Just one more reason why playing against SWF is annoying. Award points for playing against them.

This is true, though I've also been on survivor side of this where the killer has asked and I tell them I'm solo since I am and that's all I can say for sure, but times where I've also suspected the same that the other three players were SWF at least. As a solo survivor we don't always know that stuff either. Actually... I don't think I've ever seen this question answered with a yes. (That and sometimes when the given answers is "no" the chat itself is so toxic and vitriolic that I don't really think it's the sort of thing they'd admit too anyhow)

Even though this very much happens with people mistaking their own errors for inherent disadvantage, it should still be noted that this itself isn't indicative that SWF games aren't a real problem. As a matter of fact, that confusion is just another consequences from SWF that bleeds into the game elsewhere. Player legitimately cannot tell most of the time where they're defeated by pure skill or also because the other side had access to information and coordination that's straight up impossible in any normal game. Next side effect there being that players have a hell of a time ever actually gauging their own skill level and recognizing where they really screwed up.

It's particularly silly though because it's such a needless side-effect to suffer. If there's one thing I think everyone can agree on it's that they could at the very least disclose SWF at the end of the match with all the other information details they reveal. There just no reasonable excuses for why they wouldn't disclose the information and so many benefits to gain.

I meant to reply to this awhile back but ended up distracted and rolled on, though I was dumb enough to play on the weekend at peak hours and got joyful reminder to come back to this issue. The length/scope is a bit overboard, even for me, though I'm not just addressing you and mean this to be a collective rebuttal for all.

[Quick preface: The devs explicitly declared Voice-Coms aren't cheating, though I'm just gonna call it that here with the context understood that's specifically not cheating as defined by current rules, but the nature of the game (where the inarguable distortion constitutes de facto cheating by unreasonably unbalancing the game) to avoid repetitive qualifiers making my long-ass posts even long-asser.]

Most means of cheating don't guarantee victory or make unskilled players skillful. Same as VC, they boost players of any given level beyond their actual limits and abilities. In fact, the degree of any boost typically depends on skill in part too (the better you are, the more areas you can apply the same means of cheating effectively), so, sure, SWF God squads and SWF scrubs alike. There's a grand failure to acknowledge that edge itself is an issue without "eh we could've cheated harder" ever coming into focus. Studies even show that, likewise, most people cheat for "a little edge," regulating what they could "probably" do anyhow... with the standards of "probably" relaxing over time, per challenge. All those excuses of inconsequential impact and required skill are just the default delusions for cheating in most any form.

I'd say you're generally right that people frequently mistake being out played by solo players for being out-cheated by VC at times. However, you pose another argument via context here too. Maybe not something you realized or intended, but by jumping into a topic that's basically "hey this is how we should deal with the SWF problem" and veering to "ugh people say everything is SWF," you're directly responding to their prompt with the indirect rebuttal that the issue is overblown and irrelevant at all. (Or I suppose making a total non-sequitur, but one that ends up creating that same argument when interpreted by readers). That's what I'm demolishing here.

You presented it yourself as "literally everything I do in X I do in Y" too, where its honestly no big deal and any advantages are negligible. Like you'd know to do gens still, so same diff; but, when you're taking steroids for baseball, you still hit the ball with a bat like any other game. Hell, you even score home-runs in fair games anyway too… there's still a material distortion of your performance. Here we're dealing with the accumulation of so many little factors tipped in your favor--and a flood of (even indirect) information that rivals any number of perks--in a game that can tip back & forth based on small mistakes normally. The alterations of VC are impossibly different to account for unless the game so heavily imbalanced its irrelevant anyhow. When a killer can beat your team while you're actively exploiting VC, that's just a killer who would always stomp your team in a real game.

In normal matches, even that inability to point out "hey trap right there" could be the pivot for snowballing. Of course not every potential distortion of VC impacts every match, but it doesn't require knowing every killer move to ruin the match integrity. There are far too many adjustment factors (any number of which could be significant alone) that, whatever inevitable differences do occur, they're amassed and intertwined inseparably from the match circumstances beyond recognition. To imagine that any of your accomplishments are still distinguishable skill at that point is just naive. It's like stringing together a speed run made of save states and pretending you did the whole thing at once. You simply cannot eliminate so many little imperfections, and shift all the pressure dynamics, while still feeling righteously decent because you can sometimes do those things in normal games anyhow. It's fruit from a poisoned tree.

This is still without really accounting for people fully intent on exploiting the imbalances either. When that intent exists, the distortion is so overwhelmingly negative that a bad taste lingers even for killers capable of overcoming the fixed odds. What's so insidious is that your team doesn't need to go into any match with that intent to cheat heavily. Most probably don't, making it that much easier to believe "we just have fun" since its discounting every time it doesn't end up that way. Only once things start going sour, the cheating efforts kick into gear with that irresistible urge to "rebalance" inevitably creeping forward. Players increasingly exploit those unaccounted/unbalanced interactions of VC to pull off maneuvers and coordination straight up impossible in any real game. And that's some real bullshit. Of course it erodes the fun of playing killer when some games irrationally flip on a dime to the other side's whims.

Naturally groups love it: they largely dictate the match. So it's all fun and games, unless they decide it isn't. Dismissing every distortion (and every attempt at even mitigating any of those distortions) under the premise "most groups just chill anyway" is ridiculous when all have that gateway at anytime. VC isn't any more reasonable an accommodation for players to work around without grievance than, say... letting killers use a game trainer to make walls transparent at will. Everyone just accept that most use it with good discretion, like when lost or they can't find anyone, and that makes the game more fun for everyone. Plus, its a nice challenge. And make some entertaining twitches and this game desperately depends on the twitches. And it's not every occasion, I mean, unless they want to. Sure, some will, but probably rarely... probably. Or, they only bust it out when when survivors that get too cocky, or maybe too loopy, or just a little bit too existy. You can't punish them for wanting to have fun too. Besides, it's not like that actually guarantees the killer will win. Still gotta catch 'em first, and that's pure skill there. Pure skill. So all good, right?

It could be that you're fine with the status quo--and if so, that's okay, and you're right to like what you like--however I don't know how you could possibly believe that most everyone else is just dandy when there's a clear killer deficit in this game. I'd think that's a sign of something seriously wrong when that side already only needs one player for the other four, and gets to be the badass pop-culture horror icon. Seems more likely to have the opposite queue times.

If most killers are really alright with it, then I'd have to think that's because the ones who aren't happy about it have already quit playing killer, if not DBD entirely. Even without being red-ranks (or maybe explicitly because of it on either side) I know for sure there's still a killer shortage the higher the ranks, or they wouldn't be mixing up even red rank solo survivor against killers literally ten levels beneath them so damn frequently.  That alone is probably a major recipe for burn out when a lot of people perceive a skill difference between Rank 2 and Rank 1 survivor skill levels. When you start tossing in the voice-comms of even just two players onto that whole mess, well, it shouldn't really take much convincing to predict a fire hazard burning through new and old players alike to devastate retention levels that should be way higher.