What Exactly *Can* Be Done To Help Solo Survivors?
I'm...actually struggling on this one.
This game unfortunately cannot be balanced around solos - otherwise SWFs just roll killers. However, I think the common opinion is that solos should, instead, be given some love to help bring them closer to SWFs.
The problem is - I can't really imagine how.
The status icons? I don't know if that would really do all that much.
Voicechat? Ahahaha.
Stuff like baseline Kindred - would be a buff to SWFs too.
Unless you want to give solos a direct buff that does not apply to SWFs (which BHVR have expressly said they would never do), or maybe fiddle matchmaking to either give SWFs a higher MMR or solos a lower MMR, I'm drawing a blank here.
Anyone got any good, realistic and effective ways to help solos that won't impact the SWF versus Killer matchup at all?
Comments
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Solo survivors don't need buffs of any kind.
They need to start repairing gens more and stop playing badly. Low survival rates are entirely due to poor tactical decisions, cockiness and entitlement.
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Status Icons would help immensely, actually. If someone gets hooked and I see the icons go from 3 survivors working on gens to 2 survivors working on gens, I know someone is going for the save. That is one example of saving extreme amounts of time based on a little amount of information.
There are countless situations in which knowing what is happening at specific moments can turn the tides of the match.
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Eh...the issue is that the game is heading towards a position where it's balanced around SWFs - and there's no realistic way for solo survivors to coordinate or share information like an SWF can do.
Hell, even perk selection - far too often you get 3 people running Kindred.
I think they'd help slightly.
The issue is that just because people have the information doesn't mean they will actually cooperate.
You can't force coordination.
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Easy. Sepereate solo and swf-queue and balance both seperatly. At SWF, killers have higher power level, at solo, its lower, basicly.
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BHVR have emphatically said that they'd never do it - probably because you'd have a lot of SWFs that go back to lobby shopping until they get put together, in order to get the solo buffs.
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1000% this
When I play Solo, I run Kindred because that information is vital to the teams success. If I spent 20 seconds running to the hook but someone else was, that's 40 seconds I just burned saving someone that didn't need saving (20 to get there, 20 to get back to the gen I was working on). That's almost half a damn generator...
I also run Bond for the same exact reason (information is King). So half of my perk slots are taken up by information perks; perks that a 4 man SWF would get for free because they can just talk to each other.
Icons wouldn't be the end all be all fix to help solo queue but they'd be a huge help and wouldn't make SWF more powerful. Depending on how extensive the icons are, I could open up (at least) one perk slot that used to be filled with an "information" perk.
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I wouldn't say some qol improvements are not needed but there is definitely immaturity and attitude problem. If all survivors worked as a team and gave their best without giving up, solo would be in a much better place.
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This, 100%.
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You can't make random teammates cooperate, so that's out the window already, but there are things that can be done. Information sharing is one of the benefits of SWF that can be given to solo queue, albeit in a lesser form.
Status icons would help a little more than you're making out, but they're not perfect on their own. I'd also suggest the ability to see your teammate's perk builds both pre-game and in the mid-match details screen, two more gestures (thumbs up and arm-waving to convey 'stop'), and something akin to a basekit Kindred. What that'd look like, I'm not entirely sure, but something to know roughly where your teammates are when it's time for a save is the part of Kindred that wouldn't buff SWF, the way the killer aura would.
I'd also like to see more perks and items that help with solo queue specifically, without becoming the single must-run option for its type. For instance, stuff like Bond would be much less necessary if keys were retooled to have like five times more charges and showed you teammate auras without the use of any addons. That way you could have a full build of perks like any SWF player without needing to give any up just to know what the hell your teammates are doing.
At the end of the day playing solo will always be weaker and more frustrating than playing in a group, as it is for every other team-based online game, but there are things that would help improve it.
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They could start by giving a hoot about Solos, that'd be the ideal starting point. After that, in all seriousness, status icons (Anyone with time on the forums has seen the status icon image floating around) and an in-game VGS (similar to Smite) for callouts. Just those two changes would work wonders for Death Q. Oh, and revert DS nerf or buff it so it's not insulting.
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First being able to see your teammates's perks in the lobby would be great info and could allow for more coordinated plays for solos survivors mobile already has that feature btw.
And next is some players just need to get better at the game start using common sense stop being so predictable and for the love of Jesus Christ stop going down every 20 seconds some survivors just need to get better at looping no matter how much you buff survs the majority of the playerbase is really bad nothing BHVR cant hold players's hands forever you have to play better.
I run Open Handed + Bond so I can see what my teammates are doing most of the time and there is ALWAYS that one braindead clueless survivor in the team that ends up screwing up the 3 others good survivors.
Stupid plays lots of mistakes giving the killer alot of pressure early in the game at 5/4 gens then end up getting tunneled beceause the surv in question is just terrible at looping and is the weak link,Killers tunnel bad survivors that get downed easily rarely the good ones who can loop them for 3 gens.
MMR is hardly working and we need two separate game mode ranked and casual beceause right now MMR is just a joke that's why I started dodging lobbys with very low prestige survs and it really made my SoloQ experience is way better and enjoyable while playing with decent competent survivors.
There's like 43k players playing DBD on steam rn I am sure that the current playerbase is large enough for two separate game modes plus we dont even know how many players are playing DBD on console/EGS.
So yes this is my idea on how to help SoloQ survs give us the ability to see our teammates's perks and create a new REAL ranked game mode with a working MMR system.
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They should nuke the survivor meta and give killers 4/5 basekit buffs.
Oh wait
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I don't see how a weaker version of kindred (no killer aura) would help swf. Even the most casual swf can communicate stuff like "hey I'm going for the save" so nothing would change for them, but in solo, either everyone scrambles to get a save or no one does because everone thinks someone else will do it.
This is why I think kindred without killer auras would be a good addition to the base game
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Status icons AND voice chat. Talking proximity chat here like F13th. I'm focusing more on fun here because it would be goofy just hearing a squeaker getting chased. Proximity chat would make the game infinitely more fun. All the potential things to come from it regardless of good or bad make for a nice idea. Besides, the good outweighs the bad.
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Have you played this game before? Do you have any idea how toxic voice chat would be?
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Permanent Bond/Kindred/Empathy is the only way to bring solo up to swf. Unless you know exactly what your teammates are doing ie being chased by the killer, doing gens, hiding, ect there's no way to match the voice advantage swf brings by being able to simply tell teammates that the killer stopped chasing them and is coming to you.
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In short "if you want to play survivor, git gut and be a pro", right? And it doesn't apply to killer, of course.
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This guy has never played high MMR killer.
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Solos need better info for a bit teamwork thats about it.
And they need to gid gud a little.
Whenever i play survivor the second some one is hooked i notice the other 2 players drop what they are doing even with auras.
Like dude, chill, that dude has 60 seconds, theyll be fine. Do your gens.
But thats learned behaviour and most survivors lack it.
Way too inefficient.
I had a game with artist a few hours back that took 10 minute or so and 0 gens got done in the meanwhile. Thats entirely on them.
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Status icons would be nice. could be range dependent based on your prestige level.
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I have but do you see me caring? I wanna hear them ######### on mic than over text. It's funnier that way.
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Buff DS to stun the killer for 10 seconds at 5 gens. If the killer wants to tunnel at 5 gens he should be punished for playing like an #########.
Make DS have 5 tokens. Each time a gen is repaired, a token is consumed and a second is taken off the stun duration.
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SoloQ's biggest issue is bad players. Get a better SBMM that counts the Survivors as a team instead of individuals and that would fix the problem
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Wow, you cracked me. How did you know? You have stats? And did you play? Rhetorical questions, of course. "Whatever doesn't fit in my beliefs does not exist."
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Yes?
Putting a bunch of exclamation points in front of something doesn't invalidate the point.
If they buff SWFs, you'll see kill rates drop again, and you'd be looking at more killer buffs - putting us back where we started.
It's more that voicechat is nearly impossible to moderate.
I remember when WoW tried a native voicechat experiment, and it was wall to wall racial slurs, people blasting air horns, people screaming...ugh.
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I agree that basekit kindred, status icons, and lobby info would be helpful. Basekit kindred may also help swf but much less. SWF players dont waste a perk on Kindred, solo q wouldn't have to either anymore. The idea of lobby info on builds is great as well and wouldn't benefit swfs at all.
But... A couple things:
1) The REAL problem is matchmaking and peak times. Solo Q is terrible mostly because when you play any time other than peak hours matchmaking has a much more limited pool to work with and you almost always get 1-3 teammates that are far out of your MMR window. You simply can't win unless the killer is brand new to the game. During peak it's still hit and miss but better. I would still LOVE basekit kindred and other info to help make the games tolerable.
2) I believe Behavior does not want solo q to be closer to swf. I think they factor in the easy games for killer vs solos as part of the equation for how to keep killers happy. If solo q became tougher killers would complain because they are clearly the more 'entitled' of the 2 sides. They expect their easy wins that offset their occasional beatdown by a serious swf.
Also, bear in mind, for this topic and others when we're all discussing our opinions on relative difficulty... I'm talking about top tier survivors and killers. Not that there isn't a place to talk about balance etc for ALL players, but if you're an average to newish player, of course you're going to lose some games as killer or survivor regardless, because you don't know how to play well enough yet. But established 'red rank' players who want to have a solid, fair game as a solo find those games extremely rare because of the issues described. You simply cannot get a team of 4 'red rank' solos together and then, even if you do, you're severely hindered by the lack of information. Yet, you're expected to face a high mmr nurse or blight and penalized if you quit. No way is the game balanced or fair.
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1) A preset icon that solos could activate (ie I'm going for the unhook). Voice chat wouldn't work very well due to partially language barriers but mostly many people don't want to talk or don't have a microphone
2) Status icons showing in chase, doing gens, etc
3) Being able to see the perks that your teammates are running in the pre-match lobby so redundant perks can be switched out and you know if someone has something situational such as Kinship
4) Possibly Situational Awareness basekit so people can see which gens are being worked on? The perk itself would have to be buffed and the problem with this is that it would get survivors congregating on gens when survivors should only be stacking on gens when it's hotly contested and important.
Realistically though, my game losses as survivor are more due to survivor misplays than the Killer anyway but I think the above would be helpful.
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Same thing with hacking. Record your matches if they start to get out of hand. Also this ain't an MMO, sir. It's a 1v4.
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I feel survivors seeing one another’s perks in the lobby would just lead to lobby dodging. We already see people doing it based on prestige. In fact, I exclusively solo queue and I see it multiple times a day; people enter a lobby and will leave without warning if the prestige levels are 0-2. I can only imagine how much worse this would become if survivors saw other survivors not running META perks.
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Haha, thats funny dude.
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Yes - that was a cooperative game.
I can only imagine DbD.
'Just record all your matches in case someone does a thing' is not realistic.
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The difference between solo and SWF survivors, are night and day.
Needs to be changes regarding this system or game is going to die. Solo atm is basically unplayable because most rando-survivors as you say, do in fact play like crap.
More information would help, which isn't a bad thing.
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The onky answer is to stop playing.
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As a new player, about 2 weeks in, i definitely agree with OP. I really feel like solo survivors should get something to help. Voice chat would probably work well. Just being able to communicate basic stuff would be so useful for randos. And voice chat really just brings them in line with swf players. Even if not everybody talks, somebody who does can at least relay basic information. The majority of my public survivor games go badly and when i play killer, I've been rofl stomping so many teams so easily.
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I like the idea of preset lines. They would be amazingly useful
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Anything added to the game to buff solos would also buff the escape rate of 2 SWFs and 3 SWFs, because it would give SWFs extra information about the survivors that aren’t in their SWF.
What BHVR needs to do is calculate SWF MMR better, to offset the advantages of being in a SWF. Maybe SWF MMR should be set to the highest SWF survivor’s MMR, and maybe we need to additionally add bonus MMR points (for matchmaking purposes) depending on how many people are in the SWF (e.g 2 SWF is +50 MMR, 3 SWF is +100 MMR, 4 SWF is +150 MMR).
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Voice chat is mocked but its actually pretty sad that we don't have it in a 1v4 game w/ 'MMR' when almost every other game had it and this games been out for years. Even Evolve Stage 2 had it, lol.
If you aren't a fan of voice chat, then opt out. If you experience a toxic player, can simply mute them. I don't understand this whole 'voice chat will be horrible and toxic!' mentality when there could be a simple option to disable it if you aren't interested in comms.
Hell, even a experiment or test phase on PTB would be a start to gather data. I'd be all for it.
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Buff Nurse
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Honestly, the way to help solo survivors would be to eliminate daily challenges and eliminate the rift challenges. That way the onky objective left would be escaping.
The challenges help divide the objectives that each individual is focusing on.
For example, Johnnies build relies on boons for healing while Sally has to cleanse totems. How do John and Sally work together, through lack of communication, when their objectives contradict one another?
I'm not personally opposed to challenges/achievements, but people aren't able to iron out certain details without pregame communication. Therefor, it appears that challenges impede uncommunicative gameplay by offering alternative challenges which might handicap other players.
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Show survivor auras when someone is on hook
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You're missing the second half of the objection- voice chat would be horrible and toxic, and, it wouldn't fix any of the problems that solo queue is currently facing.
If your proposal to fix the lack of information solo queue faces hinges on as many uncontrollable factors as voice chat, your proposal will not fix anything. New problems crop up, no old problems are fixed... from my perspective, that's a net negative.
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They might not actially be playing like crap. They may have spent money on the 'battle pass' and they might be doing rift challenges to unlock cosmetics. Which doesn't require that you play the game how it is intended to be played
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- Status Icons
- Seeing Teammate's Perk Loadout in Lobby
- Remove Hatch
- Revisit Map Design
imo, hatch seperates solo from SWF more than the potential skill gap that comes from coordinated comms. It's pretty much common knowledge at this point that a 3v1 is nigh impossible to win. Because of hatch, some games play like a 3v1 before any survivor has even died--SWF has the luxury of avoiding that problem.
Edit: OH, and do away with the self-sabotaging rift challenges. They are horrible for the game's health.
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The number one thing I see concerning solo que games as either killer or survivor is a lack of willingness to take a risk. Solo que groups need to realize that the gens are the priority. Work the gens until you can't work them, then run. So many times, I see them get hesitant and stay hidden much longer than they need to be. When you get a solo que team of players that understand this, you win more than you don't. I played for the past few weeks as solo que survivor and lost almost every game where my other teammates tried to hide and avoid unnecessary risk. Every game where gens were popping while I was looping (I'm not a great looper - I can usually last just over a minute or so) was a win, usually 4 escapes.
I've played killer and survivor for years. The number one killer of a team is not usually the killer themselves, but the survivors not having the guts to get on the gen and focus on it. The second they hear a heartbeat, they run. That is a loss every time. I don't have an SWF. If I'm on a gen and hear a heartbeat, I usually have taken notice if another survivor just got injured or the obsession is in chase. This means I can stay on the gen. If the heartbeat picks up, I may start to separate from the gen a bit and get ready to run. If it becomes clear he's not in chase, I start working towards distance. The minute I'm not in chase anymore, I hit gens. If I hear other gens roaring away, I avoid running the killer towards it. I don't want him to hear it even. If I go down, so be it. Maybe that gen pops while I'm being hooked.
Solo que issues is less about killer power and more about a total lack of understanding on how to win in DBD as survivor. The key to winning is being willing to stick that gen until it's done sometimes. Instead, I often see people hiding in bushes when I'm downed. Even though they are on the other side of the map. Total waste of time.
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My idea is a ping wheel. Playing Back4Blood you can easily access a wheel that allows you to mark a location, say stop, show objective, thumbs up, thumbs down, and a spray paint tag. If DbD implemented something like that they could have ping location visible within x meters, chase, hiding, going to unhook, healing, and repairing. Make it so some pings can be seen map wide and some are only visible when within 20m of the survivor that ping'd. The other option that would provide a lot of info and assist without buffing swf is the action icons.
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One thing i can think of is adding entity claws to all survivor's portaits and not just the obsession.
Like the obsession gets what we have now and the others only get the small claws.
That way you will know when a teammate is in chase which will help soloq and only save swf a "he's on me"
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Basekit Kindred and optional voicechat.
There's this notion that every survivor would suddenly become a god with voice comms, but I can't think of a single game where every player joins voice chat or uses them coherently until they get to higher ELO, and most players aren't there.
And I can say from experience, most players that transition to comp take weeks to months of work before their voice comms are useful or don't throw games against comp/high ELO killers. Simply saying "he's on me" or "I'm on the gen by shack" are not useful or descriptive comms.
So my vote would be to add those things. There are times when survivors need to say "let's heal by gallows, the killer isn't committing away from this 3 gen. Then split main and town." That's how you have to play against a higher ELO killer to win. You can't do that in solo queue as currently constructed. You just have to hope everyone is on the same page. It breaks down.
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The problem with separate game modes is that there is no way to stop people from swapping between the two. It's part of why I could no longer enjoy Overwatch.
With Overwatch, Quickplay was dominated by smurfs, ranked folks practicing and people refusing to do the objective because "It's just quickplay". Ranked, or "Competitive", wasn't much better since it was all sweat.
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Others have said, and I agree, that status icons would probably be the best way, I'd recommend some sort of quick-chat as well so that you can alert your team of things and what you're doing.
As for the games turning out better there's no real way for the devs to make that happen since the game is so reliant on the fact that the 4 survivors must work together in some way since its a 4v1. It's like how sometimes you'll be playing and loop the killer for a long time and no generators will be done, but when you're hooked you see that the other survivors are crouching around the map, breaking totems, and hiding in lockers. There's no real way to prevent people from doing that without making SWF crazy overpowered, and that's where the issue really lies. I can guarantee you playing with at least two friends makes the game 500% more fun in most cases because you can communicate with your team properly and don't have people doing stupid stuff like sitting in lockers or all rushing the first downed guy and dying immediately, you can also let them know "Hey, don't heal me, I have Resilience!" instead of a default Dwight main chasing you through the entire map trying to heal you making you stop running 106 different times.
In other words, there's honestly not a lot that can be done regarding solo-q and making people be smart about their plays because even if the status icons and some form of quick-chat was added there's no guarantee that some people wouldn't just ignore it completely which would make any change useless. Addressing it in some way is better than doing nothing though so I hope that the devs can at least try to implement something in the very near future.
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To help solo survivors out, they need to add more categories into the MMR system. I solo q a lot and rarely swf. My survivor MMR rating is tanked b/c i die a ton due to my team not getting gens done, multiple players going for the unhook, any other number of things which were mentioned above.
The fact that MMR only tracks kills/escapes has ruined the experience for solo q and the casual killers. Even at the high end of MMR a lot of survivors complain that they only see Nurse or Blight when they play. MMR should be calculating all skill based stats instead of a "proxy" stat which "represents" skill.
What should have been designed is MMR starting as it is, then every month or so they add another stat to the calculation. Then give MMR some time to kick in and player base to adjust. Rinse & repeat until all the meaningful stats are included. It's always been a horrible idea to only look at kills/escapes to determine matchups.
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