SWF are killing this game, prove me wrong.
I completely understand why SWFs were first introduced into the game, but after 4 years they are doing far more harm than good. SWFs make it unfun for killers, who are forced to run the same meta perks in order to have a remote chance against them (aka gen slowing perks, or survivor slowing perks). BHVR decided to nerf one hook moris because it was the easiest method for slowing down a team. Now killers are forced to either 3 gen, slug or camp in order to try and secure a 4k almost every game.
As a result of SWFs, que times for survivors are awful because the 80/20 balance isn't maintained. No one wants to continuously go against SWF teams which is why you will constantly get lower ranks as killer and que times are immediate because no one is playing killer at lower ranks anymore. This is creating a vacuum, and I feel as though it will only get worse. As I play survivor, I see matches where I'm solo que'd against a rank 13 or 14 killer because a 2 man SWF team decided to play with a rank 16.
As both a survivor and killer main, this is extremely frustrating because as a survivor, I'm wondering why my teammate is playing so poorly (not knowing they are new to the game) often times causing us to die because of a mistake that a veteran player could see coming. As a killer, it's frustrating because I always seem to go against the extremely optimized teams, all running BT, Unbreakable, DS and some exhaustion perk only to get gen rushed and depip because I couldn't move as fast as someone could speak on comms.
What I propose is this, either incentivize solo queing i.e. give more BP to solo folks after a match or simply place a debuff on SWF teams, 10% with 2 people, 15% with 3 and 20% with 4. Give killers the chance to slow down the game slightly enough where people no longer need to run the same 12 perks over and over again. If killers can start having more fun with the game rather than stress about each match, not only would new players come to dbd but veteran players I feel would return as well.
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I dont have to prove you wrong, you're right. Its either ######### on or get ######### on. Just like life itself
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I don't think SWF is a problem personally. But I do feel like there should be a BP bonus of 100 percent when you're not red rank yourself as survivor going against a red rank killer and a BP bonus for killer when they play against a SWF. 2 man 25 percent, 3 man 75 percent, 4 man 100 percent.
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I don't think this is an issue with SWF but rather, matchmaking. Good killers do well against good SWFs and vice versa.
You brought up an interesting point, the 20/80 rule. I think it's super applicable to the issues we face in DBD. Essentially, you have 20% of Killers / Survivors driving the most volume of the games with higher win rates. At a aggregated level, this statistically makes the game seem balanced. However, it means that your average player will generally have a lower win rate than the "20%" and thus view the game as imbalanced.
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Proving you wrong, as requested: https://steamcharts.com/app/381210
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Naw, I don't mind SWF, and im a killer main. I took on a well coordinated purple rank SWF yesterday as legion without meta perks (I ran thana, nurses calling, discordance and tinkerer) and they only got 1 gen done. Once you realize they are swf, yiu have to play a bit differently. This is how i change it up:
-I stop feeling bad for tunnelling, because the point of me tunnelling isn't to get the player sacrificed, its to cause other members of the team to focus on protection instead of gens.
-The more the person has been hooked, the more likely another survivor or possibly multiple will abandon their objectives to try and body block. I make them run as a group for a bit until im in a good position to hit the body blocker and not lose sight of the tunnel target. I keep it up until I down the target or the body blocker, possibly downing both if I do it right.
-if I down my tunnelling target and they're dead on hook, I DONT hook them. I patrol the area and wait for the unbreakable or for someone to try and save them. They're perfect bait because they're much so valuable to the team alive that they will almost always abandon gens to save them. I hit people that try to rescue and continue to camp the slug until an injured surv tries to rescue, they stop trying, or I get another down. Then I hook the person whos not dead on hook and continue to camp the slug until they almost bleed out.
-another important thing to keep in mind is to cause misinformation. If you are chasing and know where someone is repairing, break the chase and pretend to go for the gen, the double back and surprise the person you were chasing. It adds an element of surprise AND the chased surv will tell the repairing surv that you're coming, often making them flee the gen, buying some time. There are other similar mind games you can play.
-expect cocky flashlight, head on, or pallet saves. Use their cockiness to your advantage. Bait them into using it and punish them for it. Agitation and mad grit are a perfect combo for SWF because they will be more likely to try and save each other from getting hooked
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I dunno about killing the game as a whole, but SWF and the awful matchmaker/ranking system is causing some problems. People look at steam charts and don't see it, but it shows in the survivor queue times and in your matches.
People try and play killers like Pig, Legion, Trapper, Wraith, etc.... and they end up getting bullied relentlessly by SWF groups and such so they end up playing like Spirit, or Freddy or something instead because that happens less when they play them usually, and they notice that.
Someone gets a really sweaty bully group even, and might just give up playing killer entirely after being t-bagged and insulted in the post game, chain stunned unnecessarily like half a dozen times, etc. They might end up just only playing survivor.
Even the best players will end up maining like Nurse or such at red rank 1 simply because they prefer that to playing a low tier killer that gets bullied. People don't mind losing, but they don't like feeling like a punching bag.
Post edited by [Deleted User] on17 -
The devs have said the goal is two dead & two escape on average per match, across all ranks. Your personal goal as killer might be to get all 4 (perfectly reasonable btw) but overall they're looking for two.
Based on their history of changes, imo they resist doing anything that splits the playerbase, hurts queue times, or 'punishes' a side. So directly nurfing anyone in a SWF is unlikely either. Since more that half of all survs are in at least a two-man that's a lot of players to consider in all the ranks.
I believe we need to keep all of this in mind when making suggestions. To me the method that makes the most sense is to raise the info aspect of solos to something closer to SWF levels, and then balance killers around that. Exactly how to do that is very debatable.
Over the past few weeks I've been teaming up with friends who are quite new to the game and trying to teach them, mainly because the tutorials are ineffective and solo queue is a nightmare. My personal goal has been to get everyone else out, easier said than done just check out recent vods for that.
But it helps to remind me we have to consider all players and ranks together.
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It's a complicated issue that doesn't have a very clear-cut answer.
To me, there's only one group that's actively detrimental to the game-- the sweat squads, the people who play together not for fun but to be maximally optimal and win the DbD tournament for life. They ain't fun, they ain't fair, they ain't healthy, especially when Matchmaking puts them against people that really don't deserve them.
But too often this is equated with ALL players, because there's no indication on whether someone's SWF or not, and thus it's just up to guesswork. And this leads to some real questionable changes being proposed.
Do you nerf SWFs as a whole? Well desperate times and all that, but I certainly hope not. SWFs are primarily composed of casual people just, as the name implies, playing a fun co-op game with their friends and having a good time. I do it from time to time, and we usually get stomped even though we have fun doing it. Do we punish these players because a certain segment are ultra sweaty?
Do you nerf Survivors as a whole? This, to me, is the worst possible answer. Solo queues aren't a problem for any killer, as many people will tell you, as the disorganization and lack of quality of teammates can quickly bring any solo queue game crashing apart. So doing what some people proposed, like making ruin built in, increasing gen times, things like that, are gonna absolutely destroy a large majority of the players that already struggle immensely. Like a wiser man than I once said, it's not viable to sacrifice over half the playerbase to balance against one small group.
So yeah, in a way, SWF kinda is killing the game. But at this point, someone who doesn't deserve it's gonna suffer for its fix.
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The dev's inability to fix issues with the game is killing the game.
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that's a fair point, but I'd prefer to not have to result to tunneling every match (or most matches) to get a 4k. Adversely, I'd like as a survivor to not have to run with anti-slugging perks all the time. The point I'm trying to make here is that SWFs throw off the balance of the game and force everyone to play with the same 10 perks over and over again.
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U can't get rid of swf or too many survivors might quit playing. We need killers, but we need the survivors to spend money.
Getting rid of comms will turn away a bit too much survivors the devs will be comfortable with
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Swf fix again repeating this again. reduced healing and gen speed based on number of prematched teammates. It reduces bullying by making the healing take longer. Forces swf teams to dick around less as gen time is gonna be harder. Solo queue should not be balanced on the same level as swf and pretending it doesn't exist or doesn't matter is negligent at best abhorrent at worst. Disable certain perks like OoO on swf teams. Finally start looking at solo based buffs like kindred like effect base maybe not as good but similar to help solo queue players get a better read on saves.
Side note op were getting rank 12 killers as a lobby of 3 red rank survivors premade no green ranks pre lobby there something fundamentally borked about swf matchmaking, Still disgusted monto and ohtofu pals got matched with a fking rank 20-18 trapper.
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SWF is not the problem. The problem is the stubborn developers who refuse to change core mechanics to make the game better for everyone. They need to bring up solo closer to swf and balance killers around high level play and stop band-aiding the issues of this game with perks.
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SWFs have a 5th perk: Comms. There's nothing the devs can do about that in a world with Discord, but they purposely left out in-game chat for 1) immersion and 2) it gives a significant advantage.
There's been a problem lately of SWFs padding the MMR by having a smurf (or otherwise low rank survivor) account to get matched with low rank and, likely, newer killers. That is highly discouraging and turns people off from playing killer. Killer is not an easy role and pulling these shenanigans just makes it worse.
An issue with balanced MMR is queue times and we're essentially left with two options: Comparable matchmaking with longer queue times or throw a lobby into the next available killer (of which, I watched my buddy at rank 20, with a brand new killer, get matched against two reds and two purples on the first match).
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SWFs aren't killing the game, it's a lot of fun playing with friends, it's just hard for the killer when the survivors have map-wide info at a moment's notice with their 5th perk.
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Posts like these are a dime a dozen. Prove me wrong
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SWF keeps the game as alive as it is. They are killing the game balance however. Putting a penalty on SWF would be a bad decision, they'd be better off buffing solos and killers so the gap isn't as large.
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^ This
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I think solo just needs better matchmaking and Kindred to be base kit to feel good. Or the pip system needs to gatekeep out the urban evasion spine chill self care survivors from red ranks. As it stands right now, it's too easy to get to red rank and stay red rank as a survivor.
The problem with SWF in my opinion, sweat and bully squads aside, is that decent players don't want to queue solo due to all the awful teammates you get, leading to a lack of good players queuing solo and an overabundance of decent players with good perks queuing SWF only. I wouldn't mind having a SWF indicator just so I could see how many SWFs I actually play against and if they perform that much better in my games.
Also matchmaking gets incredibly wonky when you play with varying ranks. It should matchmake either off the average rank or the highest rank in your group.
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It'd be nice if they signified in the pre-game lobby who's in a party and who's playing solo. Don't think it'd be too difficult to achieve, but I'm not a programmer. But this way at least Killer would know if they have to deal with comms or not.
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I don´t want extra Blood Points for wasting my time against premades, I don´t need them.
I just want to know if the enemie team is premade and if they a re 2-3 or 4 players to decide If I leave the lobby or I play that game, just that. This will be long queue times for premades? I don´t care, you have a vast advantage so that is the price for abuse killers :)
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I know it's sarcasm but damn I hate this lazy argument "prove me wrong" aka "I don't want to provide fundamental facts for my argument so i will let you show me yours that I am wrong (which I don't think/want to aknowledge I am)".
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this punishes solo survivors more than pre-mades, one team of duos and the other two solos have to deal with extended healing and gen time bc two friends are hanging out? lmao.
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SWF is the only thing making survivor bearable.
The issue this game has is players unwillingness to admit they might just be bad at dead by daylight but instead default to the X is the reason I'm losing.
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SWFs being the issue is just a symptom of the real problem: core mechanics that can be abused are not dealt with properly, more often than not they are a bad-aid fix (perks.)
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They cannot do this. If they indicated when survivors were grouped, the lobby dodging would never end. Killers already balk every time they see a Nea in a neon hoodie or literally anyone with a key. Even people just grouping with a random player they met earlier that night wouldn't get into a match because killers wouldn't want to risk them being on comms.
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That just displays how big the problem is
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Looks like a decline in active players to me, with the increases during this year corresponding to events with worth it rewards (ie good logins, 2x bp, etc.) Not that I completely agree with the OP that swf is what's killing the game, but the active player base does not prove him wrong.
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People are not playing this game because giving 10k bloodpoints a day is ridiculous, swf existed since 2016 and the playerbase has grown exponentially since then. Remove swf and that's how you're gonna kill the game for real. They should make a weekend with swf off and show how many players played the game during that weekend and then rub those datas in front of everyone. I would be surprised if the playerbase would be higher than 15k
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SWF is the only thing that provides a challenge for good killers, solo lobbies are just walk on the beach but if that's what you like then I ain't gonna argue.
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The current player count is probably what passes for standard decline, for this game in 2020. Compare it to previous years; DBD is having its best year to date.
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I am a solo survivor main, and used to play both sides. But i finally stopped with playing killer, because of this. But overall, i play the game less anyway. I liked to play killer for a change, but now, i just play some survivor games and then i do something else. And while i have nearly all dlc (i skipped the saw dlc) and some cosmetics, i won´t spend any money on this game until they balance the important issues, which can be either adressing swf or making matchmaking work. But since i doubt they try the first and also doubt they are able to do the second, i belive i will play less until i just stop someday and return for the odd game in between.
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If SWFs are the issue tell me why I can have 30 games of killer in a row whilst having fun but I go into one game as survivor, 4man swf or solo doesn't matter, and have such a ######### match that I close the game?
But okay, everything is the fault of the swf.
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Ive been playing mostly killer because, as people have said, solo survivor queue is absolute hell. The biggest issue i have is just getting 4 man SWF teaching their friends the game but absolutely creaming all over the killer. For me that is not fun cause i get flamed in post-chat that im bad and im losing my rank and i cant help but feel like their friends wouldnt really learn anything either if i just get screwed over every time. I only started playing the game seriously this month and im already considering dropping it after getting 4-man SWF 10 times in a row with at least 2-3 red/purple ranks
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SWF yes, but also the no-heal-genrush-ds-user. Like holy #########
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The effect stacks and increase in potency. With a small debuff that escalates the more premades are added. Two friends debuff is going to be lower but does need to exist. Solo play suffer for swf nonesense "hanging out" is still possible you will just wont be horrendously punishing the experiance of solo play by forcing the game to balance around swf.
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I'm not saying SWF is balanced or fun for the killer but I get the feeling that if SWF wasn't a thing the survivor population would considerably go down. I myself don't wanna play with randoms, I would have never started playing the game if it wasn't because I can have fun with my friends...
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I don’t need to. The steam charts already do that.
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As I said in another post, if you want SWF, lets give the killer the same amount of info.
A person or a bot spectating the Game, telling where are survivors, what are they doing, what Addons do they have and the gens that they are doing.
"Unfair"... Ah yes? Premades are exactly this, they know where killers are, what are they doing, where are they going, if they are chasing or not.... So if survivors can, Aldo Killers should be.
"Stay near the hook, they are going to sabe her" "The hatch is over There, Claudette is camping It so go an kill ver"
Now, SwF users Will say that this is crazy, unfair and cry cry cry.
Ok, that IS what you do as premade, so we want the sale rights that you have, I want my voice chat with my spectator friend telling me everything
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So just reduce the power of swf by adding a debuff that stacks according to the number of premades. Make it so healing and gen speed progression is reduced to account for more co-ordination and start buffing solo play so you have more power but less co-ordination as a solo survivor.
Why is every nerf to survivor targeting survivor as a whole hit the premades not the solo players. You could raise the number of base tools to give swf level co ordination to randos but the devs keep saying they don't want that. So just hit swf then. You can start with small reductions and escalate them if they are proving to be ineffective.
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I just want to invite my friends as killer...
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Because your skill and experiance as killer will have a greater impact on the game then being one teammate as part of a unit of disorganised randos.
You cant have a strong solo survivor experiance because of swf. So point nerfs at them to enable solo specific buffs. I. E. A penalty for premades that increases in potency the larger the lobby. With minor healing gen regression debuffs at first that scales as the number of premades increase. Solo player will be immune to this.
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Based on their recent history that doesn't seem accurate since they took mori out of the game, the only incentive for some people to not dodge a suspected or profile confirmed swf lobby or to blow off steam after a number of bad games in a night rather than switch to survivor or start playing anything else. I don't enjoy long queue lengths and only want to play survivor moving forward. so anything that could impact that negatively for me I'm against, and I solo, and have had some awful experiences in lobbies with 3 man swf as a solo survivor since you're just bait to them or a place to try and leave the killer hoping you'll keep it busy for them or get camped so they can do gens. Some can be helpful because of the teamwork mindset and the tactics they're used to, and I've gotten out once in a while due to some to my surprise, but generally they either ignore me or try and use me as if I'm another perk or addon in their loadout. They are often the most selfish players and I always roll my eyes regardless of which side I happened to be on expecting a bad experience.
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I'd really like to know the win rate of all the killer mains complaining about swf. Can you guys accept it's ok to lose a game once in a while and that a win rate over 60% shouldn't be considered normal?
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this doesn't fix anything and will instead just increase the amount of SWFs that play, people would 100% rather face a bigger debuff than play solo and maybe get bebuffed as a solo if they get put with a 2-man / 3-man.
and to top it off, killer ain't even hard, people are still pushing this idea that killer is as hard as it was 3 years ago and that just isn't the case, people really need to stop thinking they're the best killer in the entire game and that the only reason they lose is SWF, because that isn't it, you're just bad at dbd.
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There are people that can consistently 4k against many of the good ones and still hate playing against them sometimes just because sometimes it is very unfun for them to go against the way they play. I can imagine it's exhausting sometimes. I'd never stick around long enough to find out how exhausting, on bad nights I wnet to survivor the rest of the night or played a different game if survivor queues were longer than 5 minutes some of the nights. I don't work for free. Even clowns need to get paid. Pun intended.
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SWF is keeping the game alive at the cost of making the game unhealthy. It's an unholy bargain that got made back at the beginning, and we're all experiencing the consequences, now.
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Dang that's rough. If you're on Xbox lemme know so you can at least have one on your side. I solo less and less for many of those reasons you list plus I'm teaching younglins.
As far as the Mori change I believe they simply sent it out when ready, not giving two craps whether the key changes were ready, which has tilted many by timing it like that. Maybe romorrow......
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So you honestly think there aren’t solo Q teams which don’t “throw off the balance”???
Like, I think people on here give SWF WAY too much credit in regards to how it affects the outcome of a game. I can play with my SWF friends without comms and rest assured that they will be making the right calls.
The reason solo Q teams suck most of the time is because of how much they throw the game or how little they are willing to throw themselves at the killer to take aggro. Aka they are not reliable.
Even if you aren’t in a SWF you are still going to have to bring anti-slugging builds and anti-whatever. Why? Because the game itself allows killers to use these built in mechanics without hardly any downside.
Camping, Tunneling and Slugging does not require anyone to waste a perk slot.
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I wish more people would read this and understand that this is the core, fundamental issue that plagues DBD. SWF, while of course always meant to be in the game, likely never truly intended to be played with voice coms. Why? Because if they wanted the information coms bring to be shared freely, they would have built in voice chat, and made far fewer information gathering perks in the game. Regardless of if your team plays like a tourney squad, SWF allows for the confidence that your teammates have your back, and provides tons of valuable info that you normally would have to guess at or waste time/ perk slots to figure out yourself. Should SWF be removed? No!!! But to claim it has no effect on the game is complete nonsense.
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