Visit the Kill Switch Master List for more information on these and other current known issues: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/articles/299-kill-switch-master-list
We encourage you to be as honest as possible in letting us know how you feel about the game. The information and answers provided are anonymous, not shared with any third-party, and will not be used for purposes other than survey analysis.
Access the survey HERE!
Why can TCM have both built in voice chat and show who is in a party whilst DBD can’t?
Seriously what is the reason the devs seem unwilling in this game to implement voice chat, balance around this communication and acknowledge the advantage playing in a coordinated team gives you?
For anyone who has played TCM, you know when you see the icon telling you the family is in a party they’re going to bring much more coordination and subsequently the game will be tougher. Same with the victims. Yet with DBD, the devs seem to be unwilling to do this or they downplay how powerful SWF actually is. Yes, the HUD was good for solo queue but it’s nowhere near actual voice communication.
Of course officially, this game does not have built in voice chat. But at this point, seven years into the game, this is akin to burying your head in the sand. Are we saying the DBD community can’t be trusted to have voice chat in game? Are the devs worried adding in voice chat would lead to too much balancing work? I just don’t understand at this point- the idea of this being a horror game where you’re on your own lacking information is a fallacy at this point. This is basically an action PVP game where communication plays a big part.
Also, any built in voice chat should of course be able to be switched off but pretending a large amount of players aren’t already on coms and that its effect is negligible is just silly at this point.
Comments
-
I do not want voice chat in the game and there is at least a decent chance that I will stop playing if voice chat is in this game
As stated concisely by lidokain above, they are two different games. Weirdly enough, DBD has a lot more teamwork that is required for you to get your objective done where TCM, you could have a group of sentient potatoes as your teammates and you can still escape, which is why I'm more fine with ignoring VC in TCM than I would be in DBD.
In DBD, VC would become the expectation if it was added. If it's the expectation, BHVR would start to balance around everyone having VC and so you'd be at a big disadvantage if you chose not to use it. I suppose it's not impossible that BHVR would choose to continue to balance like nobody could talk but that seems very unlikely as teams that talk would instantly have a huge advantage and would start stomping killers.
18 -
That’s not a good answer. There is no reason for this game to not show who is in a party and to provide players with a communication option- those two things can then be balanced around.
Edit: unless of course you don’t trust the player base with it?
7 -
Public voice chat for dbd sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, i can think of more cons than pros were it ever to be added.
25 -
You should of course be able to turn voice chat off- but the option should be there and you should be willing to accept that you are putting yourself at a disadvantage if you don’t use it.
It should be accepted that voice chat gives an advantage (no-one disputes this right?) and the developers should balance around communication IMO.
0 -
So we have to acknowledge this is a community issue then right?
Post edited by Rizzo on8 -
Exactly, like other things in this game, you cannot trust this community to not abuse stuff in as many ways as possible.
Giving people the option to use voice chat is just asking for trouble on so many levels because most will not use it for it's intended purpose.
Among other reasons as well, but overall i would absolutely hate it's inclusion as i do not believe it belongs in this game no matter what.
Post edited by Rizzo on11 -
because the games had different expectations and objectives when they were made. and continue to have them.
6 -
Honestly my counter to this is I wholeheartedly believe if DBD was released in its current form new tomorrow it would include voice chat. It is not the game that was released in 2016, far from it.
3 -
I would be accepting that I am putting myself at a disadvantage...
Which is why I'd more likely quit the game outright than I would accept voice chat
3 -
I fully agree. because that is now an expectation of every new asymetric game.
but I also think the devs like not having voice chat.
4 -
its probably the same reason they clownishly over censor end game chat, they don't want to invest the money/manpower into moderating voice chat I guess.
1 -
Because DBD survivors have four times as many player(customer) as Killer.
TCM requires fairness because both sides need player.
1 -
Of course not. Have you seen some of the stuff that people type in the endgame chat? Imagine what they would say if we had in-game voice chat.
2 -
This i believe is the main reason for not adding it.
Imagine the nightmare of having to police & moderate across all the platforms DBD is currently on. Much easier to leave all that mess to Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo and whatever tf our PC cousins are using.
Also, have you met us? 😕
1 -
Considering everything I've seen and heard about how people are choosing you use TCM's voice chat, yeah...No thank you.
That has been out for mere days and already people on twitter are complaining and posting videos about how voice chat is mostly troll noise, slurs, and people doing call outs like their playing siege and raging when folks don't follow their orders.
At least DBD makes people have to wait till endgame text chat to express their BS only to get filtered.
10 -
Yeah I was watching Angry Pug play and some guy started spewing racist crap at the person playing Sonny. People left the lobby but imagine hearing that in a DBD game and DCing and then having to cop a penalty because you don't want to play with and listen to someone talking like that. As far as I'm aware, TCM has no DC penalty so you don't have to put up with the people playing with you if you don't want to. You're kind of stuck with them in DBD.
8 -
Because then BHVR would be responsible for moderating voice chat. It's not worth the time or resources, especially knowing how toxic the DBD community can get. People constantly complain about messages they get in end game chat, it would be even worse with VC through out the entire match.
3 -
Well, for those drenched-in-sweat lords of competitive play overbearingly supercilious Semi-SWF alpha-DBD pseudo deities (SoloQists as well) who allow themselves to become filled with toxic levels of rage, both mid-match and post-match, over the “rando” players that have the audacity to, dare I say, cleanse a totem, or anything at all deemed by their-SWFly worshipfulness as unlawful… yeah, coms (even w a “on/off” switch) could be a downside to the overall experience.
Anything, however smol could set someone off. Com’s-for-all could only intensify the madness.
btw, DBD has succeeded optimally since its inception w/o all-coms, proving whatever numbers of the playerbase who may have completely abandoned the game for not having the coms still hasn’t hindered the outstanding numbers of those faithfully, steadfast DBD-Lifers and newcomers.
To answer the OG question tho, DeadByDaylight CAN have build in voice chat… nevertheless, built in voice chat simply wasn’t and isn’t yet necessary, to this date, and very well may never be needed.
5 -
Honestly, I don't want in-game voice in dbd, I don't want in-game voice in most games I play bc I just don't want to talk to strangers on pvp games. It only leads to toxicity bc you know the internet is a thing. I don't think I'm by myself on this either considering every game with in-game voice I play(OW and Hunt are the top two there) randoms don't talk anyway. I even seen streamer solo matches in TCM where most ppl don't use comms to talk. Ppl only really want to talk to ppl they know aka friends and in dbd you don't need in-game comms to do that. You have a software called Discord. There are a lot of ppl like myself who either don't want to run the risk of talking to someone who is really toxic or just have social anxiety. I just don't see the point of putting in something that would take a bit of work to work into the game when only a small % of ppl who will really use it for what it is supposed to be used for. The rest will either leave it turned off or use it to be toxic to others and call each other slurs and other nasty things.
Think about it as soon as you mess up or make a mistake all the comms will be used for is to tell you that you suck and you should quit the game. I have seen this type so many times in other games and text chat in dbd can be like this also so voice would only make it worse. Then you have to think about female players, I have seen a lot of them get harassed in games too just for being female and that will happen in dbd also if voice is added. Face it there ALOT of toxic ppl out there in pvp games and the chances of you running into them on a daily basis are pretty high imo so why risk it? I really don't think voice would be used to make solo queue better and only make it far far worse. I think a ping system would be the better way to add more comms to dbd not voice. Either way, if they did add comms I know I would never use it and just leave it turned off.
9 -
I can think of nothing that will put a nail in the coffin on this game faster than adding voice chat. I cannot imagine any posible scenario involving the random scum and villany that call this game home where that would end well.
9 -
Voice chat in DBD? No effing way. Its a disaster waiting to happen, given how people can, will and do get salty over everything and anything. People DC, Sandbag and grief other players over the smallest of slights enough to leave long winded post-game chats. A voice chat would just amplify that type of behaviour one hundred times.
Some neckbeard hears a woman speak in a proxy chat "time to sand bag her so she dies," or "time to sexually harrass her and prove how much of an unevolved ape I am towards women in games."
I'm sorry, but DbD is DbD and TCM is TCM.
8 -
God that's just awful, imagine too if the player was also a female, it'd be tenn times worse with sexist drivel and sandbagging/sabotaging a female player. XO
2 -
SIr, I play overwatch at gm1 and 3/5 games people have themselves set to not join the voice chat.
You are blowing this out of proportion.
Although I doubt 4/5 games would have more than 1 person join vc in dbd.
Your putting yourself at a disadvantage technically but lose nothing from the current state.
-Sincerely someone who would not join voice chat in this awful player base.
1 -
Now hear me out... mute button.
Very innovative! Or as I said previously a option in settings to automatically not join vc.
This entire thread only proves dbd players don't play other pvp games.
3 -
If you love voice chat that much, maybe you shouldn't play Solo Survivor.
7 -
BHVR would still need to moderate the voice chat like they do with the end game chat - that is alot of resources.
4 -
the only things I've heard about TCM after the "new DBD" talk is that voice comms are super toxic and that there's a dodging problem, so no thank you.
3 -
Leaving aside the potential for toxicity and language barriers (for those of us on the EU / Asia Servers), I think they would have to drastically change the game to a co-op killers vs survivors set up, so that both teams could co-ordinate. Giving every survivor team the ability to SWF on comms would be too strong and drop kill rates through the floor. And it would nerf Stealth killers into oblivion. The game just isn't balanced for either side to have a complete knowledge of the game's state of play.
2 -
So basically everyone just has to accept the huge advantage SWF has in this game and deal with it?
1 -
I don’t “love” voice chat. I’m just fed up of people pretending like this community is “special” and the unwillingness to actually acknowledge the huge advantage communication gives people.
1 -
Thank you. It’s really not that hard is it.
It’s hilarious to me how this thread is boiling down to “this community is toxic and the devs can’t handle it ergo voice chat= bad”.
Of course in that equation it’s voice chat that is the problem…
0 -
People already complain about discord comms. Adding this is just going to trigger people even more. I don't see a point.
1 -
Or how about:
Voice chat is precisely the reason why I avoid other pvp games like F13 and TCM, and the lack of expectation to use it is actually what makes DBD a less toxic gameplay experience for me.
Just because "other games have it" doesn't mean it's a good idea.
DBD is balanced around it's current format, where VC is not expected. This is leading to things such as the survivor HUD icons, and other tools to help solo survivors. If VC was the expectation, then the skill divide between muted and unmuted would be even greater. Killers would be balanced to deal with full survivor communication, and non-VC survivors wouldn't stand a chance.
If you're an advocate for solo survivor, then you wouldn't want that for the game. If you think "solo survivor would be improved with VC", you're not a solo survivor, you're a SWFer without a SWF. Just get on discord and team up, it's not difficult.
14 -
If DBD gets global servers like TCM or servers based on chosen language then sure add voice chat which can be muted if needed, But atm playing in EU servers i would never ever keep my voice chat on.
0 -
Then when people say “solo queue is terrible do something”- something which crops up daily on this forum, Reddit, Twitter etc- what are they hoping the devs can actually do? I constantly see “buff solo, then buff killer so things can be balanced to SWF level”. Again, how exactly is solo meant to be buffed anymore than it has since the implementation of the HUD? Some more base-kit perks perhaps? Eliminating all killer tactics that are deemed “unfun”? Aside from that, there is nothing that can be done.
If we accept SWF with communication is the ultimate easy mode for this game, then we have to accept as a consequence that BOTH killer and solo queue will suffer. Like I said, I’m not even saying you personally or anyone else should be forced to use voice chat, but based on the responses in this thread the only reason to not have it is because of the community. And that’s just kind of sad.
It’s also incredibly naive to just outright say that “this game doesn’t have voice-chat”. Because whilst it does not have official built in voice chat, an awful lot of people are using communication and gaining a massive advantage from it. Actual acknowledgement of this from the devs would be nice. Instead someone will probably come along and say the usual nonsense of “most SWF’s are just friends chilling and having fun! It’s not really an advantage”. Which everyone knows is total BS.
Hiding who is in a party, not having comms whilst letting people have comms, not showing MMR- All of this at this point in the game is just silly now.
0 -
People complain because the game isn’t balanced around communication. SWF can basically run rampant over game balance because of how powerful communication is in this game.
Now stopping people playing with friends is clearly a terrible idea. I am not advocating for that. But everyone just throwing their hands up and saying “what can we do” is not the solution. Maybe a more thorough ping system is the way forward to help solo queue and then look at killers from there. But bridging the communication gap is the only way the imbalances in this game can be addressed.
1 -
The main reason "solo queue is terrible" is because of other survivors refusing to cooperate, and a slightly too unreasonable expectation that they should cooperate.
There's two things to this. Firstly is that no matter how much information you make available, you can't make other survivors do what you want them to do. This is apparent from things like Kindred, and those irritating situations where you're on the hook, you know they can see each other, but still no one makes the save. This is also evident in other pvp games with VC, where said VC is misused by people talking nonsense, playing music, or just trolling.
SWF derive their advantages from a willingness to cooperate. Not from simply having VC. This willingness is far better acheived by seeking out a SWF team, than it would be by hoping random players will choose to communicate with you properly.
And secondly, Solo isn't that bad. Playerrs just have short fuses, they get easily triggered when things don't go their way, they can't handle losing, and they don't take responsibility for their actions. You can't make other survivors do what you want them to do... so you acknowledge that and adapt.
I play predominantly solo survivor, and I don't have a bad time.
Sometimes I get screwed over by other survivors, but I recognise that's simply due to them having a different set of information and goals to me.
Most of them time, my games go ok, I even escape a fair amount of them, more than 50% I'd estimate. Mainly because I've chosen to play solo, I understand what that entails, I know I'm on my own and adjust my tactics to accommodate that. I play a bit more cautiously, I don't make reckless plays like rushing the killer to prevent a hook or rushing a gen in the killers face, etc.
All of these things are actually behaviours that often work against SWF. Overly reckless plays and mistakes that grant the killer too many openings to take advantage of. Which is why SWF isn't always as advantaged as people believe.
All of which is to say; solo isn't as bad, and SWF isn't as good, as most people think, all of the time. Good solo players and bad SWF exist just as much as their opposites. Which is why revealing SWF isn't a good idea, it'll lead to greater lobby screening based on confirmation biases, which are ultimately fallacious.
Instead someone will probably come along and say the usual nonsense of “most SWF’s are just friends chilling and having fun! It’s not really an advantage”. Which everyone knows is total BS.
So you're gaslighting and calling my experience BS?
Official stats place SWF as having a 10% higher escape rate than solo. (Before HUD actions) That's actually not very much at all. That's less than the difference between a 2K and a 3K, or a 3K and a 4K for example.
It's one more escape for every 10 games. I don't even play as many as 10 games a night, so on any given day I would not be able to discern the difference.
Post edited by Seraphor on9 -
I honestly believe that VC would mostly benefit the game. Some things would need to be rebalanced because of the ability to share information, but that's something that can be adjusted over time to fit the new dynamic among survivors.
However, I don't think DBD should have VC. Not for any "good" reason, just that the community is so hell-bent against it.
Every worst case scenario would apparently come true with VC. The community, which is considered very LGBTQ+ and female friendly, would turn into a bigoted mess over night. Somehow. The older audience that DBD enjoys would suddenly become 12 year olds screaming gamer words 24/7. Somehow. The poor people that hook out at the beginning of a Trapper match or spend the whole game hiding would have to endure the horror of their team telling them to be productive. Tragic. New players would have to experience the torture of their team telling them, in real time, how to play better and coaching them so they much more quickly learn how to be proficient at the game instead of spending weeks to months having to research it themselves and figure out what they did wrong or just giving up. It would be pandemonium.
I'm not saying bad things wouldn't happen. They absolutely would. But I personally don't think it would be the average experience. However, Ben Afflecks Batman said it best: "If there is even a 1% chance that we could have a bad interaction in a video game, we have to take that as an absolute certainty."
So ya, don't add VC to DBD. The vocal community simply doesn't want it, regardless of the potential benefits.
2 -
A lot of people are touching on the toxicity angle, and it is a very valid one, but it's not the main reason that voice chat would be a bad idea for DBD.
The main reason that voice chat would be a bad idea for DBD is that it'd be a lot of manpower and effort put towards implementing a feature that would have extremely slim returns, insofar as it would only even work for some players in some regions some of the time.
If your goal is to increase the information that a solo queue player has, voice chat isn't even an option for achieving that, let alone the best one. A solution that relies too heavily on factors entirely out of the specific players' control isn't going to do absolutely anything to increase solo queue's effectiveness as a whole; if your goal is to acknowledge the advantage of communication and balance the game around expecting survivors to have that information, the game has to give them that information. There is simply no way around this.
Let's say you're a solo queue player, and BHVR have implemented voice chat. Let's set aside toxicity for a moment, even though it is a pretty huge immediate barrier to this working. Let's say you (like myself) play in the EU servers. What has to align in order for you to get the benefit of voice chat?
- Everyone in the match has to have a microphone.
- Everyone in the chat has to have the willingness to use that microphone.
- Everyone in the chat has to speak the same language, which on EU servers is extremely far from guaranteed.
- Everyone in the chat has to know what to convey and when.
If any of these things fail, which is extremely likely, you are back at square one and voice chat did nothing. If we factor back in toxicity, voice chat did nothing but add extremely annoying noise you have to spend time muting while you're in a match. That's not only not achieving what you want, it's a net deficit.
I saw you ask further up what people expect BHVR to do. The answer is, implement information sharing that comes passively from the game, not actively from players. The solo queue HUD was a great start, but there's more to do; basekit survivor-aura Kindred, showing teammate's perk builds in the lobby and in the pause screen, and better instances of perks giving visual cues (EG, survivors in lockers with Head On highlight that locker), would all be great ways to give solo queue players that want to coordinate the tools to do so without relying on all the facets necessary for voice comms to work.
When you add toxicity on top of the things I've laid out above, it becomes obvious why voice comms are a bad idea for DBD. I don't know enough about TCM to know if they were a bad idea there, but I'd imagine probably.
As for showing survivors in a group, the reason that's a bad idea is lobby shopping. That already messes up the matchmaking a lot, we really don't want it to get worse.
7 -
You don't know how hard it would be since you know you are not a game dev. You have no clue how much time and money the dev would have to do to put in voice comms and police it. Just adding a mute button doesnt mean they don't have to police comms. Every game that has a voice has a mute button but guess what they still police comms and ban ppl for slurs and other things. You can't just add a mute button and call it a day.
Now put yourself in the dev's shores for a moment. You put in the hard work, hours, and money to add voice comms in a game that is already been made for years and even add a system to police it. Then you see that most players either keep it off or use the comms to be toxic. Only a very few players use it for the reason why you made it in the first place. Not really worth the time and money now is it? Why add something to a game that is just either going to be not used or be abused by toxic ppl? The biggest thing is TCM and other games were designed with voice in mind and those systems were put in as the game code was being made. DBD wasn't and adding a new system to the already made code would not be as easy as you may think.
2 -
They use the Unreal Engine, which actually has native VOIP. Essentially, it's already in the engine. It has Global, Team, and Local voice chat already built into it. Ya, they would need to craft the visual queues for it, but the underlying system that powers it is already (technically) in the game. From there, UE has APIs that allow the developer to tailor how it works and interacts with their servers, other servers, etc.
1 -
I wouldn't want them adding voice chat to dbd unless they add a ping system. You can give callouts that way that everyone else can see and this will help players over in the EU as there's more language barriers.
0 -
That's what we've been doing ever since the survivor HUD was released. There's zero reason to believe that BHVR has any intention of actually compensating killers for all the quality of life buffs the survivors have been given. It's literally been years, and we've heard absolute zero on compensation buffs, besides the FoV idea that is happening for accessibility reasons.
We even have the healing nerf to prove that BHVR's goal isn't to actually balance survivors as a whole. BHVR nerfed self healing, but kept altruistic healing exactly the same, which WIDENS the gap between solo q and SWF. It's like BHVR's goal isn't actually to close the gap, and instead they're just using that as an excuse to buff survivors whenever they want.
PvP games that have basekit voice chat, are balanced around voice chat, which means that if some people don't participate in voice chat, the whole team might be at a massive disadvantage.
Even if we use TCM as an example, have you seen the difference between killers that don't use voice chat, and killers that coordinate Bubba removing specific infinites, killers that coordinate being in specific places to flank survivors that are trying to loop, killers that coordinate being at the well drop-down place in the basement so they can be there when a survivor drops down a well, etc etc etc? And that is what the game is balanced around... players that are using voice chat to coordinate strategies that are impossible to do without voice chat.
2 -
Exactly this; saying "we should introduce VC and if you don't like it you can just mute" basically means we should balance everything around swf on comms so solo players are either forced to have a massive disadvantage or endure people yelling atrocities at them.
It would just lead to people saying "just mute the VC" when solo players complain about it, but also "just turn on VC" when they complain about balance. I would genuinely stop playing survivor (and possibly the game altogether) if that feature was introduced, because there's no way i'd use VC but I also wouldn't bother searching for 3 available people everytime I want to play.
8 -
i think dbd problem is derive on aura's. if survivor can see aura of teammates, they can do most teamwork actions effectively. in TCM, there is a character in the called Cook. One of his skills is that he can grant-wall hacks when he detects a victim to himself. at base-kit, this is not very useful with no voice com's. With level 3, he grants wall-hacks to everyone on his team when he uses Seek ability. You can see how dramatically more powerful his ability becomes once aura is shown to everyone on the team.
His level 3 ability grants voice com's without needing to talk. The game shows the aura and the aura does all the talking. survivor has same problem in dbd. with bond/empathy/kindred, the teammates auras perks do all the talking required. there is no reason to add voice com's. your better off just putting those aura type perks into base-kit so nobody needs to talk. the game does all the talking for you.
they cannot really buff killers because majority of matches are soloq survivor matches vs killer. until solo is as good as swf, there is no reason to buff/compensate killers.
2 -
I think you missed the point on everything else I mentioned about TCM and voice comms.
"Even if we use TCM as an example, have you seen the difference between killers that don't use voice chat, and killers that coordinate Bubba removing specific infinites, killers that coordinate being in specific places to flank survivors that are trying to loop, killers that coordinate being at the well drop-down place in the basement so they can be there when a survivor drops down a well, etc etc etc? And that is what the game is balanced around... players that are using voice chat to coordinate strategies that are impossible to do without voice chat."
All the above stuff is important, and currently needs voice comms to do.
The real problem is BHVR said they don't intend to balance the game around voice comms.... but when they say "lessen the gap between solo q and SWF", they literally mean voice comms. The survivor HUD had 0% to do with basekit SWF, as basekit SWF has 0 extra communication features beyond what solo q gets. And whenever survivors talk about closing the gap, they are also literally talking about features that survivors only get when they use voice comms.
0 -
Game was built without it and after so long, doesn't really need it. In the words of so many, it's just unnecessary at this point. Sure it could be helpful whatever.
And that's ignoring the obvious people can't be trusted with comms, since that goes for any game with comms.
2 -
hud is small step in closing gap. the problem is survivor do not really need UI. what they need is teammates aura. you do not need UI telling you the generator progression. you can just see a survivors aura in the distance that the survivor went on generator. from that, you can deduce that if he is on the gen for 20 seconds. the gen has 22% progress. you do not need UI to tell you that survivor is in a chase. you can read body language of a survivor running away from a generator. that survivor must be in chase because he is running in circles. you do not need UI about healing progression or gate progression. you can do same internal clock as generator's.
dbd's survivor problem is just teammate aura reading. It is similar problem to cook's level 3 seek ability. I am not sure why they have that seek ability as upgrade because that upgrade is clearly an upgrade that every cook is going to use in soloq. the SWF will also use that level 3 ability until everyone learn the basement map but after x months where the player knows the maps inside out. SWF will not need to use that level 3 skill because they can just do call-out based off basement location like "victim on side-garden ladder". soloq on the other hand will always have to rely on that level 3 cook skill because you do not know if your teammate understand the map to use your call outs effectively. you have to use level 3 perk in hopes that they use wall-hack properly.
0 -
The survivor HUD doesn't close the gap between solo q and basekit SWF. It's literally closing the gap between people without voice comms and people with voice comms. Remember that basekit SWFs have the exact same game information as solo q, and many SWFs don't use voice comms... so they had the exact same game information as solo q, even though they are in a SWF.
And aura reading is pixel perfect information of where the survivor is, which is way more accurate than what most people are communicating via voice comms. And auras give constantly updated information. Auras and voice comms are not replacements for each other, as they have completely separate advantages and disadvantages.
0 -
No thanks. If anything. I would rather them have the dbd mobile version with already made commands you can choose from so everyone knows what you are going to do etc. I dont trust some ppl in my community to handle voice chat at all.
1
