Why no voice com?

I don't think they want to openly admit the balance issues caused by SWF and balance around it. That's a monumental task, and they won't even do anything about Freddy, or Wraith, two years later.
Easiest way to balance for SWF is to make it a separate mode with a separate ranking system, that still gives bloodpoints, and gives bonus bloodpoints to the killer or just slows generator progress and reduces numbers of pallets or something based on how many survivors are SWF. But even that would take more work than just ignoring the problem and telling people to go play Civilization.

@Tsulan said:

@weirdkid5 said:
The game is already balanced around solo players. If you did this you would need to considerably buff the Killer to be able to take into account teamcomms, like in Deathgarden. But that would require an entire game overhaul. Perhaps wait until Deathgarden is out and just play that?

So it´s better to have externa third party tools, which give people a significant advantage over others. Than having a game intern programm and balance around it?

It's not possible to balance the game around voice communication. It's entirely designed around a lack of communication even down to perks like Kindred and Knock Out. You could seriously nerf the survivors and buff the killers and give everyone voice chat, but that's a game overhaul and still screws over the people who didn't want to talk, and haven't been doing so for two years. The only proper solution is segregation so killers can just avoid SWF altogether, with an incentive for them to play with them.

@Tsulan said:

@The_Manlet said:
I don't think they want to openly admit the balance issues caused by SWF and balance around it. That's a monumental task, and they won't even do anything about Freddy, or Wraith, two years later.
Easiest way to balance for SWF is to make it a separate mode with a separate ranking system, that still gives bloodpoints, and gives bonus bloodpoints to the killer or just slows generator progress and reduces numbers of pallets or something based on how many survivors are SWF. But even that would take more work than just ignoring the problem and telling people to go play Civilization.

But points alone won´t give killers an incentive to play against SWF. We all know how toxic a 4 man SWF group can be.
The game has to be fun for both sides. Only few killers enjoy facing SWF death squads.

They're less likely to be toxic when the killers can choose to avoid playing with them with ease without having to check their profiles and choose whether to dodge the lobby.

@Tsulan said:

@The_Manlet said:

@Tsulan said:

@weirdkid5 said:
The game is already balanced around solo players. If you did this you would need to considerably buff the Killer to be able to take into account teamcomms, like in Deathgarden. But that would require an entire game overhaul. Perhaps wait until Deathgarden is out and just play that?

So it´s better to have externa third party tools, which give people a significant advantage over others. Than having a game intern programm and balance around it?

It's not possible to balance the game around voice communication. It's entirely designed around a lack of communication even down to perks like Kindred and Knock Out. You could seriously nerf the survivors and buff the killers and give everyone voice chat, but that's a game overhaul and still screws over the people who didn't want to talk, and haven't been doing so for two years. The only proper solution is segregation so killers can just avoid SWF altogether, with an incentive for them to play with them.

Then why do the devs tolerate the external third party tools that give an significant advantage over others?
Because that´s against the rules. No one applies them, but it´s clearly an infration.

Because the game would die if they actually stopped people from using external voice communication. When the game launched it didn't even have SWF, and people were writing bad reviews and refunding the game because it didn't let them play with their friends outside of a crappy private match mode that was far more basic than it is now, doesn't give bloodpoints and requires 5 people to enjoy. SWF was something they rigged together with duct-tape very quickly post release. It didn't even work properly at first, it was so buggy it was almost unusable.

The devs are pretty amateur and thought they could sell a multiplayer game with teamwork in 2016 that doesn't let you play with your friends. Letting them play with their friends but banning them if the system detects that they're running Discord or something is absurd. The game would die overnight.

Essentially what it comes down to is the devs have no control over or responsibility for people using voice chat externally. Sure, it gives them a communication advantage, but when I play killer the way I see it is you win some, you lose some. I've had as many utter defeats as wins playing swf, although probably more wins than I get solo queue. And as other people have said, the game will die if they remove the ability to play online with friends. It almost died once before, only about six months into release. People can complain all they want about swf but at the end of the day it's a core part of the game and it's what keeps a lot of people playing. And honestly toxicity is a problem that should be dealt with in its own right. Treating symptoms won't affect the root cause of the issue, and toxic people will be toxic whether they're playing with friends or not.

@The_Manlet around then, yes. Basically people just stopped playing, daily logins dropped hugely, and obviously the more people stopped playing the longer queues got and the smaller the player base got. I was one of the people who stopped playing for a while at that point so I don't know how they recovered from it, but I remember it happening.

@Markness said:
One of the reasons that I enjoy DBD is just because I don't need to hear the mouthbreathers over voice comms. It is precisely the reason why I stopped playing F13 because I couldn't stand hearing people gabbing the whole time.

Well, you could always just mute them all.

@weirdkid5 said:
Nothing is stopping people from resorting to phone calls to talk to each other so the Killer can't hear them, which I feel like this community would definitely do.

Exactly. People would find a way to play with and communicate with their friends regardless of what the devs do with swf. It is possible to play with friends just by solo queueing over and over, and talk over the phone if need be. Changing or removing swf would, practically speaking, have no effect except to make what people will do anyway less convenient and more annoying. Nothing is solved from a balance point of view, and you have a whole lot more angry players.