Do You Judge SWFs?
By that I mean, the individual. I'm talking about the people who only or majority of the time, only play this game if they are in an SWF. My friend and I got into a discussion bout this today; I only solo que (I've tried SWF once, the full voice comm experience, calling stuff out, etc - its such a downgrade).
I personally think SWF players, the people who rely on voice comms, knowing their teammates, etc are not all bad but a lot of them are and their egos are inflated.
My friend thinks the way SWF is should just be the norm in the game, ie voice comms and call outs, etc. He does agree a lot of SWFs are cocky and have their egos raised.
Curious, what do you guys think about SWF players? Do you judge them? Do you think twice about them? Sweat when you see them, punish them, or just a normal game (per say)?
Comments
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i'm fairly certain most people who SWF are just playing like they would normally, but they happen to be with a friend. you don't realize it because they don't play like the stereotype of a SWF, they play like a normal solo queue player. i'm not 100% positive this is the case, but based off of the SWFs i've seen it feels like it is
edit: so, to answer the question, I don't judge SWFs because practically speaking that's basically just judging them for having friends, which would be a really weird thing to judge people for. there are certain behaviors that seem to be more common with SWFs, but we should judge people for doing those behaviors as individuals, rather than assuming a connection between those actions and SWF status
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I do judge them.
The amount of players that are boosted solely by the fact of being in a swf is quite high. It's playing a version of the game that while allowed, is not balanced around.
Not saying they shouldn't get to play with their friends, but it is in fact an "unfair" advantage and a substantial one at that. If I'm in a swf I have no right to complain about tunneling or anything.
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I don't judge people for playing in a SWF. It's a normal game for me. I'm sweating as hard as the other side is sweating. If they're chill, I'm fairly chill while still playing to win. The only time I'm really going to judge players on either side (SWF or killer) are when they sweat their tail off in a public match. Matchmaking in this game isn't going to give those players quality opponents the vast majority of the time because the devs think players will set their PC/console on fire if they wait for more than 10 seconds, so they're just going to be beating up on unprepared players 99% of the time. And players who sweat like that typically don't actually want a challenge. They play for the power trip. I've seen so many BNP/styptic/prove squads and quad slowdown Iri add on killers have absolute meltdowns when they lose a game.
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Why would I judge people for wanting to play a game with their friends?
Seems kinda silly
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Solo queue is miserable why would I judge them for not wanting to deal with it?
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Do I judge people for playing games with their friends?
I genuinely don't understand the point of contention. What's there to judge to begin with?
By the same logic, I could also ask if we should judge people for playing solo because they don't have friends.
DbD is the only community where having friends is a cardinal sin.
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i despise them since it's one of the main problems that this game has... People who play in SWF are just using "legal" cheats in my book since the game's balance wasn't made with voice comm in mind (devs will probably deny this, saying that they always had in mind to put SWF into dbd, but they are just lying to themself and their playerbase in order to obtain more players and money from it... it's sufficient to look at the various perks that are present into the game that now are even more worthless with the new hud: from dark devotion to emphaty, from deathbound to aftercare, from thinkerer to kindred: all the info perks are useless in a swf and all the perks that will hide your presence as killer will be utterly worthless, not to mention that certain killer will even suffer more SWF due to their powers that rely of the survivors being oblivious and unaware of their presence/traps).
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I don't really have an opinion towards them. They're just friends playing a game together. I have no interest in playing in a swf, and I've had a mixed experience playing alongside or against them. I don't have a blanket approach, but then I don't take this game seriously either.
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until they add a killer judge with a gavel... unfortunately no. but punisher could also become a killer. just saying.
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What the hell, no
Most SWFs are just random people playing with friends while talking about work or movies or something. They're not better players and they're not more toxic.
I'm not gonna judge a whole group because of outliers.
Would be like saying all killers are toxic because of Bubbas.
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I don't judge swf just like i don't judge premade teams in R6S or lol.
But i judge games that don't accommodate for that or aren't balanced/compensating for the possible advantages.
And DBD is nearly the only one that doesn't.
Other games at least try to balance premade teams by setting them also up against teams or by compensation with higher MMR matchmaking.
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Why should someone judge people who want to play together in a Multiplayer game?
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I guess I do judge them in the way of:
Wow, here is a smart person that is not playing the complete garbage, borderline unsupported game mode that is SoloQ, which is in its most miserable state ever. Despite the whinefest about the HUD, SoloQ games are just as unplayable as they have been since the Killer patch+MMR tweak combo completely wrecked what little fun there was left.
If I didn't have certain real life circumstances limiting my gaming experience, I would never touch Survivor without a SWF.
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Feel free to judge their choice to group up while theyre busy judging the killer's choice of character.
Swf+comms btw arent the default game.
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i don't just because they're playing swf, why would i judge someone for playing with their friends? I'll judge people if they're abusing OP stuff but that applies to both sides. Stop using Swfs as a scapegoat when you lose when the worse thing that they brought was flashlights and a brown medkit.
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Why would I judge people for playing a co-op group with their friends? Lol
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Depends on the swf I guess? I don't really judge players who just go about the game by game, swf or not. Swf just means my short games get shorter or my long games get longer. It's the groups that get together to game the killer with sabos and flashlights. Then it's hard not to judge them.
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That's a selective bias, though. If there's a bully squad, you know they're in a swiffer. But any non-bully swiffer team, you'll have no idea.
So that 'usually' is really just based on the fact that you only recognise your opponents as a swiffer if they're bullying.
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I dont think most swf groups are cocky. There are many swf which are cocky yes, but I think most of them are just frinds who want to play together.
I judge SWFs who only play together to bring the most overpowerst stuff only want that the killers have a bad time, but if you just want to play with your friends feel free to do it.
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What kind of question is this?
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How can i judge something what i can't prove 100%, even not after the game is over? (SWFs / solo icons would be nice on the endgame screen) Also as a console killer i can't check profiles nor hours as i verse crossplattform players 98%. And even when they don't have many items and using default skins, they still could quickswitch at any second (they should lock loadouts when the lobby timer hits 15secs or so). The only way for me to compete would be to pretend they're all SWFs, going full meta and playing VERY tactical in all my games. Does this sound healthy? Prob not.
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The only thing that changes for me when i think i verse a swf is that i have to deal with overly altruistic players and try to take advantage of it and perhaps the fact that they are much more aware of me as killer than a group of solos
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No I dont blame them, alot of stuff is more fun with friends but I feel swf often causes issues and/or certain behaviours and reactions.
Firstly balance: it's well known swf is the strongest thing in the game, or at least has the potential to be, sure there can be weak swfs but you can never quite reach swf as a solo, no matter the buffs they add to solo queue swf will always be on top. This isnt just because they have the comms but more the fact they can pick their teammates, the can pick everyone the same skill, efficiency etc. Which is the huge difference, they dont randomly get paired with people not doing gens etc.
Killers dont know: this is a big one imo, the fact they have no idea means they cant prepare for it, as I mentioned swf has the ability to be really strong but it also affects perks etc. Hexs is a great example, already a huge risk but verse a swf it's even worse as they can call out the hex positions. Most hexs suck anyway though but still a negative.
Toxicity, this is a big one and for some reason swfs tend to be more toxic or sore winners/losers. Maybe they get a power trip with the imbalances, maybe they just think it's funny but it's rare someone in that swf will say "stop being toxic" and usually support that behaviour of their friends
Oblivious: alot dont seem to understand the advantages they have, even if they dont use everything to the max potential its still there. This happens with all players as everyone has different opinions but some just straight up deny any swf advantage and often result to name calling.
Matchmaking: everyone has different mmr rating, if the swf is a mixture it can mess with the matchmaking whether you verse a far weaker killer or stronger one just because of a single players mmr. This is a huge reason I never do swf anymore, either I versed a very easy killer and felt bad or my usual sweaty killers and my partner having a bad time because they arent at that level.
Summary:
Dont have an issue with swf and I dont blame them, all I ever ask is no toxic behaviour or act like it doesnt cause some issues. I just think killers should be able to see swf in the lobby to prepare, if you think every killer would dodge that tells it's own story
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If they're not trying to make people actively dc why would I care or judge them? Getting mad at people for having friends in a multiplayer online game is one of the most chronically online takes of all. I'm not saying you can't talk about the advantage they have, I'm saying getting mad at friends playing together and practically foaming at the mouth is problematic behavior
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No? At least in my opinion that's honestly just kinda weird.
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It's a case by case base for us as we also often play with friends so we don't be a hypocrite.
If we see 4 toolboxes or flashlights, we're gonna assume bullies or people trying to break gen speed records and judge accordingly. That said we know most swfs are just playing with friends so if we see an obvious swf (ex: similar names) that don't look like they're going to try to be bullies we play as normal. Every time though we forget about them at the end of the day.
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No
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I only play in SWFs most of the time, and speaking from experience, we are never as sweaty as most people think. Most of the time we aren't even communicating properly (we are mostly talking about off topic things), we don't gen rush or "bully" (if we do silly stuff like flash lights or messing around, we let the killer kill us, we don't go with the mind state of winning). Now while I can't speak for everyone because I know there is sweats and bully squads that take advantage of comms and stuff like that but most of the time, it's people wanting to play with their friends. I love being around people, so I cannot enjoy games by myself most of the time.
Anyways, I wouldn't automatically judge at the start of the game, "they are swfs, so i better sweat!" I'd judge by the items they have, how they are playing at the beginning, etc. More than likely, people just want to spend time with their friends.
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I don’t judge people for simply playing in a SWF, it’s objectively the least stressful niche in DBD if you break everything down into separate categories and playing with friends is completely normal. I SWF myself as a Survivor main
HOWEVER
I definitely judge the entitled/inflated-ego players in a SWF that have a consistent history of griefing everyyyyy Killer they come across and lacking self-awareness on their livestreams and social media posts.
You know the ones that individually aren’t even great at the game but they’re still boosted by their teammates? Carry these players long enough and they start walking around like gods-gift and arguing with people way better than them because they think they’re responsible for all of their teams success. When they come to SoloQ or have to SWF with people on their actual skill level they get exposed fast and that’s when they go to the internet to spread ridiculous talking points
I talk my ish too, but the difference is I always give credit where it’s due and I understand humility because I play both sides at a high level historically. If I’m in a meta-stacked SWF with my P100 friends I’m not going to spin in circles at the exit gate or make fun of a low-tier M1 Killer for losing to us, I’m going to immediately run out the gate and act like anybody else that’s accustomed to being good at something or going on winning streaks
“Act like you’ve been there before”
Some people will stack the deck as far in their favor as humanly possible and still project hypocritical rules/criticism onto the Killers who are simply adapting to what the entitled players are putting them against. You don’t get to bring a Garden of Joy map offering, 4 syringe medkits, Hyperfocus/Prove/DH/CoH and then complain about anything
unfortunately, that DBD player archetype seems to be the most vocal and the most coddled by others in the community. The sad part is this isn’t just random dorito-fingered teenagers trolling after school, this comes from grown adults 5–15 years older than me (I’m 26) publicly on YouTube/Twitch/Twitter/Reddit.
Theres literally a circle-jerk created by this archetype every single day and it’s quite sad
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I just play the game and do not care
The bad apples who play swf are bad apples when they play solo, there is no difference
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i do it! because they get so many aura reading perks for free, can collude all this just because they download discord, if bhvr is honest would they add voice rooms then it wouldn't matter if someone uses voice chat via dc or ingame but that's not the case , it's more or less a tool that gives you so many extra perks, but no! bhvr doesn't want the swf to get too much information from the hud and thus be buffed, but bhvr doesn't see that the swf has so many perks and synagies with certain other perks that you can time perfectly in relation to solo q,
so a debuff for swf would be essential, i mean here people say "there are tryhard swf troops but a lot of them just play with their friends for fun" if they just "play casually with their friends" then it doesn't matter if a debuff for swf troops would come in, or does it suddenly stop having "fun with friends" here? I mean if the intention is to have fun with friends then you don't care about a debuff, because you enjoy the time with your friends, it reminds me of the people who abused strechet res "I don't do it because I have a better view, but because I have more fps and it looks better"
in addition, if everyone plays swf, they do their own matchmaking, you don't get the useless bots in the solo q in your lobby, what I mean is, if it's not a Nurse, Blight, Spirit then it will be very difficult for the killers To counteract this, there is also the fact that when you play swf you don't match good killers, but mostly killers for a hundred hours that are completely overwhelmed, everything would help if you gave them at least one debuff in actions
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Depends on how they are using it, right. Like, am i gonna be upset if someone is just playing the game with their friend(s)? No. But there is an obvious difference between that, and a squad of 4 last second swapping to 4 p100 characters with super stacked items. They are playing the easiest form of DBD possible and generally are the most toxic. If you play well, they harass you for "tunneling" or "camping" or breaking some other unwritten rule. If you play badly, you are a "trash killer, uninstall" and you get teabagged the whole game.
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I was going to basically say the same thing :) I agree 100%
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Based on true events.
*Killer gets beat by 4 Solo Q players*
"You're just lucky you are in a SWF. SWF takes no skill..." proceeds to go into a whole-ass diatribe over SWF
🤡🍾
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That's a weird question.
Of course not, why would anyone be judged for playing with friends?
I would judge a play-style, maybe, and counter it however I can. But that has nothing to do with the relations between the members of the group.
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Okay...
How many times have you gone out of your way to confirm the players you're playing against were in a swiffer, if they were not using bully tactics?
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I don't judge people by who they play with. If they play with their friends that's good for them.
I judge by how they play. Do they send me to Garden of Pain or Eyrie? Are they trying to be d*ckheads? Do they stack the strongest tools possible and ending the game in 4 minutes before proceeding to butt dance in the exit gates? If the answer to all of those questions is 'no', then these are people I have no problem versing. If the answer to one or more of these questions is 'yes', well... Don't expect me to play nice.
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A) That's not necessarily a swiffer. If three unrelated survivors are in a lobby and that lobby fails to fire, the three of them together might get shunted to a different lobby and thereby appear to be a swiffer when they're not.
B) This is the same selection bias: if you base your tallying of swiffers on how coordinated they are, you will miss the uncoordinated swiffers. Not to mention that solos can also be coordinated. My most 'coordinated' plays have all been on randos, not swiffer teammates, for example.
C) I'm overly altruistic to solos because all three of my builds on Vittorio at the moment have an emphasis on healing. Also, there's challenges that can compel survivors to rush for unhooks and heals.
So yeah, your means of identifying swiffers are pretty flawed, so how do you know most swiffers are bully squads?
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Again, how do you know that anyone NOT running that set-up is NOT a swiffer?
How do you know, for sure, that anyone running that set-up IS a swiffer?
What's to stop me from piling on a medkit, tracking perks, DS and Built to Last and being the completely randomly assigned fourth wheel?
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I don't mind them as a killer, because them wanting to escape as a group is a cause of many deaths.
But oh boy, I would PAY to never be matched with swfs when i'm in solo Q. There's a higher chance you'll get ANY help from a random, than from 3-man swf that doesn't care about anyone besides their group
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Use VC to play game is OK. I play APEX,BF,etc... but, i wish dbd is still be horror action game.
If DBD will go party game. i don't play that.
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SWF don't load nor tend to load simultaneously in a lobby. That was changed many years ago to make them join the lobby in a random pattern, same as solos. If you don't play in a SWF, then you can watch a streamer who does and you can physically see that happen the moment a match is found. Each member will pop up randomly in the lobby even if they're queued together.
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I don't judge people for playing in SWF. That's just silly.
If someone acts like they are amazing but clearly gets carried, that's an entirely different story.
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Well, unless they are obvious about it, like last second switching, then I won’t know they are SWF. Doesn’t mean I can’t judge SWF as a whole though, I just don’t typically judge them Game by Game or make unnecessary assumptions. As a whole SWF are cheaters. They are verbally communicating in a game not designed with that in mind. Finally the game is moving towards buffing solo to the same information sharing level of SWF and if they manage it and buff Killers to combat SWF instead of Solos, then I’ll stop considering SWF as a bunch of cheaters.
If you adding a playlist of Solos or SWF, every Killer will gravitate to the Solo que lobbies because it’s a challenging yet peaceful more fair exchange between 4v1. AND YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN? SWF would join the solo lobby at same times to try and group up and continue to CHEAT and have easier games to bully Killer.
It’s clearly cheating and we cannot revert back, nor am I advocating we stop letting ppl play with friends. Just please stop pretending like survivors don’t openly and clearly cheat to gain an advantage on Killers and stop creating perks that provide information on Killer. Every survivor action now a days gives away our location. Near a hook, revealed, break a pallet, revealed. I mean SWF need to only run 2-3 perks between the 16 they carry and I’m known at all times.
At the point where you might as well have Killers glow Pink throughout the whole match just to match Solo players to the same benefits SWF have~
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Its great trying to play when your position is told constantly and 4 man teams are coordinating info on a call while your stuck trying to sweat out a kill with just information perks and the like
Especially when they go out if their way to be toxic.
Most of my most miserable experiences with this game have been with steam 3 and 4 man groups.
I also love when a 3 man will basically leave the solo q as bait and to die.
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I'm trying to get you to understand that you've gone up against tons of swiffers that never did anything to you, you just don't realise it, because you only and exclusively think it's a swiffer if they're a bully squad.
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I agree with the group of people who say something along the lines of judging certain behaviours in game instead of being in a swf. I come across those behaviours with both swf as well as solo. Granted, the frequency is higher among swf --- but it would be erroneous to then assume thats how swf are by default and judge the swf-ness and not the behaviour.
As killer it's often somewhat easy to tell if a group, or at least part if the group, is swf-ing. And I don't mind. Only thing I do mind is the rather .... unnecessarily agressive/taunt-heavy behaviour some survivors - swf or not - show. And hyper efficiency in general - be it on the survivor or killer side.
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But isn't that mostly true?
Not every swf is a bully squad but (nearly) every bully squad is a swf group?
Randoms simply lack the coordination and the accompanying balls to play in a bully squad (successfully).
Also to your question about "how do you know it's an swf?". While @Sillymare has brought up on false and two very subjective arguments, they also said they play on PC and it's really easy to identify a swf from other steam players, check their profiles.
And since more than 90% of all lobbies you have to wait for survivor to ready up (if at all), you have more than enough tike and in my case boredom to check their profiles.
It's the funniest thing when 2 of 3 or 3 of 4 have their profile on private only for the last guy to have them all visible on their friendliest.
Of course this also doesn't work cross platform and the majority of the time it's back to the subjective guessing game.
Another indicator btw would be simultaneously last second switching. Randoms rarely do it in tandem.
Disclaimer: Yes i regularly checked profiles (again, why can't they just ready up ugh.) but i don't change my playtstyle when i find one. Tbh i was so casual and bad that i couldn't really change my playstyle to compensate anything. I already played with Lightborn on all my killers and cathegorically refused to tunnel or camp because of my experiment.
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But isn't that mostly true?
No, it isn't. Bully squads aren't the only swiffers, and I doubt they're the majority, or even a large component of the swiffer crowd.
Not every swf is a bully squad but (nearly) every bully squad is a swf group?
That is true, but that's not what Sillymare said and it's not what I'm arguing against.
Sillymare stated:
Usually it's all 3. So yes, I judge swf ad they are some of the most toxic players in this community.
With 'all 3' referring to keeping everyone updated on killer position, pissing off the killer, and trolling the killer.
But that 'usually' stems from how they don't recognise any swiffer that doesn't do that stuff.
they also said they play on PC and it's really easy to identify a swf from other steam players, check their profiles.
But they didn't bring that up, leading me to believe they don't do that. And so they miss all of the swiffers they go up against that don't piss them off or play specifically to troll them.
That is the selection bias. They only recognise it as a swiffer if it's a bully squad, leading them to assert that "Usually it's all 3".
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That doesn't actually contradict what I said. You say a majority of swiffers are bully squads, I point out that you don't know when you're going up against non-bully swiffers.
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