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suggestion: SWF decreases perk slots
2 player SWF = both players lose 1 perk slot
3 player SWF = all 3 players lose 2 perk slots
4 player SWF = all 4 players lose 3 perk slots
Full slots for any players not in the SWF.
Comments
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I could see the argument for capping perk slots at 3 for any number of SWF players for slight balance, but forcing people just playing for fun to have only one perk slot is excessive. It takes away the fun of curating different builds for varying game experiences.
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Suggestion: killer brings a mori = less perks slots. Cypress: lose one perk; ivory: lose two perks; ebony: lose three perks
How does that sound
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how about we compromise and do this instead! 😁
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/167029/suggestion-swf-mori
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I had suggested something similar, but the perk slots were not locked, they were simply disabled until members of the SWF were sacrificed.
For example, a group of 3 would still be able to equip all 4 perks, but when the match starts they each only have their first two perks enabled. When 1 of the 3 die (not the random), then the remaining 2 members have their third perk enabled. When it is only down to the last of the group (whether the random is alive or not), that member will have all 4 of their perks.
This is open to strategy as well. They could put Left Behind or Wake Up! in their last perk slot, knowing that it won't be necessary (nor enabled) until they are the last of their group.
The question, though, is "should perks still accumulate tokens and/or progress while disabled?" Should Deliverance not work until enabled later on if its conditions were met while it was disabled?
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Alternatively, the match could start with three perks disabled for everyone (including Killer). Every 2 minutes, both sides have 1 more perk slot enabled.
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So we are going to punish the 95% of terrible swf teams in the game? Think this is extremely harsh tbh.
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OMG! I would actually LOVE that! Then I could put hexes in my last one or two slots, and not have to worry about them getting destroyed the second the match starts! 😁
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then how about this instead? 🙂
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/167029/suggestion-swf-mori
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Are you trying to be passive aggressive by making a counter suggestion that's entirely feasible and reasonable as one course of action for balance (not the best, but a course of action)?
I don't believe your post had the intended effect.
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So, I agree with the OP, considering that I've also made posts about this topic, and I thought I should do my best to perhaps give you a logical argument convincing enough to change your mind.
Briefly, the issues that arise with SWF are due to communications otherwise impossible between survivors. There are several perks, items, and add-ons (Bond, Blood Amber, Aftercare, Gold Token, Empathy, Kindred, etc.) that come close to being as powerful as two players talking to one another, but nothing in-game can be as impactful. I say, "can be", mainly because as you two point out, many SWF parties don't utilize their outside advantage to its full extent. However, something as simple as telling another survivor without any killer-detection perk that a cloaked Wraith is coming his/her way can be enough to sway the course of the game. Side effects of this may manifest as survivors being boosted out of ranks appropriate for their skill level.
Even the knowledge of an SWF group changes how I play the game. I will not run perks such as Third Seal or Insidious because I know that voice comms will "cheat" around the game's structures and reveal information the survivors shouldn't have. I'm wary of running totems in general simply because I know that even if I chase one survivor off, voice comms have revealed it to at least one other survivor.
In short; SWF survivors, whether they use their potential knowingly or not, have immense power equivalent to at least six different survivor tools and power enough to negate/diminish several killer perks and abilities, and it would make a lot of sense to try to compensate for that fact in some way.
If "taking away" perk slots doesn't appeal to you, it would probably be better if there was an "SWF comms" perk in the game that would be automatically equipped in the last available slot on any character chosen when in an SWF group.
A simple description could be: "Enables the user to connect to other survivors by means beyond the Entity's reach, replacing several other information perks". I would love to have this effect scale for each survivor added to an SWF, but that is probably too hard of a pill to swallow for some right now.
I hope this comment has given you some insight into the reasoning and logic behind suggestions such as these.
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I disagree heavily with this suggestion. Removing a perk slot, while may sound good in writing, would be a terrible balance decision for the game. Firstly, you're punishing the player for leveling up their character, which is a direct requirement of the game. Secondly, it takes away possible gameplay styles/mechanics from the survivor, thus leaving them to most likely experience more boring gameplay. Finally, it just isn't really ethical, it's too impactful and forces you to build too much around it. My simple suggestion, which I posted about on this thread, is that 3-4 man SWF groups get a generator repair speed debuff. An X% per player. So 5% of a 3 man SWF would be 15% repair speed debuff for those 3 players, while 4 man would be 20%. I think 7-8% is the perfect sweet spot number for this, but it would need to be tested before a definite decision is made. It would definitely have to be over 5% in my opinion though.
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You see here's my issue. Comms are helpful yes to swf teams but the really good swfs teams don't even need comms. The really good swf teams that everyone hates is good because all 4 players individually are extremely good.
At the minute solo q is extremely unreliable and most good players lose because their teammates are pretty bad. So once they see a player who is good at looping and seems smart then they will say "I should become a swf with them, that way I have at least 1 guaranteed good teammate".
The bad swf teams do well because of comms but the really good swf teams don't really need comms to beat most killers in the game. I only find comms useful in meme builds and when a killer tunnels/camps.
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Ah, we have different issues when it comes to SWF. If an SWF has just as much chance to fall for an Insidious Bubba trap as does a group of intelligent solo players, then in that situation, SWF is balanced (for example).
I'm a solo survivor player, so I fully understand that situation of "wt* are they doing?", but sometimes I get really good other survivors and I manage to not be a potato myself, and I consider that to be perfectly fine.
I don't consider SWF without comms as an issue in the slightest. If people want to play the game with their friends, great! Go for it! But my issue comes when I know my position and intentions are being relayed to other survivors as I'm trying to juggle chases with mutliple survivors on a map such as Hawkins.
I recently faced Paulie Esther and his crew, and as soon as I saw them in the lobby, I had to change my entire plan, because I knew that whatever fun thing I was trying to do with Hag and Granma's Heart was not going to work because comms would ping me like a beacon. I ended up switching to Billy and equipping Caulrophobia, Huntress Lullaby, Unnerving Presence, and Overcharge just because I knew that the instant I got more than one survivor downed and picked up someone else to hook him/her, the rest of the survivors would be swarming the downed person and reducing my pressure instantly because that's what most SWF players do when given the chance.
If I know it's an SWF before the game starts and I have time to change my build, then I'm going to manage to make do with the annoyance, but when a game starts and I've planned for a spooky game where I reduce as much information from solo survivors as possible but it's SWF, then I have a big problem.
The one time I've gotten added enjoyment out of facing an SWF group was recently on Grim Pantry when I equipped Devour Hope and managed to kill all but one. In the post-game chat, I was informed that the survivor hadn't known what Devour Hope did and had looked it up mid-match. They had been wondering, "Does this one-shot effect go away?" One player came back with the full perk info just as I had gotten my fifth stack, and it was then that they had all apparently gone, "Oh, s***" . It was amusing, and made my experience that much better.
I would actually prefer to face a hearty SWF group without comms than an assortment of solo players. To me, it would make using Third Seal or something of the sort that much more exciting.
This is not meant to disregard your opinion in any way; I just wanted to further clarify my position on the nature and issues of SWF.
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I think the reason you don't consider a swf without comms an issue is because you just assume every swf team uses comms. The good swf teams will probably bring perks to tell when someone is getting chases or arrange for the best looper to get chased. While this is happening the rest rush gens.
How are his swf? I've saw him play and I didn't think they seemed like a good swf tbh.
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In my experience, SWF with and without comms are night and day no matter how good the players are. I had two games in a row last night, where the first game all 4 survivors were comms-trolling, and doing all the usual garbage and it was awful. The next game I had a great time, and got a 3K even though the survivors were much higher rank than me, and thanked the survivors afterwards for not SWFing. One of the survivors replied that he and one other survivor WERE SWF, so I thanked them for SWFing nicely, since they obviously hadn't been using comms to cheat (or maybe they had but since it was only 2 of them it didn't matter as much).
There is a very obvious difference between a group that's using comms to cheat and a group of solo players that are all really good on their own.
Unfortunately, since there's no way for DBD to know whether or not a SWF team is using comms, any mitigation of the problem is going to also handicap SWF players who aren't using comms.
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I'm well aware of the issue people have with SWFs. I'm also fairly convinced that most people cry SWF if they're outplayed. Now I play on console, and genuinely I cannot tell if I'm going against a SWF or not (save for instances of like 4 P3 Claudettes already in the lobby). There's probably a way to do it, but I literally could not care less if people are SWF-ing against me because there's always another game if it goes poorly for me.
But the proposed "solution" literally forces people to give up part of the game THEY PAID FOR. It limits builds. Having the benefit of knowing killer location is not worth three perk slots. It's why I could see the argument of removing the one (because comms are like built-in Kindred). Because honestly, any GOOD survivor is going to know how to respond to killer location on the map even if someone's not telling them. I don't need my friend to tell me they're in a chase to know that I should be doing a gen outside of the terror radius. That's just common sense. Knowing if my friend is being camped, however, is useful, and that's something that Kindred would give, so exchanging the one slot (which could just be assumed as Kindred) for the comms makes sense. Limiting people to 1 perk because they're playing with 3 friends is still excessive.
But like at the end of the day, my friends and I die all the time, and we're a mixed red/purple squad, but we just mess around for fun with the game and still get enough done to safety/pip up usually. 🤷
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I usually can't tell until it comes down to who's saving whom on hooks or other specific scenarios, so like you, I base my pre-lobby preparation on guesses as to who's SWF.
I'd like to support your second paragraph, but I can just as easily and rightfully so say that I paid for a horror experience that gave me the ability to have effective, diverse builds without worry as a killer but that SWF often ruins that. So, in the game's current state, I am being forced to limit my builds and playstyles from what I PAID FOR all because of an outside comms program with which I have no way to deal. I don't fully agree with the logic behind that statement, but it uses the same argument you pose, which is why I would dissuade you from making the "you can't change it because I paid for it" (*cough* some people with the DS change *cough*) reasoning. As for your chase situation, if I have Bond or Empathy as a survivor, I'm much more willing to sit on gens in front of killers' faces if I know someone else is being chased, and that in and of itself often leads to more gens getting done in addition to a decrease in the tension I feel in the trial. If I can have that kind of knowledge through comms without bringing in Bond or a Key or whatever else, that's an incredible advantage, and it's up to me whether I use it or not just as it's up to me whether I effectively use Bond or not.
I agree that 1 perk slot for four survivors is excessive, but two perks, which is not too far off, is where the debate should begin imo. What I would wish to see is a 1,2,2 perk reduction, but I would settle for the bare minimum of 1 across the board in a heartbeat.
Losing a perk or two shouldn't mean the difference between having fun in messing around and not having fun. I'm sure plenty of survivors have enjoyable games even if they only have one, two, or three perk slots with perks equipped. I've been doing a lot of one-perk solo survivor games for the crown cosmetics, and they haven't been necessarily any less fun than games in which I have a full loadout.
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Another unreasonable SWF hate post. Pretty good job so far.
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I don't change my killer builds based on my lobby. I play the killer I feel like playing with the build I feel like playing, and the only time that really changes is if I have a challenge to complete.
I don't really understand the argument from the other side, though. Some perks run the risk of not being used - and this is on both sides - and it's the game mechanics that allow for those to disappear. Whether it's SWF or not, if you're running Ruin or Devour (for example), someone will try to cleanse those once they know. I love running Deliverance, but it's just as easily nullified if I'm the first found/hooked. But the point is that I still have that option to run it, knowing the risk of potentially not being able to use it. I really don't think there's a limit in builds and playstyles on either side because of all the options; it's player's choice to run whatever they see fit, but that's the whole point I guess I'm trying to get at. I want to choose what build I run because I purchased the game. As it stands, literally no one is being forced to limit builds and playstyles, but this proposed solution does.
I have also played games on fewer than 4 perks, but it was my choice to do so, not because I was forced to because of SWFing or whatever. And I think that's what really makes the game exciting. I can alter my playstyles to challenge myself or to meme or to try something different.
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sure are a lot, huh? Almost like there are some major problems with SWF and people are doing their best to express their frustration and suggest solutions. 😁
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Unreasonable hate posts like yours arent a solution. Theyre just showing your lack of game sense. But youre crybuddies will surely applaud you. LOL
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*your
Actually dude, to be totally honest with you, I wrote this post when I was angry after a particularly troll-tastic Survive-With-Chat match, and thought "this is totally unreasonable, but it expresses my frustration, and may get some conversation going". And then a bunch of people rolled in here and said "actually, this is a good idea" and people posted the same suggestion (which it looks like they came up with on their own) in another thread complaining about Survive-With-Chat. So if I posted this thing thinking this was unreasonable, and a bunch of people are saying "no, that's totally reasonable", then the problem must be even worse than I thought!
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Hmm, I'm not entirely sure how to respond to you, mainly because it seems out disagreements boil down to you perceiving this change as inherently detrimental to your fun in SWF and my perceiving this change as something that would allow me more freedom in my builds and playstyles, views that we both don't share. While you may not change your loadout depending on the survivors you face, I do. The difference between add-on-less no tiering up Myers against a solo group vs an SWF comms group is tremendous, and I'm unwilling to have the limitations I put on myself for fun to be undermined by comms.
The only possible way for your feelings to change on the matter of reducing at bare minimum one perk slot in any SWF group is to have the change be implemented as part of a PTB, much like how the devs tried out a version of self-care a while ago. It was received badly and was not put into the game, but if it had been received well, we might have had a very different perk on our hands today.
Both of us agree that we dislike being limited in our builds and playstyles (my issue is with information depriving perks such as Insidious and Third Seal and yours is with potential survivor builds (do you have examples to discuss? This would give me more insight into the reasons behind not supporting this change)), but the solution I see to my current issue appears as a potential threat to you.
Since the suggestions we have put forth don't appeal to you, I should probably ask your opinion. How would you suggest the devs (or I) should deal with the fact that using perks such as Third Seal or specific things such as tier one, add-on-less Myers is so much less effective, less fun, and less rewarding (by a significant margin) against a group with communications versus solo players?
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It definitely seems like we just have different ideas of what's fun in the game, and that's totally fine! But also if you're playing add-on-less no-tiering-up Myers, you should expect a challenge in the game, so I don't see how going against any variation of squad will change the fact it'll be a challenge. Half the players run Spine Chill now anyway, so there are counters to that without having access to comms.
If I could test it out in the PTB, maybe, but I play on console, so I don't have access to the PTB.
I still don't understand the argument about Third Seal though because that can just as easily be cleansed in the first 30 seconds depending on totem and survivor spawns. Hex perks are always a big risk to run. I cleanse them all for the points tbh. And hidden in the correct spot, I've gotten jumped by an Insidious camping Bubba even while playing on a 4-man. In general, it feels like (and I could be making a huge assumption here) that you feel SWF are always giving each other exact coordinates, and while I can only speak from experience, the best "location" I've really been able to relay to my team is "I'm petting the horse."
I can never think of super specific builds off the top of my head, but I have one that I've been wanted to run forever: No Mither, Iron Will, Tenacity, and Resilience - aka the "I'm always injured but I'll be fast af while doing it" build. If one of those perks gets removed, the whole build doesn't work the way I want it to. But in general, I just like fiddling around with a combination of perks, and some synergize really well, so I want to be able to make the most of having leveled up my chars to get 4 slots.
As to your last question, my opinion is that fun is too subjective for actual changes to be made. What's fun for one killer isn't for another, and what's fun for one survivor isn't for another. Trying to balance it to appeal to everyone is virtually impossible. And the changes here might help killers facing 4-man red rank squads, but it definitely does not help me and one friend clowning around and getting stuck with two other solo queuers (the likelihood of one being absolutely useless too....). I see more 3-4Ks (on both sides) with or without decent matchmaking than I do anything else, and while 'winning' isn't necessarily everyone's definition of fun, it seems that most arguments based around nerfing SWF (and their fun) stem from wanting to win more (and increase killer fun).
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You're going in the right direction but it's a bit too much.
2-Man SWFs are just a couple of friends who wanna fuck around and have some fun, should be left alone.
3-Mans should lose 1 perk slot each
4-Mans lose 2 perk slots each
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sounds great to me! :)
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A cypress is solely for the cinematic, you don't get a slight of advantage by killing the final survivors when you can literally just hook him.
Ivory loses 1 perk slot and ebony loses 2 sounds more than fair.
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There are some really interesting perspectives you bring up in this post, but I'll be coming back to edit this later (maybe? if I remember?) to talk about those. I'm writing this briefly to clarify the Myers' scenario and the Third Seal issue.
Regarding what I enjoy doing occasionally with Myers and the issue of Spine Chill (which shouldn't work on him imo because he has to look at survivors to even become a basic m1 killer), I often go around the issue by walking backwards toward gens/ avoiding looking in the direction of survivors I'm pursuing. If I'm hidden, the only notification solos receive are my breathing or the gestures from another survivor (which I don't mind because it's cool when stuff like that gets used, and there have been some pretty funny moments / confused survivors as a result, but I digress). If it's an SWF group, even if I'm going to extreme lengths to avoid all perks and all other in-game ways to notify survivors of my presence, an SWF comms group can just say, "he's coming for you, and...he's walking backwards...?", which is a bad feeling for me, because I won't know that, and I'm not looking at the survivors to find out that something's happened. It's the feeling of being defeated by something outside of the game that makes that scenario particularly unfun for me.
Regarding Third Seal, or, rather the blindness that Third Seal gives to all players once hit, solo survivors often have no idea where their teammates have been hooked, and I've had a Meg walk up to me in desperation as two of her teammates were on hooks and she just couldn't find them. More generally, it disables any aura perks/items survivors might have, which reduces survivors to only relying on LOS and sound to locate anything on the map. It's most often seen effective with slugging, but that's a sore subject for a different discussion. All that is true for solo survivors. Comms survivors don't give a ****. Sure, they might think, "huh, that's unusual. I guess I'll have to TALK TO MY FRIENDS ABOUT WHERE THEY ARE more than I usually do," but Third Seal doesn't affect them (between each other). Having a SWF do that and knowing that they didn't locate each other based on the limitations I gave them by using a perk far off the meta is deeply disappointing. I enjoy when solo survivors manage to locate each other through Third Seal, but I get a bad feeling mixed with exasperation when SWF just completely avoid the effects of my perk.
I'll finish this later. I appreciate the replies you've made, as they are both useful and interesting!
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The best way to nerf a swf is to buff solo queue making more of the information base game to lessen the advantage gottem by swf which will increase the strength of survivor allowing for more changes to killer to balance the game
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from a purely mechanical standpoint, I agree with you; giving everyone perfect knowledge and balancing around that would negate the benefits of Survive-With-Chat. Thematically, however, I feel like the more information everyone has, the more it feels like a game show (like The Running Man) and less like a horror movie.
For just one example, a SWC team constantly tell each other where they are and if any of them can see the killer. To negate this, by default every survivor would need to constantly see every other survivor's aura, and see the killer's aura if any one survivor can see the killer. This negates like a dozen different perks for both survivors and killers, so those would have to be completely changed. But it also means you lose pretty much all of the "mind games" that make it feel like horror, where you THINK the killer is doing one thing but you're not totally sure, so you're constantly on edge that the killer might pop out any second.
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I more ment to a limited extent like a 16 meter bond or a kindred if the killer is next to hook or right as the survivor gets hooked more things like that to more balance out soloq with swf
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