SWF nerfs

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.

Well, first give me a couple examples of what you would nerf about swfs and I'll let you know.

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.

How do you make swf in line with soloq? You brainwash your swf teammates to make them as dumb as the avg soloq survivor

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

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.

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.

Yes

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.

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.

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.

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.