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Why is SWF so broken?

I just started recently and have gotten into the dbd community and mainly just read through other peoples opinions on things to see if mine are similar, but one thing I seemed to notice is SWF (Survivor with Friends) groups being really tilting for some people.

I just experienced that today and it was probably the worst experience i've ever had

I'm not expecting to always win my matches, or always do really good in all of my matches, so when I do bad in a game, I accept it and move on

But these teams make it honestly unplayable

One person just loops you around and makes you look stupid for chasing them while the rest of them just 3 man a gen.

I know that they also wont remove SWF either. I honestly think that there should be an option that only let's you queue up with random players. That way, SWF can still have their fun and killers can still have fun too.

I really hope devs somehow fix or nerf this.


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Comments

  • I don't have too much of a problem with SWF. Most of the problems are caused by matchmaking and ranking issues.

    Look at your game there for example a clear rank difference; even if you were red rank the game stops there but if on a scale of 1 - 10 red rank was a 4 you still get players that are a 10 while you are a 4- because the playerbase can't allow a strict enough matchmaker.

    It's a flawed system.

    The SWF problems I have are things like one person having OoO basically meaning EVERYONE has it now- without any of the downsides.

  • popeyeskid
    popeyeskid Member Posts: 8

    I just think they should rework the ranked system as is now because the matchmaking is so weird, I keep going against red or purple ranks on an often basis. Hopefully the new update will touch upon it (Haven't paid attention to what's coming in it) and maybe fix how stupidly overpowered SWF is.

  • SleepyWillo
    SleepyWillo Member Posts: 2,197

    They're fixing MMR before releasing it again. Be patient. It will get better.

  • Aven_Fallen
    Aven_Fallen Member Posts: 16,265

    The Devs said it in a Livestream at some point. I think the Stream was from 2018.

    But even without it - like I said, nobody would create a game where players can play in a team of 4 people without the thought that friends want to play together. And the Devs also knew in 2016 that Third party programs for Voice Chat exist, its not like the Devs are living under a rock.

  • PigEmpress
    PigEmpress Member Posts: 79

    When I encounter a horrible matchmaking I just stop playing and just roam the map doing nothing until they fix the gens, maybe break a blockade or two just for the meager blood points and to have something to do. Then I go and open the exit myself. Usually I just watch youtube at the same time until the match is finally over. This way the games are shorter than chasing the tryhards around for half an hour as most survivors will get frustrated and finish the map when they realize they can't get you to play the match as they want you to.

  • MrsGhostface
    MrsGhostface Member Posts: 987

    That’s bad matchmaking, not SWF OP

  • SentinelCaptain
    SentinelCaptain Member Posts: 234

    SWF is one of, if not the most divisive topics on the forum. Personally, I think you were just the victim of poor matchmaking. 12 is a perfectly respectable rank and is where I hover around for both Killer and Survivor, but unfortunately, you occasionally get thrown in with people you have no business playing with. Low rank Survivors get pulled into matches with high rank killers because of one good Survivor on the team and vice versa. I have been on both sides and typically queue Survivor as 1 of a pair. The strategy you encountered is fairly common, and admittedly, pretty clever and effective. Your best option in that scenario is to break off and find another target. Good Loopers (Which I definitely am not) will try everything to get and hold your attention. I'm sure you've encountered a Flashlight Clicker by now. Just try to ignore the bait and do what you can until it's over.

  • Mr_K
    Mr_K Member Posts: 9,222

    Maybe the issue is 4 red ranks vs a green rank killer and not SWF?

    Four solo red ranks would of bullied you the same way. Really, your story doesn't scream SWF as much as you chased a good looper all match.

  • SOMENINJANAME
    SOMENINJANAME Member Posts: 294

    Exactly, it literally warps the Killers slight advantage into the Survivors considerable advantage. Very well demonstrated.

  • Yords
    Yords Member Posts: 5,781

    Because this game is broken.

  • Clevite
    Clevite Member Posts: 4,335

    Yeah, that is MM issue, not a swf issue.

    A red rank killer might have destroyed them.

  • Ink_Eyes
    Ink_Eyes Member Posts: 561

    Queue times for survivors are already a whooping 10 to 15 minutes to find a match, and SWF have longer times since some killers lobby dodge if they get the hunch that they are going up against a team, if thyey separate the queues swf will probably have to wait longer for a match.

  • popeyeskid
    popeyeskid Member Posts: 8

    Flashlight spamming, crouch spamming, flaming me after game, hell I even have this clip https://streamable.com/vki4og , if that doesn't scream SWF, I guess they're just reaaaally good red ranks

  • Steel_Eyed
    Steel_Eyed Member Posts: 4,033

    No one talks about the SWFs they beat easily. The problem seems to be, not people talking to each other, but killers playing against good players who make good plays.

    The killer still has to play the game. The survivors still have to play the game. Talking to your friends does not make you better at looping or the killer worse at chases.

    On PC you can see player’s friends list and see if they’re SWFing. They can be beaten and these threads are probably made by inexperienced players who shouldn’t be adjusting anything balanced related until they learn to play better as it is.

  • EvilJoshy
    EvilJoshy Member Posts: 5,295
    edited January 2021

    Talking to your friends gives you so much information that it makes a huge difference in your match. You can tell your friends

    Who the killer is

    Where they are at

    What perks they are running

    If someone is being chased and where they are bringing the killer

    Where a lit totem is

    Gen locations and progress

    If it's safe to make a rescue

    If someone is going for a rescue to maximize gen repairs

    Coordinating DS, BT, Adren, UB, body blocking to get even more use out of them

    Headsets can negate some killers power completely. Such as trapper. Headsets do help you at looping because your friends can tell you if they used a pallet where your going. I've been in chases where I said "I'm heading to the shack" and a friend said "Don't go there, I used that pallet already". If a friend is nearby watching you they can inform you if the killer is walking backwards to mind game. In this game, if the killer and the survivors are playing optimally then the survivors are at an advantage because there are more of them. This game is designed and balanced around survivors making mistakes.

  • popeyeskid
    popeyeskid Member Posts: 8

    That's because i've never beaten a SWF easily. The skill needed is a big difference. Killers benefit from players coordination. You may get a player that would rather wait for hatch to open instead of going for the risky save on the 2nd to last person alive, or you may get a player who will go back for them and make sure everyone makes it out alive. OR you may just get people who already have a set plan and everything the killer does is just falling right into their plan. The best way to kill SWF is maybe facecamp or tunnel imo

  • Steel_Eyed
    Steel_Eyed Member Posts: 4,033

    All that info, but it still comes down to winning chases and pressure. These threads and complaints are excuses for bad mechanics and poor decision making. In my experience.

  • SocialDistomancy
    SocialDistomancy Member Posts: 1,319
    edited January 2021

    pretty sure anybody wanting to be able to opt out would be fine if their queue times were 20 minute for more frequently enjoying the time they did get to play. the mmr should fix this for low ranks, and for the most part mid ranks too which might be what op could find some benefit from out of options the devs are willing to even humor. I can't imagine purple or at least reds' games would change too much though from mmr compared to times there were enough killers to avoid frequent rainbows and stuff like op's situation since when they put reds versus reds they claimed it was often sweaty anyways and more frequently swf. Some said they spent a lot of time deranking every time they got sick of it. right now there isn't enough killers for it to be helpful or something is internally borked but the matchmaking is too all over the place but I'd have suggested OP afk enough to derank and do it every time they hit the rank they started seeing unliked changes in their matchmaking. That hasn't worked for a while though unfortunately.

  • kaeru
    kaeru Member Posts: 1,568

    If swf survivors are not meming around, they will win. Even if they bad at looping, they have all the info to do gens non stop. At least one survivor will always do gens. No urban evading at corner of the map, no 3 survivors going to unhook, no suicides. All that makes swf much stronger than solo queue. Even best killers rarely beat survivors at this point.

  • Covens
    Covens Member Posts: 15

    Yes i agree general good information and not wasting time is the best way to be effecient as a survivor. Most SWF just see the general abbuse of most mechanics.

  • Adjatha
    Adjatha Member Posts: 1,814

    I like that there's two threads on the Recent Discussions, back to back, one about nerfing Iridescent Head and one about nerfing Survive with Friends. One is an addon only Huntress has, has a negative effect on Huntress (fewer hatchets), costs a ton of blood points and gets consumed after use, and requires a tremendous skill ceiling to use effectively. The other affects killers of all ranks and types, requires no blood points, takes up no perk/addon slot, and lends tremendous information advantages to everybody involved no matter the skill level.

    Gosh, I wonder which issue is more likely to be addressed with a sweeping nerf.

  • Covens
    Covens Member Posts: 15

    Yeah so we want both fixed. Iri head is mostly taken with intry belt (sorry is i types it wrong). You can then have 3 insta down hatchets that saves the killer a complete health state and the survivor a speed boost.

    And very unfun for survivors.

  • TotemsCleanser
    TotemsCleanser Member Posts: 723

    There's little to nothing that the devs can do to "nerf" SWF. Maybe change some tools that they abuse (OoO and keys) but that's it. If anything, solo Q could be "buffed" so that it would become as powerful as SWF, and then the killers could be balanced around that. Maybe.

    Devs can do literally nothing to stop SWF teams from being on comms and sharing information with each other during the match. Literally. Nothing. The core element that makes SWF powerful, which is comms, cannot be changed by the devs. And people will continue to play with friends, because playing with friends is way more fun than playing alone.

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 5,229
    edited January 2021

    It's mostly not so bad, until someone cheeses it with OoO on discord.

    That's small pp play style though; so I'm not too bothered losing to that.

  • Aven_Fallen
    Aven_Fallen Member Posts: 16,265

    Dont get me wrong, I would find it kinda funny if a Killer player waits 30 minutes for a game, just to play against 4 Solos and will most likely still lose this game. Would be interesting to see what they say when their excuse is gone.

    However, everything what would increase Queue Times for either side should not be a thing.

  • NotACompPlayer
    NotACompPlayer Member Posts: 193

    its not op, youre clearly new lol, stop blaming everything instead of yourself for losing

  • SocialDistomancy
    SocialDistomancy Member Posts: 1,319

    probably wouldn't complain too often if it was more fun for them, the playstyle is part of what makes swf unfun, they abuse the ability to coordinate very well with up to date information in order to play in ways that deliberately annoy killers like timing stuns and saves and body blocking forcing you to slug etc. Then there's a lot of tbags, as if they're actually proud of themselves for doing so, as if it requires great skill to do so. Avoiding that and having it become a rare thing would be welcome to a lot of players probably.

    It's kind of funny when it happens in randoms sometimes, like a night I needed a stun the killer in 3 or 4 times in a match rift thing and a couple of randoms must have thought I was trolling and decided to join in and we abused a poor hag for about ten minutes when we could have escaped. We did it until we were finally all hooked to death after a long time running the poor thing around and screwing with them. They probably assumed we were a 3 man swf, but, ironically we were randoms or I was solo at least. It's possible they were duo but they didn't seem to play like it until then. What seemed to kick it all off was letting the hag pick me up at a pallet so I could ds there, and then try and time the pallet when it wore off to stackt he rift challenge stuns before running it around and trying to still be able to escape after the rift thing lol. It'ss till funny thinking about it, playing that way was unfortunately really fun and hilarious so it's not gonna be easily deterred.

  • lagosta
    lagosta Member Posts: 1,871

    I digress on a few points here. In this case, specifically, matchmaking seems to have flexed the level range for killer after the SWF were in the queue for a while. This is the intended behaviour of the current tool. As a survivor main, I don't think choosing your queue is cherry-picking, that can already be done by dodging suspicious lobbies.

    I believe that it is impossible to balance SWF and SQ together. The variant here is not the killer, it's the survivor team. SWF are prone to use comms to coordinate efficient and bold strategies. Even without comms, when you play SWF you're playing with selected teammates that have experience with your playstyle and you with theirs.

    IMHO, separate the queues and balance around that, either giving SQ some kind of benefit (IDK built-in kindred to allow some level of coordination) or increasing the difficulty for SWF (by giving the killer some built-in perk too/increasing the number of gens to be completed by 1).

  • Steel_Eyed
    Steel_Eyed Member Posts: 4,033

    Saying that someone can deal with higher level play by being a more experienced killer is exactly the problem with the SWF complaint. By the way, we all have potato moments, I’ve been wrecked before, but SWFs are not untouchable. I’ve beaten tournament players with clan tags; yall can too.

    My overarching message is to not politic to make a good game soft and plushy and unfun by removing the competitive side of the game. It’s fun as it is. Learn to overcome.

  • popeyeskid
    popeyeskid Member Posts: 8

    lol what? obviously I am new, I am just pointing out how stupidly broken it is. Whether I have played 100 games or 10000 games, it still changes nothing.

  • SOMENINJANAME
    SOMENINJANAME Member Posts: 294

    Lol, I nodded my head in agreement the entire time I read this. I love your passion.

  • SwInD
    SwInD Member Posts: 13

    Someone told me about this thread and I read through everything and thought it was very funny, here is the VOD of this game so you all can understand that the killer making this thread actually does just NEED TO GET GOOD.... I'm sorry..... https://www.twitch.tv/videos/883234262

  • SilentPill
    SilentPill Member Posts: 1,302

    I mean it’s more a matchmaking failure than anything. SWF is stupid strong and throwing baby killers into meta squads with probably thousands of hours is pretty dumb.

  • SwInD
    SwInD Member Posts: 13

    Meta squads? My ONE friend and I were running appraisal and plunderers with coins. I also stated that there was a flaw with matchmaking in the post game lobby. We didn't do anything toxic we just played the game and he was not as, good simple as that. Whether it was a matchmaking issue or not the case still stands. Either way I posted the video to prove that it was a 2 man stack, we weren't running anything meta, we did not flame him in post game, and the guy knew we weren't even a full squad as we talked in post game about it but decided to come and complain about how op and amazing SWF is. Enjoy the day

  • xenotimebong
    xenotimebong Member Posts: 2,803

    It changes quite a lot. You’re new enough that you don’t even realise the problem with this match wasn’t SWF, it was matchmaking and your own inexperience.

    This was a group of 2 with 2 other solos so SWF really wasn’t your reason for losing here. The 2 stack were even running stuff that slowed them down and made them waste time so it’s not like they were some highly optimised SWAT team. The problem is that you made a lot of mistakes because you’re new to the game, which is totally understandable and not your fault - it’s a failing of the ranking and matchmaking in this game.

    You should be complaining about how horribly this game onboards new players by making them go against people with thousands of hours, not SWF. Removing SWF would not have changed the outcome of this match at all.

  • ILoveDemo
    ILoveDemo Member Posts: 681

    Jeez just men up or get gud in the Game. It's not that they did something against you in RL.

  • SilentPill
    SilentPill Member Posts: 1,302

    Bluntly, the chest build is almost just as bad because it practically guarantees a key. And guess what, you found one. Then all lined up at the hatch to jump out.

    Then at the end you complained about camping and tunneling which honestly is just as cringe as him complaining about SWF. I love how the guy doesn’t even know what tunneling even is yet because it’s that made up by the DBD community.

    And I’m not specifically talking about this game I’m talking about what happens in DBD in general.

  • SwInD
    SwInD Member Posts: 13

    Nice troll dude, I had one person with me and we didn't flame the killer in post game chat sorry to break it to you. The person who opened the hatch was also a pub so we had no communication with him either. Not to mention the door was literally 99% and a 5 feet away from the hatch so what was the issue? This is my last response as I'm pretty certain you are either trolling or didn't read half of what I said or even watch the video. Sick take though looting chests to make the game take longer than necessary is totally meta and as strong as all those meta perks like UB/DS

  • BamboozledBTW
    BamboozledBTW Member Posts: 1

    I agree. I'll have you all know that I am rank 1 both sides and find survivors absolutely disgusting. Playing this game with your friends only makes you more toxic and entitled. Running perks like appraisal is just sweaty and disgusting. 


    Every swf is toxic. Wake up lol pathetic. 


    Tunneling is just something survivors make up because they're salty over losing to the survivor sided mechanics like Spirit, Slinger, and Nurse.

  • Tilt
    Tilt Member Posts: 2

    I mean, I just played the video game.