The biggest problem with SWF

Can we apply the 90% of survivors cant use the swf optimally excuse for nurse too?

Well it's about balancing but also limiting. You can balance for the average player while also limiting the top level. This is sometimes easier, sometimes harder, because top level players will exploit things average players will never think of, so you can just nerf or limit those, while other things are intrinsic to the play style and can't easily be changed.

Voice software = cheat software, cheater > they must be banned.

i do not think that would happen. they would simply remove the ability to swf from the game. note I do not believe that swf is inherently imbalanced, but I do think that killer(s) themselves are not balanced around SWF game efficiency. if you had global bond for example, you wouldn't as strong as swf 1:1 but it would be closer, close enough to be acceptable level.

I agree with your post more. Killer that are skilled at the game should be able to handle SWF though I'm not certain how you expect wraith to reach high mmr or reach high mmr. that is one of marginal problems. you get reduced killer variety as survivor from a bunch of killers not being too effective.

As a solo q survivor with no friends I can understand your pain. Any nerf to SWF is a massive nerf to solo q. IMO if you were to add the action that a survivor is undertaking under their name in solo q you could potentially look at nerfing SWF, but I think this would reshape the game and countless perks.

This isn't the reality, it's flawed on multiple levels.

I don't know who that Nurse player was, and Hens did not share that information on the video. I assure you that an actual comp-level Nurse will not be getting 2 hooks on Dead Dawg (or any map). It's pretty silly to use that. Ask Hens how they'd fare again FallenArt, Volga, Zaka, Knightlight. Let alone with range add-ons, a Mori, and any perks of their choosing. 4ks galore. Maybe this player had a particularly bad match, or they were just not an actually good comp player, maybe merely someone that participated sometime(s). If you watch actual competitions, Nurses 4k all the time even against teams way better than Hens' pub team.

In fact, a whole bunch of killer characters are able to 4k in tournaments regularly, again against teams way better than this team. Survivors at that level are in fact not "far too powerful", average kills are above 2, with 4ks being completely common. Yeah there are loadout restrictions in place, but not only are there restrictions for killer loadouts too, but it's instantly a completely different argument to go from "top survivors OP" to "top survivors with all these perks and items stacked a bit overtuned". And not even that is entirely true: We know from "everything allowed" tournaments that happened even before the recent survivor nerfs that Nurse and Blight are perfectly able to compete and even outperform survivors at the top level, again averaging above 2 kills, with 4ks being completely feasible.

There is also a very important distinction to make that changes the entire takeaway from tournament-level DbD: The killer side is 1 player, just like they are when they play public matches, whereas the survivor side is a team of 4 players, practicing together, communicating via voice chat using efficient call out systems, preparing and coordinating builds and strategies, having team cohesion and natural team cooperation (things like having assigned roles, knowing who does what when, intuitively knowing how to play certain scenarios, all due to shared experience as a team). The survivor side benefits much, much more from the tournament setting than the killer side does, because in essence nothing changes for killers. In public matchmaking, the amount of comp-level players presenting a tournament-level killer side is bound to be far beyond the amount of comp-level players presenting a tournament-level survivor side, because for the latter, you need 4 comp-level players that have experience as a team coming together and deciding to play pubs with all the coordination and communication and such that they use in tournaments... and for the former you just need such a player deciding to play killer. Comp teams playing pubs as 4-SWF and actually trying hard to win is vanishingly rare, it basically never happens; comp players playing killer in pubs and trying hard to win happens every single day.

Granted, I was surprised that Hens' team managed to get like 190+ 3-4-escapes in a row, but it's not like the opposite is unheard of either, far from: there are multiple 4k streaks (note: not 3/4k, strictly 4k) spanning 200+ games. In public matchmaking, even now with MMR in place, you almost never meet players of that caliber, so if you are a top-level killer player or 4-SWF, you will be winning the vast majority of your matches pretty handedly. And while Hens' team is not a tournament team, they are all top-level players with thousands upon thousands of hours of playtime and tournament experience (Dan is in one of if not the best team in the world, Laser has been in the comp scene for a long time with varying success, Hens himself has been involved in the scene a lot). I do want to note that matchmaking particularly for 4-SWFs seems to be messed up. You can ask those players themselves, or take it from Dan's recent stream: they know they are getting pretty bad killers most of the time that are simply nowhere near their level, and even say they are getting notably better killers when they queue alone. I have made the same experience.

We should neither balance the game for top-level 4-SWFs nor top-level Nurses, instead we should nerf both SWF and Nurse. We should also buff solo queue as well as various lower-tier killers. Some maps need rebalancing. Restricting pre-made groups to only be able to use any perk/item/add-on at most 1 time would go a long way to make SWF much less of a balance issue.

Yeah but again, that Nurse player was just simply not playing up to the level of the survivor team at all in that match, so it shouldn't really be used to argue about balance. Top-level Nurse players can actually compete against this type of coordinated team.

It's not balancing strictly for top-level players - while those are way more common on the killer side in pubs (since again for a top-level survivor side you need 4 top-level survivors coming together with voice comms and all that, which just almost never happens), you still won't be meeting a top-level killer player all that frequently either, even if you are at the MMR cap and whatnot. But in pubs, an even just competent Nurse and 4-SWF will win 90+% of their matches if they try to. That's still a notable balance issue (as well as a matchmaking issue).

I believe that the game is actually slightly killer-sided in its native game mode (and heavier killer-sided depending on the killer character), which is this: all 4 survivor players do not know each other, as such have no coordination on their builds and strategies, and of course no external communication. So yeah, solo queue buffs have been needed for a long time in my opinion. And it's particularly camping and tunnelling that are disruptive in solo scenarios, so those in my mind are what should be rebalanced most of all. A competent killer player can play any killer even perkless and still win the majority of their matches against pub randos if they camp and tunnel.

SWF does obviously change a lot about this, and the game has blatantly not been balanced with SWF (+ voice comms) in mind. That doesn't mean SWF completely destroys balance, but in pubs it definitely more often than not upsets the balance, and it really highlights the power differences between the different killer characters, with some of them definitely being inadquate in that scenario. One blatant aspect of the game not being balanced with SWF in mind are loadouts, which is partly your original point in this thread, but it goes beyond SWF simply having perks "basekit": their coordination of loadouts and their ways of using them allows them to create completely busted combinations that just clearly aren't healthy - 4 BNP toolboxes with stacked Streetwise, 4 OTR + Deliverance, dedicated Booners, 4 Styptics/Syringes, 4 For The People with 4 Soul Guard, multiple Adrenalines and Kinships and Unbreakables and perfectly coordinating the use of them, Power Struggle + Flip-Flop on everyone and always going down under pallets intentionally, Open-Handed on one player with Bonds and 2-3 Kindreds on everyone else, stacked Sprint Bursts + Vigils, and so on. Restricting SWF loadouts would prevent this type of ridiculous abuse, as well as encourage more perk diversity and create more freedom in the perk designing process to begin with since then one won't have to worry about the prospect of those perks being stacked and abused in a coordinated way.

I think those loadout restrictions would actually already be enough to even the playing field for most killers against SWFs, and tournaments support this too, but some killers would still need buffs. Some killers need some nerfs, most of all Nurse, but also Blight, and various add-ons are definitely overtuned. Various maps need adjustments, I'd say around 40% of maps lean more toward survivor, 20% killer, and the rest are pretty okay.

The argument of showing SWF in lobby has been made on here before, as has the idea of compensating them with extra BP, and the general consensus was that they would lobby dodge regardless of how much you compensated them.

Competetive =/= Esports

facepalm

Mario party is competitive, counter strike is competitive, so is UNO etc. You're competing against another.

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Swf is problematic because it's the same character as "solo", both are survivor.

Compared to killers, theres no weaker character to balance seperately.

• "Solo" survivor = pig
• Good "solo" survivor = blight
• "Swf (comms)" survivor = "baby nurse"
• Good "swf (comms)" survivors = GodNurse

Disclaimer: The example provided is just a bad metaphor. No need to friggin start with the "nurse op" crap again.

I vaguely recall the devs stating they do not want to balance solo/swf differently. They didnt do it yet and i doubt they start doing it.

So the devs have this awful situation of balancing "bad survivors", "good survivors", teams and "teams on comms" with only touching "survivor".

One can maintain the position that Nurse is not okay while still believing the game should be balanced around the average player. The video you linked is a very extreme example of swf.

As you can see in the video, they're using a clock system to coordinate. This is something you see in tournament swfs.

I only play survivor in a swf duo, very rarely a trio, but never a 4-man. We communicate only the important details. Who the killer is, what perks they're running, if they have a hex and if we're in chase. If a totem is lit at a major landmark, we can say "Lit totem at shack". We don't use a clock system and say "Killer is at 1, going to 12".

Comms are not necessarily always giving survivors the information perks you'd think they are. I can't say to my friend "Just got pushed off a gen at 9, it's nearly done but the killer's on me." because we haven't planned that far ahead. We are making it up as we go because we want to have fun, not win every game.

I believe that swf duos and trios are fine but when you get quads, it tends to be a different story. I'd be fine with placing restrictions on quads, but not duos and trios.

You just proved my point. People already dodge suspected swf lobbies, why would they play against a team they know is a swf? Why would they play against a swf that is potentially more skilled than them when they can play against solos who are probably going to kill themselves on their first hook?

Players who previously didn't dodge because they weren't sure would dodge because they'd know it was a swf. Killers, in general, don't want to play against a swf.

I'm against telling killers they're playing against a swf because even if they do choose to play, they're going to go a for a full sweat loadout. I'm playing for fun, not to win.

I would take them to have the information easily accessible without having to lose time trying to communicate in a foreign language with my teammates. I would take them because I don't know the maps and placement of the tiles perfectly, so there's still a lot of "Where are you ?" "Uh... near main building" "Okay which side?" "I don't know, what's the front and what's the back?" and it takes time to really get where someone is.

I play on comms (duos and trios) and still use Windows so that I don't have to calculate which pallet was dropped 5 minutes before that I definitely forgot about.

I still run Kindred to know where people are and estimate if I'm the best person to go for the unhook or if my friend really is closer.

I still run Alert to know exactly how far the chase is from my position, so I can adapt and not disturb my friend's concentration.

Before the rework, I still used Dark Sense to know where the killer was, rather than ask and get a "I don't know how to describe where he is but it's somewhere near a tree". Post patch, I still use Dark Sense to counter early mindgames or to hide from the killer safely.

I still use Small Game because I don't know most of the totem spots, and neither do my friends. Again, if we really tried to communicate to positions, it would go something like this : "Oh I saw a totem" "Where?" "In a jungle gym" "... okay?"

I still use Deja Vu because I can't find gens on darker maps like Autohaven or on convoluted maps like RPD.

I don't run Object of Obsession, but I see it mostly used to get attention from the killer and draw aggro, not to know where killer is.

I still use Plunderer's Instinct when I have a chest tome challenge. It's easier to walk around looking for pink auras than to wait for a friend to maybe happen upon a chest and depend on them to actually describe where it is.

A lot of the other perks described in the original post are DLC perks that I don't have, so I can't say I run them or know all of their effects. But I can guarantee you that most SWFs, those who play casually and not on a competitive level, still use a lot of these aura perks.

Because it's still easier than depending on someone's ability to relay any and all information at all times, especially when they could be under pressure and should be focused on their situation rather than lose concentration to try to describe what's happening to others. Especially if english is not their mother tongue and they have to translate mid chase.

MMR exists but doesn't even work correctly, if at all. If good swfs played against equally good killers, there wouldn't be so many complaints.

MMR merely attempts to find you a balanced match. If it fails to do so, you just get whoever's online at the time.