Is solo survivor really that bad?
I've lurked in these forums for a little while now, mostly to get a feel for how the community feels about different game aspects. For reference, I've been playing the game off and on since it dropped on Xbox and have just about 1200 hours logged, so, not a veteran but not new either. I play both roles, have multiple killers and survivors P3 and such (not an accomplishment but meant to give scope to the roles I play).
Is solo survivor truly the miserable experience that many claim it to be? I've played solo survivor for 99% of my survivors games save for 4-5 games I had with an SWF 2 years ago. I tend to have a great time in solo except for the times I run the killer for a long time and no gens are done or when I'm being camped and my teammates swarm the hook leading to slugs and a loss for all survivors. I don't expect to escape, just pip the majority of my games. If I pip and die but some of my teammates get out, then I feel accomplished and I won.
Is it possible that other solo survivors that are having a miserable time are just thinking of the game as a 1V1 instead of the 4V1 that it is? Bad games like I mentioned ( long chases with no gens completed or being camped and being one hooked while team all dies) happen but are not the majority of games. I noticed a difference in the way both killers and survivors play when I moved from Japan (where I lived for the last few years) back to the United States so maybe region and players attitudes in said regions has something to do with it, but the difference was not significant.
I just hope that other people can see the good that solo survivor is, the great coordination that goes on even though no one knows each other or can talk together. The friendly messages that get sent when one random teammate goes back to save you by the skin of their teeth, even when they could of just left to save themselves. The relief in seeing a borrowed time icon when being saved and the killer turns around the corner or when a survivor jumps to thier feet on their own from dying state when you led the killer away on a chase. These are the positives I see in this aspect of the game, to be able to win when at a disadvantage without communication or familiarity and to see people's actions when their teammates are not those they know or friends.
Anyways, thank you for reading and I hope to see you in game!
Comments
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Well not really, solo survivor is genuinely stacked against survivors, but that is how the game was originally designed.
I too am mostly 99% solo survivor and I'ms till playing this game after all these years, so it's not that bad that you wouldn't want to play it. It's bad in the sense that it really is a one way ticket to hell, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's people who want to win so bad that find it "bad."
If you can enjoy the game even after getting killed solo survivor is perfectly fine.
My escape rate is something like 20-30%. I'm not very good at this game and I die in most games. I'm still playing aren't I? Solo Q is really bad if you want to win, but if you just want to play it is fine.
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I feel like a big "problem" with solo survivor is that there aren't any defined win conditions. Like in any semi-competitive game there's always winners and losers. If you did really well in chases but your teammates sucked and didn't do much the game can say you didn't do well (de-pip) but you can feel accomplished. To me that just isn't satisfying enough, like if everybody believes they did well but actually was really bad or vice versa because the game told them so based on their weird ranking systems it just creates weird gameplay that doesn't work out so well. I think the game genuinely needs to have a win and loss condition, like if 3 or more survivors escape that's a win, and vice versa. If that was in place solo survivor would feel so much more defined and make more sense imo. It would fix a lot of issues people seem to have.
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solo survivor is only bad when you have 1 or 2 weak links depending on how "weak" they are.... if a really good survivor takes chase agro from the killer, then 1 survivor can carry an entire team of weak survivors... so it is actually favorable for survivors if they are any good at looping/general game sense (any good being most around at least 1500-2500 hours as a general landmark)
however for your average group, most solo survivor games happen to be unfavorable because there aren't good enough players
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I think you are right, winning isn't too feasible in solo survivor but people's definition of winning is variable. Like you, I die much more than I escape, but at the end of the day, it just means that either I wasn't strong enough in chase, the killer was better than me, or collectively, the team was not playing well enough to overcome the killers pressure. The way I look at it is that there is an unstoppable, deadly force is hunting down 4 fragile average humans and so, the odds of survival are extremely low. The killer should, and will kill the majority of survivors and by skill, experience, and sometimes a little luck, some will escape.
With that thought process in mind, I consider that winning isn't escape, but instead, pulling my weight and receiving a pip is how I win. Only if I barely safety pip or depip, do I consider my survivor game a loss. The odds are stacked, and like the survivors in the trial, solos play without communication, planned tactics, or a contingency (via maps and keys). But that's what makes the solo escapes feel that much more rewarding, because truly skill and a random team made the escape possible. Unless it's a new killer that barely even gets in any hooks before we escape, then I just feel very bad.
Keep on playing man and good luck in your future games 👍
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I am 100% solo queue and have been red rank as long as I can remember. The experience is heavily dependant on time of day. After a certain time, (like around midnight EST) the matchmaking gets extremely bad and I am put with brown and green rank survivors against decent killers and get completely demolished. I have to switch to killer or it is basically unplayable.
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Lol.
Yes there is.
Escape!
The pipping system and emblem system have nothing to do with win conditions. They’re simply used to determine if you were well matched, or poorly matched against your opponent.
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Well if I lead the killer on a 5 min chase but my green rank team do barely any gens and the killer camps me till death is that a loss cuz I didn't escape? The point I was trying to make is that the game says I did "bad" cuz I didn't get any heals or repair time but got 3 people to escape. It's unsatisfying and leaves solo survivors with bad tastes in their mouths
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This is a problem BHVR created themselves.
The win condition is very clear. GET OUT OF THE EXIT GATES.
BHVR confused it with the stupid emblem system that doesn't even work properly (survivor pips way too easily). Game needs to go back to basics. Win is escape, win is kill survivors. Doing well in chases, sneaking, etc. that is immaterial. The bottomline is what matters. if the game needs you to be good at chases to win, then those who are good at chases will win more than those who are bad at it in the long run, and have a higher ELO. Simple.
Why are people so worried over survivors getting "free escapes" by getting carried by teammates? A bad survivor will be exposed in high level play no matter what. It might not happen every game but it will average out.
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DBD is like flipping a coin, the teammates you get is all based around luck, as sad as it sounds.
Think of it like an actual horror movie. There are 4 friends trying to run from the killer, but the killer is catching up quick. 3 of you run faster, and the other 1 trips and falls. Do you think the others are going to stop and help? Probably not, as they all will end up dying too. This applies to DBD because at the end of the day, YOU are trying to escape and your teammates escaping is just icing on the cake.
With this being said, sometimes you can't blame your teammates for how they play. They're trying to escape just like you, even if they aren't doing it efficiently. If the match ends up going south, you have to just focus on pipping up & finding hatch.
All in all, I play solo 80% of the time since my friends don't like DBD as much as I do, and I win 7/10 games if I'm having a good day. It really isnt as bad as people say it is if they don't take it so seriously.
The little things such as a Dweet sacrificing his life for me in the endgame sticks with me, and you cannot get that when playing in a SWF. Not to mention, winning in solo makes me feel a lot more accomplished.
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I think solo queue has more potential to have those shorter games when you don't get saved. But if you focus on getting a pip and doing your best in chase, I think it is still a lot of fun. :)
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Must a win for the survivor be an escape though? Like I mentioned before, I consider a victory to be when I pulled my weight enough so that some survivors escape at the end. If all 4 escape, that means that we all played remarkably well or that the killer is bad. If the killer is absolutely devastating, it is fair to say that even good teams should all die by the end of the trial. At least, that's what I see when I think of an asymmetrical horror game. I thought the pip (emblem) system is to help determine the win condition as well as rank?
I might of assumed incorrectly but I always thought that a pip means you won, a safety means a tie game and a depip means you lost? Everyone is free to define a win as they like, but I do see the point some of you are making in Behavior having a clear win condition for all.
I just hope that players aren't beating themselves up at the end of every game that they don't escape or in the killers case, don't kill most of the survivors. To tell yourself that you lost many games back to back is detrimental when you in fact pulled your weight as a solo and did well enough to earn a pip. It's not good for the mind and certainly not good for the ego. Both of these things are important in relation to why we play video games because we usually play to unwind or destress and of course, to have fun and do something we enjoy.
With that being said, maybe we should think about other definitions of winning, besides escape and maybe even besides a pip. Did you benefit your team? Were you the gen jockey who pushed the majority of gens while others were being chased? Did you hunt down the undying and ruin so that your teammates could effectively do gens without losing progress? Were you the distraction who took the killers away from teammates doing gens? A survivors win is possibly based on the benefit that they bring to the team.
Maybe we should have an instant reply or at the score screen, something that shows how many gens, totems, team heals, and chase time they each individually had. So we can see what they brought to the table and so that even in death, survivors can see the importance they played with thier sacrifice.
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TA
Post edited by dbdfan92 on0 -
Yes, yes it is. I very rarely escape. I definitely never get a 4 piece escape unless the killer is genuinely bad. I have too many teammates who don't unhook me or can't hold up a chase or waste all of the pallets or waste time by crouching in a corner or going and searching chests when we're still at 5 gens and the killer is getting consistent hooks. I derank as a result of the strong killers I go against compared to the weak teammates. I only gain pips when I'm playing in a swf.
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No, it's not, anyone who says otherwise just doesn't like dying!
I've been keeping a statistic count, I have a 43% escape rate as a rank 3 survivor, but I almost always pip or double pip (unless my team gets absolutely destroyed, getting some bad luck can set me back quite a bit). Going into solo survivor (and swf, you save your friends and die, no one complains about that), you should 100% expect to die for the good of your team, 90% of the time I'm taking the killer on a 4/5 gen run and I end up making my points up on totems and healing others, and when I'm not doing that I'm full well pounding gens for the sake of the person in chase and going for saves, risky or not.
Keep in mind I'm also running non-meta builds 90% of the time cuz that ######### is boring, the closest I get is running the occasional adrenaline or dead hard, so people who says you need x or y to do well is full well not right, and neither is anyone saying solo queue is bad (it IS how the game was designed)
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Yea, people don't like to lose.
4k hours here and I'm always between rank 1 and 2 (unless there's a reset). It is bad. It is bad to lose not because you suck but because other people suck.
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Also this. UK time here. I refuse to play after 7pm. I even get rank 20s on my team who dc, after having to wait 5+ mins for a lobby.
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but there is a big difference between dying and losing, losing is a 1/0 man escape, the game is balanced for a two man escape (or so the devs say), so dying, whether your team mates are good or not, should not matter if you did well and served your purpose, people who end up bitter because of bad team mates play selfish and become the ones leaving behind, where as I like to play for the team as a whole, maybe I'm just very happy go lucky but that's how I see it
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Me dying and my 3 team mates escaping because they didn't save me from first hook isn't a win for me.
Never once played selfish and would rather save a team mate than leave. Me not liking team mates who were carried to red ranks by SWF and can't loop for more than 2 seconds doesn't mean I am selfish. I'd consider it common sense really.
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I never said that wasn't the case, look on the bright side that your team got a three man escape, as long as you didn't do ######### all all round you at LEAST safety pipped right? Otherwise you're doing something wrong.
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So you're telling me, someone who runs kindred every match, that I should be happy for my 3 selfish team mates won because they decided to abandon me on hook instead of saving? Lol that's not how this works I'm sorry.
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good for you running kindred, but acting like this is what turns people away from the game! Hate and anger creates, you guessed it, more hate and anger.
So that is how it works you just want to be angry at something, I've been left behind for no reason whilst running kindred, there's ######### all you can do it about it, move onto the next match and have fun in that one...
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Funny, i do keep statistics as well as a 100% solo survivor. Somewhere between rank 2-4, and i have an escape rate of about 80% since the mori nerf (was between 72 and 75% before that) Also not running meta perks, unless self care is one (and i see it often in my games, so maybe it is)
To topic: As a solo survivor, you depend very much on your teammates (as it should be). in red ranks, you get decent teammats most of the time, meaning that most people acutally work on gens. They might not all be good at chases, but at least they play the game. But from time to time you get games where all your teammates have a serious gen-allergy, and you will do the work alone.
Oh, and if someone dcs or hook suicides early, you basicly screwed (although i had several games where the remaining survivors still finished the 5 gens in a 3v1 game, with any number of survivors still escaping. They were actually the most exciting games).
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Yes, I get angry when I know if I had competent team mates we would have escaped. I get angry when I loop the killer for 5+ minutes, and only one gen was done. I get angry when my team mates go down in 2 seconds and suicide on hook. It's frustrating to be good at the game and losing not because of your own skill.
My "hate" isn't the issue here. The issue is people being carried to red ranks when they shouldn't. Why do you think most people would rather play SWF?
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Let's face it, people on the forums like to over exaggerate to make everything that they don't like sound game breaking. It's what killers do with swf groups, which in turn makes solo queue sound like a miserable experience when it's honestly not that bad.
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Damn, that's a pretty good escape rate! How often is it 3/4 man escapes (not being rude, genuinely curious)?
Self Care is a bit weird, there is a section of people who use it religiously (particularly Blendettes), and the people who hate it because it wastes time (I myself use it in a couple builds, but only with desperate measures, which is also a generally helpful perk).
I do love the tense 3v1 and 2v1 matches, it's so fun!
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I mean, some people who should be sitting in green ranks are boosted to red because of communication alone, when I have played swf (which is the rare occasion, life has been exponentially easier because of the large amount of communication, the qol change is insane).
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People are carried to red ranks for no good reason, yes, but all you can do is grind your teeth and bear it, its better to look past stuff than dwell on it.
No matter how good you can get, there are people who are going to be worse than you no matter what (even if they earned their way to red ranks as well), that's the way it works, people get better over time, there's nothing that can be done except hope they get better and you can move into the next round with better team mates, being angry achieves nothing but making your life unpleasant!
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I started keeping stats after the mori change, and till the last rank reset, i had nearly perfect stats, as in 20% (+-2%) of games where on each result, with 4k and 0k being a little less than 20%, and 2k being a little higher.
I dont have the recent numbers, i have to check, but after rank reset the survival rates usually drop a little until i hit red ranks again.
Also note, that my games are a very small number, and are heavily impacted by my playstyle, so if only one escapes, its me most of the time.
(i suck at loops, but are a stealth player, that means that while in a chase i have a good chance of juking the killer and lose him, so my chases often ends unhooked, and thus i often be one of the last survivors)
Edit: I also keep track of the numbers of gens done (dont count hooks, because i usually cant remember after a match) and a lot of the 4k games still had 5 gens done, which is a better masurement on how the game went then just the escape rates.
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People used to win 90% of their swf games and that's why solo exp is miserable for them
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You can have some great games as solo but also some terrible ones. Usually it's just down to teammates doing not doing gens or all crouching near you when your hooked and just doing nothing while the killer camps. However like you do now I also don't worry about escaping and just try and concentrate on pipping so win or lose as long as I've pipped I'm happy.
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I mainly play solo survivor or with my fiance. There's a difference in difficulty, depending on the other 2 survivors, but I wouldn't say Solo Survivor is any more frustrating. I don't really care about surviving though.
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decided to log in to put in my opinion.
this game for solo survivor will always be bad as long as the gap between SWF groups and solo is as big as it is.
SWF with comms basically gives you a built in freebie: Kindred, Bond, OoO, Small Game, Dejavu, and several others i cant remember the name of off head.
to get that same advantage a solo survivors currently needs about 7-8 more perk slots.
the gap IS that big.
then theres taking into account that some survivors might outright troll you, sandbag you, do nothing and farm you which actively works AGAINST you as a solo playing making the game a 3v2 or in some sickening situations where a 3 man dislikes the solo a 1v3v1.
then you take into account survivors who rage quit on the first hook/suicide just because they got caught within seconds or dislike the killer forcing a 3v1 before a single generator is even done, but at least this one has a solution.
remove the ability to kobe off the hook unless you have a perk which make the base chance 25% so at least if they truly build for it atleast then it'll be understandable that they fail the dice roll. with the current mechanic of 4% chance with 3 tries more often than not the survivor will just use all 3, immediately go to phase 2 of the hook then rage quit by not pressing struggle.
changing the struggle phase into a hold button to give up wouldnt solve the core issue but at least you can design it so that those who give up automatically complete a generator (unless its the last one) granting the other survivors the blood points for pity sake and the sacrificed player can at least gain a pity penny.
TL:DR = close the gap between SWF and solo as well as changing hook mechanics to disallow suicide/trolling by removing kobe escapes unless you perk for it and change struggle so that if you give up it completes a generator so the remaining survivors at least stand a chance.
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If your playing at red ranks and are a very good player then yes it's extremely bad. I've recently played a decent bit of solo survivor and it is just painful.
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Winning is escaping. Period.
But just because you don't "win" doesn't mean the game you played was "worthless" or you didn't gain a "moral victory" in the game.
You are free to play the game and enjoy the game however you want, and it doesn't require "winning." You are not required to "win" a game.
The idea that you win by pipping is again the confusion set on by BHVR choosing to introduce the ######### emblem system. In some ways you are correct in that the game purposefully makes the subject of "winning" and "losing" a gray area. That's all baloney to me. A game is a game because it has rules and a clear cut victory and loss condition. This isn't soccer mom participation trophy time. We are playing a real game here.
The reason why ranking doesn't work and matchmaking is shot to ######### is because the game doesn't recognize that clearcut victory conditions are required for winning and losing. And you need to group and rank people according to who is good at winning and those who are losing.
Almost every other multiplayer game on the planet has ranking systems based on winning or losing. DBD is one of those games that is just confused and has no idea what it's doing.
It is your kind of thinking that has led to this mess of craptastic matchmaking. It's the same thinking BHVR employs and frankly it has got to go.
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I think solo survivor has the most potential for great memorable games, but the problem is on average you will just get bad teammates and therefore bad games.
So greater potential, but worse overall imo.
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The only people who find solo queue terrible aren't only looking to win. It's a video game and some people are just trying to have fun, which solo queue is not for most people.
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What happens if I do 3 gens unhook 4 times and sacrifice my life to get someone else out?
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Honestly, I'd say that sometimes it's worse than playing killer.
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It really comes down to what you want to get out of survivor or what you make of it.
I have the most fun playing optimally, having good chases, getting the gens done in 5-7 minutes, and I have very few opportunities to do that in solo queue. I can't control the playstyle or skill level of my teammates. There's nothing necessarily wrong with being stealthy or whatnot, but I'd rather have optimal teammates and I get frustrated when solo teammates make some rather bonkers decisions.
Like I said, it's a matter of preference. It's really not that bad if you're not looking to optimize on survivor. Randos are always going to be a mixed bag.
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I personally feel like so little time is spent learning to loop (and the losses that come as a result) that there is very little growth in most survivors. It’s basically just sit on a gen, get downed in about 20 seconds of chase, and rely on teammates to finish gens. Even worse is skulking around the maps in shadows avoiding the killer at all costs.
playing enough gets these same survivors to upper ranks where they get demolished by killers because the training wheel stage was completely skipped. What we have now in red ranks is a direct result.
take your lumps, learn to interact with the killer. It makes survivor a far more enjoyable role. (Also you won’t feel obligated to rely on the devs to make you better by nerfs. This goes for both sides FYI)
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A lot of that is BHVR refusing to put together a good tutorial. Casual players aren't going to go out of their way to watch guides on running individual tiles or specific killers.
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I completed 3 of D Kings tome 2 challenges in solo play yesterday. Played 4 games got escape with d king, chased for 30 sec and escape, and protection hit and escape, 4th game tried another one but hardcore tunneling ghostface poor meg was dead in 30 seconds and I couldn't do nothing to help since my d. king was only level 8 except take a hit for her and try to get him to chase me but he had tunnel vision. But 3-4 games with 2 yellow perks I was happy.
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Solo is only hard in the sense that most survivors are not very good. So they make solo harder for good solo players. Outside of that, solo is a breeze vs the majority of killers you will face. Sometimes you run into a good Spirit, which will give you a challenge as a good survivor, but it is rare.
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It is pretty bad in my experience. It would be total hyperbole to say every match is a disaster because its not. Once in a while you'll get decent team mates. But more often than not you'll get bad ones. Even one lousy team mate can screw up the entire match for you.
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I agree with this to a point. The potato problem wasnt nearly as pronounced when we had old rank reset. Casually playing wouldn’t really allow the eventual arrival into red ranks where people stay indefinitely now.
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VERY much depends on the other survivors you have to play with.
in 9 out of 10 cases i find that the main reason we died was not because of the killer, but because my team seemed to be allergic to generators and didnt touch any for a whopping 15 minutes.
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- *Claudette in the corner intensifies*
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Solo is a mixed bag and people tend to remember negative experiences more than the positive ones.
I've started playing survivor more frequently again and honestly most games have been decent the past days even though I'm always solo and I either play without meta perks or a mix of meta and meme perks.
I've played 2 matches today so far. Both matches were VERY long (around 15 minutes each) and exciting.
1st match against Rank 1 Nurse. 4 k but fun match with lots of chases.
2nd match against Rank 3 Pyramid Head. 3 man escape and lots of exciting chases (even though people act like all Pyramid Head chases ended in seconds).
Yesterday I played 4 survivor matches. Result was 2 wins for the killers and 2 wins for the survivors. Nearly perfect 50/50 kill/escape rate.
The day before I played I think it was 7 matches and I escaped 4 out of 7 but I can't remember if/how many of my teammates died in those matches.
I think if people really started recording their results they would realize survivors are winning/losing relatively evenly.
UPDATE:
Played 5 more matches in the meantime.
1st match: Rank 1 Freddy with Ruin/Undying/Tinkerer/Discordance. He 4k'd and the match was one boring waste of time. I got 1-hooked.
2nd match: Rank 1 Legion with Pop/BBQ. 4 man escape.
3rd match: Rank 3 Trapper with basement build. 4 man escape.
4th match: Rank 1 Pig with Corrupt/Pop/BBQ and Tampered Timer (purple addon). 4 man escape.
5th match: Rank 5 Ghostface. 3 man escape but the last survivor could have been saved. No one tried, though so they got 2-hooked.
Solo survivor really isn't as bad as people think when your team is somewhat decent.
Post edited by Yamaoka on1 -
It's only bad if you let the things you don't like bother you. Play for fun, don't care about the outcome, and be content with the little successes (a heal here and there, a save, a good loop or two, a pallet stun, etc).
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