Status icons update is mostly QOL update
Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing for soloq to know what your teammates are doing, but what can you do with that information? Maybe among some good players this can be cheap version of kindred, or if you will pay enough attention, you can track other people gen progress, but at average, this is basically nothing.
Is it going to stop people that don't want to do gens? Or people that use shiny coin and want to loot every chest on map/destroy every totem or they might be just afraid of killer and do nothing, this change mostly won't affect AVERAGE soloq, now you just know what your teammates are doing, you can print that info down and wipe your ass, at least then it's going to have some use.
I repeat, this is good QOL change, but it should be pushed further, why we only have recovery progress? Why we don't have healing/repairing/totem action/gate opening progress at status icon? If your answer is "because it's gonna give soloq survivors more information" then I would ask you "Yeah, so?" I am not asking to drop a beam of light on the gens that are currently reparing (we have map addon for this), or give global bond basekit, just a little bit more
Maybe even totem counter? Pretty please?
Comments
-
You can't fix crappy teammates
You can try to make it a more even playing field but a teammate who doesn't touch a gen all match isn't ever going to be fixed by QoL updates.
11 -
An increase in Quality of Life for solo survivors is what we were aiming for - there are other things that can be added such as Gate progression etc, but the decision is made for right now to add these features in gradually, we are adding in gen progression so you will see how much progression is on each gen that a survivor is working on, but for now at least there's no plans to add any more features. It will be a testing phase to see how this goes, how much effect it has on gameplay etc and we will be monitoring it all very closely.
14 -
"but what can you do with that information?"
Literally tons.
It makes you hyper efficient as now you always know exactly what you should be doing. IE hook saving, doing a gen, not worrying about getting jumped ect. This makes your team way more time efficient.
If people don't find this information helps their games much it's a skill issue going on, not a solo queue issue. This is way more than a QoL change, it's a significant buff.
19 -
I play solo 98 % of the time - never understood why everyone complains about it "being too difficult" I regularly escape, get to rank 1, and enjoy (most) of my games. I do not think there needs to be any changes made for solo players - whether QoL or HUB changes or whatever. It is fine the way it is. If I want to know what the other players are doing I will run Bond - plethora of information with this. For the love of the fog do not change anything to make it "easier" for solo.
3 -
If they ever made Bond basekit, it probably wouldn't take long for me to stop playing SoloQ altogether. Too many Survivors use that perk for evil rather than good (ironic considering the perks name)
2 -
"Hey, everyone is working on a gen or in a chase right now, maybe I should go for the rescue on that dude that's hooked"
That on its own is INCREDIBLY valuable intel.
12 -
Trying to pretend like knowing what every survivor, all the time and by extension the killer is doing at all times mapwide and without taking up any perk slots is anything but a massive buff to survivors is a bald faced lie. It streamlines decision making to a ridiculous degree and by extension efficiency.
Like it's fine that survivors are getting this buff. But don't try to gaslight yourself and others into thinking it's somehow not a buff.
7 -
Quality of Life is the main aim of this feature - as i said, it might well be an overall buff to survivors, however knowing information and acting on information is a very different thing. which is why we will carefully monitor the situation.
4 -
It completely obviates most aura reading perks and frees up those slots for survivors. Kindred is pointless now(especially after the gen progress icon), alert is pointless(you can see that the killer is in chase), bond is dead. It's got such a huge knock-on effects for everything in the game and seeing you try to downplay it is extremely frustrating. I'm thankful you're willing to sideways admit that it's a buff but I hope you factor average gen times into your statistics gathering and not just kills.
4 -
Wow...
Thats really downplaying how much this update buffed survivors.
7 -
I guess it's good if you get multiple tryhard survivors in the lobby, but overall I don't expect it to meaningfully change solo game outcomes. If anything it encourages suiciding on hook since you know for certain how worthless your teammates are being.
1 -
Already had game where survivor died on hook while I was in chase and other survivor on gen, same thing even happens with kindred sometimes, anyway, you described how player with good game knowledge will think, not average soloq where things I described above happens sometimes, I am not doubting that for good survivors, even in soloq this is massive buff, I am asking to add just a little more, why we need artificial complication so I have to track gen progress manually? Actually this discussion already can be closed because Mandy stated that gen progress will be added (if I get it right), that's pretty much enough for me, but there are room to add more
0 -
She's saying it that way because it can be considered QoL or a buff, depending on how it is used.
1. I've died on first hook plenty of times running Kindred. The only person willing to save gets found and the other two see it, yet still sit on their gens. They have the info and still choose not to use it and give the Killer two free hook states. Also the problem of multiple soloq'ers running it and wasting perk slots is gone, I see that as more of a QoL change than a buff.
2. Alert still shows you exactly where the Killer is and what area pallets are being broken in. That is still valuable. This perk is not run too much but it will still do its job after the change.
3. Like I said before, I feel Bond is used more for evil than good. So if it gets used less, that is a QoL change at least from my gameplay experience.
I'm not going to downplay it like it isn't a buff but again, can also be seen as simple QoL changes too.
1 -
Devils advocate here:
So hypothetically if you gave survivors a 3rd health state "you" would say that "could" be considered only a QoL instead of a buff because a person could potentially just run into a wall and be dumb? Rather than it being objectively a buff?
5 -
with kindred and new HUD, I almost always understood where the killer and other survivors were and what they were doing, this is a huge buff and it became much easier to play solo
3 -
I agree this buff is being done rather cautiously.
They have been bolder in the past, however since this is an overall buff to survivors, if done too ambitiously it might lead to a significant drop in kill rates, more than intended and would leave BHVR in the uncomfortable position of either rolling everything back or letting the community weather the storm until they can strike a balance, which would lead to frustration.
I agree that this solo buffs are better done in small increments until that balance is achieved naturally.
3 -
Having played a couple of games and it's just as underwhelming as I had imagined it. While it's nice not having to run Kindred and having more information for free, the real issue with SoloQ has always been skill discrepancy. You could literally give ten perk slots for SoloQ lobbies and the escape rate wouldn't climb even 5 percent. The 100 hour Meghead will never run the 5k hour Nurse for more than two blinks. And I guess that's it for SoloQ for the next five years. Thanks BHVR!
2 -
Where's the down vote button?
3 -
I mean... just look at the perk update time to now and how many people have a problem with one of the changes... that's what they want to avoid
Plus it might have something to do with making sure that the code can handle all of the changes
0 -
That's clearly just a straight up buff. Come on now. QoL changes improve the gaming experience in different ways than just buffing. That was more the point I was trying to make.
Buff = JUST making things stronger
QoL= making things better and the experience more enjoyable
I see a difference but if you don't, hey different strokes I guess.
2 -
wouldnt go as far as "significant buff" but it is a improvement for solo q which is good.
0 -
The only way this would not be a buff is if the killer also got to see what all the survivors were doing. TBH I feel like this is too much info for the game.
DBD has always been balanced around players not knowing what to do at any given moment. Everyone just got like 15% more efficient.
The only way I can counter that is to tunnel harder on my strongest killers and play meta gen defense EVERY Single Game.
3 -
So you don't see telling all the survivor nearly exactly what each other are doing at all times as "just making things stronger"? That is exactly what it's doing.
We can "also" say it is making the experience more enjoyable, but let's be honest, why is it more enjoyable? Because you can be stronger and more efficient from that information.
I feel like trying to call it just a QoL would be extremely disingenuous.
A QoL change would be something like having your loadouts pre-saved in order to waste less time. That isn't stronger, it's just convenience. That is what QoL is. QoL is feel good/convenience changes, not power.
2 -
Sadly it does not fix bad teammates. I can be camped in Basement, one Survivor is doing Gens, the other two are trying to get me out against a Trapper who is a) camping me and b) trapped the ######### out of Shack. The only thing the symbols did is to show the Survivor on the Gen that one or two of them are chased. Game was obviously lost (would have been won if those two brightbulbs would have done a Gen).
So yeah, it is more of a QoL-Change. At best, sometimes it is more frustrating when you see people doing nothing or just blessing/cleansing Totems all the time.
But, I remember "GuEsS ThErE WiLl bE MoRe tUnNeLiNg" because some people like to pretend that it is an actual impactful change.
1 -
Let's say they reduced all Exhaustion perks cooldown by 10 seconds. This would just be a buff because it doesn't make the game FEEL better to play, just easier. These changes make the game less crappy for Solo Q to play and help them play with people they have zero communication with. Yes it can be considered a net buff too, but the main intention is QoL.
Maybe this means we can actually tone down SWF in some way in the future, as the disparity between Solo and SWF after these changes will still have a big gap.
0 -
So it seems your main argument for QoL over buff is the "intent" of the change, would that be correct?
I'd argue the only reason the HUD information FEELS better to play is because it makes you more efficient, IE stronger. I guess my main point is I think you're misusing the term "QoL". As in your definition of QoL isn't what it actually means.
They will never be toning down SWF, that just isn't going to happen. Punishing people who want to play with friends isn't going to be a thing.
2 -
I do not understand how you expect killers to be more challenging to play against if the average player struggles to escape the current killers in the game. There is lack of incentive for them to make killers stronger to play at SWF competitive level if average survivor does poorly. Its sort of like, why bother? you have to make concessions in making average survivor stronger for you to get stronger killers close to swf level. Their icon is step in doing that, but I do not think that their current level of information matches that of a swf in term of efficiency. As a result, swf matches for killer will still be a lot harder then soloq matches.
1 -
I actually think it's a much bigger deal than just QoL-change. It levels the playing field drastically, knowing what your teammates are doing at times, knowing the gen progress on gen, and seeing how recovered people are. I am not sure why you make it a simple quality-of-life change, like adding colorblind settings, because the changes done will drastically alter some games for the people who use those features. It's obvious it's not going to work all the time because of challenges/people in general, but it's pretty game-changing information. Pretending it's just a QoL improvement is like saying the change to how long the burst of speed from injuring a survivor or adding basekit sbfl stacks was just a QoL improvement when it was much more game-changing than it appeared. When the gen progress information is fixed for survivors, it will potentially allow you to make plays you usually couldn't have in solo q; the downed survivor recovery meter also tells you a lot of information as well; potentially, kindred might be a dead perk at this rate.
1 -
You're misunderstanding the points I've been making.
I never said they shouldn't have done these changes.
The only thing I've been debating with him here is the definition of "QoL" and whether these changes were QoL or a buff.
0 -
That is absolutely a buff for survivors. It helps tremendously with decision making. Oh player 2 is hooked and player 3 is in a chase, maybe it's time for me to unhook my mate.
Oh 3 ppls working gens while I am looping? Lovely, I will try my best he chases me forever.
The amount of information is incredible.
4 -
I think it would be really good to show the progress of the exit gates being opened, these are usually shared in a SWF call. You still would have to guess which one is close to be opened though. Maybe the progress of healing/cleasing/blessing/etc would be taken into consideration.
0 -
I'm running Kindred and still getting left on first hook to die. The icons are nice QOL and I'm glad they're there but there's alot of survivor players that do not use information that's given to them. I do like having a visual confirming teammates just not doing anything.
I played 10 matches today, in 5 of them the killer was farming and letting everyone go so hard to fully judge how impactful the icons are. In the 5 matches killers played serious I really didn't notice a difference, just visual confirmation teammates weren't doing anything. One match where I was one of two survivors left and we had two gens left - they were definitely planning to do nothing and wait for me to die but after a bit of me attempting a gen they FINALLY decided to hop on a gen across the map. I got my gen done but ended up dying, had they not waited so long probably could've gotten both gens done but they spent more time watching my icon pop on/off.
Please no on Bond basekit. 99% of the time I play with someone running Bond they are using it to sandbag teammates - I'd rather they need to use a perk slot to screw over their teammates.
0 -
It’s a needed buff for solo but I don’t think it’s as massive as people are making it out to be. I did get one big benefit from it earlier. I was in a game with one gen left and saw that the Dwight was on a gen. I was able to figure out which one it was very quickly. It made finishing it quicker than it would have been otherwise since we both would have likely been on two different gen. Something that’s easy for a SWF but not as much for solo. Knowing who is being chased is also nice. The only other thing I really want is some sort of indicator that the killer is facecamping. The main reason it works so well is because survivors have no coordination in solo. If you could see that the killer is resorting to cheesy tactics then it would tell people that two people need to go for the unhook. This would be a significant nerf to this kind of playstyle.
0 -
Honestly? Face camping indicator?
Just look at the killer and the hooked person.
Do you mean proxy camping? That isn't in any way I can figure, an issue that should be addressed. But you could use Kindred on everyone.
Anyways, these icon buffs are massive in so many ways. They're going to quickly change how the game is played for people that want to learn how to play.
0 -
A buff doesn't stop being a buff because some players are too bad to capitalize on their new advantage.
If you gave Killers the ability to see how far all Gens have been progressed, that would be a ridiculous buff, even if a portion of players would fail to act on the information
1 -
Honestly though, you might be underestimating the amount of players that this will shame into doing more than they usually do. We have nothing to really compare to in terms of useless team mates before and after the update, but at the very least I'm sure *some* players are now consciously aware that the team can see when they're not helping and may at least make an effort
1
