWF was broken. I hate to break it to yo but it's still broken and in a number of ways SWF got easier because gen regression is based on kicking and waiting for a 60 second timer.
Giving players more information without using perk slots would very likely send the game back the other way where the killer is underpowered again.
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