What do you guys think of the potential handholding for Survivors?
This particular case.
"One feature we are experimenting with is a status icon next to each Survivor’s portrait in the HUD that lets you know what they are doing. This way, solo Survivors can base their decision around what their teammates are doing, and partial groups get a better idea of their solo teammates’ contributions, making everyone feel like more of a team. This is something that can already be easily conveyed with a quick callout over voice chat, but is currently not available to solo Survivors. Once again, this is a very early preview- so early that we’re still discussing this internally. Feel free to share your thoughts, but please keep in mind that none of this is final or confirmed. Depending on how things go, this feature may be changed or scrapped entirely before it ever sees the light of day. We wanted to be open about this and keep you in the loop: The gap between solo Survivors and groups is not going under the radar, it’s something we’re actively working on"
I think the thought process behind is disastrous. This coming from someone who has been playing Solo queue for years. I don't think Survivor should be hand held because they have the game sense of a potato. I want the average survivor to improve not because they're spoon fed every information in the game on a magical hud. I don't care if this closes the gap between Randoms and SWF. Go use Kindred or rely solely on game sense.
If some killers can figure out Survivor movement without any information perk at all WITH a first person perspective you can too with Third person camera and I have been doing so with enough accuracy to get consistent 3-4 man escapes and this is with randoms. My best memories in this game is clicking with randoms like we were navy seals and getting out alive
Map awareness is a skill and they're destroying it with this hand holding.
Also keep in mind this isn't final but I'm just putting my thoughts out there. I don't want this in the game.
Comments
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If they "fix" facecamping like they are planning to I don't think it will be needed at all.
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I agree it's hand holding but I don't really care, SWF already ruins the entire game dynamic so whatever.
They should give solos in game comms OR put SWF in a separate lobby. Anything else is just a half-measure and waste of time honestly.
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I don't want this added in game either. I play solo q mostly when i play survivor. as much as i want the team to play well and not potato, i also don't want potatoes becoming as strong as swf thinking they're good at the game b/c they can read icons.
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Bruh.
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On one side I think that you are right. People no using Kindred or other "see your friend" perks is a huge mistake on the survivors side. If you do not have enough information, maybe drop your Iron Will and slap on some Bond/Better Together/Kindred/Deja Vue on your build. Saying that you need certain perks while complaining about a lack of information is just...
However I think that soloQ survivors should receive a buff. After that we can buff Killers to keep up with the new income of information.
Not to say that some survivors are not insanely stupid: I use Kindred when I duo que and it is a regular occasion that 2 people come to rescue me or all 3 people are just slamming their generator and let me die.
Some people are just not able to coordinate and no amount of information will fix this.
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BHVR won't stop hand holding until they reach that coveted 4 escape average lol
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Some small ping wheel would be fine but I also think this might be too much
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Well, you can't have a balanced game and a massive solo/swiffer gap. This is a step towards shrinking that gap and putting the game in a more balanceable state.
Maybe they can make it toggleable so you can still handicap yourself if you want to.
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Even if they're given the information, they need to learn how to actually use it.
Handholding would be the game itself dictating which Survivor should go unhook a Survivor, or what Generator to do.
"I'm on a Gen", or "I'm going for Hook" (assuming they allow the Point action to apply certain status messages), still requires the Survivors to have the game sense of when it is appropriate to do so, and how to react if other Survivors are doing so, or if said Survivors fails in their attempts.
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This is not handholding at all. This is exactly what it says it is- an attempt to bridge the gap between SWF and SoloQ in terms of pure exchange of information.
Additionally, this wouldn't cannibalise the value of perks like Kindred at all. All it does is tell you what a survivor is doing, not where they're doing it. That's not handholding information, that's just giving you the tools to use your game sense and make an informed play if you aren't playing with friends on comms.
Speaking of, I'm not sure how you'd get this information from game sense? Certainly if you're sprinting around the map you can get a sense of what your teammates are doing, but if you're on a generator and someone gets hooked with none of your teammates around you, no amount of game sense is going to let you psychically know what those teammates are doing. At best it'd be educated guesses based on what they were doing when you last saw them and what the smart thing to do would be- the latter putting a lot of faith in your random teammates.
The gap between SWF and SoloQ needs to be bridged somehow. That's always going to look like buffing SoloQ, since the alternative would be very stupid, so this seems like a perfectly reasonable change that doesn't step on the toes of established tools and doesn't help out SWF in any way.
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They need to bridge the gap as soon as possible. For most killers the only relief they get is from SoloQ, so once they are equally as broken as SWF the game will either die or major killers buffs will have to follow.
Either way, it's exciting.
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It's not rocket science if you know that the rest of survivor is a doing generator and someone needs to go on the hook. It hands the information you on a silver platter. You have to be a massive pepega to not know how to use that information. You can start blasting generators with that.
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Solo survivor does need a buff, but I don't think this is the way to do it.
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It's not rocket science if you've got hundreds of hours on this game, at which point you'll likely be running kindred in SoloQ anyway, so you'll still have more information when someone is Hooked anyway. A Chase indicator only helps scrubs feel safe as Gen chads will just sit on them regardless already. And a Gen indicator is pointless as you should be sitting and spinning on gens regardless. Hell, if people feel "safe" that other people are on gens it's possible they may be more willing to do something like cleanse a Totem or open a Chest.
You know, that whole "The more people in a group, the less likely people are going to try to work as hard"
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"Major killer buffs".....with this balance team...HA I will believe it when I see it.
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Bridging the gap between solo and SWF Isn’t handholding. It’s balancing
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I know, I know. But it's time for change, the sooner the better. Killers will lose their minds when SoloQ becomes as strong as SWF and then it's decision making time.
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All they have to do is add voice comms, completely with mute options.
Now, SoloQs have the same exact power SWFs have, and BHVR can balance around that instead of this half-arsed 'Can't be too strong or SoloQ suffer!' that makes it so Killers beat SoloQs but SWFs beat Killers.
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Requiring Player effort to setup voice-comms in and of itself performs chat filtering.
Base-game opt-out voice comms is just ripe for toxicity.
Integration with DBD also places moderation completely onto Behavior.
Perhaps introduce platform specific methods in order to more easily setup (opt-in) party chats with platform specific/3rd party software.
Even then there are people who don't want to use voice comms.
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It is exactly hand holding. You're handed information on what everyone is doing because people have the game sense of a potato. It is the same exact reasoning when they rework Ruin because people couldn't hit skill checks so they made it easier for people to do. God forbid Survivors has something difficult in mind that they can't figure out a workaround Cough Kindred Cough
There's a lot of built in formation already in the trial. My rule of thumb is as a Random Survivor is splitting generator. If a survivor spawn with me and I know what generator he started pumping I can come back to it at some point in the game and if I exactly know what he's name is(Lobby) and I noticed that he got injured and down then it's not rocket science on what you're supposed to do in that situation. You're also severely underestimating the amount of information the game feeds you when you get downed as well and what people are doing while you're on hooked. It basically says what gen is getting worked on and it's up to you what to do with that information what you should start pressuring to avoid a three gen scenario. You can also make educated guesses based on Killer movements, What direction he started heading off to and how fast he got someone injured so that means a generator is getting worked over in that general direction maps like Dead saloon make this easier. That's just on top of my head.
You can make a lot of educated guess and put a lot of faith in your randoms. You only need to do one thing and that's keeping them away from the Killer. Loop him away from the area they're working on, See a generator get popped while in chase? Then it's up to you try and redirect the killer in that area since there's no more objectives. Don't let them get injured since it throws a lot of variables into the mix. If the killer won't chase you then just start pumping generators. The killer can't physically chase four individuals in the match. Avoid getting injured at the start of the match and bring circle of healing so everyone is as efficient as possible. As for hooked scenarios, You're in a third person camera perspective. You can immediately spot someone running towards a hook and double back depending on the map and only do an unhook if you the second person got injured then apply the same mindset. Sometimes you can still mess up and do a double save with someone and that's fine at least you're sure the third person is pumping generator that way and you found out that you can leave the unhooking to this random you double saved with. There's a lot of time lee way on the hooked timer before they get to second phase so only move when you really have to and just do generator. On top of my head.
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What 'player effort to set up voice comms'? You have a mic and run the game? Boom; voice comms.
How is opt-out VC ripe for toxicity? Literally every game with co-op has it just fine.
Moderation SHOULD be on BHVR; it's their game.
Just freaking add voice comms so the game can be properly balanced. This half-arsed balancing where they pretend it doe snot exist is what keeps Killers weak.
Ok? So they mute it. Put an icon over their head for Survivors to see so they know 'This person can't hear me'.
The game will FOREVER be broken, so long as SWFs have voice comms, and devs keep balancing as if voice comms don't exist. Because that means voice comms are breaking whatever they throw into the game.
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This is necessary. You can't get rid of comms or SWF, and the game will never be balanced when half of survivors are blind and half of them know everything their teammates are doing.
This had to give. If we improve survivor efficiency across the board, we can improve killers to keep up with that higher efficiency instead of this current situation where you'll stomp or be stomped depending on if the same 4 survivors are solo or on comms. If we leave things as they are, killers will always be balanced for solo and all but a few will get wrecked by SWF.
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I rather not have some 12yo kiddo scream into my ears or some guy crunching chips while playing. Why suggest adding voice chat if most ppl would mute it? The HUD change is the only decent way to buff soloq.
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Why do people pretend this is what happens all the time? Literally every co-op game has voice comms and you rarely get eaters, screamers, and mouth-breathers. And that's what the mute option is for.
I don't know a single game where people mute more than they use the VC to work together.
I will say it again, since people are ignoring facts to point out frankly uncommon scenarios: As long as voice comms are ignored, and the game is balanced around SoloQs not having voice comms; SWFS using voice comms will completely break the game balance.
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I'm hoping for "scrapped entirely" or at least making it optional feature you can turn off because I wouldn't want all that info when playing solo queue, seems like it would remove a lot of tension and suspense from the game if you know what all your teammates are doing almost the entire game
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They still have to learn how to use the information. I almost never take off Kindred. I find the information invaluable. The number of times I've been left on the hook would suggest my team found the information alot less useful. That, or they simply don't know how to use it.
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Yes, as I already said, you can make a lot of educated guesses if you want to. However, educated guesses are nothing compared to actual communication.
You can currently do all of those things, and there is also currently a giant chasm between SoloQ and SWF that makes balancing extremely difficult. That hasn't changed because you've listed all the tools survivors currently have, so I'm honestly not sure what your point is- unless you're trying to tell me that chasm doesn't exist despite it being officially commented on by BHVR themselves? Is that what you're getting at here?
SoloQ needs to be brought up to the level of SWF, or at least close to it, so that the game can be balanced. That doesn't mean SoloQ currently has zero tools at their disposal or that it's completely unwinnable without comms, so I'm not sure what your point is.
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Player effort: If you're not in a friend group you literally have to coordinate with strangers to setup a party/call at the moment. Typically, people are not going to do that if they just want to give a passing "Yo mamma" joke. Effort is needed to engage, not disengage.
Opt-out: People are lazy and may not know how to mute others, or not care to, or have misgivings about "silencing" people regardless of how toxic they are. Opt-out means that the initial feeling is that this is what is expected. Opt-in gives a feeling that it is a choice you make.
Moderation: Takes time and resources. Is it a worthy thing? Yes. Should you try to make workloads manageable? Also yes.
And then there's still the necessity for the muted/accessibility framework for people that choose to not use voicecomms or that are unable to use voicecomms.
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How is this system hand holding? They still need skill and game sense in order to use the information. you are grasping at straws with this argument.
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Player effort: If you're not in a friend group you literally have to coordinate with strangers to setup a party/call at the moment. Typically, people are not going to do that if they just want to give a passing "Yo mamma" joke. Effort is needed to engage, not disengage.
What? That's not how in-game voice chat works. Are you just making up flaws?
You get into a lobby as an SWF; you are now in that lobby's voice chat. There's your 'player effort'; you joined a lobby. The end.
Opt-out: People are lazy and may not know how to mute others, or not care to, or have misgivings about "silencing" people regardless of how toxic they are. Opt-out means that the initial feeling is that this is what is expected. Opt-in gives a feeling that it is a choice you make.
Again; you seem to be making up flaws. It's pretty common knowledge that you can right-click someone in a lobby (depending on game) and choose 'mute'. Or press 'tab' in-match and click the microphone next to someone's name to mute them.
There's your 'opt-out'. Again; I don't know any co-op games where people think a mute function is toxic.
Moderation: Takes time and resources. Is it a worthy thing? Yes. Should you try to make workloads manageable? Also yes.
Ok, and? Again; you're acting like this is some flaw of voice chat simply because you want it to be. BHVR should be moderating their game anyways. Voice chat is not going to quintuple their work-load.
And then there's still the necessity for the muted/accessibility framework for people that choose to not use voicecomms or that are unable to use voicecomms.
They can go into options and chose 'Turn off voice comms'?
And now, when Survivors can see them in lobby or are near them in-match; they have an icon of a speaker with a dash through it, showing they can not hear anyone?
It's like you just made up the most absurd flaws you could without actually thinking of if they're actual, real problems or not.
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I'm talking about DBD's current voice-comm setup.
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Then why were you quoting me?
Now I'm confused. Are you for or against in-game voice comms? Why were you quoting me and talking about current voice comms?
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Ah, yeah, I wasn't clear, I was providing points against the inclusion of DBD managed voice comms.
Edit: At least with their formal product and not an informal place such as a Discord Server.
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But your points don't apply to DBD managed voice comms. So I still don't understand why you quoted me, then talked about flaws with discord voice comms as points against DBD voice comms.
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Discord?
I'm talking about DBD's current voice-comm setup. Their lack of one. And said provided benefits.
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Awww... I came in here thinking physically hand holding like you can do in Humans fall flat and I AM SO READY FOR THAT. Pulling survivors out of a gen and trolling in general would be so fun (maybe only available in private games though, it'd be really toxic in public games).
The new solo q HUD info is not necessary for me.
I change my build when I play solo and it's part of the fun.
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I think I'm done here. You pointed out what Discord (and other platforms) do for voice comms as flaws with voice comms. Flaws that would not apply to an in-game voice communication setup.
Then say 'I was talking about other platforms'. Fair enough.
THEN say you were talking about points against voice comms in DBD
THEN say you were talking about benefits to voice comms?
I'm just going to leave it here: Voice comms break the game. The sooner the devs admit this, the sooner they can add voice comms, and balance the game properly.
Until they do; SWF (who have voice comms) will always beat Killers, and Killers will always maul SoloQs (who lack voice comms).
And Killers would have to be balanced around SoloQ power, which lacks the voice comms (and thus information & teamwork) of SWFs. Which is why facing SWFs sucks so much for most the Killer roster.
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Dude:
DBD does not have voice comms. I am talking about THE BENEFIT TO NOT HAVING VOICE COMMS IN DBD.
Because DBD does not have voice comms, this means that DBD players have to put in effort to setup voice comms with people using 3rd party channels.
This effort reduces the number of ######### in DBD related chats because ######### typically don't give two shits about setting up communication channels.
This effectively acts as a "passive" social moderation tool that requires zero effort to incorporate.
If DBD had voice-chat like Modern Warfare you'd have to implement effort on both Moderator teams and on Players themselves to both regulate and distance themselves from jackknobs with additional reporting effort and management of social channels that are forced upon you rather than being chosen by you (opt-out vs. opt-in).
And then there's the groups of people that don't use, or can't use, voice comms, who will still need to be addressed with non-voice communications anyway.
Just use the dang Icon systems and leave voice-comms to the player to setup.
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Built in voice comms are not a big deal, thousands of games use it.
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That change can be a very good change in the long term, but it can be pretty disastrous if done improperly
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is this for real? I think it's a great idea. Solo Queueing is soooo hard especially--in my area--the night games. Morning games people are just up and ready to go, and actively participating, and they're great games. Night games are when Bills hide in the basement, slowly walking back and forth so they don't get crows, and only coming out to beeline for the door the 2nd it gets popped.
I understand that this game is extreeeeeemely unfair with 4man swfs, but I would need 10+ perk slots to get the benefits that 4man swfs get for free. It would be too much to make perks like kindered base game unless it was something that only applied to solo queue, and even then...eh iffy.
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BHVR: Thinking of ways to help make solo experience less miserable/info deprived compared to SWF
You: "Is ThIS sUrviVor hANdhOLding???"
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Voice comms put way more strain on servers though, and then you're dealing with language barriers and a mic requirement.
This is a way safer option with less hassle.
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It's nice that it's not final. I hope that this not going live.
There are already survivor trashtalking on stream about other survivors while themselves are just walking around or watching the killer.
In a horror movie the survivors have barely information what the other are doing. We already have a lot information perks which are abused to "hook" other teammates.
There are always people using this information in a wrong way and think if a survivor is not on a gen or being chased they need to find this one and look what they are doing.
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People are always complaining about how strong SWF is (which it is) and how they have to nerf Survivors but then they forget how hard Solo queue is (which it is).
The game has a massive power gap between SWF and Solo which translates into unbalances, you buff Solo and SWF gets out of control, you nerf SWF and Solo is hells on earth, same with Killers, you buff em to face SWF theyll eat Solos, you nerf them against Solo and SWF mops the floor with them, this dichotomy brings us to THE FIRST QUESTION.
How do we balance the game? easy, by closing the gap and for this there are two approaches, either lower SWF to Solo level or put Solo into SWF level, first we must know what makes SWF so strong and if you play both sides youll already noticed, Information and the ability to react to it and apply efficiency accordingly, nothing is stronger in this game than knowing when its safe to push a gen, where a hex spawmed, when Killer is camping or where the 3gen cluster is located. Its not because SWF have god loopers, there are Solos who can loop you for 5 minutes straight, its not because clicky-clicky flashlight saves or Lightborn would be meta against SWF or wathever absurd reason someone can come in a moment of rage at seeing 4SWF buttdancing at the gates.
Killers have long answered with "remove voice comms" and "remove SWF" awful ideas, fist one is impossible, you cant stop a group from using Discord (no, you cant scan their PCs to check if they are using Discord and ban them, its illegal in most countries and the very moment Brussels hears of this you are getting a fine the size of Mother's Dwelling, hell I dont think even autocratic countries would be happy with this) second one will make a chunk of the player base quit.
The only choice left is closing the gap by making Solo as close as SWF and since what makes SWF strong is information the Developers feel they need to give Solos something to comunicate between themselves in order to make them play more efficiently, then they will be able to proper balance maps, Killers, perks and loops to this new level, since it will affect both groups in a very similar way.
TL/DR you want a balanced game? Solos need to have similar gameplay experience to SWF and then buff/nerf wathever needs buffing/nerfing so giving Solo information about the trial is the only way.
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Sure, that sense of scary-movie blindness was the original intention, and they clung to that for a long time, but in practice it's led to this huge gameplay gap. You can't stop players from having this information without nuking one of the most popular features in the game. DBD has no way to regulate whether players are using Discord, or their phones, or currently exist in the same building. So solos will have anywhere from 0 to 3 players running for each unhook while SWFs always delegate one. SWFs know where partially completed gens or hex totems are when solos need to burn perk slots for that. SWFs can tell their teammates not to bother with a play or call out the killer's perks and location when they see them; solos can't.
More information is the way it has to be if we want a prayer of balancing this game, or else a chunk of survivors are going to be straight-up better than the rest of them.
Solos using perks like Bond to sandbag isn't an issue with too much information, it's an issue with bad players (or tome challenges), and that will persist regardless of how much or little info they have. In any case, the floated suggestions aren't giving aura perks, they're just telling you what your teammates are doing (so if 2 people are on a gen, one is hooked, and one is chased, you should probably get off your gen.) If you're afraid people will be mad at you for running around the map looking for chests or totems or stealthing instead of doing gens... do gens.
As for comms themselves, while staff have repeatedly told us they're not going to happen - I suspect the main reason behind that decision is moderation pressure. DBD has a hard enough time moderating postgame chat. Comms can't be automatically censored.
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This is a bad argument.
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I think it's a good idea in theory, but I can't think of any universal buff that they could give killers to make up for the infinite amount of free information (ie - Survivor A is in a chase, I know the killer is Ghostface. I no longer have to worry about being stalked or releasing M1 unless the chase is brought near me) without completely redesigning the game.
Maybe the devs will prove me wrong.
I certainly hope so!
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I'm thinking the obvious things to buff that'd apply across all killers would be slower gen speeds or weaker/sparser tiles.
Whether that'll happen is more questionable, but that's the kind of thing you can do across the board to counter increased efficiency.
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And what happens when that gap is bridged then? the game already favors SWFs in many ways and while the devs say that they'll balance killer accordingly afterward remember how long something like ds took to nerf along with the nerfs to killers like deathslinger, the many for twins,and the most recent patch nerfing the only good add-ons for a few do you really believe that they will actually do the right thing and fix it or just say that its fine and only fix it when the game becomes an undownloaded icon on people's owned game list.
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