Is (or should) the default powerlevel of Survivor be that of players with voice chat?

9000

Or at least add text chat.

You don’t balance around people screaming because there are always vocal people screaming all the time regardless of what happens. If hypothetically the devs gave all survivors some buff that mostly helped solo players (e.g. they all get Kindred type info) it would probably result in somewhat higher escape rates, and if it pushed the needle too far in that direction then they could simply, like they are in this next midchapter, tweak gen speeds or action speeds or recovery times in the base numbers to compensate a bit.

There are some advantages to doing that - it’s simple parameters, they’re literally just changing one number in a datatable when they change base gen speeds for instance. It’s easy for players to understand, it doesn’t increase knowledge overhead for new players, and the numbers can be fine tuned as precisely as desired. The main downside to change a base game parameter like gen and recovery speeds is it does indirectly alter perks and add-ons and such that work as a percentage of that number, so it may lead to some secondary small tweaks in those effects also.

Either way though fear that some people will complain on the forums when you make a change is never a good reason to avoid changing things.

Put in icons to let people know what each other is doing. Don't use voice chat.

As an example, they have voice chat in VHS. Many players don't use it (most don't now that the game is in Early Access) and, frankly it was only 20% useful and 80% annoying in closed beta. It's almost 100% just annoying now.

Pings could be used but that kind of invalidates Bond, Empathy, etc. Kindred would still be useful but I'm in favour of Kindred being base kit anyway. I'm not saying we shouldn't have pings; I'm saying survivor perks like Bond and Empathy should be considered for buffs of some kind so as not to be useless if there are pings also.

I am convinced that for the majority of development time, BHVR designed DbD on the assumption survivors wouldn't be able to communicate. When it became obvious that their party-based survival horror's success hinged on people, well, being able to party together, they begrudgingly began working on SWF. This must have happened late in development, given that the mode was not available on launch. Hell, I'm sure there were internal controversies on whether SWF should be added at all, I can't see it having been an easy decision. On one hand, the game is not designed around SWF (and this is an objective fact given the huge amount of info perks that were and are available, see Kindred for a glaring example) but, at the same time, I'm not positive DbD would still exist in an alt-2022 where SWF was never added. I imagine the reason KYF was instead available on launch was because it was planned from the start. Of course, when you're playing with friends, you can self-regulate voice chat usage.

Now, as for the main question: where "should" survivor power be? That's rather subjective, but when it comes to game design I am a pragmatist. Killers will meet normal players and will meet SWFs. If killers want to be able to win consistently, unless SWFs are one in a thousand (which they're not), they'll have to gear up to face that specific threat. This means that, in turn, they are going to be overly equipped for solo-q players. The simplest solution is simply to equalize SWF and Solo-Q by giving everybody voice chat.

Now, I'd assume most players would not use voice chat still. That's been largely my experience playing other games in solo-q. But having the option in itself is enough to level the playing field. Of course, SWFs would still be at advantage because they'd have more experience playing together, but it would be a gigantic boon for solo-q players.

I don't think a ping system should be added to the game. If you add a ping system without voicechat, then you're still just buffing SWFs, who now have voice chats and pings. One of the few things that SWFs have to practice is team cooperation, coming up with callouts, learning maps to be able to communicate properly, learn not to talk over each other, etc etc. A ping system would make that much more trivial, while still only barely helping solo-q players.

you either split the queues or take swf as balance into account for all, and as a mainly solo player this hurts but it has to be taken into account.

Strong survivors already play like swfs even if not that efficiently so yeas, I think swf shoul be taken into account.

the balance problem tho doesnt limit itself to that

A stricter matchmaking is required which is not simple thing to craft.

moreover the main reason why current and past matchmaking didnt feel good is because there is no clear definition of meta/skill and objective ranking is not really an indicator of being good or meritable.

in my opinion a stricter definition of what meta is supposed to be is essential for the developement of the game.

otherwise you will end with an half assed game who doesnt know what it wants to be.

A ping system reminds me of how annoying people in apex legends would be by spamming pings, although a ping system would be really good.

THe map (item) has that add-on but in In-door maps the add-on is basically useless (I think).