How does BHVR plan on balancing SWFs?

If we are looking at some server regions, Europe and America, for example, most people there will be able to speak english, but sure, you could as well add a chatwheel function together with voicechat and text chat just to make sure that everyone has a way to communicate, that feature alone would work without additional hardware. But like if you can afford a pc or console to run this game you will most likely be able to also afford a headset, especially since it makes it harder to play against certain killers if you don't use a headset anyway.

I cannot really talk about the other server regions but considering you have over a billion english speakers wordwide you will probably encounter one every few matches. But I have to say I am yet to encounter a game with voicechat and or textchat where not at least one person was able to speak a language I speak.

That's missing the point, though. You're talking about "most" or "at least one", when the solution has to work for everyone that is attempting to use it.

Europe, the servers that I play on for most video games, has a lot of instances of people on voice chat not speaking English. This was one of my biggest barriers for success in ranked Overwatch, back when I played that; playing on the EU servers meant that a huge number of my teammates overall could not communicate with me -- at least, not via voice. That game, though, gave a lot of information to players without the need for input from their teammates, and that is the direction DBD should go.

Voice chat would mostly work as a solution for NA servers - as indeed it does for other games, I visited Canada for a few weeks and playing ranked Overwatch there was much easier for this exact reason - but it wouldn't worldwide, and that means it doesn't work as a solution at all.

Just to be sure I'm not only shooting down other ideas, some examples of things that the game could do without running into this problem would be: Showing teammate's loadouts pre-game and in the match details screen mid-game, giving some form of basekit Kindred to know who is where when it's time to orchestrate a save, adding secondary information elements to a lot of perks and improving the ones that exist, and allowing Keys (+ to a lesser extent, Maps) to be substitutes for voice comms via buffing the heck out of their info elements. A ping system could work too, though I'd be wary about tone.

Such things will never work for everyone. Everyone has the capability to get the information via voice or text chat, you can as well deactivate it because you don't feel like communicating, but the language barrier will always be there, and even if we add a chat wheel or add aura reading it will still not be entirely equivalent to communication via voice chat with 3 other people that speak your language and that you are comfortable around speaking with them.

That would be because those games tend to have other ways of imparting information on the player so they aren't solely reliant on whether or not the stars align for their teammates to be able to vc with them.

Also, you've heard one complaint, from me, about Overwatch. It is a thing in those games, but comms are both more expected in that genre and the games offer alternate ways of gaining information. For instance, those games can include a ping system, with minimal tonal concern- among many other methods.

Headsets may not be ultra expensive but ten bucks is sometimes more than people have. Put a gun to my head and tell me to buy a new headset right now, I wouldn't be able to. It's the least impactful of the reasons, yes, but it is still one factor of many that contribute to whether or not someone can benefit from a voice chat system-- and since the entire stated goal of implementing one in the first place here is to cut down on some having information and some being left out in the cold, that's relevant. If the solution doesn't work for everyone it necessarily cannot be considered a solution to this particular problem.

It's easier to tell people over voice... if you are able to. If your teammates do not speak the same language as you, if you do not have a headset (for whatever reason), if you don't have the privacy to voice call without insane noise pollution, if you just want to avoid harassment based on gender or accent or whatever... then you'd be using the other methods for exchanging information.

Implement both at once if you must, but the voice chat won't achieve much and cannot be implemented on its own. It's important to correct your rundown on my take; it isn't that it wouldn't solve everything, it's that it wouldn't solve anything. You would still be at square one with the exact same problem: Some players can exchange information, and some cannot.

On a second note, noise pollution? Where on earth are you playing? Like you have a headset, obviously, otherwise the game sound would too much already, and then you cannot talk simple words? Are you playing in the public library or what is it you're trying to say?

I would still argue that those people who do not have a headset, or are afraid of whatever in voice chat or are playing god knows where are the vast minority so sure, for them it would not do much, but do you think they would be like just because I cannot have this advantage nobody should? Pretty sure they would be happy as well about new features, and like I said before they would perhaps also get information despite not distributing them themselves, If I play dota for example I never talk in voice, because I just don't feel like it, but I still listen if other people use it, which is perfectly fine. So even if they cannot or do not want to use the feature, they would still benefit from it to some degree.

have you seen any SWF specific balancing in 6 years of dbd? I have not seen anything. It is safe to say there is no plans to nerf SWF or change SWF in any conceivable way. If anything, your more likely to see information-type aura perks show up on solo to make solo and SWF a lesser divide.

When will that happen? No clue. Nobody necessary hyper requesting it. It would be nice to see dropped pallet aura's from any mean necessary passive and see your teammate's aura's so you can play closer to SWF efficiency for certain gameplay actions like healing. Only time will tell if any changes occur.

I also do not agree that no killer would play against a full SWF. Many killer players play against full SWF without knowing it. In general, if your killer has decent balance to win vs SWF, you will generally be fine playing killer against SWF.

Man that's evil! 🤪🤣😂

You do realise however that MMR already does not do much if something at all? So while in theorey it might work if we had a working matchmaking system it will not work. When MMR was first introduced it was too strict, in the sense that it basically limited killer variety as well as provided over long queue times, I think Dowsey waited for like 90 + min for a game on twins and such ridiculous things. If the problems with the Matchmaking system were not there then maybe this could work... But even then...

And when someone replied "Ok, but let survivors see who's the killer in the lobby" suddenly they think is a bad idea

It's a little outdated now, but the last official stats on SWF were I think around 30% of survivors are SWF (including 2 and 3 man lobbies) and that SWF have an average 15% higher chance of escape.

That's not all that much when you consider that is less than the difference between an extra kill/escape per game (25%) and when you consider it's an average, meaning half of all SWF lobbies don't have as much as 15% greater escape rates.

Communication is as much of a skill as anything else, and not all SWFs are good at it. Simply having access to voice chat doesn't nean it's used well. When people talk about how strong SWF are, they're talking about a subset of SWF teams who actually use the tools well.

This is all to say that the SWF 'problem' is at least a bit overblown, and that you can't fairly address SWF directly in terms of balance. You can't implement nerfs or handicaps qccording to how many survivors are in a premade group, as this wpuld be a penalty to all SWFs who aren't the high performing ones. At that point, you really are punishing people for playing with their friends.

The only fair solution is to implement survivor tools that emulate the information available via voice chat. The survivor HUD icons were a big step towards that, but more can be done.

The system already works in the way that is able to properly call out the result of a match before it happened, it is quiete good at that according to the devs, the only issue is that it most of the time cannot find good matches... So how exactly would you get rid of the error without having more players in the game? Because that is the main issue, you don't have enough players of equal skill to get good matchmaking all across the board.