SWF or premades should be nerfed for balance

You're right, I did not see where in your post you made the clarification between SWF and experienced SWF.

I still don't think assuming every 3-man and 4-man is very good is the best idea. I play survivor with 2 other friends and we're still mostly dying because even if it's possible to coordinate, we still don't because either we don't think to keep others informed, or we don't know the maps enough to go beyond "Where's the killer?" "Oh, he's, uh.. next to a tree." or "Near main building" "Sure, but like, what side?" "I don't know how to describe it". We're 3, by your logic we should have an unfair advantage, yet we don't outskill the killer.

At the end of the day, mmr does its thing, and will leave bad 3-men to be bad in low mmr and good 3-men to be good in higher mmr. Either they will, as you say, have such an advantage that they win easily, and then are facing better killers. Or they won't be that good after all and will be matched against killers that are well-suited to their skill level.

Assuming mmr works.

Which is why I think the true problem is mmr, or if we want to dig deeper, at the moment, the fact that survivor is not appealing enough as a role to have enough players to maintain a ratio in which the matchmaking system won't match bad killers with good survivors.

I think you're onto a good solution. That way it would not impede on the gameplay of survivors as a whole and it would not make the SWF's mmr artificially high, as it would still balance itself through escapes and deaths.

Another solution but that could be hard to implement is calculating an mmr specific to the group, where the game would make up a collective mmr it would calculate for your SWF, that would be updated with deaths and escapes. When you're playing solo, you'd have your own mmr, but when you join your friend's lobby, game recognizes them as your SWF buddies and keeps in memory that you have maybe a higher escape rate with them, so it switches to your collective mmr (that is theoretically higher).

That way, having for example a good escape streak with your buddies who keep you informed would not make your next 10 solo games miserable as your mmr is adjusting down again.

That's just an improvised idea though, yours is way more straightforward. :)

Perfect fix: buff solo-Q to the level of SWF then buff kkller to compensate.

I also vote for something to happen to SWFs. 4 man SWF bully squads quite literally break the game, and it shouldn't be allowed to exist. As far as I'm concerned, 4 man SWF is sanctioned cheating.

I would be okay with allowing duos, so the worst you'd get is 2 duos.

It is widely known that Solo Survivor is the weakest role. And no, I almost never complain about Solo-Survivor, because I never play SoloQ. As I said, I play with a friend (and obviously I do this to exploit, not because I know him for so long and just enjoy playing a game with a friend). Because this way, I only have to care for two randoms and not 3.

When I play Solo, I play Killer, if I have the time to endure the long queues.

And what could the devs even do about comms, assuming they wished to?

Unenforceable.

Most SWFs are beatable. But it is just super-easy to blame a loss on SWF, because sadly players in DBD are unable to accept that they might not played that good.

OP probably never had the thought "Hm, maybe I did not play as well as I thought".

What they should actually do is add comms to survivor lobbies so every group has the same benefit, then balance around that.

Yup

A more realistic measure would be to either let a killer have their choice of +20/-20 meter terror radius vs a SWF.

I have been begging for years now...

“A while back there was a bug that caused each survivors level to be shown above their heads for all survivors to see while grouped together before the match starts, what I suggest is much like that unintended bug, every survivors perks, item, add ons, and offering should be visible to all other survivors when waiting for the match to begin. This way solo players can coordinate with each other at least somewhat when going into a match.”

You do have a point, it really isn't the fairest thing, but can't do much so really nerf it.

You mean like supaalf with nurse? Or many other killers? :) For skilled players streaks are not that hard. Last time I heared there is already larger killer main streamer that is sad how weak survivors have become - making the game boring.

The difference between playing against 4 solo survivors and a 4 man swf is incredibly obvious when you watch any big name streamer. I see the same thing in my games. Show me that quote please.

There should be at most nothing higher than a 3% escape rate. Limiting swf to no character/item/perk/offering repeats would make for a better game experience for everyone.

"You're saying that the difference between facing a SWF and facing solos is obvious with big name streamers. Yes. Because they're at that high end of the spectrum the devs are talking about."

You assume I'm not playing against people who loop regularly with pixel perfect precision. You assume I don't regularly play survivors whose hours range from 2000-10,000.

-"Solo is miserable precisely because they have less choices of perks if they want to stand a chance since they have to bring aura perks or perks that help them not depend on others."

Limiting SWF groups so that they physically cannot become bully squads in no way affects solo players.

"Here you go."

Peanits has also been quoted as saying every killer has their own independent MMR. That is both false and misleading as we know that if you hit the 1600 MMR cap then all your killers are set to a minimum rating of1200 MMR.

The problem with statistics as that quote block indicates is that they can easily lead the untrained eye to misleading conclusions.

When the game sorted players by rank I was able to get very bad players to red rank 1 by giving them all the information they needed to make the right decisions when playing in a SWF. On their own they were essentially green or low purple rank with no ability to hit red ranks consistently.

When I played with a regular SWF group or red rank players we were able to get three players to escape in something like 80% of our matches or higher. We didn't even use many items and at the time I was a terrible looper but an amazing stealther (not a do nothing hide in a corner stealther but lose the killer mid chase multiple times per game so I dont get hooked type of stealth).

Ignoring my own experiences I will point you into the direction of the Marth Experiments. Without looking at the data I believe they had at least one data set where 80/100 killers they went against either lost a pip or did not get a pip. It should be noted that at the time Marth was not a very good survivor either (as he was a much better killer). If I remember correctly they had at least one set of games where they had fewer than 20 deaths for 100 games.

There is no need to allow people playing with voice coms to have such an insane potential advantage over solo players.

"You assume..."

I'm not assuming your mmr or your hours in any way. I'm talking about those streamers, not you personally.

"Limiting SWF groups so that they physically cannot become bully squads in no way affects solo players."

Might be a silly opinion, but I think you should not balance a game around the potential of a minority of people to be bully squads. It's like telling "From now on when playing Bubba you can't bring perks and addons because most Bubbas camp anyway". It's just silly.

For the Peanits stuff, I'm not going to accuse the devs of lying, so any doubts on the validity of their words is not an argument I really want to participate in.

"There is no need to allow people playing with voice coms to have such an insane potential advantage over solo players."

In most cases the average SWF is not that good. They're not better at chases, they don't have a better game sense, they don't have a better map knowledge than their solo counterparts. Sure, they have means of communication (SOMETIMES, because people SWF without comms often when they don't speak a common language well enough), but to be efficient that requires experience : landmarks to orientate themselves, constant updates on everyone, an overall strategy, the ability to actually coordinate rather than just relaying useless info or not being able to apply their plan because someone F's up. All that is learnt through experience.

So when I hear that SWF should be nerfed because even at low mmr they have the potential to be overpowered, I hear "SWF is overpowered at low mmr, because if they were high mmr they'd be so much better than low mmr solo/killer".

It's potential precisely because it's not actual.

Anyway. I don't think I'll change your opinion and I don't think you'll change mine.

Let's just agree to disagree and go our own way ?

It’s called The SWF double standard…..

Solo q needs to be buffed to be closer to SWF, because it’s a big difference.

SWF should not be nerfed to be closer to Solo q, because it’s not a big difference.

"I'm not going to accuse the devs of lying"

I never accused any dev or moderator of lying. Not being able to read data correctly is very easy in the case of statistics. This happens all the time when you gather the wrong statistics. I talked to the dev stat person in ~2017 or 2018 and realized they were gathering the wrong statistics a long time ago. I asked fewer than four questions and almost all the replies were : we don't track that stat. I asked one complicated question if they ever considered cross referencing one specific stat with another and the person was literally horrified saying that would be a month of work. I' was required to do more than I asked for in a less than four hour exam in college. Needless to say I did not get a very good impression of how the staff were handling statistics. Things might have changed since that time but I doubt they have a "math person" covering things.

Not knowing the correct answer and giving one you think is true means you are misinformed - not necessarily that you are a liar.

-"you should not balance a game around the potential of a minority of people to be bully squads"

This cuts both ways. Why did we lose the LF masks? Because a small minority were choosing to engage in abusive behavior. Game design should prevent all abusive behavior.

From a marketing perspective making people not be able to duplicate characters in a SWF has the potential for people to buy more characters. From a fair play perspective it's a rule they use in tournaments so that you can't hide how many times which Claudette has been on the hook.

Not being able to bring 4 toolboxes is a good idea from a fair play sense. Why? Many killers will just immediately dodge that lobby anyway. Most tournaments do not allow items to be repeated as it makes each item more interesting and each item gives that player a specific role advantage.

Not being able to repeat perks (with BT being an exception for one duplication) again makes each character have a clearly defined role. There is no way you can honestly tell me that if you played DBD about one- two years ago there was no difference between a SWF where the perk loadouts of four survivors on voice coms were : BT, DS, DH, Unbreakable and one where the SWF just brought "whatever". The difference is night and day and everyone knows why. The same perk build outside of a SWF sucks. Do you know why? Because you have zero information to utilize your perks to their best extent.

-"In most cases the average SWF is not that good. They're not better at chases, they don't have a better game sense,"

This is not true at all. If you are in a SWF then you can have at your disposal the knowledge of the most experienced player in that SWF. I can recognize almost all the dangerous killer addons and warn my team about them and how to outplay them.

When you are in a SWF you can say : the killer went to the two people on a generator or the person alone. That's an insane advantage. This gives those parties 10-15 seconds to hide before the killer gets there.

When you are in a SWF you can say : the devour hope totem is located exactly here (while you are being chased).

When you are in a SWF you can say: the killer has bamboozle.

When you are in a SWF you can say: I used shack pallet.

When you are in a SWF you can say: the killer chased me off generator at X,Y,Z it is 90% completed - go finish it now.

-"when I hear that SWF should be nerfed because even at low mmr"

The changes I am suggesting to SWF will have almost zero effect at low MMR so we can just delete this thought entirely. The changes are meant to address survivors who have a MMR over 1600 which is a larger number of players than people think.

The frequency and number of people in a SWF goes down as mmr goes down. As a function of volume the people who are disruptive with SWF are the players around 1600 MMR. What makes my suggestions to change SWF so good are that they will impact high MMR players negatively while having almost no effect on middle/low tier survivors.

-"It's not a double standard. Nerfing SWF is punishing people for playing with their friends."

He nailed you pretty good actually. Nerfing SWF isn't punishing you for playing with friends. It's limiting how much better you are than solo queue.

-"Solo Queue needs to be brought up to the level of SWF as they're the ones who need help."

So give solo queue 4 information perks that are picked ahead of time and activate if they end up in a SWF game. Information perks are things like : bond, empathy, kindred, rookie spirit, alert - but NOT perks like Dead Hard or Self Care.

Likewise give killers 4 perks when they queue up against SWF. The killer gets any four perks that are chosen ahead of time for each loadout and only activate in case of SWF. You forget the killer is solo queue too and the second part of buff solo queue is the plan to buff killers.

Either way you want to put it the plan is :

1. Buff solo queue
2. Buff killer
3. By proxy : swf gets nerfed because it gets zero buffs.

Honestly the idea of buffing solo queue to be on the same page as SWF is insane. DBD was a stealth game built around uncertainty. Should you rescue? Should you hide? Should you go for the save? Chasing was in an abysmal state in 2016 when you look at pallets and vaults. But what people had not worked out was : what to do when. People look at the tiles and asked how did killers win during this time? It was because survivors did not have the game sense to know when to do which action (and few people played in SWF groups).

Imagine for a moment that all walls in the game (and things like trees/corn) looked like glass for the killer and for the survivor they were opaque. That level of buff would put the killer on pretty equal footing with SWF. That's insane if you stop and think about what kind of buffs the killer is eventually in theory going to get.