The real cause of bad solo queue survivor behavior
It's queue times.
When survivor queues are instant, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from killing themselves on hook. They can use this to get out of a match early and immediately go to another, or have the luxury of shopping around for 3000+ hour teammates or 4 medkit/BNP toolbox teams. Generally survivors in this game state are unhappy, BUT have the ability to quickly cycle through matches to find one they like, enabling and even encouraging their bad behavior since they technically did not disconnect.
When killer queues are instant, as pre-6.1.0, it means the role is largely miserable. Yes, they get to shop around as well for no-item no-obvious-SWF lobbies, but this was not enough. Generally killers in such a state of the game are also unhappy, but do NOT have the survivors' ability to quickly cycle through matches. A killer game that goes bad enough to cause them to give up is often a 10+ minute wait for the killer if they don't want to eat a DC penalty, so they'll often begrudgingly play it out anyway.
The difference is survivors have no reason NOT to throw the instant things aren't looking up for them, as they don't get penalized outside of having to wait another 5 seconds in queue. If they had to wait 5+ minutes, as was often the case pre-6.1.0, then they'd play it out.
The solution is to add a forced timer to queueing after intentionally dying on hook. War Thunder does something similar, in that if you eject from your aircraft/crash into the ground without being damaged by an enemy you cannot queue with that crew for 8 minutes minus however long you were in the match. DBD could implement this fairly easily - the game already has a flag to cause an immediate sacrifice after 2 ignored struggle skillchecks, just have that event set another flag that prevents the survivor from queueing for a set period of time (7+ minutes) to discourage this behavior.
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Fortunately matchmaking incentives will be back on live with the Wesker update so that should help even out the times a bit. (It’s on the PTB already but for obvious reasons has no real impact in that setting.)
One other thing that could help matchmaking and queue times is if they made it so if you leave a lobby it times you out for, say, 60 or 90 seconds from entering again. That would discourage people lobby dodging on a whim because “four Claudettes / obviously a swf / default skin so must be a n00b” or whatever. You could still leave a lobby obviously but a slight timer before trying again would make people think twice about it before they click Cancel.
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It won't help, we don't care about incentives. As long as the game remains in its current state the que times are going to be long, because the population of people who still wants to play will be lower than usual. The average for this game sits around 50k, however after this patch the population sits between 27k/34k that drop off will only change when wesker comes out for about 1 week. And then as soon as the hype train leaves it'll drop right back down and then stay there.
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BP incentives will likely help some with the current killer queue times, but the end-goal of them is to make queues instant for both sides at the same time. It'll help killers be less bored with waiting around, but is not a solution for survivors throwing games.
I do like the idea of a short lockout on lobby dodge though, cuts down on shopping around.
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No, you and I don’t care about the incentives, but lots and lots of other players definitely do care about them. This was very clearly demonstrated when the bonuses were available briefly and survivor queues skyrocketed because the incentives were accidentally stuck to only reward the survivor players. Tons of people were literally going out of their way to play the side that had insanely long queue times just to get the extra bloodpoints, that’s why they had to killswitch it to stop the survivor queues from being so lopsided.
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This is a good idea, but I am kind of okay with KILLERS dodging lobbies they don't like the look of. I've seen streamers dodge lobbies because they want to avoid solos which is refreshing. Also new players probably SHOULD dodge TTVs, multiple flashlights and lobbies where everyone is a Nea with Toxic in their name. But I'm sure some survivors dodge lobbies just because they see a presige 0 Yoichi. Most Yoichis are presige 0!
Prestige 0 Megs fair enough.
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Coldest take on the forums right now, didn't really need another thread.
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I hope they fixed incentives for real this time, everyone will want to play wesker at release so queue should be worse than now, hopefully we'll get +100% bonus all day for survivor
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I don’t believe incentives are going to change things. Survivors will still DC or attempt hook escapes that kill them. I guess it shouldn’t matter though because at the end of the day killers get their 4K. That’s what matters most.
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The difference between 25 or 50k players is quite irrelevant for queue times though, as those numbers are good enough to create matches. Queue times it is all about survivor to killer ratios of those players.
If you consider that a lot of people play solo, they aren't bound to one side or the other. Currently as a solo killer became far more attractive to play while simultaneously solo queue got less attractive.
Incentives will help, but the best thing to get a better division would be to implement solo queue buffs.
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Incentives do work double bp events often increase the player numbers. Dbd is starting to see more competiton at the moment. Many games are hosting events and vhs and evil dead is now competing with dbd.
Theres a good bit of fire under behaviour to step up. Last patch was due for a while. The killer exodus really hurt the game both in terms of killer variety and queue times. I would like to see more nuances added to the survivor role some new items like caltrops and adrenaline.
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But survivor queues are instant because there are less players playing on the surv side than before patch 6.1.0.
If you intend to add a forced timer fornthose that DC/Kill on hook, that would lead to even lesser survs and even longer killer queues.
And this timer does not guarantee that the surv that would die on hook will play the game instead. Some would just close the game and come back later, or not come back at all.
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True - I'm sitting on 2 million bp I never spend after login rewards. Shards I don't even care about anymore.
Alll I'm looking for is a good match and since end game excitement is getting slowly killed (it's going to come to just gtfo at the end and leave others to their fate) - there's not even that.
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Incentives only work when the game is fun, but right now it just isn't. And that's the core of the issue, if this game was in a half way decent state incentives would make a difference. But because it's become increasingly irritating and demoralizing to play the people who play it don't play enough matches for incentives to matter.
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I dont have any issue woth dbd tbh. I have been playing primarily survivor. However dbd i m playing less of because vhs is giving me a more refreshing experiance. On top of the hunt showdown event I am playing less dbd.
The game dosent annoy me as much as competitiom is heating up and its going to get harder with the number of asyms still to come. As said a few new items and the introduction of perks like reassurance should help make dbd more exciting. The new patch did a lot to help reinvigorate my love for playing killers like doctor and other m1 killers. Because i cant describe just how much dead hard killed my interest in dbd pre changes.
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It not a lose only situation. Ihave dropped this game more to a dcing rando on my team then to a miserable game. Espicially if we actually somehow make progress. I cant describe how much hatred i have for the randos who give up immediatly, dont play the damn game if your just gonna dc on the rest of the team when the game dosent go your way.
I want less survivors who pull the cord even if it meant longer queue times. Because if you are solo dcing in my survivor games then you are the worst aspect of this game. Thats just facts.
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That's exactly it though, between competition and killers being boosted the part of this game that it make miserable was the part of the game which was always miserable but less so before, which is being a survivor. The killers of course have a lot more fun now, because they're boosted now. The survivors on the other hand aren't. And that's the part that makes the numbers fall off and the game unfun.
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No im pretty sure killer experiance pre dead hard changes were miserable. Do you know what it was like looking at the rooster of killers and basically doing a dead hard litmus test on whether a kiĺer was worth playing. Killer largely always was the least fun role.
Solo survivor sucks because there is no communication tools. This means co ordination is a nightmare. Give survivoors a status system and a ping system. Bang the drum! Swf is the ultimate reason why were here give solos similar tools and dbd will be a fairer game.
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The game isn't nearly polished enough to punish leaving a lobby. It's very common for 3/4 friends to load in. That would make every SWF's experience worse for no reason.
The devs need to get a functional backfill system in place instead of pulling the next available player. Bidirectional matchmaking on backfills, something.
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What do you make of survivors dying on hook to give their teammate a chance at hatch ? There are legitimate times to [fail on purpose] on hook.
Also, the faster the skillchecks, the harder. Some people are bound to have struggles with them and be forced to wait more time to get into a game. I sometimes miss two in a row. It happens, and people shouldn't be punished for being clumsy or new to the game.
Also, for the "survivors have no reason not to let themselves be killed on hook", I think it's important to remember not to generalize. A lot of survivors have integrity. Otherwise, every game where the count gets to 2 survivors would be a hiding game of waiting for the other to be killed.
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Call me skeptical that swfs have trouble loading into the same lobby on a regular basis.
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I just don’t think giving solo queue “communication tools” is enough to bridge the gap with SWF. Like most solo survivors have access to Kindred, Bond, Empathy, Aftercare, and a bunch of other aura-reading perks yet they don’t seem to morph solo queue into SWF.
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But that was also before it was so clear that the patch droped solo survivors in such a bad state that people dont want to play it anymore.
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I think you're underestimating how much people liked the extra bloodpoints and overestimating how many people think solo survivor is so bad it's unplayable, but who knows, we'll see in a few weeks when the new chapter hits. 🤷♂️
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I have had just about every killer tunnel and camp today, so I find it hard to believe that queue time is what is causing people to not want to play games out.
I had a nurse chase me for about 2 minutes, down me, then insidious camp the hook. I sat on the hook till about the last second, as soon as I got unhooked she just killed me.
SoloQ is literally dying, and somehow you find a way to blame us.
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Survivors play bad, allergic to kindred and gens, awful at even safe loops.
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They really should make being on the hook or struggling on hook more rewarding. Killing yourself on hook doesn't cost the player anything.
In first stage survivors should get 20 bloodpoints per second in the survival category just to hang there. Hanging in there and not trying to kobe is the best thing a survivor can do for their team most of the time. If they hang the full minute, it's an easy 1,200 points.
Struggling on the hook should be 300 points per skill check or start at 200 and award more points as the success bar shrinks.
While some people will still kill themselves quickly this bloodpoint-thirsty might hang in there a bit longer, pun intended, which would be nice.
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Wait, you're mad because the killers got buffed so much that many people don't want to play survivor and so the queues are instant? Your solution is to kick the survivors in the guts and make it so survivors are punished if they die on hook?
"Waaaa! It's too easy for them to get into new games! Behaviour should MAKE them play with ######### teammates and toxic killers!"
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This is a great Idea!
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Oh, I personally don't care what survivors do, I'm a killer main so I'm not mad in the slightest. This is just me considering how and why survivors are acting the way they are. But it'd sure cut down on the survivors complaining about their teammates dying on hook if they were forced to stop killing themselves so much.
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You guys are still getting survivors that throw games?
Literally none in a few days. Im either out of that particular mmr hell or survivors stopped throwing that particular tantrum
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But they always have been, there is no change in that, other that chases were changed in favor of the killer so even a safe loop dont last long, and the 2 people that do gens cant do them with 90 seconds and lots of slowdown perks.
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Longer queues? maybe all wait 10 minutes?
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Yes and q times were instant before the awful update and people weren't DCing and killing themselves on hook as much. So yeah I wonder what changed.
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That wouldn't be in line with the game though. Think about it, the game is based on the principle of 1 killer chasing 4 individual survivors, how would that work if at least part of this was a real life scenario? Do you think that the survivors would magically have headsets or working phones?
Now as far as the killers being miserable is concerned I played killer half the time, and even though dead hard was a saving grace for survivors before, they never had to nerf it the way they did. They could have simply taken endurance off of it and left the dash. That would have been enough. The only real issue with dead hard was always the endurance, because it was the act of never getting hit via endurance that made it so hard to play around, not a regular dash that could still be downed.
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No the regular dash was the problem. Dead hard for distance was a major issue. Theoretically you could take the iframes off and see how that goes but again your powering up the ranged killers and power based killer who already are stronger. The nerf to dead hard hurt the stronger killers not the weaker ones. A very smart decision. Dead hard pre changes was completely broken. It needed to be tunned.
As for the whole not realistic. You can clutch a key to telepathically view killer through walls, you can share your aura with survivour with vaguely powered friendship links. In horror it is common to have characters share a telepathic link. Consult any stephen king book for reference. In multiplayer games like apex hunt even when there is zero justifiable reason for a mechanic to exist. It exists nontheless to improve the gameplay experiance.
Dbd need survivor communication tools. Its frankly backwards and unfair to rob survivors the abillity to communicate with randos using basic ping systems whilst swf has these tools available. Pandoras box was opended swf exists. We cant go back to buipding this game for both solo and swf. The ppwer level disparity is to different.
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Your down one perk. Thats one less perk to prevent the power struggle play. On each survivor to since you dont know if anyones bringing it. Also the aura reading perk have much more defined limitiations then swf communication requiring specific clauses to trigger. I gurrantee you a ping system wpupd shppt up survival rate by at least 10%
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Wrong, must maps are still survivor sided and survs are the power role. Killers need buff, addons made basekit
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No, as long as SWF get 87 perks for free, they should not do this.
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Punishing people for not having fun instead of addressing why people aren't having fun in the first place, would surely do wonders for the game.
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I fail to see how incentives are gonna help considering they'll be for survivor 90% of the time.
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When the incentives were on initially the survivor queues were extremely long solely because a ton of people were playing that side since the incentives were stuck on it. There’s no particular reason to think that those same people won’t play survivor again if the incentive is on that side.
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Yes yes yes yes yes! Devs pls see this. You sir are a genius 🤩 .
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Everything was sorta new then; many players didn’t realize how buffed killers were or how debuffed survivors had become. Now that the true effects of that patch have settled, I do not foresee people rushing to play survivor for 20-40K BP. Mind you—that’s with excellent gameplay.
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Nah I consider Dcing everytime someone starts killing themselves on hook as Killer. Don't play the game if you don't want any sort of challenge. After the first week 80% of the survivors I go against are good and don't kill themselves, with some exceptions. But I'm probably just lucky. Don't queue up in this game if you don't want to play. This is the only game I have ever played where a side actively throws consistently, It's quite absurd how many people defend this.
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I don't think it is absurd to quit a game you are playing to have fun, when you are not having fun. Both killer and survivors have to see the game through the other side's eyes.It is not an easy balance to put together to make the game fun for both sides. As a main survivor, I did enjoy the pre-patch experience, games were fun. They are not as much anymore, and I wonder if a loud minority has wrongly influenced BHVR to make changes that didn't consider the fun factor for survivors, only the unfun for some killers. I certainly hope BHVR did have in-game data/metrics to justify there was a need for some of these changes, and even if they did, they may have overlooked the fun factor of survivors before nerfing... and now we are spiraling down in a negative feedback loop where players are expressing their dissatisfaction (e.g. letting themselves die on first hook), which in turn dissatisfies more players... This is not a survivor or killer problem, it is a BHVR problem, they created it, they need to fix it... and fast... I will give them time to understand the problem and fix it, but they need to make it happen in the next few weeks... this is not sustainable... And no, a new killer/survivor won't fix the root problem, it may just hide it until the novelty wears out.
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Not absurd to me: you play a game to have fun, if the game is not fun, you stop playing it, it is not a job.
I suspect a loud minority influenced BHVR to make these patch changes, it broke a delicate balance between survivor and killer fun factor. Survivors expressing their dis-satisfaction in drastic ways (e.g. letting themselves die on first hook) creates a negative feedback loop, that liek a nuclear chain reaction makes more players dis-satisfied. Not the killer or survivor's fault, BHVR broke it, they need to fix it before this death spiral kills the game.
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Ok well this game is competitive as its a multiplayer game with any sort of regard for balance. High mmr is genuinely a back and fourth between good survivors and good killers, the only exceptions being a variation of the top 1% of blights with iri tag and nurse in general. Competitive games should always be balanced around high mmr/elo with exceptions being things that are there to intentionally cater to low mmr and are thus balanced around low mmr(doctor). I do agree solo queue needs some QoL adjustments to make it so teams aren't wasting time for unhooks ect... But in general other than the 10 seconds extra on gens, only m1 killers were affected a lot and they are still not very good at winning games regardless of skill. If you are not having fun playing this game you should not play this game until it gets changed. If you are consistently killing yourself on hook before other survivors get hooked you should receive a 2 week suspension. Most survivors and killers alike are genuinely terrible at this game, its just that at low mmr survivors will suffer and there will never be a fix to that. Survivors genuinely only know how to hold w until they learn how to loop and do gens efficiently and all killers have to do is m1 and hold w after survivors. But there is quite literally not a single competitive game that has retains a large following balances around anything but good players.
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What a lot of people don't realise too is that Solo Q takes up the biggest portion of the survivor playerbase, especially in the morning and afternoon. So the fact that the recent midchapter has made it a lot worse for Solo Q, a lot of solo players have either switched to playing Killer more, or playing a different game entirely.
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You really think the players ruining games with DCs or suicide hooks will take advantage of that....even if they did I bet you most would just tunnel and camp just to make more people hate Killers even more
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Dead hards biggest advantage was not the dash, it was the endurance and I can prove it. The dash by itself might have you dodging a hit, but that's all it does. The problem was that when they dashed they could get over traps, and under hits. Without that, if they dashed they would get stuck in every trap, they would dodge 1/4 hits maybe if they timed it right, and the only ones that would really utilize it are the people who just needed a bit more space. Which would have it working as intended.
Yea it's common to have characters with a telepathic link, if they were twins, or part of some magical pact, but these are literally survivors from like 20 different stories that have nothing in common with one another other than being hunted. There's no logical way to explain them having any interaction other than whispering and pointing. And if you wanted to put those in the game I'd be ok with that, but to put full on communication in is a ridiculous overture. In fact I was always of the opinion that having the ability to do SWFs outside custom games is bad game making. If they wanted to make it better they should make a ranked mode and disable SWFs for it. Give more BP for that mode.
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