http://dbd.game/killswitch
Why Behavior should add voice chat/ Comms, With a Twist! A serious and logical debate. :)
The question goes as follows, Do you think voice chat can benefit DBD if designed in the following way?
I believe it's not outlandish to claim that Comms were not originally intended to be used in this game, This much can be observed by the fact that it makes lots of awareness perks like kindred become redundant. That said, Devs have indicated that they do not frown upon its use.
Ill first explain the concept, then any pros and cons.
The Concept:
All survivors have full lobby voice chat, They can hear each other anywhere on the map as if using discord. The catch however, Is that a Killer can hear survivors comms within about 3-meters(to be determined) of a survivor and NOT in chase. Killers CANNOT speak to survivors at any point.
The reason the Killers ability to hear is tied to being in chase is for the following two reasons.
- If a killer can hear a survivor's comms when not in chase, then they are disincentivized from simply playing loud music or having background noise that may bother other survivors because the Killer would hear them if they pass close enough.
- On the same note, because sound is so important in both roles, proximity audio for killer would be turned off while in chase to prevent survivors from drowning out steps/breathing with music for example. This provides killers a brief window to hear survivors reactions/strategies before a chase starts. Similar to death comms in other games but one way.
That's it, that's the concept. Now lets address why I think this will make the game better, and how we can make it actually work, as i'm sure you can think of a few issues already. First up, the Pros of this addition. I will number them so they can be easily mentioned in any comments. :)
Pros:
- As a Killer main(Play killer about 95% of matches), the number 1 reason I stop playing for the night is because I get bored/lonely. I sometimes win every match, but unlike playing survivors were I can socialize while playing, winning only brings so much fulfillment. This would introduce a social aspect to killer, as I would quite literally NEVER get tired of hearing survivors reactions to me popping out of nowhere and scaring them.
- The native ease of use and and ability to chat with all platforms would ideally bring all comms in game, albeit i'm sure there will still be SWF groups that will stay on external comms to not give killers the added bonus of proximity audio.
- Would create a social aspect where survivors could find new friends to play with. Ideally, Behavior would also add a after match option to "Add recent players" & "Continue playing with recent players".
Cons~ and how we can address them:
- This would greatly favor survivors. This is the main concern, but it's actually the most important reason it should be added, I'll explain. The current challange with DBD is balancing perks. Because there is such a large gap between new/random matchmaking survivor groups and experienced SWF groups, it raises the following challange. How do you make a perk effective to a new/low skill player, but prevent that same perk from being overpowered in the hands of an experienced player? By adding in game chat, you add power to new/random survivor groups, without increasing the power of pro players that already use comms to begin with. Reducing the gap between the bottom and top of the player base directly affects' the ability for devs to balance perks, as you now have a tighter skill pool across the board. In other words, when survivor win rates inevitably goes up due to this change, devs can then confidently buff perks to even the playing field. They can then rework perks that are made redundant by this change like kinderd. This will in fact reduce the power of high level survivors and bring the skill levels even more in line, as it stands now, SWF gives you the effect of perks like kindred on top of your 4 chosen perks.
- This can lead to toxicity where survivors can verbally bully the killer or even fellow survivors. To mitigate this, this feature must able to be toggled off for every match by default, or you can mute just the bad apples individually. Additionally, an in game group finder similar to overwatch were you could post an "ad" would also combat this issue. Think of a post reading "Looking for 18+ to vibe and chill" or "looking for competitive players with meta perks". This reduces the chances of playing with randoms, and actually finding and sticking with like minded folks.
- Behavior would now be responsible for harassment because the chat is in game. This would ideally be countered with a robust reporting & endorsing system similar to overwatch. Played with someone that was cool beans? endorse them and increase their score. Play with someone that was bullying and breaking terms of use like teaming with the killer? Report them. This would ideally improve the culture of the player base and improve good behavior over time.
Anyways, This is just a dream of a fan of the game that gets lonely from playing killer to long.
I will attempt to link a Poll for this discussion shortly.
Please provide any feedback, pros, cons, issues you see with my idea. :) Please stay respectful to each other in the comments.
Comments
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Why would voice chat be needed when survivors just use discord?
Hell they'd only use in game voice to BM the killer even more.
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I don't want this.
Would it help balance the game? Probably. Solos would still be at a disadvantage (SWF can sit on voice call on Discord and stop the killer listening while solos would need to let the killer hear) but it can hardly make the solo-SWF gap worse.
But the main reason I don't want it is because of the community. 13 year olds using their terrible £3 headset blasting down mumble rap like it's their gospel while a 50 year old, balding man screams a racial slur. Someone with a semi-high pitched voice speaks and suddenly they're the reason the game is being lost. Etc, etc- the community is far too toxic for it to ever work.
Combine with this some people just not having microphones, or not being comfortable talking, and it's just an all-round shitshow.
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Thank you for your feedback. :) My rebuttal would be the simple solution of disabling the feature if you were not interested in using it. This would effectively make it so your not at all affected by this change. So no cons if your not interested, and on the flip side you might make some new friends if you do use it :)
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For once I agree with you.
And then there's streamers and one survivor will just get salty and start being toxic to try and get the twitch streamer banned.
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Because of the reasons outlined in the post, besides, you can disable the feature if you wished to opt out. Unless you can think of a con under those circumstances still
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I mentioned this in another post but I felt it would fit this post as well:
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Reducing the skill gap between casual and SWF would definitely improve the game
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Just ignore the peer pressure mate.
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To be fair, even VHS has icons and communication wheel for those who cannot or do not want to use a mic and it helps the teamwork flow
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Exactly why I only played a few F13 games online. Thankfully that game has fun single player options.
No voice com is one of the main selling points of DbD for me. I play solo exclusively and I have no problem with it.
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No. Give voice exactly as it's on discord when playing as SWF. Then balance the game around it. Otherwise SWFs will not use the in-game chat and continue to use discord, retaining their advantage over solo and making the game very hard to balance.
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would be funny and enjoyable, but also broken because is like swf. However, killer should be able to talk to the survivors, only the survivors hear the killer speaking and nothing else.
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Yeah, I don't want it, won't use it either. I'll swf with people I know, but if they have VC in the game, not only will I not use it for the same reasons, but then I'm the guy post game my team wants to talk trash to bc I didn't want to use VC.
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That would be hilarious to see ngl.
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No. This community lacks the maturity to have voice chat. Given how toxic the post-game chat is, I don't see how having voice comms would be a good thing.
We should have information in the form of icons and auras. A HUD indicator that shows who's doing what, and half-range kindred to determine if the killer is camping.
These are things that would greatly help to bridge the gap between solo's and SWF's while providing absolutely zero advantages to SWF.
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