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SWF and it's current impact on DBD
Below is simply my own opinion on the current state of DbD. I am not intending it to be a negative post and in fact only want to see this game improve. I have been playing this game as both killer and survivor for little under 600 hours now and to some that will be a lot and to others not so much, and that's fine. I'm simply highlighting that I have some decent experience with the game at this point. Also let me say right away that I am not against SWF but I do feel that it has resulted in some issues for DBD.
To my knowledge the dev's themselves have said that the game was origonally designed around survivors having no way to communicate other than gestures. I believe I read somewhere that this was to enhance the atmosphere of the game more. As far as I understand it, they then realised that it didn't make sense in the long run to have an online multiplayer game that people could not join with their friends and so rather than re-work the core gameplay to fit the inclusion of SWF, the just added it as is. in my opinion, since this decision, the game has become almost impossibe to balance successfully and as a result on average feels much more frustrating to play than it needs to be for both killer and survivor.
The inclusion of this gamemode changes how the core gameplay of DBD is approached. For example, a number of perks were made redundant (for both killer and survivor). Just to name a few:
Perks like Bond/Empathy are not needed to keep track of your teammates locations when you already have voice chat.
Likewise perks like Premonition/Spine Tingle are not needed because team can keep you posted on current killer location.
Killer perks designed to make it harder for survivors to locate each other are made useless, such as Knockout/The 3rd Seal.
And Hex totems are being destroyed much faster, as all it takes is one survivor to see it then they can relay its position to the other survivors.
If SWF fit the current core gameplay mechanics of DBD then their would be no issue, and more importantly no need to keep premade groups hidden from killers in the pre-game lobby. By all means a killer in a lobby should be able to see if they are up against premades so they they can then plan their perk/addon loadouts accordingly to make up for the added communication four other players now have. But the reason this will not be added is because of the high number of killers than would just see the premade group and dodge. Again this would be a perfectably reasonable reaction as with the games current state, playing vs SWF is just an extra hastle that for many hinders their enjoyment of the game.
This issue becomes a vicious cycle. Killers complain about the unfair advantage survivors now have and yet premades cant be shown to killers or they may dodge lobbies and then survivors have the new issue of crazy long queue times.
You cant even seperate the two modes, so that players can queue for a solo only mode because premades will suffer with a lack of people willing to play killer, and again I am not for removing SWF. I'm simply highlighting how it fundamentally seems to clash with gameplay.
As a result we have killers being buffed to try give them more presence when dealing with premades, yet this makes solo survivors lives much more difficult. And so the dev's buff the survivors to compensate and so the issue just keeps getting recycled.
It's for reasons like this that like I said at the beginning, this game needs to either be reworked to accomodate the inclusion of SWF groups or else this game will continue to be held back from being a truly enjoyable game. I have no clue as to what they could currently do but I hope they figure it out in the near future. And as a long time fan of this game, who fully intends to keep playing, I of course want to see Behaviour succeed!
Comments
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They don't care and they won't care until they implement dedicated servers, thrust 4 man SWFs on killers unprepared for them and watch their queues explode after about two weeks. I give it two weeks as most will try and persevere. But even the most diehard will inevitably succumb to the stress of knowing that the next game is yet more of the same with no reprieve.
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As I posted on the Steam forums:
The logical solution would be to add voice chat in-game, thereby killing solos, and balancing around that as the baseline. I have no idea why they haven't other than some stubborn attachment to the original creative vision for the game.
The thing is most survivors already play in SWF squads. From watching the biggest streamers it's clear that the players already have de-facto killed the idea of 4 random survivors unable to communicate outwitting a killer.
The devs need to admit the truth.
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Probably because they have the actual numbers of solo players and SWF players and it’s not the way you picture it, why add something to a game that people can already access if they want it, only way adding voice chat to the game could be balanced is it being proxsimity based and heard by the killer, and the. People would go back to their current coms, it’s a pointless waste of time and resources.Okapi said:As I posted on the Steam forums:
The logical solution would be to add voice chat in-game, thereby killing solos, and balancing around that as the baseline. I have no idea why they haven't other than some stubborn attachment to the original creative vision for the game.
The thing is most survivors already play in SWF squads. From watching the biggest streamers it's clear that the players already have de-facto killed the idea of 4 random survivors unable to communicate outwitting a killer.
The devs need to admit the truth.
not sure that the majority of people are in a SWF squad at all, and I’ve been messaged by killers after a match saying nice SWF, even though I had no idea who these people were and wasn’t communicating with them at all.
Killers wilm call call any random group that plays a certain way a SWF group when in fact it isn’t at all.
Id love to see an option button after a match that asks the killer was this a SWF match or a random match and see what % they actually get right at the end of it, at the moment they guess based on loading and game play and some case FL, but they don’t really know.
Also non of my friends play this game and the friends I’ve made via DBD and played SWF with don’t use coms at all during game play, the coms really aren’t the advantage at all.2 -
@Paddy4583 The devs in a stream a whiles back they said that 70% of matches contain SWF groups. SWF is the large majority of survivors. I'd wager most solo survivors are killer mains and people new to the game.
@Paddy4583 said:
Probably because they have the actual numbers of solo players and SWF players and it’s not the way you picture it, why add something to a game that people can already access if they want it, only way adding voice chat to the game could be balanced is it being proxsimity based and heard by the killer, and the. People would go back to their current coms, it’s a pointless waste of time and resources.You don't need to add proximity chat. The killer doesn't have to hear the voice chat for it to be balanced. The devs could do other things to balance around voice chat like buffing killer stealth so killers can hide better from groups and adding a secondary objective that's more difficult than generators to slow down the game.
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@Okapi said:
As I posted on the Steam forums:The logical solution would be to add voice chat in-game, thereby killing solos, and balancing around that as the baseline. I have no idea why they haven't other than some stubborn attachment to the original creative vision for the game.
The thing is most survivors already play in SWF squads. From watching the biggest streamers it's clear that the players already have de-facto killed the idea of 4 random survivors unable to communicate outwitting a killer.
The devs need to admit the truth.
I like that idea actually. Allow survivors to talk to each other in-game, eradicating the voice comms advantage that SWF groups have and buff killers appropriately to balance it.
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@captainlongshlong said:
I like that idea actually. Allow survivors to talk to each other in-game, eradicating the voice comms advantage that SWF groups have and buff killers appropriately to balance it.They already are quasi-doing this by stating their intention to buff solos to SWF levels. The thing is any buff they give to solos would also apply to SWF squads. The game has no way currently to track SWF survivors once the match begins. So unless they give voice chat to everyone the gap will always exist and the game will never be balanced. Anything they do right now will either hurt killers or solo survivors. I don't see them trying SWF-only nerfs even if they could track SWF. It would be a repeat of the Freddy and Exhaustion Nerf review bombs all over again if they did.
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@Okapi said:
@Paddy4583 The devs in a stream a whiles back they said that 70% of matches contain SWF groups. SWF is the large majority of survivors. I'd wager most solo survivors are killer mains and people new to the game.@Paddy4583 said:
Probably because they have the actual numbers of solo players and SWF players and it’s not the way you picture it, why add something to a game that people can already access if they want it, only way adding voice chat to the game could be balanced is it being proxsimity based and heard by the killer, and the. People would go back to their current coms, it’s a pointless waste of time and resources.You don't need to add proximity chat. The killer doesn't have to hear the voice chat for it to be balanced. The devs could do other things to balance around voice chat like buffing killer stealth so killers can hide better from groups and adding a secondary objective that's more difficult than generators to slow down the game.
I think the point he's trying to make is that people want the game balance solely around the chance that there is a 4Man on comms. They don't care about the 2/3 mans.
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@SenzuDuck said:
I think the point he's trying to make is that people want the game balance solely around the chance that there is a 4Man on comms. They don't care about the 2/3 mans.But if you add voice chat in game everyone will be on coms. Sure you'll get people who wont talk but at least you can tell them stuff like the killer's location, totem placements, gen statuses that as a solo player you would be unable to do.
If people want to play as a team with voice coms the game should balance around that. Not doing so is asking people whom play killer to have a not fun time.
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@Okapi said:
@SenzuDuck said:
I think the point he's trying to make is that people want the game balance solely around the chance that there is a 4Man on comms. They don't care about the 2/3 mans.But if you add voice chat in game everyone will be on coms. Sure you'll get people who wont talk but at least you can tell them stuff like the killer's location, totem placements, gen statuses that as a solo player you would be unable to do.
If people want to play as a team with voice coms the game should balance around that. Not doing so is asking people whom play killer to have a not fun time.
Only issue I see with this is how to correctly implement it? For example what would stop premades from choosing to simply not use the in-game voice coms and just stick to discord where they can continue to share game info privately?
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@captainlongshlong
yes because having access to voice comms means everyone is gonna use them! so once we have that then we can buff the ######### out of killers!0 -
@Daneryn said:
Only issue I see with this is how to correctly implement it? For example what would stop premades from choosing to simply not use the in-game voice coms and just stick to discord where they can continue to share game info privately?Well if they're a 3 man team that refuses to talk to the solo dude well that's their choice. If I'm playing Overwatch and no ones is talking to each other and we happen to face off against a 6-stack that is well that's our choice and we should accept it's our own fault if we loose. We wouldn't complain to Blizzard to balance the game around 6 solos not talking to each other. If Blizzard did that the 6-stacks would only become more powerful.
The same situation that this game is in. Behvaiour balances around 4 solos who don't talk with other which only makes SWF have an easier time. But unlike Overwatch it isn't an equal sized team of solo survivors facing off against a team of SWF it's 4 survivors facing off against one killer. A player who is always a solo and can't talk with anyone. That person is currently getting screwed over by the game right now.
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@ Okapi:
I completely agree that solo survivors are getting the short end of the stick in this case, and I take your point about 4 man SWF's. I guess I was more so addressing the idea of proximity voice coms in game where the killer could also hear survivors, but that might have been suggested by someone else so sorry for the confusion! '^^
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@captainlongshlong said:
@Okapi said:
As I posted on the Steam forums:The logical solution would be to add voice chat in-game, thereby killing solos, and balancing around that as the baseline. I have no idea why they haven't other than some stubborn attachment to the original creative vision for the game.
The thing is most survivors already play in SWF squads. From watching the biggest streamers it's clear that the players already have de-facto killed the idea of 4 random survivors unable to communicate outwitting a killer.
The devs need to admit the truth.
I like that idea actually. Allow survivors to talk to each other in-game, eradicating the voice comms advantage that SWF groups have and buff killers appropriately to balance it.
I'm hesitant as I don't want a child screaming profanities at me, but I'd be up for additional ways to communicate to be added to the game.
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@Okapi said:
@Daneryn said:
Only issue I see with this is how to correctly implement it? For example what would stop premades from choosing to simply not use the in-game voice coms and just stick to discord where they can continue to share game info privately?Well if they're a 3 man team that refuses to talk to the solo dude well that's their choice. If I'm playing Overwatch and no ones is talking to each other and we happen to face off against a 6-stack that is well that's our choice and we should accept it's our own fault if we loose. We wouldn't complain to Blizzard to balance the game around 6 solos not talking to each other. If Blizzard did that the 6-stacks would only become more powerful.
The same situation that this game is in. Behvaiour balances around 4 solos who don't talk with other which only makes SWF have an easier time. But unlike Overwatch it isn't an equal sized team of solo survivors facing off against a team of SWF it's 4 survivors facing off against one killer. A player who is always a solo and can't talk with anyone. That person is currently getting screwed over by the game right now.
I'm not sure why players mention SWF and their only focus is on voice communication. Voice is only as good as what you make it. If anyone has any experience with in game voice communication with random players it is unorganized, uncooperative and really a bunch of noise. You will have more randoms complaining at their 'team' through the voice communication than anything.
Only SWF who group up purposely with an understanding of one another in their skill, knowledge and role within the game. There is no way adding in game voice balances out anything, all it does is give players an in
the game an option which most will find better to simply keep muted as randoms communicate as their title suggest. A bunch of random blah blah blah.My suggestion for SWF balance has nothing to do with voice, but limiting their ability to abuse in game perks/items/offerings balanced around solo team play and survival. Put balance around random players and give that to organized SWF teams who can abuse that balance and you have what SWF are capable of doing today.
Let's keep bringing up SWF and the obvious game breaking abilities they bring into the game, but I highly doubt anything will be done.
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Solo almost every game. Even if they add comms I hope it comes with the ability to opt out. Nothing breaks my immersion like a 10yr whining in background audio.2
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So to be clear you think they are making killers too strong against solo's in the process of dealing with SWF? It was a lot to read so I just skimmed.
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Yeah, sorry I was referring to To the idea that all SWF are a 4 man team with comsSenzuDuck said:@Okapi said:
@Paddy4583 The devs in a stream a whiles back they said that 70% of matches contain SWF groups. SWF is the large majority of survivors. I'd wager most solo survivors are killer mains and people new to the game.@Paddy4583 said:
Probably because they have the actual numbers of solo players and SWF players and it’s not the way you picture it, why add something to a game that people can already access if they want it, only way adding voice chat to the game could be balanced is it being proxsimity based and heard by the killer, and the. People would go back to their current coms, it’s a pointless waste of time and resources.You don't need to add proximity chat. The killer doesn't have to hear the voice chat for it to be balanced. The devs could do other things to balance around voice chat like buffing killer stealth so killers can hide better from groups and adding a secondary objective that's more difficult than generators to slow down the game.
I think the point he's trying to make is that people want the game balance solely around the chance that there is a 4Man on comms. They don't care about the 2/3 mans.
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I believe we will see in game comms added at some point because think back to all the things they've said no to in the past like in game comms -
Dedicated servers? No.
Killer clown? No.
DbD on Nintendo Switch? No.
Maybe I'm being too optimistic but their track record of saying no only to do it later is pretty established at this point. I just wonder if it will come soon enough or if it's too late.2 -
They could fix it by making killers choose to face SWF or not and also give them more BP in return because they decided to play with an handicap.
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@Okapi said:
As I posted on the Steam forums:The logical solution would be to add voice chat in-game, thereby killing solos, and balancing around that as the baseline. I have no idea why they haven't other than some stubborn attachment to the original creative vision for the game.
What will prevent them from still using Discord, Skype,... ?
And therefore keeping the advantage of telepathy ?The thing is most survivors already play in SWF squads. From watching the biggest streamers it's clear that the players already have de-facto killed the idea of 4 random survivors unable to communicate outwitting a killer.
The devs need to admit the truth.
That's well puts !
Personally i think they should simply nerf the SWF's repairing efficiency to be on par with competent solo teams.
With all the "data" devs gather for years, i'm sure it would not be that hard to try.
A lot of differents solutions for this specific problem were made since this game's release.
And even with the numerous PTB they launched, not once they tested anything to fix the SWF problem.0 -
I don't know what the problem with swf i generally like swf as it makes camping and tunneling more viable especially overaltruistic swf groups.1
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@Plu The problem with that is that no one will opt-in. Extra BPs isn't worth the headache honestly and, eventually, even those that take the bait would opt-out. This would drive SWF que times up which will lead them to re-queing until they are put in a lobby with their friends, driving killer que times up, and bringing the imbalance back.Plu said:They could fix it by making killers choose to face SWF or not and also give them more BP in return because they decided to play with an handicap.
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@RWoodrow said:
Plu said:They could fix it by making killers choose to face SWF or not and also give them more BP in return because they decided to play with an handicap.
@Plu The problem with that is that no one will opt-in. Extra BPs isn't worth the headache honestly and, eventually, even those that take the bait would opt-out. This would drive SWF que times up which will lead them to re-queing until they are put in a lobby with their friends, driving killer que times up, and bringing the imbalance back.
Yeah i guess, but that's the only quick fix/bandaid fix i could think of, since devs won't change the entire system, they are WAY too lazy for that.
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Yeah ofc, it's obvious isn't it? Currently it's kinda balanced to verse solos, but as soon as the devs keep nerfing survivors to the point that swf is balanced there is no point to play solo Q anymore but only for hatch escapes most of the timeBlueberry said:So to be clear you think they are making killers too strong against solo's in the process of dealing with SWF? It was a lot to read so I just skimmed.
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I'm pretty sure they're aware of the SWF Issue but are choosing to ignore it. That or they are working on a solution but wont let the community know which would also be a terrible move since It's brought up all day every day only to not be acknowledged.
There's been countless suggestions on the forums for years now but the only one we've gotten after so long is the hidden perks/add ons at end game which I'm grateful for, It shows they do listen. Now they need to keep that up and do a hell of a lot more.
I'm not going to suggest nerfing SWF because we all know the uproar that would cause, and besides people shouldn't be punished for playing with friends.But at the same time the Killer and solo survivors shouldn't be punished either at put at a disadvantage just because most players choose to play in groups.SWF is a necessity for the game, People want to play with friends. The days of Balancing the game around Solo in mid ranks are gone, the devs need to realize this. We already know it's very easy to rank up and we already know a group is stronger than the killers except 1 or 2. When SWF is the majority it's time to start looking at the other two player bases and buffing accordingly.
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Another SWF post.... You pretty much summed up all the other posts before you.. No offense this has all been said.
@Daneryn said:
You cant even seperate the two modes, so that players can queue for a solo only mode because premades will suffer with a lack of people willing to play killer, and again I am not for removing SWF. I'm simply highlighting how it fundamentally seems to clash with gameplay.I was thinking though... They could actually pull this off now. Maybe not at this instance, but when Dedicated Servers come in.
Bascially... Leave the core of the game the way it is now. Add in the Ladder system the Devs mentioned awhile back. However, make it a seperate queue, solo only, and anonymous (meaning people can't see who or what is in their lobbies, in order to dodge).... Basically make it so you get big penalties if you dodge a ladder lobby.
There done... You get a Ladder Try Hard Queue for solo players... One that survivors can't dodge because they can't see if their friends are in the lobby or not. One that killers can't dodge cause they can't see anyone in the lobby but four anonymous survivors. They can try hard and compare all their stats together...
Then the casuals can stay in the current system which stays as is, other then the current buffing / nerfing actions that already happen.
Barely any changes to the system as is... They are adding in dedicated servers anyways.. with the talk of ladders... Just make it so you can't play SWF in the ladders and people who want to play regular games still can, and those who want to pit their skill on the ladder have a good / fair solo queue to do so.
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I will never play kiler again until SWF being balanced
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Nurses are killing this game
Saying this as a 800 hrs solo survivor and 1k hrs killer
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Nurse is finexBULLETx said:Nurses are killing this game
Saying this as a 800 hrs solo survivor and 1k hrs killer
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The problem with SWF is too many killers think they are God's gift to DBD that can't take an L. Man up and play the game. If you lose you lose. Yea I admit, toxic SWF groups that gloat or throw salt at the end game shouldn't be a thing, but SWF itself is not as big a problem as everyone makes it out to be. Most SWF groups I come across are just friends playing together. I can count on 1 hand the number of Depip Squads I've faced that absolutely destroyed me, but I wasn't salty about it and said GG at the end of the game. In fact, I can point to mistakes I made during those games that cost me. I didn't lose because it was an SWF, I lost because I screwed up at key moments.
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@Blueberry said:
So to be clear you think they are making killers too strong against solo's in the process of dealing with SWF? It was a lot to read so I just skimmed.No worries. And not exclusively, but that is partially what is happening. Like I said, I think both killer and survivor go back and forth in regards getting placed in a stronger position game wise, because on a fundamental level, buffs/nerfs are not being done solely on the basis of results that involve only solo gameplay, but rather SWF statistics are also being considered (because their is no way to track SWF matches separately so these game stats get mixed in with solo survivor stats, such as win rates/escapes, etc) I believe that because of this the basis on information the game gets patched on is arguably skewed.
That is unless I am wrong and they do indeed have a way to track premade game progress separately.
@TheBean said:
Bascially... Leave the core of the game the way it is now. Add in the Ladder system the Devs mentioned awhile back. However, make it a seperate queue, solo only, and anonymous (meaning people can't see who or what is in their lobbies, in order to dodge).... Basically make it so you get big penalties if you dodge a ladder lobby.There done... You get a Ladder Try Hard Queue for solo players... One that survivors can't dodge because they can't see if their friends are in the lobby or not. One that killers can't dodge cause they can't see anyone in the lobby but four anonymous survivors. They can try hard and compare all their stats together...
Then the casuals can stay in the current system which stays as is, other then the current buffing / nerfing actions that already happen.
Barely any changes to the system as is... They are adding in dedicated servers anyways.. with the talk of ladders... Just make it so you can't play SWF in the ladders and people who want to play regular games still can, and those who want to pit their skill on the ladder have a good / fair solo queue to do so.
I really like this idea! They could even go a step further and make a SWF only ladder, where for example you need to be premade with at least 1 other player. This would also give killers who enjoy the extra challenge a chance to test their skills.
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@Daneryn said:
@Blueberry said:
So to be clear you think they are making killers too strong against solo's in the process of dealing with SWF? It was a lot to read so I just skimmed.No worries. And not exclusively, but that is partially what is happening. Like I said, I think both killer and survivor go back and forth in regards getting placed in a stronger position game wise, because on a fundamental level, buffs/nerfs are not being done solely on the basis of results that involve only solo gameplay, but rather SWF statistics are also being considered (because their is no way to track SWF matches separately so these game stats get mixed in with solo survivor stats, such as win rates/escapes, etc) I believe that because of this the basis on information the game gets patched on is arguably skewed.
That is unless I am wrong and they do indeed have a way to track premade game progress separately.
@TheBean said:
Bascially... Leave the core of the game the way it is now. Add in the Ladder system the Devs mentioned awhile back. However, make it a seperate queue, solo only, and anonymous (meaning people can't see who or what is in their lobbies, in order to dodge).... Basically make it so you get big penalties if you dodge a ladder lobby.There done... You get a Ladder Try Hard Queue for solo players... One that survivors can't dodge because they can't see if their friends are in the lobby or not. One that killers can't dodge cause they can't see anyone in the lobby but four anonymous survivors. They can try hard and compare all their stats together...
Then the casuals can stay in the current system which stays as is, other then the current buffing / nerfing actions that already happen.
Barely any changes to the system as is... They are adding in dedicated servers anyways.. with the talk of ladders... Just make it so you can't play SWF in the ladders and people who want to play regular games still can, and those who want to pit their skill on the ladder have a good / fair solo queue to do so.
I really like this idea! They could even go a step further and make a SWF only ladder, where for example you need to be premade with at least 1 other player. This would also give killers who enjoy the extra challenge a chance to test their skills.
Ah I see.
While SWF is one of the core issues I still think even solo survivors are way stronger than killers bar exceptions like nurse etc anyway. If solo survivors and a killer both played a perfect game hypothetically, the killer would lose every single time. To me that's not very balanced. Now the reason we don't see this as much is because the average survivor isn't very good. Even though the average isn't very good I still think it would be very bad to balance around assuming they will play bad, which is what we currently have, hence the imbalance. My opinion anyway from a lot of hours.
I think the best solution is split ranked and unranked que's with SWF only allowed in unranked (maybe allow only up to a 2man SWF in ranked possibly). Obviously for this to work we would need rank rewards and for ranking up to be made much harder.
I don't believe the devs plan of bringing the solo survivor up to SWF levels is ever going to work. They would need to buff killers exponentially and I just cannot see them ever buffing killers the amount needed based on their past 3 years of balance. I also simply think this wouldn't make the game as fun as you'd have less surprises and jump scares.
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