has BHVR just completely given up on solo queue? The last AMA made it sound like they have...

I mean this is kinda what they said. You can only do so much with solo queue. The biggest issue is you're not super incentivized to work as a team. SWF will take hits for each other, will trade for each other, will bring teamwork perks like we'll make it or botany because they want their friends to live too. but you get a lot less of this with solo, you do get some but a lot less. Which brings the question what motivates solo queue? How can we get survivors to instead of thinking of their own survival think of themselves as a team? You could say bloodpoints but thats a very limited motivator especially at high ranks. Because info doesnt seem to be much of an issue anymore. You know what people are doing because of the HUD. So here are a few things I can think of to might improve it but also might not.

1) Show the builds in the loading screen or after the load. I get why they are hesitant showing perks. People will dodge lobbies if there is a no mither or if the perks dont line up with what they think they should. They don't want to make queue times worse and adding reasons for people to dodge would be included.

2) In the end screen let killers see who were together. This is a double edged sword but one of the big issues with solo queue is perception and killers tend to perpetuate this by complaining about SWFs. I think that if killers saw who was SWF and who was Solo after the game it would tune down this rhetoric IF its closer than it seems, which I honestly think it is.

3) Use bloodpoints and emblems to incentivize staying alive. If "unsafe" unhooks hurt your emblems and BP so should failed attempts to pull, with the exception being if there is only 1 or less non dead/hooked/dying survivors (still allowing to die for hatch). In addition the time you are recovering/find help, being carried and are on hook should all count towards something. Are you being idle? Yes. Are you still contributing to the team? YES. You are distracting the killer buying time for the "team".

4) Make a bloodpoint category for Teamwork, not the same as altruism. But this can have additional carryover from other categories, like altruism boldness and objectives. So if you are maxed on altruism and you heal someone, bam it goes into there. If youre gen jocky and have maxed out objectives and pop another gen it goes there too. Other passive actions can work with this as well. If you are in the killers terror radius, being chased, hooked, carried or recovering/find help you get points based on the gens that get completed during this time. The number of other survivors who escape would also go into this category and could continue to calculate as long as you are in the lobby. The counter-side for killer can be Honorable. Getting points for essentially not slugging, camping, or tunnelling. Points for picking up quickly after a down, for being outside the hook area for hooking a different survivor after the first.

5) Create an honor system similar to league where you can honor one of your teammates or the killer. This one tho is really tricky because you would need to do less honor from SWF (essentially next to none) and I am not sure killers would get honor. A lot of people get upset when they die and blame the killer. In addition killers might give honor for the wrong reason, ie helping the killer. This one is tough because its a 1v4 as opposed to an even match.

But again each of these has concerns. The first two might accidentally create a further divide in the player base and the last three could be completely ineffective. So the question would be is the time to put into this worth the potential payout. Because they still need to work on bugs, get new content, analyze whats working and what needs tweaks. The HUD change was a HUGE bridge between Solo and SWF. But I am unsure if any of these or other suggestions I have heard would do more for it.

Dude its an asymmetrical game. Its going to appear unbalanced to a lot of people because it has to be balanced as a whole across the player base. This is the reason there aren't a ton that gain traction.

So I would be fine with the totem, gate, chest and healing progress. But why not just run kindred. Like its a great perk. This is the same as killers arguing for a basekit corrupt. Except that when killers start running blind add ons and perks people are gonna be even less prepared. Like if you want the kindred info run kindred but its def not necessary to do safe saves as a solo survivor

I wish more, including BHVR understood that.

For number 1, it's kind of odd that this is something DBD mobile has already done. It's a gut punch when you cross the map not knowing the teammate who got slugged doesn't need your help due to unbreakable. I had a game earlier this month where I ran into the basement to do a hook trades, only to learn too late I wasn't needed because it was a deliverance play.

From their answer, they believe that soloq UI provided is == to 4 man SWF with clock-outs. The reason that soloq according mod/dev is not doing as well as SWF is because they're not using information correctly. The UI is apparently equal so why would they further go to bridge soloq information gap if they believe it is already equal? right?

From personal opinion, the dev seem to think that soloq being disorganized is good and that many many gameplay error's is normal. UI is half a tool, half a guessing game. Playing SWF is not a guessing game. It is strong clean-tool that provides significant advantage in the game.

part of their argument is that soloq escapes less because of lack skills to use UI effectively. they're just not good at the game. that is maybe true for beginner/intermediate mmr players but i do not think that survivor like past 3000 hour mark do not know how to play the game. the survivor with lots of experience generally know how to play the game. strong soloq teams do exist, but it is harder to be strong soloq team then it is for SWF to be strong.

Devs have the numbers, they can answer the questions and make changes if they see fit.

We know devs want a 60% Kill rate. We know that solo queue experience and escape rate is worse than swf.

If the solo queue escape rate is so low that swf escape rate isn’t enough to bring it up to desirable levels, devs will add changes (More UI additions, basekit Kindred etc). If the devs don’t see any urgency to do so, it implies that they are satisfied with the Kill rate, thus adding more buffs to Solo Queue may see the Kill rate drop below their desired rate and they would have to buff Killer again to compensate which leads to more work overall.

I get why devs want to avoid stating this, but in order for the triangle of Swf, Killer and Solo Queue to be maintained, Solo Queue needs to have a lower escape rate which means devs need to be very careful of how much they bridge the gap between Swf and Solo Queue.

This is often exactly the same thing.

You don't see MMR, you can't claim that another player is objectively worse or that it's a matchmaking issue. Other survivors can be at exactly the same MMR as you, or higher, and still throw the game. Anyone can screw up regardless of skill level, and a lack of coordination and teamwork is what leads to most screw ups.

Anyone who plays a significant amount of solo survivor knows that your real opponents are often other survivors.

This is the exact issue though.

The game wasn't designed to handle that level of constant real time information generation and passing in real time that SWFs have freely. Under normal circumstances to have that there is supposed to be a trade off of at least one perk slot because you aren't supposed to just have a ton of information without being worse off at another aspect.

Nothing the devs can give survivors is going to fill that kind of gap. HUD changes plus perk changes are literally the best they have to offer without just giving you in-game voice comms and as much as it sucks to be told that the problem isn't a lack of tools but lack of player skill it's true. The vast majority of players in this game aren't actually particularly good and aren't actually even aware of how much information is available to them. New and low level players do not understand the HUD most of the time and higher level players actively ignore it until something bad happens.

Pair that with the fact that players in solo Q often treat the game as 1v1v1v1v1 rather than a 4v1 and you have an experience that is going to be overall less enjoyable than playing with your actual friends or at least a coordinated team. So yes, at this point it is the players' fault because no amount of mechanical intervention is going to make up for having weak players, selfish players, inattentive players, or people refusing to use the tools they have access to over something else they are already using. Like folks constantly ask for versions of Kindred to be basekit, but absolutely despise even considering that they should just run the perk. Even when perks are changed to directly address fundamental game flaws like the buff to Deja Vu people actively refuse to use it when it can help them in the short term. You can't out design reckless player choice.

No. Kindred needs to include killer aura or it is pointless. I'll take basekit Kindred as it is now and bhvr can take away the ant face camp feature that is worthless.

My favourite soloq perks are Deja Vu and Better Together. Honorary mention to Kindred as I used to run that instead, but Better Together gets me more co-op points and has a similar effect.

Yeah, so you know how borrowed time went basekit but we still have the borrowed time perk?

What would you suggest the Kindred perk do if basekit Kindred was implemented the way you suggested?

They won't see because of the bubble.

That would be nice but the devs have said that the bubble is intentional.

I don't know the reason, but my guess is so that the killer can stand still for 2 seconds to activate Insidious if they have it.

Of course, the bubble has been there since before the anti face camp mechanic was introduced.

That isn't what I said.

Yes the bubble exists so that survivors cannot see where the killer might be going after hooking another survivor. It’s by design, is free, and advantageous. But the hook bubble wasn’t always a feature and people initially believed it was a glitch because when it showed up, the devs didn’t say anything about it. They clarified their stance on it within the last 1-2 years IIRC and that is when they said it is an intended feature. It does nerf kindred. Anyway using the hud isn’t a substitute for kindred proper and a basekit kindred that doesn’t show killer aura cannot be used with hud to know if the killer is camping.

Yes, but it can't work both ways. It can't be a team based game with bad matchmaking for the team based role. That's the core problem with solo queue right now. There's often a massive skill discrepancy between teammates. It's not about execution/team work when half the team is playing a completely different brand of DbD.