SWF nerfs
When was the last nerf to SWFs to bring them more in-line with solo survivors?
Someone told me they have never been nerfed and never will be nerfed as BHVR fear them?
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They haven't and won't ever ever ever be nerfed and it should be the other way around, bringing solo up to swf level and change killers accordingly.
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Its not necessarily they fear them its just any nerf they do to swf will negatively impact solo queue substantially so its a tightrope kind of situation.
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Why then have BHVR introduced circle of healing for free heals in a known location and then nerfed it whilst SWFs on comms still get this for free?
Why don't the buff to survivors with who is doing what not include distance numbers of how far each one is from the hooked survivor?
Why then if solo survivors are being buffed (and killers not buffed to match) are SWFs never going to be touched?
Could it be that players in a SWF, killer and others don't like their role to be nerfed for actual balance?
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If I play in a solo lobby how is nerfing a SWF or a SWF with comms going to affect me?
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Good luck with this one, Prince. Logic doesn't work with this one!
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Perk nerfs arent swf nerfs and if a perk works better in a swf than solo, that's bad perk design
We literally just got a solo qol of life with the hud. It doesn't bridge the gap completely, so I wouldn't say solo survivor hasn't been touched.
To be honest with you some killers love to blame their losses on things other than themselves and swf is the big target. Swfs are essentially meaningless.
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The way i cackled lmao
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Well, first give me a couple examples of what you would nerf about swfs and I'll let you know.
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They want kill rates around 60%. Solo would make up the bulk of the kill rates, so nerfing swf to solo level would increase kill rates. They don't need to nerf swfs while they have solo to supply kills.
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If swfs are nerfed to solo level then killers have to be nerfed to solo level too
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Their intent seems to be to raise solo play as close to SWF as possible, not the other way around. The hud changes is the best example of that, something that absolutely helps out solos but didn't have a massive effect on SWF play.
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How do you nerf SWF but not solo? If there is a way to do that it'd be great. The medkit and heal nerf didn't really bother SWF, but really hurt solo, so hopefully for the sake of solo, they don't do anything more to hurt them.
It did suprise me that when the last chapter came out, the survivor perks were focused on teams, as if the Devs were purposely building the game around SWF.
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I think what OP is talking about is the idea that a SWF would get a hard penalty just by being in a SWF, like slower gen repair, and isn't talking about perks.
There's a couple of answers to that, but the one that usually gets made is that is that if you put a penalty on playing in a SWF, there are ways for people to still play together without using the built in feature, and people would just do that.
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If by "nerfing a SWF" you mean in-game survivor nerfs then I literally can't imagine any nerf that would affect swf but not solo q. If you mean things like "gens take longer for swf", it can't be implemented bc solo q & swf shares lobbies. If you mean rewards & BPs (making swf gain less BPs and/or XP) it won't change anything balance wise. Also, BHVR can't differentiate swf & swf with comms, and I don't think they can physically stop people from using comms.
Finally, even if BHVR could nerf swf without touching solo q they wouldn't want to do it because there's absolutely no reason to punish people for playing with their friends or trying to forbid them to do so.
The only way towards balance is giving solo q more information (like load-outs in the pre-game) to bring them up towards the lvl of swf, and then buff / nerf killers accordingly. And also stop making perks / reworks that cater only to people with comms (CoH rework, teamwork perks).
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Am I the only one who thinks swfs are necessary at this point. Some of my most fun and sweatiest matches were from swf. Swf brings a completely new element to the game. Yeah having infinite info all the time wasn't how the game was designed but it's here and there's no way of stopping it. The only way to bring solo q up to swf level is vc and we all know we don't want built in VC for every match every person so Dwight can yell about how you suck because he was hiding in a locker and you didn't complete 5 gens.
That being said swfs are the highest level of gameplay for survivors, and killers alike. Is it hell going up against a really awesome swf of course, but it pays off as far as learning goes, you can't just run around downing whoever and camping whoever, you have to have actual game awareness and strategize. As many have already stated there can't be a nerf to swf without indirectly in some way hurting solo q. As far as solo q being buffed maybe an emote wheel of pre set phrases to let your teammates know what the plans are, so you cant just talk ######### to Claude for hiding in a bush although she may desrve it.
Dont know if any of this makes sense but just inputting my 2, hope everyone has an awesome day!
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I would like there to be seperate queues for swf and solo, with different balancing.
Killers can choose if they only play one or both, but due to the different balance, the outcome would be close together.
IF still not too much people want to play killer vs swf, just do a swf contingent, so that after x games in an swf, a player has to win y matches as killer vs swf. Win because a) they cant just go afk but have to play, and b) they might get a different oppinion about the balance in the game.
None of this will ever come, and thats why dbd might get better, but most likly will never be balanced.
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How do you nerf communication via all kinds of software available on Windows?
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The easiest and best solution (granted not popular) is to remove swf entirely. That would help provide better balance for both sides but thqt will never happen because people want to play with their friends, which makes sense, but there isn't a way to keep swf without throwing off the balance of the whole game
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How to cause the death of a game: step 1
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The game would be healthier without it honestly. Balancing would be better for both sides.
Now I don't expect it to happen because it's already in the game and people will quit because they can't play with their friends which is somewhat understandable.
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And then dbd would die, no way it survives if you remove swf
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not possible solo is never going to be close to the level of swf
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This game WOULD be dead if swf hadn't been in the game at this point already. So if "healthier" means dead, and it's balanced because it's dead, sure.
Hard disagree. The HUD was a good start. Bond + kindred needs to be basekit and a communication wheel and then you get the majority of information a swf has. It doesn't need to be a 1:1 equivalence.
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How do you make swf in line with soloq? You brainwash your swf teammates to make them as dumb as the avg soloq survivor
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It's impossible to nerf SWF to be as bad as solo. SWF main advantage is you can bring a team without any bad players. That means high gen efficiency, no easy tunnels, everyone using strong perks, no one throwing for archive challenges.
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I'd say the biggest strength of SWF is knowledge. It negates several killwr perks and it nerfs most killer perks since they have shared knowledge of killer perks, killer items, and killer perks
Post edited by IWasLeft2Die on4 -
I can’t think of a single game out there that doesn’t allow players to play with friends. And even if DBD tried doing that, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo do allow friends to queue up together & DBD cannot circumvent this. They tried it with the anonymous mode and got into trouble with those companies b/c DBD settings cannot overwrite console settings.
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They only know how to nerf soloq without affecting swf too much and coh is great example of it
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The only issue is that the game isn't designed around having open communication (perks not designed for this nor is their an in game chat functuon). There aren't any other big 1vsmany games out there so it is tough to compare but comparing something like cod, overwatch, etc with even teams is not the same. DBD would need to change a lot of fundamentals of the game to make communication fair but that won't happen. Effects like blindess serve no use in swf among other issues
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This right here hits the nail on the head. If SWF is going to exist, the game has to be balanced around it rather than solo queue, or killers need the ability to opt out of playing against SWF groups (which I don't even know is something that's possible to do.) The game was NEVER meant to have communication like voice chat in it, the devs literally said as much over and over again when the game came out, but they realized how much they could make and how many players would stick around longer with SWF as an option and just....never adjusted anything on the killers side to balance for it.
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So buff solo and killlers?
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That wouldn't make the game that much healthier considering that is how the game originally launched.
It did not launch with the ability to play with friends, that was added later when people kept asking for it. The game is only somewhat more "balanced", but from previous experience the biggest issues back when we didn't have SWF were issues related to players generally not feeling like playing as a team was necessary. Solo Q issues won't be solved by making the game go back to perpetual solo q as that implies that the game is balanced around SWF which it isn't, at least not in anyway that soloq doesn't benefit from.
From the killer perspective it would feel more balanced for a while until everyone just relearned/learned to use the old methods of communication that exist in the game. DBD players at one time were actually developing the necessary communication skills to functionally coordinate, but I think that has mostly died out now. Yet, if people got back into doing that, after a while people who can coordinate will still be just as strong as before. So in the long run it wouldn't help killers more than say substantive QoL improvements made to killers who aren't good.
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Yeah I remember old DBD and I think there qere definitely Means to communicate (such as pointing etc) but the commutation then still doesn't compare to say "hey the killer is right by me, has Pentimento and sloppy butcher just so you all know". It just isn't the same. The fact is that survivors can gain far more info now and even gain info faster than you could previously. It renders several perks useless and many others much less useful
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Yes
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The existence of swf makes it hard to balance DBD as a whole because the idea of bringing solo closer to swf and buffing Killers accordingly is honestly a pipe dream.
1)Any buff to solo queue will directly or indirectly buff swf most of the time.
2)However nerfs to solo queue may not affect swf as much (Imagine if devs removed the new Survivor Ui).
3) Swf specifically can’t be nerfed because play with friends.
4) Any nerf to Survivor on the whole targets both swf and solo queue.
Rather than two sides, DBD’s balance is more like a triangle made up of Swf, Killers and Solo Queue.
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men dont talk from your ass console has anonymous mode and playstation or the other ones doesnt allow you to play with friends that depends from the game itself
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Nobody said SWF was ever getting a nerf. It's unfeasible to nerf SWF. The only feasible solution is to keep massivelly buffing Solo Queue until you achieve almost parity and can buff Killers to compensate
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Just to confirm NOBODY was able to answer the original post question and instead talk about why SWFs should never be touched...
Q1. When was the last nerf to SWFs to bring them more in-line with solo survivors? Someone told me they have never been nerfed and never will be nerfed as BHVR fear them?
The number of comments generated yet nobody giving a simple answer is very concerning where lack of logic and emotions appear to be shown
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I note that no developer has commented as this should be a very easy question to answer.
SWFs when using communications causes all sorts of imbalance to the game and as such BHVR have acknowledged this by trying to buff solo survivors (and by doing so almost always also buffing SWF survivors).
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OoO change was a swf nerf because the perk was way too effective when someone could coordinate the info.
But ultimately it's hard to strictly nerf swf. Swf power comes from the ability to pick their teammates and the ability to communicate information not normally available in the game. Neither of which are things you can nerf within the game.
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...how do you nerf swf? You going to punish someone for having friends?
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Well, the answer just isn't all that simple. Firstly, its hard to really make balance changes around SWF knowing that each group is going to be different as far as their mentality goes to why they are playing together, ranging between memes and goofing off to being a comp sweat squad. Then there's the obvious "3rd party communication platform of choice" which usually ends up being discord, and there's no way to really prevent them from being in a call with each other to give each other information. No matter how you look at it, the best solution is to help bridge the gap between solo queue and SWFs (hence the UI update).
In an attempt to answer your question though as far as when SWF was last nerfed, Knight's release (6.4.0?) when they made it so Killers were immune to flashlights when grabbing survivors from lockers. Yes, it is still technically possible if using a Flashbang or if the Surv slowly exists the locker, but Flashbangs must be earned by doing gens (more set-up involved for limited usage), and the slow exit is in a sense less reliable (waiting for them to fully exit to M1) vs when you were locked into an animation and had to eat the beam.
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Your question isn't straightforward. The devs make changes based around balancing. Currently, they're happy with kill rates. Nerfing swf will increase kill rates. Which will lead to killer nerfs. It's a domino effect. It's not a matter of 'when have they nerfed swfs?' and more of 'have they ever actually needed to?'
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All M1Killer down to almost pinhead level. In order to do 10-12 cycles of starting a chase, some of the auxiliary abilities that can be used to prepare the chase at the beginning require a certain amount of high-speed movement, remote interference, and tasks other than gen fix to Survivors. All of them are lower layers except for the killer who is in the middle.
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Easy answer, yes they need to balance the game... aka 'balance swfs' to solo level or vice versa.
The answer is obvious, SWFs play a big proportion of the player base which is why BHVR hides them end game when there is no reason to. Balance can be achieved with those kill rates.
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How I love to see that meme of 'for having friends' #nerfPig
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Nerfing people for playing with friends is a bad look.
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Yay another one of these pointless impossible nerf swf topic, hmm what number is this one?
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They said they were happy with 60% kill rates months ago, but right now, even if many people ask for stats and number they refuse to show anything..do you wonder why ? Yeah that's right because the real kill rate is way below 60%
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They cant nerf "swf" without touching "solo" because both are "survivor". The only difference between solo and swf is the swf lobby before the real killer-survivor lobby. Theres nothing in a trial different for solo or swf, aside survivor strategy/gameplan/team mentality or lack thereof.
Nerfing swf to get on par with solo is a funny thought though, seeing survivors react to survivors being balanced around " nerf top killer" logic would be a delight.
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