What Exactly *Can* Be Done To Help Solo Survivors?

I'm not missing it, I just don't agree with it. How would it be horrible & toxic if you aren't using it? I hate the assumption that voice chat would be horrible when it hasn't ever even been tested in this game. When other games have it (and yes some people are toxic in those games too) and they more often than not help a team out rather than hurt them. The pros would outweigh the negatives. Of course it would address a lot of the problems happening in solo que. Knowing what killer it is early on, knowing who is being chased and who is doing which gen, letting your team know you're being tunneled and to do gens, when to go for saves, etc.

You say voice chat brings uncontrollable factors, but the same can be said for literally every other game that employs voice chat. It would definitely alter data since people would at the very least, try it out once. Acting like everyone is toxic and voice chat is fundamentally awful and not going to work, is just counterproductive. There has been no testing of it in this game.

Do you get all of that information if you play in servers where it's very likely not everyone speaks the same language? Do you get it if your teammates don't bother to use the voice chat, or don't own a microphone, or own one of such poor quality that you're not quite sure what they're saying?

Do you get to convey that information yourself if you don't own a microphone, or have too much noise pollution to use one properly, or if you have any facet to your voice that would invite harassment?

Do you either get to use or convey that information if you've had to mute the team?

And after we've cut out all of those players from using this new feature... have we fixed the lack of information to all players? You say the same is true of other games, but I can say two things to that- first, those games aren't suffering from the balance issues a lack of communication is causing for DBD specifically, but more importantly, those games have other, non-voice information tools.

Just to be clear, my take here is specifically about fixing solo queue. It may be that voice chat would have some pros in other areas, but when it comes to fixing the lack of information that solo queue suffers from, it is not fit for purpose as a solution, period.

It's pretty simple actually. Create a new game mode for SWF ,and leave "solo queue" as being only solo, or maybe let you queue with 1 friend (but make it so the other 2 have to be solo on the team).

Then, you have 2 separate queues, and you balance them differently. Similar to how games like CS:GO non-ranked play gives you more money and free armor, it's a different experience. Similar to how DotA 2 has turbo mode which gives you free XP and gold and makes the game much faster. Similar to how LoL used to balance (when they had it) 3v3 and 5v5 differently, by having abilities of characters simply function differently depending on the game mode.

You balance the game differently such that it is fair for everyone depending on which queue they join. There are many ways they can do this. Simplest being perks, maybe in the SWF vs killer mode, survivors can only pick 2 perks, but the killer gets 6. Or maybe gens take a bit longer, or the killer gets a little bit of movement speed boost (permanent 5% extra speed?)

For the solo mode, maybe the survivors get a few perks for free basekit, like free kindred and bond. Maybe their hook timer get's paused if the killer is near, or maybe they don't even HAVE a hook timer, Gens go a bit faster. Hex auras get revealed after a certain amount of time like NOED.

There are tons of ways they can fix things that are relatively easy.

1). Let us see each other perks in lobby. If I'm running inner strength and see someone running a boon build for example, I'll just trade inner strength for something else and vice versa. If I'm running quad boon build and see someone has a totem hunter load out, I would want to switch to a different build. "But it would lead to lobby dodging!" Who cares? People do that now.

2). Status Icons. Let me see what my teammates are doing.

3). Ping system. People say we need voice chat, but I think a ping system would work for this game better.

They could steal pings and status icons from VHS. Would help.

Nerf tunneling and camping. Nerf gen regression perk stacking. And nerf Nurse, Blight, and Spirit who shouldn't be as strong as they are if they were S/A tiers before all these Survivor nerfs. Hag could probably be thrown on that pile to, but like she is almost as rare as Twins so I wouldn't really rally for that till people start abusing that unfun, miserable creation that has been left unchecked for so long simply cause people aren't interested in playing her.

Well, coordination, yeah, that's something solo will never have

I dont get the issue. It's simple... add voice comms and balance the game around the assumption that survivors are communicating. Either folks decide to use it or continue with self inflicted punishment by getting steamrolled by killers.

Under what circumstances would someone be unable to use voice comms? And what percentage of people would be unable to benefit from voice? You can't fix the game for everyone, period. But you can help most people.

Try out VHS for awhile with its built in voice comms and see how often they're used if you queue solo. I'd rather the effort go to icons

Basekit kindred without seeing the killers aura is my only idea. I guess that way it would be better to know that you can go get the unhook because without kindred I have wasted trips when someone would unhook as I get there.

Lobby dodging waste just a few seconds of people's time

Somthing like kindred baseline or those basic action icons. It would naturally make solos play more organized and just give them info a swf already would have

Yes but a lot of the poor tactical decision making comes from the lack of communication and information. There is a reason why SWFs typically do better than SoloQ (with a nearly 30% higher escape rate). They can share information when it is needed, that SoloQ would otherwise not have. People have made countless suggestions that BHVR just ignores. HUD UI to show what people are doing, basekit Kindred, etc; simple quality of life to make the game a lot better.

Plus having SoloQ up to the level of SWF means that BHVR can start to balance the game a lot more accordingly, youll get more difficult teams, but those killers stuck in the gutter from how weak they are might actually be made useful for once, and we all know killers like Sadako really need it.

Then again, with a name like "Delete SWF", I dont know what to expect, and I dont mean that in a rude way. People should be allowed to play with their friends in a game, they shouldnt remove an entire feature because you dislike facing strong teams, which is what your name would imply.

No multiplayer game can be balanced around random teams who might or might not work together as they should. The same is true for every other team based multiplayer game. Random people are random people. It's a gamble. There is nothing odd about this. It's just how things are.

A better tutorial will go a long way in helping newer players and teach them the importance of things like time management, situational awareness and objective importance. I'm not particularly fond of making perks basekit because sure, you could give everyone a free kindred but why not give them a free bond, alert, etc? A big aspect about survivor that a lot of people don't get is information. Information is vital to survivor gameplay and just handing free information perks to people kinda cheapens the experience a little. The action icons could be a good compromise but they'd have to be simple because I don't need to know about EVERYTHING that everyone is doing.

Soloq is kind of a hard thing to balance around but teaching new players good fundamentals will go a long way in helping the experience.

You're very original. I already spoke of this before. I have and I. DON'T. CARE.

revert 6.1 😕

Language barrier, lack of microphone, social anxiety, any facet to your voice that would invite harassment, noise pollution in your area, lack of interest, hell, even not being able to speak at all.

It's not a statistically insignificant number of people who would gain no benefit from voice comms, and if your solution only works for some people some of the time, when the stars align and everyone in the lobby has a microphone that they're willing to use and are literally able to communicate with the other three players, it is not a good solution. In fact, it's not a solution at all, since the problem clearly still exists in all but the perfect scenarios I just described- even one player in a lobby who can't benefit from voice comms means the exchange of information is not functioning.

Passive information will always be the better direction to look, because it doesn't require anything from you or your teammates except the ability to read a UI.

You're right in that its not a clear cut solution to solo que however it would help a lot. Just because people suffer from language barriers or any of those reasons you listed, that just sounds like a problem for them and isn't enough of a reason to hold back voice chat for all the other players who would actually use it. Like I said, introduce voice chat and give people an option to disable/opt out or even mute specific players. If you don't want to speak, thats fine. You can still listen and gain info. If voice chat isn't for you & you like playing immersed and w/o talking, then just stay out of it. Let the people who want to actually use a tool that would help communication, use it.

Until I see voice chat experimented with, saying all this means nothing because we have no data to go on besides what has been a staple in other games. & yes other games do have in-game tools to use for comms but those games heavily rely on call outs and voice comms over pings/in-game indicators. Not that they're useless, just that voice comm is a lot more useful.

Voice chat should be an option and thats my stance. Even if it doesn't apply to 100% of the playerbase, it would still be a great tool for the people who would want to use it. & that doesn't mean we can't keep addressing solo que if its still so incredibly bad. I just want an experimental phase on PTB, I get being cautious and worrisome but not even trying something and avoiding it like the plague while not knowing how truly constructive or helpful it could be, is not the right decision IMO.

You're still missing the point, friend- this isn't about the personal experience of any given player, it's about the balance issues that arise from solo queue players not having information. If you implement something that only sometimes gives information to some players, the problem has not been fixed.

It's not about whether you personally like or can use voice comms. If anyone in your lobby doesn't or can't, that means you have the current solo queue problem again, and it has not been fixed.

If someone opts out of voice chat, you have the same current solo queue problem. If you have any situation other than every player in the match liking and using voice comms, you have the current solo queue problem.

At bare minimum, voice chat would have to be implemented after the kind of changes that would actually fix the problem. It's not a solution and can't be implemented as one, if you want it that's totally fine but it's a separate thing to fixing solo queue.

And let's be honest, "any facet to your voice that would invite harrassment" includes "sounding female".

I remember the chat in League of Legends, and everything I've heard about games with voice comms has me quite certain I shall never use them when playing solo.