My Proposals to Equalize SoloQ with SWF and Promote Positive Gameplay

DesertYoshi · October 17

I've been thinking a lot about game health lately. Most focused around difference between a solo queue survivor and a premade group of survivors, as well as promotion of positivity and healthy plays. After all that thinking, I came up with a list of changes that could potentially steer the game in a better direction. Obviously, these aren't perfect fixes and won't change the game for the better overnight, but I believe a lot of these would massively help the game as it is now.

In recent years, there have been many additions and improvements to communication between survivors. We've gained HUD that displays current action (healing, repairing, mending, etc.), chase indicators, hook progression, anti-camp progression, recovery progression, pause menu showing teammate perks and offerings, and player intent. These are all great additions, and with just a few more, I think the playing field might almost be equal enough to balance around.

Allow survivors to see the perks of their teammates in the lobby for the match starts. Even if this could cause dodging frequency to rise, the benefit outweighs that. Being able to plan around your teammates will allow much better coordination, such as allowing the survivor with We'll Make It to unhook, or the survivor with Overzealous to cleanse a hex, or a survivor with Plunderer's Instinct to open the chest. You will now have it in your mind early to know what you might expect from your teammates.
Player intent gains a new option: "I'm using [perk]!" Once you select that option, you get a second wheel that let's you choose on of your four perks to call-out. I am borrowing this idea from Otzdarva. But this is genuinely one of the best ideas for Player Intent. Any survivor can now remind their teammates what they have equipped. And if you don't have lobby perks, this by itself is still a really strong tool. You can make sure your teammates know you will use For The People or Reassurance to assist your teammates, or you can make sure they know you have Adrenaline in chase before they finish the final generator prematurely.
Partial basekit Kindred. You should be able to see the auras of all teammates while one of your teammates is hooked. You will now be able to see if someone is going directly to save, being chased around the hook, or slacking off. That will allow you to know whether or not to leave your generator and save, or stay repairing while a teammate handles it. And the auras of the hooked survivor or the other two survivors with this basekit should never be hidden by Blindness. You should be able to coordinate the most important aspects of a rescue. This would also extend to Executioners cages and Judgements exiled state.

Snowballing Balance Changes

Assuming that all the collective changes to SoloQ information, including my suggestions above, bring SoloQ close to the level of a SWF in terms of information, or at least some kind of balance metric, the rest of the game could follow. Naturally, teammates with voice communication will always have an edge over auras and text presets if people really try, but in the average game, it will probably be enough. Here is how the game could snowball after the game can be balanced around Killer vs Survivor, rather than Killer vs SWF and Killer vs SoloQ:

Map size and placements could be tackled first. Maps could be made a better size for all sides. And the placement of tiles, main building, generators, killer interactables, pallets, etc can have a better algorithm of placement as well. You'd still likely never get the exact same placements on repeat visits, but you'd also never get a variation that heavily favors survivors one match, and then the exact same map heavily favors killers the next time you see it.
Killer baseline can be adjusted to keep up with coordinated teams. Better regression, better action speed, better movement speed, etc. You can make them more efficient to make for the fact that survivors can coordinate, and take advantage of rewards (more on that below).
Killer strength can be compressed and almost equalized. There will still be a gap between Nurse and Trapper, but not a whole 20km canyon. We can take Nurse, Blight and others down a peg, and push Ghost Face, Demogorgon, Legion, etc, forward. It would be good if all killers were viable.
After killers are standardized and maps are balanced, that opens up changes to perks. Ideally, we'd get to a point where running four meta slowdown perks isn't needed or even considered. And full anti-tunnel builds aren't encouraged to be able to play the game.

Use the Carrot, Not the Stick

Back in the 9.2 PTB, there were experiments with anti-tunnel and anti-slug features. The problem was that the punishment (the stick) was far harsher than the reward (the carrot). 25% bonus repair speed and removal of the ability to damage, regress and block generators. Both are hefty punishments. Which caused backlash, and the whole system was scrapped. I think, however, if we reintroduced the idea, and focused on rewarding spreading hooks should be used rather than punishing eliminating a survivor. Here are some carrots I've thought of:

There should be an entire system for unique hooks/spreading hooks. If you play into the system, you get rewarded, if you don't play into the system, you forgo the rewards. It's just based on eligible targets. Eligibility would focus on whether the same survivor was hooked twice in a row, and whether or not you hook someone who is in less or equal danger than everyone else. So if all survivors have 0/1/2 hooks, they are all eligible (other than the repeat). And if you have two survivors at 1 hook and two at 0, the two unhooked are eligible. And so on. Hooking someone eligible would grant the following:
- Basekit BBQ and Chili aura reading. Playing within the system rewards you with information. You'd be able to see all remaining eligible survivors beyond a certain distance for a few seconds.
- A slight increase to the instant regression on your next kick. Any killer can benefit from this, whether fast or slow. And the base increase to kicking speed, if it were to happen, would make this really appealing on low mobility killers.
- The return of the bloodpoint bonus from Old BBQ and Chili. For each unique first hook in the match, you get a bonus to the Bloodpoints awarded after the match is over. It doesn't directly benefit you during the match, but for some players, it's enough of an incentive to play nice.
There is also reason to add some carrots to efficient hooking, rather than leaving survivors to bleed for minutes on end.
- If you hook within 60 seconds, for example, the unique hook bonus can be increased a little bit more (2% more instant regression, 2 more seconds of the aura reading, ideas like that). The faster you hook someone and get in the action, the more likely you are to be rewarded.
- If you don't hook within the window, you don't get penalized, you just don't get the extra little boost. This isn't meant to punish you if you are being proxied by flashlights or a pallet. You should have enough time to chase others away.
Killers shouldn't be the only side getting carrots for fair play. Survivors should get bonuses for interacting with the killer and repairing, but never punished for only choosing one of the two goals.
- Partial basekit Quick Gambit is a interesting idea to look into. If you get chased for enough time, you should be able to see the locations of your teammates, so you can avoid them if needed. At the same time, while someone is in chase, other survivors get a slight increase to skill check frequency and great skill check size. It means you get to help other a little more by stalling.
- Partial return of old We're Gonna Live Forever bloodpoint bonus. In the same vein as killers getting more bloodpoints for fair hooking, survivors should get bonus bloodpoints for helping their teammates.
- Partial Aftercare basekit is another decent idea. Finishing a heal or getting an unhook means you could see your teammate for a brief period of time, give some kind of coordination after helping each other.
- One riskier path to look at is selfish benefits for altruistic plays. Consider Second Wind. If you heal another survivor, you get an automatic heal after being unhooked. Rewarding altruism with a selfish benefit can be a good idea, if balanced properly. The Down to the Last/Sole Survivor rework is also good, because you only get the true benefit by participating enough.
- One other idea is rewards that transfer one action into another (e.g. getting chases gets you some kind of generator bonus, and repairing gives you some kind of chase bonus). Again, that idea needs balancing.
One other thought I wasn't sure where to add. I think there should be a bit more gameplay while in the dying state. Maybe a skill check, or more interestingly, the hacking mini-game from the Skull Merchant's drone. Doing either well grants bonus recovery progression. Just to break up monotony.

Make Decisive Strike/Will To Live a Token Perk

I'm not sure where I got this idea, but it was from a while back. I think this idea makes this perk the best anti-tunnel concept in the game. The idea is that the perk starts with 5 tokens. Each generator finished removes a token. Once it has 0 tokens, or the gates are powered another way, the perk deactivates. The base stun duration is 2 seconds, and each token adds 1 second to the stun (7/6/5/4/3 seconds). This heavily punishes tunneling at 5 generators by stunning the killer for an insane 7 seconds. But at 1 generator, it only stuns for 3 seconds, because you've gotten to the point where you want to secure kills. The early punishment is heavy, but it's not basekit and therefore isn't exactly a stick that you will deal with in every game, especially if the game balance encourages avoiding that playstyle.

Positive Framing and Clarity for Wins and Losses

This proposed change isn't about gameplay, this is supposed to improve how things are framed, and therefore hopefully improve mindset.

Right now, all we have for match results on Survivor are Dead, Sacrificed and Escaped. At a glance, only one of those is something you'd be happy getting, because two of them clearly are negative. That's why I propose another result for Survivor that the game is sure to frame much better: Martyred. This result is meant to show that yes, you did die, but in dying, you ensured the survival of your teammates. It can be used when a survivor dies after contributing a lot to the match (e.g. lots of hook saves, teammates healed, chase taken, or generators done). You clearly furthered the game enough to be celebrated. There could even be a bloodpoint bonus because you don't get as much usually without escaping.

On the other hand, I think it would be funny to call out survivors that escaped without actually winning or playing the game. Not a penalty, just shame the whole lobby can see. That's why I also propose the match result Squeaked By. It is granted when you hardly contribute anything (no heals, chases, hook saves or generators repaired) and then escape through the hatch after all your teammates die.

A functional change that helps with positive framing is being able to spectate the moment your dying animation starts, whether sacrifice or mori. It's lets you watch to see if the teammates you died for escape. It also cuts out the long animation of dying, the loading into the tally screen, pressing buttons until the spectate button shows, and then waiting for it to load back into the match.

As for killer, I want to reframe the kill match results to not sound super negative at 1 or 0 kills, and make 3 kills sound like a result to be happy with. Here are my ideas for that simple change:

0-1 kills: The Hunt Continues…
2 kills: Hard-Fought Draw
3 kills: Unquestioned Victory
4 kills: Overwhelming Slaughter

Fixing the 1v1v1

The last thing I thought of tackling was the toughest, but I think it absolutely needs to be worked on. In some matches, the most annoying, boring and painful standoffs occur when there are two survivors remaining, and two or more generators that need to be fully repaired. The killer might think only 4 kills is a win, and therefore wants to secure kills on both of the remaining survivors. And both survivors probably want to be the one to escape. Even if only one of the two sides decides to play like that, it can still cause both survivors to hide until the killer finds the other survivor, or the killer to slug one survivor while they find the other. That's why I refer to it as a 1v1v1. The survivors have now been pitted against each other just to escape, and the killer still wants, in most cases, both kills.

Finding the solution for this, however, is not an easy task. The moment this situation happens, it's likely to turn into a free-for-all. I only have one proposal to give, but I would love to read what other ideas people might have if anyone comments one. But this is mine:

Final Stand

Once there are two remaining survivors and 2 or more generators remaining, a 30 second timer starts, and the generators flash to indicate this. After those 30 seconds, the three generators furthest apart from each other are reset to 0 progress, regardless of their previous state. The remaining four are completed and blocked. The charges required are increased above 90, and further increased by a bit for each generator remaining before Final Stand. However, cooperation grants substantial repair speed, and can be in the following forms: repairing the same generator, repairing different generators at the same time, or repairing while one survivor is in chase. All repair bonus, penalty and regression effects from other sources are disabled. The killer's kick will take off a fixed amount of charges (10, 15, whichever works best). If one survivor dies, the hatch spawns as normal. If the final generator is completed, the gates are powered. If this Final Stand lasts longer than 5 minutes, the game will end regardless.

Balancing gen charges, repair speeds, instant regression from the kick, whether a hook is an instant kill, etc. is all for consideration after the fact. But this remains the core idea to move away from the 1v1v1 standoff and move towards cooperation until the bitter end. Please, share your thoughts.

Conclusion

And for now, that is the extent of my thoughts. I would be more than happy to hear feedback or critique on any of these, tell me where I went wrong, or how good a solution is, or whether it needs a small tweak.

I'd also be extremely happy if BHVR took inspiration from this, as it took a lot of time to put together.

Thanks for reading, good luck in the fog!

Elan · October 18

If every killer is Nurse/Blight/Billy/Ghoul level of strenght we can defienetly think of reworking base game into more core-balance.

esarraf · October 19

Bad idea for the maps. It's honestly better to just remove the rng nature of them and instead just pick three or four variations of a map that are balanced and picking from that instead of reworking the whole system.

Carrots are fine but you need both. Remember the simple fact that there are people who get enjoyment out of ruining another person's fun. If you want to actually fix a problem you need to use both punishments and rewards rather than just buffing one side.

Final stand just does nothing in both cases the survivors are incentivized to not even bother. Remember the simple fact that all a killer has to do is down a survivor and they die in that scenario since it's literally impossible to save against a camping killer if it's just one person. Making it so there's only one generator left but it's impossible to do is pointless.

My Proposals to Equalize SoloQ with SWF and Promote Positive Gameplay

Table of Contents

Adding More SoloQ Information