Survivor que times reflect bad killer game experience

Survivor ques are ridiculous for a few reasons. Primarily, the incentive to play killer is simply too low which I believe is more a problem of game balance than matchmaking. (Note: I suspect the devs have been unable to produce a decent MMR system due to the game being simply too unbalanced. That is, a player can be wildly successful in one circumstance and wildly unsuccessful circumstance all due to these unbalances and thus ranking the player accurately and consistently is too big of a problem.)

=== Issues that diminish the incentive to play killer

1) Bloodpoint requirement. (This issue can be mildly mitigated by using BBQ and Chili to increase BP earnings.) While changing between survivors is almost exclusively a skin change, each killer has a unique playstyle.

Perks are essential to both killers and survivors but since survivor is just mainly a skin choice, a survivor need only unlock teachable perks for their non-main survivors (rank them up to level 40). To be successful with each killer, you not only have to unlock all teachable perks, but you have to rank up each individual killer until you get the full set of perks that are essential for for that killer to be successful. Given Bloodweb RNG, you have to get way more perks than necessary to be viable.

The only counter argument to this is that you could choose to main a single killer and then you wouldn't need to unlock so many perks. If this approach were to be taken, killer players would focus almost solely on S-tier killers to be competitive. This would have a negative impact on the survivor experience and we've seen this in the past where Hillbilly and Nurse seemed to be in every other match. Also, most killers aren't content with playing just one style of killer and so maining a killer is an option but not necessarily a good one.

The other drawback to having to spread bloodpoints over several killers is that the killer cannot invest in building up addons and offerings whereas a survivor is generally investing the majority of their points in a main and has built up a store of items and addons. For some killers, like Huntress, this is less of a problem because she's rather effective without addons. But for other killers, addons are critical.

2) Skill barrier. Each and every survivor character plays exactly the same unless you count sound (breathing and sounds of pain) and size when trying to hide from the killer. Killers, on the other hand, are distinct and require a different set of skills. Not only are the skills different, some killers take significant time to master the skills to make them remotely competitive (nurse, hillbilly, etc.).

The only advantage to learning these more difficult killers is that they tend to be more powerful. But given the time requirement, many killers won't invest the time to learn them. There is just too much frustration in losing match after match just trying to master the killer. These frustrations can also turn players from being killer mains or even part-time killers.

3) Gen Rush. Outside of challenges or the need to counter hex perks, survivors have one job to reach end game and that is to complete gens. The only way to stop this as killer is to chase survivors from a gen or to down and hook a survivor to force survivors perform a rescue.

Against a good team, interrupting gens requires the killer to be in 4 different places at once which is impossible. This leaves the killer with downing survivors to force the other players off of gens to rescue. But there are several problems with this as currently implemented.

To fully win, a killer must hook each survivor 3 times for a total of 12 hooks. The time it takes to chase, down, and hook the survivors 12 times is a much greater time investment for a single player than the time investment for 4 survivors to complete 5 gens.

Compounding the killer's efforts to achieve 12 hooks are the second chances available to survivors after being downed. Things from flashlight saves to hook sabotages to Decisive Strike to body blocking and so on.

The supposed balance to this comes in killer powers and perks but que times seem to indicate that the balance is ineffective. Receiving much scorn is the the gen delaying tactic of the perk combination Undying/Ruin which can be effective at times. However, the success of this perk combination is not guaranteed.

The killer still must effectively interrupt gens to a degree that survivors are pressed to defeat the perks. That is a fair enough demand of the killer (ignoring the need to be in 4 places at once) if these were simply persistent perks, but they are Hex perks which are notoriously RNG. It is not uncommon for survivors to spawn within several feet of a clearly exposed totem and no hunting is required to find them. Often these totems are clearly exposed and it's not uncommon for them to spawn in high traffic areas. I think the most notoriously easy to find totem is the one on Ormond just outside the main building on the long set of rocks.

There has been an effort to make some spawn locations more difficult to find or more out of the way and this is a good start. However, even these locations are finite and can be learned reducing the required time to find them. Once you learn of the totem at the top of the steps leading to the non-existent 3rd floor on Midwich, a very well hidden totem becomes an extremely easy to remember and easy to find totem.

Worse still, a killer must sacrifice two perk slots to put the game at a place it should already be at, i.e. where gen rush is harder to make work.

3) Survive with friends imbalance. This is often game breaking. (This is not talking about SWFs that are "just playing together" and not using callouts.)

The devs have acknowledged the game was never intended (designed/balanced) to be played other than as solo que. I questioned a developer on their stream as what they intended to do to balance the game for SWF. The dev's answer was they were working on survivor perks (Bond, Kindred, etc.) to give solo ques a more SWF-like experience.

This baffled me beyond all belief. Not only did the dev fail to see that the biggest problem isn't for the solo que, but the dev's solution was to force a solo que to sacrifice perk slots to a have a more "SWF-like" experience. Compounding this is that a limited perk like Bond in no way simulates the advantages of callouts and understanding where other players are or what they are doing which is map-wide and not distance limited like Bond.

A careful look at the perks that can be simulated to some degree or another via SWF using callouts shows there's over a dozen perks these SWF's gain without using a perk slot. So a decent SWF using these tactics effectively have the advantage of 16 or more perks (to a lesser or greater extent) when going against a killer.

=== Some (Imperfect) Solutions

Not to be one who simply complains about a problem without offering solutions, I will provide options. I have a ton for SWF but will start with non-SWF solutions.

-- Non-SWF solutions

1) Increase Bloodpoint rewards. Many multiplayer games offer rewards for underplayed roles until and an adequate number of players are playing the role to achieve balance. This can be done on a per match basis. "Killer Role Bonus: 5,000 BP next match." The bonus wouldn't be a static number. If there is a huge imbalance (15 min ques), the bonus could be 10K BP or if the imbalance is small (1-2 min que), the bonus could be small 1K BP.

2) Rework killers to decrease the difficulty to "git gud" with hard-to-learn and hard-to-master killers. This would likely lead to the need to rebalance some of the more powerful killers.

3) Gen Rushing. This is difficult. There are so many factors that make this hard to get right. I think there needs to be a new paradigm to gens because any decent team can have at least one member work continuously on gens if not 2, given the difficulty for the killer to pressure all 4 survivors simultaneously. I've tried to come up with options but it just seems like a complete rework is needed.

4) Improve Killer Matchmaking. While it is fairly sensible to rank a player's survivors all the same (they all require the same exact skills), the same cannot be said for a player's killers. While someone may be a great Freddy, they can be a horrible Spirit. The player should be ranked independently with each killer.

5) Make training maps for killers (and even survivors) to practice skills. The current tutorial offers nothing for killers and is worthless for practicing skills and sometimes practice is best focused on outside of an actual game (just look at sports and how practice time compares to game time).

6) Increase killer POV. The restriction on the killer's POV is beyond ridiculous. Not only is there a major difference between player 3rd-person view and killer 1st-person view but the killer's 1st-person POV is hyper restricted. The fact that a survivor can literally crouch at your feet unseen or on the opposite side of a generator or short wall is unnecessary and outside even those circumstances the restricted POV creates such an unnecessary hindrance to the killer that it can be used against the killer to easily end chases in many circumstances. Yes, there is Shadowborn but even the improvement with Shadowborn, killer POV is way too restrictive. Finding and not losing players reduces the time necessary to achieve the necessary downs and hooks for the killer to maintain pressure.

--SWF-specific Solutions

1) Buff killer to counter SWF with callouts. Not a very good solution though it provides greater balance for killers against these teams the killer would be too strong for too many matches.

2) Limit SWFs by reducing the number of perks available to each member of a SWF by the number of members of the SWF, e.g. a 3-member SWF would have the number of available perks reduced by 3, i.e. each member of the SWF would only have one perk slot available for the match. The solo que would still have all 4 of their perks available for the match. I realize SWFs playing "just for fun" and not using callouts would have fewer perks available. Even though "just for fun" SWFs would also be impacted, those SWFs still gain an advantage over solo que generally knowing the playstyle of their teammates (Jimmy always rushes to do saves, Scotty is a good looper, etc.) and taking a perk reduction isn't a great penalty given their advantage.

3) Increase the number of generators required to energize the gates. Currently, each map spawns 7 generators 5 of which must be completed to energize the gates. This extends the game match to give the killer more opportunities to make up for the imbalance. For a 2-man SWF, increase the number of required generators to 6 and for 3- or 4-man SWF increase the number of generators to 7. The drawback to this solution is that with 2- or 3-man SWFs, solo ques are penalized. So what about them? There seems to be great concern in this game with how survivors feel and what they must endure. For example, old Ruin was redesigned because new players (myself included) couldn't cope with the great skill check requirement. There is seemingly no concern for the feeling of killers or what they must endure. The ques seem to support balance concerns are completely misplaced.

4) Eliminate SWFs. Yep, I said it. Pro: The game is much more balanced as it was designed for solo que and has been subsequently balanced as devs acknowledge the only balance they've done for SWFs is to improve solo que survivor play and not killer/survivor balance. For those SWFs that genuinely play "just for fun" and do not use callouts or perk optimization to take advantage, they lose the option to play with friends and that sucks hard but it'd be nice to know how much of the player base they represent.

I often hear that survivors must be appealed to because otherwise the game would die yet at the same time I'm repeatedly told that SWFs just aren't that common. So which is it? Are they so plentiful the game can't survive or they're so rare no balance is needed for them?

5) Introduce In-game voice for survivors then balance killer for it. This helps level playing field for all survivors. Solo ques get the advantage of hearing SWF callouts and can provide their own callouts. SWFs also no longer need an outside program for voice. There is the issue that not every player has, or would use, a mic and in-game chatter could squelch important in-game noises/cues. Also, there are plenty of idiots that you don't want to hear in chat or who would actually troll (false callouts). This can be mitigated with independent volume controls for each player (to include a mute option.)

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I don't propose the implementation of any one solution or multiple solutions. I have my preferences but that's irrelevant. I just propose them as a starting point for discussion.