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The average SWF group, has little to no discernable difference compared to solo players.
Escape rates: The average SWF group, which makes up the vast majority of SWF groups, has little to no discernable difference compared to solo players.
So Survivors, please stop whining about soloq, it doesn't need buffing and Killers, please stop whining about SWF it doesn't need nerfing.
Comments
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But vieng an swf gives advantages that can't be denied if the players actually make good use of said advantages is a different story. Even if most players doesn't use it effectively they still will fair better then when thy are matched with three random players.
And lets not forget survival rate of swf also has a little dent because there are many people even big streamers that start mememing around and do stupid stuff when they swf
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There's a couple things.
SWF group could mean 2 people or it could mean 4 people. We also don't know what average means in this context.
While SWF is likely not as big as an issue as people make and solo might not be as bad as people act like it is, doesn't mean solos don't need help and SWF can't be too strong to deal with.
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I think you're missing the point about why SoloQ needs buffing, though. It's because it's a nightmare to balance effectively when any changes made will be received dramatically differently between the players who have information and the players who do not.
Also, your conclusion misses all the solo players who do win a majority of their games, but who still feel it needs to be changed because they don't like having parts of their builds hijacked by the requirement to run perks like Kindred- and considering that basekit BT and possibly even basekit Unbreakable have been used to cover for required-pick perks in other areas, it's not that unreasonable at all to suggest something equivalent be done for solo players. It's not all about escape rates, there are other reasons things might need to be changed.
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Otz & Co. should do a series where they see how long they can survive without talking on Discord during matches. I'm sure they'll wind up with the exact same success rate.
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The survivors that are really bad at the game, that are constantly complaining about solo q because they want their teammates to carry them to victory, won't get much benefit from voice comms because they're bad at the game.
The survivors that are really good at the game will get way too much of a buff if solo q got buffs.
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Note that Peanits isn’t saying there’s no difference, he’s basically just saying most swfs aren’t four person groups. Based on their earlier numbers something like 50-60% of swfs are 2 person pairs and their escape rate is about +3-4% higher than normal. In fact, those numbers from a few years ago still sound like they line up with what Peanits said above - back then they had +12% as the 4-person swf escape rate advantage and something like +3-4% for 2 person swfs and 7-8% for 3-person swfs. So the majority of swfs had that lower 3-4% bonus but it went as high as 12%. Just scale those numbers up a bit and they’re in line wih Peanit’s 15% bonus at the high end currently.
Also remember that the devs did acknowledge in January that there was enough of a gap in solo escape rates to warrant developing extra HUD icons to help solo players out. That task was supposedly put on hold due to the other massive reworks of 2022 but as far as we know it’s still on their to-do list eventually.
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They've done a couple games like that in the killer showcase videos, where they invite a player who is an expert on a certain killer and they play custom games.
The difference was pretty much non-existant, partly due to the fact that they have lots of experience playing with each other.
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And that right there is the real problem. Adding indicators for what a survivor is doing is fine in my opinion as it doesn't really buff anything just kind of fixes the fact that Solo-Q has nearly no information compared to SWF, but anything past that any Solo-Q buffs will make the actual good players even stronger. The problem with solo-q right now isn't even balance, its just the skill of the players. If a teamate refuses to work with the team there is no amount of balancing or features that can fix that, it will be a bad game for the team, and that's something that I feel not a lot of people realize. Solo-Q can result in terribly unfun games, thats just a fact, but everyone screaming at the devs to fix it can't even come up with a genuine way to do it, only "add indicators" which is a nice feature, but still won't fix the core issues.
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Soloq's are not having part of their kit "hijacked" by information perks. Survivors are not supposed to have the information SWFs have, you are supposed to utilize your perks to gain advantages.
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Indicators would also be a problem, because anything that raises the survival rate of solo q, would also raise the survival rate of 2-SWF and 3-SWF, which make up the majority of SWF teams. It is a problem because 2-SWF and 3-SWF would have extra information about survivors that aren't in their SWF.
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That ship has sailed so long ago that it's probably been decommissioned entirely by now.
"Should" is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that people have access to SWF, and that is causing balance problems. The basekit information needs to be brought up higher, so that survivor can be a cohesive whole that can be balanced at the same time, not two entirely separate groups.
Besides, that argument's weak. You could've made the same argument about Borrowed Time, it wouldn't have changed that the basekit anti-tunnel was non-existent at the time.
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Hmmm, I still disagree with you, but I also believe that soloq could be given some information to help it out vs SWF. Kindred shouldn't disappear or become basekit entirely. Give them the ability to see just the killer within range, and icons to know what the rest of the team is doing. If I know a dude is repairing a Gen while someone is on hook, that could help me make the decision on whether I should head over there or not. Would also get Killer's away from the hook since they are 100% being lit up while near hook.
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Definitely, the basekit information is going to be strictly weaker than comms, but it can be something.
I think just showing the teammate auras and leaving the killer aura to the perk would be perfectly balanced. People underrate the killer aura part of Kindred, it's not just for camping and it's definitely enough to warrant running the perk sometimes, at least imo.
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If survivors are given action icons, then the killer should have access to them too. If survivors are allowed to be more efficient with extra information, then the killer should be allowed to be more efficient with extra information.
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That's kind of the point, though. It's not extra information, because it is the information that solo queue currently lacks.
If it ends up being too much of a boost then certainly things will have to be changed to accommodate, but there's just no getting away from the fact that solo queue has what is meaningfully an information deficit that needs to be fixed.
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6 years ago, yes. The game is very different now. We can't indefinitely cling to the original design intent of limited information, especially when it creates balance issues and makes the solo experience miserable more often than not.
Killers and SWF have all the tools they need to play as competitively as they want to in any given match without losing anything. Solo survivors are the only players that have to sacrifice something to do that, either information or utility.
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No, I'll keep "whining" until Solo Q is not at a disadvantage, the same way you can keep on making excuses on why you don't want solo q buffed, so you can get easier kills.
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No they definitely do, I escape more with my 2 friends who bought the game a fortnight ago compared to solo games. The utility of being able to synergise builds so one has healing one has gens or say that on of use is getting the unhook lets us be way more efficient on gens. Hell even healing is so much easier, rather than needing a medkit or COH or inner I can jsut say "Oh Im where that guy got hooked is anyone close enough to heal?" and voila. Even specific perks like head on of FTP become magnitudes stronger when you can get people to play around it. Facecamping is way less of an issue when you can coordinate duo unhooks and tunneling you can take hits and draw it out way more. Certain killers become way weaker too, Pinhead rarely ever gets a chainhunt, stealth killers have a lot of their guessing where they are removed. While their solo skill at stuff like looping or game knowledge is low just due to the communication swfs grant they have a huuuuge advantage.
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It is extra information though, because people can only get it via third party software. If survivors are getting extra information, then killers should get extra information too. One of the strengths of SWFs using voice comms is specifically that survivors get an option to receive a lot of additional game information, but killers don't get an option to receive a lot of additional game information.
Also, as mentioned before, at average MMR, SWFs don't really get a large survival rate boost, which means that the majority of the people complaining about solo q aren't going to see much of a difference, and will therefore just continue to complain that BHVR won't give them even more free stuff. But at high MMR, the extra information will buff 2-SWF and 3-SWF, and make them even more unbalanced and miserable for killers to play against.
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I play SWF with 4 friends every Thursday, and solo during the week (when I'm not playing other games) and escape way more when I'm on my own.
That being said, SWF still provides a huge advantage due to communication, especially when playing with 4 strong players.
2 of us are strong players, 1 of my friends is average and the other is pretty pants. We do have some great games from time to time, but this relies heavily on communication and organisation. I reckon if I played SWF with them without headsets we'd be screwed.
This is why I really support the idea of kindred basekit. It would help bridge the gap between swf and soloq. Either that or just allow all players in a lobby to use mics.
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Whole lot of assumptions in your argument.
As for me, I don't know if I'm high MMR. I frequently play against Tofu, so there's that.
I don't really have issues handling Duo's or Trio's. I would rather buff Solo's because it is PAINFULLY obvious that they are in a very poor spot for the majority of people.
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I think I'll keep advocating for Solo Q changes because the majority of the playerbase desperately needs them.
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Didn't he follow up with something like the variance can be up to 15% depending on party size or something (I could be wrong).
If that was the case, wouldn't that push the game closer towards a 50/50 balance if everyone was magically SWF?
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Yes, but those with third party software are creating the standard, not gaining information above the standard. You can't do anything to curtail them, so they should become the benchmark, not solos.
Besides, the information is only one half of the strength of a SWF, so it's not really equalising anyway. Solo is always going to be weaker because you can't guarantee good teammates (or at least teammates you're friendly with), but it doesn't need to have the information deficit it currently has on top of that.
Killers don't need to gain extra information to "balance" it or whatever, because the point is that solo players have too little information. Killer has pretty much all the information they need to play the game at base, with perks and addons giving nice extra information, whereas solo players lack critical information.
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Why do people act like 15% is a small number? Would you rather have a win rate of 40% or 55%? That's a pretty big difference.
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Average nurse is fine too, but people are still whining about "good nurses that never miss their blinks"
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They just need to nerf SWFs in a way that only affects their potential, as thats the only thing anyone has issues with. The majority of SWFs aren't sweat squads, but the concept allows for sweats to get a very large amount of unintended advantages. If they can use any of the ideas that hurt the potential of comms and organization without punishing people for playing with friends, thats the direction to take.
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Killers really don't have enough information against SWFs though. For example, when SWFs use voice comms to warn each other where the killer is, which allows them to hide much earlier than they should be able to, the killer doesn't have anything basekit to help find these survivors.
Even when the killer isn't against a SWF, when a killer hooks a survivor, the killer doesn't have anything basekit to tell them if anyone is even doing generators. Because if none of the survivors are doing generators, then why should the killer leave the hook?
I have an issue with Duos and Trios getting buffed for free. Why should we listen to the survivors that complain about solo q balance, if we're completely ignoring the killers that complain about SWF balance? It's PAINFULLY obvious that people just want the solo q buffs, and want to give killers absolutely zero buffs to help them against SWFs.
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Of course the killer has ways of finding survivors? Breathing, scratch marks, disturbed crows, generators that were sparking but now aren't, disturbances in environmental objects like grass and corn...
The thing is that killer doesn't really need buffs to help them against SWFs. Against fully coordinated meta-build high-skill teams, sure, but not against the mere concept of playing against people who happen to be in a group on voice. Even if we were to focus on the higher ends of SWF, the problem there tends to lay far more in unbalanced perks and items and maps, not in basekit deficiencies.
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If killers don't need any buffs, then solo q also doesn't need buffs. Most of the time, the solo q problems are survivors that refuse to learn how the killers work, and refuse to learn the proper counterplay for the killers. There are so many posts on these forums about survivors complaining that certain killers or certain addons with "literally zero counterplay", despite the fact that I get matched against survivors that understand counterplay, and I refuse to believe they are all SWFs.
The other big solo q problem are the survivors that want to play selfishly, and excessively hide instead of helping their team with chases. If solo q was given extra game information, these survivors would just use it to play even more selfishly, so they can prioritize their own escape above everyone else's. And extra game information won't help if you're a solo q survivor matched with a 3-SWF, because they still might throw you under a bus to prioritize their team's escape.
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But these are two completely different concepts you're comparing here, unless I'm missing something?
The point of fixing the information gap for solo queue isn't that it's too hard to play survivor without it, it's that solo queue and SWF are meaningfully completely different groups that can't be balanced the same way. Any balance change that the devs make to survivor will be drastically different between the group that has information and the group that doesn't have information.
Killer doesn't need buffs because killer has what they need. Solo survivors do not have what they need to be at the same level as SWF, and that is partially because of things that can't be fixed like bad teammates, but it's partially because they straight up do not have the information they'd need to coordinate with their teammates should they decide they want to. This isn't a problem because it's too difficult, solo queue is still extremely winnable in most scenarios, it's a problem because it reinforces that clear balancing gap.
Some of it will be quality of life - it'd be nice to run actual builds in solo queue instead of being forced into running certain perks - but most of it is a legitimate balancing concern completely divorced from specific player experience.
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This doesn't make sense though. Not the statistics or the quote, just your last sentence. To say that SWF needs no changes because of "averages" is like saying slugging and hard-camping also don't need changes because of averages. How often do you ACTUALLY get slugged for over 120 seconds or hard-camped from 1st hook to death? How many times do you actually run into a god Nurse running an expose build???? With this logic it shouldn't matter how often something happens, only how problematic it is when it does
The average SWFs have never been what people are complaining about anyway although they do have an advantage over Solo even when they're bad..The experienced SWFs are what people refer to and they're not really as rare as people make it out to be. Lets not act like you need a seal-team 6 20,000 hour squad just to play this simple game at peak efficiency. Its not hard or rare at all to make a team of 3-4 strong players that make little mistakes and punish most of the Killer's mistakes at the same time. Combine this with specific perk combos and maps, you know how the rest goes
"Solo isn't balanced, we're below SWFs"
"Solo Survivor is fine to go against, its SWF that can be unbalanced towards the top"
Also the same people
"Buff Solo to the same level of SWF"
"SWF doesn't need nerfs and Killers don't need buffs to compensate" ....
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I don't think you understand how the statistics work. 61% Kill rates don't mean what you think they do. The Devs constantly have to remind people not to use escape or kill stats to discuss balance because they're mostly empty and lack context
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Ding Ding Ding! I'm always hype when I see somebody say what I've been complaining about for months and months!!
SoloQ itself could use 1-2 QoL upgrades to reflect with the current version of the game, besides that they don't need any buffs. The ACTUAL SoloQ problem is not even the lack of info (That's a big problem, just not the main one), its the fact that SBMM isn't actually Skill Based lol. It doesn't really matter what icons or ping wheel or basekit perks they want to add, if you're getting matched with people that have 400 hours and you have 6,000 you're still going to encounter the Solo Q struggle. People need to be matched based off chase time, time spent on gens and protection hits/unhooks instead of raw escapes/kills. There's too much context lacking from the MMR system and it leads to violent mismatches in all 3 directions when combined with the game's RNG
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The entire argument has been to buff Solo's and adjust Killers accordingly on an individual basis.
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That's not a good argument. All the killers should be adjusted. I'm sure a lot of people are saying this as an excuse to later on tell everyone that "Blight and Nurse get nothing, because they already have enough".
By your logic, we should give buffs to survivors on an individual basis. Low MMR survivors can get the most buffs, Mid MMR survivors can get less buffs, but high MMR survivors should get absolutely nothing because they "already have enough"
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You think Blight and Nurse need buffs? Lmao, okay.
No, certain Killers will need HUGE buffs. Nurse and Blight won't need buffs at all. They can compete with top SWF's right now.
Survivors cannot be adjusted on an individual basis since every Survivor is the same. Killers are mostly different and have different powers, ergo, they can be adjusted individually.
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Every survivor player can be adjusted on an individual player basis, by their survivor MMR score.
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You think MMR works 😂
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If you don't think MMR works, then you should be fine with solo q buffs being based upon each player's survivor MMR.
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MMR works. It’s just there are huge discrepancies between the rankings of killers and survivors, so it prioritizes queue times (faster) over queue homogeneity (equalization of skill across all players). If it didn’t, killers would likely wait 20+ minutes for matches. They more easily rise through MMR, after all, while solo queue survivors, the majority of the survivor playerbase, do not. I personally wished MMR prioritized skill equalization over times because I think it would give killers something to think about.
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So, the entire point of MMR was to match you with people at your skill level and it doesn't do that.
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It doesn’t work as efficiently as it’s meant to because there isn’t a large enough pool of analogous players to make a match work. If your MMR is 35, you need four survivors who also have an MMR rating of 35. The system could be designed to prioritize linking you with four survivors who have that specific MMR rating (or fall within the threshold b/c I believe MMR isn’t a solid number but a spectrum), or it could get you in a game in under 20 minutes. Most players aren’t going to wait 20+ minutes for a game, and BHVR knows that. So the matchmaking system works well from a business standpoint by getting more people into matches quickly, versus accurately.
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Good nurses are not rare though. The insanely good ones sure but not serviceable ones. Most people have caught on to the fact that nurse isn't that hard to play adequately. The big problem with nurse is you can slap on OP builds and any average player can consistently 4K. The complains are very justified.
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That is if MMR is working as it is supposed to be.
The kill-rate and escape right is about 60 to 40, give or take. If we are using the numbers that Peanits said, and we go half it. (and apparently a 10 +/- is extreme), that makes it into 50 to 50. 2 survivors out of the SWF escape. Also the 'big streamers' that you talk about are not the vast majority of player population so it will make up for less than 5% of the total statistic.
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That's why good survivors don't play soloQ they play swf and have all the information in the world. Killers who don't want soloq to get buffs want just easy wins.
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good enough SWFs aren't rare either.
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#########, people somehow started saying "SWF makes no difference" again?
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OK. So how would you realistically nerf SWFs in a way that doesn't impact SoloQ?
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I know right? Remember the hillarious time when comms allegedly were only used "to talk about their days, cute boys, the weather and the audacity of Stacy to go to prom with the same dress as Jessica."
The truth is more a combination of these:
- Good players > bad players
- Swf > solo
- Comms > no comms
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