Solo queue is utterly intolerable.

There's already a killer terror radius to tell where the killer is. There are also a lot of perks and add-ons to tell where the killer is. Let's not act like players are stupid.

The game was never designed for comms, despite allowing them through third party software. Allowing them at base creates its own balancing issues, especially in regards to those who opt out. The thing about requests for those, pings, automated messages, etc is that you already have more than enough perks that can due the jobs of those things, and well at that. Kindred and Windows are extremely undervalued for the info they provide to solos, as well as Empathy, Bond, Aftercare, and even Alert.

Also its worth noting you only addressed the positives and negatives for your proposed change specifically for survivors: Its a pvp game. Every change to one side affects another, and things like basekit comms would hurt stealth killers even more than they already have been. CoH alone still hurts them disproportionately to this day, even with all of its nerfs, simply because it is a concept that nullifies most of the strengths their kits are designed around. Its always important to consider all aspects of changes and their affects on both sides before attempting to put them in the game, but especially when concerning basekit.

Voice chat can put the solo experience at an even worse disadvantage. Imagine how much harder it might be hearing Myer's breathing or Ghostface's cloak or Wraith's gurgle or a skill check sound notification or a hex totem burning or the killer's terror radius at the earliest opportunity, with a loud team mate in your ear. Sounds are important in this game. At least with a swf you can choose your team mates, you're all invested in the team's survival, and you can tell them to keep quiet with no hard feelings. Try telling some aggro random you got matched with that they're being too loud and they'll probably sandbag you until you die.

I'm a solo player and I get it. My escape rate used to be 1 in every 4-5 games and it's now 1 in every 8 - 10 games. But voice chat involves putting even more trust in the randoms I get matched with than I usually do, and they let me down enough as it is. What I need is a basekit Kindred, so I know who is going for the unhook and whether it needs to be me.

I can't imagine a scenario where we'd have voice chat with hot mics for everyone and no mute option. The comms would theoretically improve with player skill, but BHVR is terrified of survivors being able to optimize and play skillfully, so we'll most likely never see any sort of ranked ladder.

Thats a weird way to introduce yourself. But ok. Who am i to judge?

Anyway, Ingame Voice chat is the only thing that can bring Solos to SWF levels. Everything else has failed so far, so why not try the voice chat for once? And yes, i´m sitting in europe, i´m aware that there might be issues with the language barrier. But that could be simply circumveited by adding a "preferred language" option. With several checkboxes.

matches are very mixed experiences - no doubt the rank reset is playing into this :)

But have you seen the upcoming new cosmetics? There's even a princess costume!

"could be buffed" is the issue. They won't. The Key/Mori issue was their litmus on whether they could handle game design decisions that require directly buffing and nerfing both sides evenly, and it took them months of excuses before falling back to a simple number adjustment.

Also I'm not going to say that info perks are as good as SWF, i'm saying that they are as good as solo queue needs, and SWF comms are an outlier beyond the game's design that has gone unchecked since its inception. They want to design things around no comms, but ignore that people are allowed to use them through other means. That has been a balancing discrepency in its very design since the moment people stopped having to lobby shop to play with their friends. They can have both swf and solo queue in the game, but it would be considerably smarter design wise to nerf specifically the potential of swf w/comms than it would be to try to bring solo up to that level and then need to rework entire core aspects of the game to try to achieve parity.

Also again, more focusing solely on the survivor perspective. The amount of QoL that killers of all skill levels could use is also massive, especially with how it gets directed by survivor changes. Its to the point that the across the board minor buffs get treated like they're single handedly ruining the game for survivors as a result, when at higher level they make absolutely no difference. The thing about making adjustments for low level play is that you have to make sure they can't be taken advantage of by better players, otherwise you end up with stuff like the basekit BT and OTR being used offensively instead of their anti-tunnel intentions. I don't fault anyone for overlooking things outside of their perspective, just when they ignore the issues of others because "they got theirs."

Just because people DECIDE to opt out of voice doesn't mean VC wouldn't improve the match quality for the people who do decide to use it.

If you can't use voice because you don't have a headset or microphone, well its 2022. That isn't a valid excuse to not bring VC to DbD. You can go buy one for very cheap, but again this is a YOU problem.

While you bring up a fair point of other perks giving very useful info to teammates, the idea & recommendation of having to bring those perks is null and dull. When in comparison to SWF, they get all that info just through comms, essentially letting them bring more 'meta' or powerful perks. While yes, we have those perks to help with info, by no means is that a rational solution to this topic because like I said, forcing solo players to bring certain perks for that info, means they lose out on some more useful or powerful perks they'd likely bring instead.

I just want to add - nothing has actually changed for solo queue, it's literally always been this bad since the very beginning. Even the worst players in terms of mechanical skill will perform drastically better when they can communicate with their team, it's simply the nature of the game.

lol it’s no longer 2016. SWF isn’t that strong anymore.

There are still situations that even with comms information is meaningless. Because now you have an array of perks which limit the accuracy and amount of information you have on the killer… meanwhile killers have aura -reading perks that are gained passively (Lethal, Scourge hook etc) so I reiterate, it is no longer 2016 when SWF may have been more at an advantage.

You have to balance around comms if you provide them with the expectation they will be used more often than not. That means you would be designing things to disadvantage people that don't use them specifically, or designing them around no comms knowingly giving people who use them a distinct advantage. Its one thing to allow it through other means, but directly implimenting it is directly sanctioning it: you arent allowed to ignore the elephant in the room any more because you pointed it out.

Also in regards to the perks, survivors don't need them. Perks for survivor are literally centered around either boosting your strengths or covering your weaknesses, none of them are required and none of the survivors have unique traits or abilities that they synergize with or against. They are literally your personal choice for how you want to improve your chances. Its not even addressing stuff like accessibility options being tied to them, its just wanting to be able to have more than 4 perks. Make Your Choice.

SWFs already use them, so whats the harm in letting solo players use those same tools or at the very LEAST, try it out? The biggest gripe I have with the VC debate is how after all these years, we still have NEVER had an experimental phase on the PTB or any real data to draw from, people just bring up hypotheticals all the time and this could have all been laid to rest awhile ago if they ever even bothered to toy with the idea of VC. If it didn't work out and proved to worsen matches or be hurtful to DbD, then disable it and move on.

Again, its 2022. If you don't want to use VC or don't have a microphone, thats entirely on that individual person. This whole 'people not using it' shouldn't even be a factor in the debate. If you don't want to use voice chat for whatever reason, thats on you. If I want to use voice comms with my 3 other solo teammates and even 1 of them decide to use it, its still a win. Because thats still better than the situation we've been in for YEARS.

Right, I don't think we need perks. But when you start saying 'hey you got all these info perks', it means very little considering every solo player knows SWFs get all those perks w/o having to even run them. And bringing solo survivors in line or even somewhat closer to SWF is what most of us want.

The reason I have no interest in using comms is because I have no interest in a torrent of verbal slurry being poured in my ear by enraged fourteen year olds who apparently all have carnal knowledge of my mother.

Y'know, like literally every other game that has voice comms.

That 1v1v1v1v1 comment is so flawed i'm still amazed they even made it. the 4 have the same objective, so they are not "vs" each other. If there was only allowed to be one survivor per match? maybe. But their goal is not mutually exclusive nor is it at odds with each other, so they are not in opposition in any way other than whether they want to sandbag or troll each other to boost their own chances unnecessarily. Its an extremely bad take on their own design.

The "harm" is that they have been a balancing outlier that has made the game unable to be properly balanced for ages. You also can't really try things like that out because then you will face massive backlash if you decide to take them away. And if you think people are ragequitting at the drop of a hat now? The average player can't even provide clear feedback without getting emotional as it is, all they would be doing is forcing themselves to roll it out for real.

And like ive said multiple times, many aspects of the game are designed specifically around NOT having access to communication. You're leaning pretty hard on that current year argument when this game refuses to even put in an FoV slider which I can literally go back and adjust in games like Doom and Quake. Not only that, but people can opt out because they don't want to communicate nor hear what their teammates have to say, and that will ALWAYS be a valid reason to not make it mandatory in game design.

And once again, you're going for the "SWF can do it, i want it too!" without considering either the implications or the false equivalence. SWFs don't get aura perks for free, they get similar info as aura perks through communication specifically without needing to use perk slots. They don't get full auras because one person has them, they have one person who can relay that information instead. There is a very big difference, especially since multiple people talking at once creates discordance. Its also part of the reason why SWFs that are organized designate people for different roles, so that one person can focus on information and coordination while the others work in tandem. Up to 4 people being able to relay that information to each other is NOT the same as all 4 having all of that information at all times.