Hate Against SWFs
There's been a lot of hate against SWFs recently, and while I'm not sure why, I thought I'd address it.
Why do we, as a community, act like SWFs are the big bad evil boogymen of DBD? You hear "Survive With Friends" and your mind immediately jumps to the 4-man bully squad who gets every flashlight save, pallet stun, and hook sabo, while also genrushing you.
Does it suck to be on the receiving end of that? Sure. It's genuinely awful, and I don't think anyone will deny that. Thing is, though, that not every SWF is a 4-man bully squad. Just like how not every Nurse player is a 9000hr God Nurse that never misses a single blink, and slugs everyone at 5 gens.
Nobody ever thinks about the duo that's just playing casually and talking about things not even related to DBD. Nobody ever thinks about how one of them misses a skill check, which starts a chain reaction of missed skill checks, and they both end up laughing about it. Nobody ever thinks about the failed Flashbang saves that end up blinding the person being carried.
"But Kait, the game was designed around not having information!" Maybe once upon a time it was, but is that really still the case? Look at all the information you get from the HUD now as a survivor. Look at all the aura reading perks that are in the game now. I think that argument would be relevant in 2016 DBD, but the game has changed so much since then.
"Okay, well, SWFs have an advantage over Solo Queue!" I mean, yeah? But it's not as though that advantage is significant enough to make a huge difference. Most of the time, your average SWF isn't much better than a Solo. I've been the Solo matched with a 3-man SWF, and they tried to be a flashlight bully squad. Problem is, they weren't good at chase and would go down in 15 seconds, and they wouldn't do gens either. The first 2 minutes of the game, and only one gen got done against a killer with no slowdown perks. I've played against way better solos before.
I think, if we're being honest, the difference between SWF and Solo Queue is having reliable teammates. With a SWF, you know how each person in the group plays and are able to compensate for each other's weaknesses. Instead of getting saddled with teammates who are still working out how to blind a killer at a pallet, you can have teammates who are closer to your own level of skill.
TL;DR: SWF isn't the big bad boogyman of DBD, and isn't the reason you lose games. You aren't going to win every game as killer, and that's okay. As for post-game chat, there are always going to be toxic players looking to get a rise out of you. Just ignore them and move on. Don't give them the satisfaction.
Comments
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I think the best thing to do is show in endgame which players were in a swf. Because I don't think people get swfs as often as they think they do and that might be the best wake up call.
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Oh absolutely. It's likely that people get more solos than they think they do. It's not as though every solo player barely knows how to play the game, after all.
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Imagine having a permanent 24 meter killer instinct placed on you at all times. SWFs are incredibly strong for that reason, me and my friends aren’t that great considering 3 of them are almost brand new and I only have a few hundred hours on survivor but we constantly win whenever we choose to. Unless of course it’s Nurse, Blight, Plague or Wesker.
The killer has essentially no element of surprise at all because me and the others constantly call out their almost exact locations and what direction they are heading. Easily letting a teammate across the map know the killer is going for them so they can hide behind a wall and not be found.Not to mention coordinating all our perks and calling out when and where we are going down and so on. I guarantee if Nurse and Blight didn’t exist, survivors could easily get a 1,000 plus escape streak. I can have my friends bring the best tool box in the game with double charges all running BTL, SW, SB and Scav or Resil and we can win pretty much anytime we want. S Tier killers permitting and item counts permitting. But it’s just not very fun.
Tl; Dr: SWFs are OP because of the insane info and coordination capabilities, and could win more often if they played super sweaty
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dead by daylight's community has developed a climate where most things that deviate from what is generally considered to be 'normal' from the game tends to draw very strong opinions, especially when it comes to other players. i personally don't mind SWFs and find them fun to go against even when the game is not in my favor, though once upon a time i was not as emotionally mature about it as i'd have liked to be. i found myself very easily getting frustrated over the fact that i got stomped by powerful teams.
but something i remembered was that even in games that had more rounded-out gameplay, that also just so happened to involve teams coordinating with each other, it would be the same experience. there's more power in numbers than in an individual usually and i allowed myself to accept that. sometimes that challenge is a very good teaching tool for learning how to handle pressure and applying your knowledge against the more tougher groups.sometimes, it just doesn't hurt to do a little introspection while playing these games! you learn a lot about yourself and tend to improve that way.
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I think top-level SWF can get win streaks even vs Nurse and Blight. Especially blight. Blight has no chance right now vs them with current nerfs. Wesker also has no chance either. Ayrun has shown that you can gen-rush killer in 4 minutes. there is just no shot your getting more then 5 hooks as killer.
I think, if we're being honest, the difference between SWF and Solo Queue is having reliable teammates. With a SWF, you know how each person in the group plays and are able to compensate for each other's weaknesses.
i don't agree. i think my teammates when they do not not d/c in soloq are very reliable. SWF advantage is macro game efficiency and extra perk slots. The extra perk slots allow you to make some incretible good perk synergies as SWF. A large majority of survivors according to Nightlight are stuck using Window of Opportunity and Bond. Imagine if they could use different perks slots.
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Imagine taking the most extreme example and calling that the norm. I acknowledge the existence of people who play like that, but that's not your casual SWF. Hens plays like that when he does SWF. His group is all about clock callouts, but even without that, the players are all extremely good individually.
You will always find people on the extreme end of the scale who choose to play in a way that is competitive. The overwhelming majority of DBD's player base is casual. They have no interest in meta. Even when UB+DS+DH+BT was the meta, there was still a large amount of players who didn't care about the meta and just played how they wanted to play.
Your TL;DR that SWFs are OP because of the insane info and coordination capabilities discounts the fact that most just don't care to play that way. It also discounts the fact that not everyone has 3 friends to play with. Some people only have one friend to play with, and they may not feel comfortable playing with strangers to make up the difference.
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8 years iss not really recently, its the unfair advantages swf have opposed to the killer. They have dozens of perks for "free", can neglect the entire point of a game (Not healing, calling out, stealthbuilds are useless etc..)
SWF is unfair for the game and playing against one sshould rewards you in extra bloodpoints
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Hate? it's more like them being a bane of existence of most killer players, simply because they are efficient
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Easiest and only fix i can see, is just to limit perks that can be used in games
Put perks into classes: chase/regression/survival,aura, whatever then just limit how many you can take, for everyone.
If its a swf add limits to the group. If its a 4 man say 2 of X 3 of X and 2 of X
Adjust the numbers however, but we all know that swfs are the main reason we never have any balance.
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Once you've played for long enough, you get dozens of perks for free thanks to experience. High MMR sweats are not the norm for most players. SWF is far from being unfair.
The main reason we "never have any balance" is because the game isn't balanced top-down. It's balanced bottom-up. If you don't like that, there is no shortage of games that balance top-down and reward skill expression above everything else.
I would imagine that they could, but choose to use those perks because a large amount of survivor perks just aren't that good. Bond isn't even top 10 according to Nightlight. Windows will always be a solid perk choice regardless of being in a SWF or Solo. It shows you what pallets and vaults are where, which can be invaluable for anyone who's competent in chase, but hasn't memorized every possible tile spawn.
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For some reason the community seems to blame the players for playing with their friends and doing it efficiently, instead of blaming the devs for not balancing the game properly and giving everyone the same tools... Swf itself can be problematic against certain killers, but the individual skill of the players is overall more important.
On top people seem to blame swf for everything, 90 second chase, 3 gens pop "swf is genrushing me", some one getting a flashlight safe after doing nothing for 2 min but following the killer "swf is so coordinated" and so on...
They should just give all survivors the same tools and then balance the map around that, instead of letting hate grow upon 50% of the player base for playing with their friends while sitting in voice chat.
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It isn''t balanced on any metric, and swfs only add to it.
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SWFs are not op!
Look at the stats that were recently published. It helps experienced players to some extend, but it is far away from being op.DBD is killer sided! And I don't understand why BHVR not even tries to balance it!
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But it is though. Just because the balance isn't to your satisfaction, doesn't mean the game isn't balanced. Your personal dislike of SWFs doesn't make the game any less balanced.
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I mean no offense, but the tools at hand are not equal for solo and swf, I mean sure not everyone is a 4 men swf comp squad with clock callous. But you still have access to a lot more information if you want to use it. Which means that if you wanted to you would not need to run certain information perks, because they give you nothing you don't already have potential access to. The game in no way is balanced around people having or not having the potential access to those kind of information.
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The main advantage of SWF is midigating the randomness of your teammates, the quality of which is the reason solo queue can be so frustrating at times. I feel this is more impactful consistently than any info shared.
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I would say potentially... You will still have friends that play like clowns, but at least you know from the beginning what to expect ^^
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It just means your in low MMR and most likely have good game sense from playing killer a lot. Climbing into high MMR has survivors can take hundreds of not thousands of hours. You either are exaggerating or over embellishing your knowledge of where the killer is especially considering some maps just don't have the view distance you imply you have on a regular basis. Even comp teams that do call out and do what your saying get found and die when vs players of their skill. Which brings me to the claim your just not placed properly in your MMR as survivor as you most likely only play the role when in a swf
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Their understanding of it being balanced is a 60% killrate... So from their POV it is not killer sided. Aside from that, the game favor whoever brings the most broken stuff into the match.
And when you look at the highest level, skill of comp players, but not with comp rules, 70% of killers are not viable against them, 20% are somewhat even chances and 10% are expected to win against them... So kind of a hot take to say it is killer sided, when quite a lot of killers are actually quite bad. Maybe specify a bit more on what level of experience.
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Imagine ignoring 95% of everything I wrote considering I just told you my SWF (with 3 new people) can win often if we choose too and the fact that we dont use clock callouts but still there is extreme info.
You can not discount my points just because YOU don’t play that way. You have no idea what the majority of people do honestly, so you are making huge blanket statements with zero evidence.
I’m telling you why SWFs are hated and that is the reason why and it’s not debatable lmao, that’s literally why they are hated., insane information and coordination, even mediocre SWFs can let each other know to start holding W key which is hell for any killer to go against.
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TLDR SWFS are like Nurse, you have to hope their bad but. Either way you likely wont have fun in that match.
SWF are the reason solos cannot have nice things. SWF is like on omega blink Nurse, both were steadily nerfed and are the reason why we cannot have any semblance of balance. Because, they both abuse anything and everything.
Sure, the majority of players might be your average joe, but everyone knows that going against nurse you just accept you are probably not going to win or have fun. The exact same can be applied to SWFs, just as you can have memey Walking Nurses and comp Nurses the same is true for SWFS. You have to hope that maybe the SWF<Nurse> is bad or memeing just to find out they<SWF\Nurse> brought a map offering, and the best addons, items, and etc. Both will eventually kill the game for regular and\or solo players.
Everyone has a story of the nurse who four slugged and bled everyone out. Everyone has a story of the fourman SWF who saboed and boiiled over, or headon stunned and flash saved over and over. Both sides will give excuses that the other side still could play and it is fun until they experience it and ask for nerfs.
Ultimately, without SWFS the game would have dies. Ultimately, without Nurse the game would of died<Old Infinites and more which were killing the games player base at the time>. Because despite what people say, winning is fun and SWFS and Nurse allow you to win much more. And no one likes to lose EVERY SINGLE GAME.
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That's true. But also your mates are less likely to sandbag or yeet on first hook either, and both are a menace in solo. You also know they will come for you in endgame if they can.
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I find that kinda hard to believe at best case scenario it can work like that but if you're friends are new to the game they go down in 10s.
I play swf and only reason we win is because we all can loop very well and make gens effiently. We have 10 000+ hours so that should be expected. Good killers can win us though. We don't use communication and not often it is neccessary.
We actually often win agains't good blights and nurses but like some unknown player ramdomly destroyed us recently. Squad I play with even won lilith omen.
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Well believe it, they have a few hundred hours each and we win often. Of course not against nurse and only sometimes blights. Windows of Op carried them for a while and still does honestly.
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Would you say you face more new/casual killers? I think experienced killers should beat you guys at least 50/50 times. They could win even more but many killers play for hooks/fun instead optimally so I can see them losing when you play optimally with strong stuff BNP:s etc. But how you guys do agains't tunneling killer who focus on your weaker friends taking them potentially quickly out?
I also have another swf (surviving with family) and that's when I communicate but we do significantly worse than with swf who I don't talk. Simple reason is we only have 2 good players me and my lil bro. But my twin bro is too casual and lil sis and cousin are weak links/new players. They lack game sense, gen/looping effiency. Sometimes feels we do even worse than I do in soloQ… We might do just bit better.
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Imagine if killers could use other perks besides Pop, Pain Res and Lethal Pursuer.
(Hint: they can.)
Unimaginative and unadventurous players being slaves to the meta shouldn't be a factor here. I play a good amount of solo survivor and I never run Windows or Bond.
With a bit of learned game sense, Empathy can be a much more effective info tool for only one perk slot. You can see the survivor who's in chase, giving you info on where the killer is and what resources have been used, and you can find injured survivors to heal them efficiently.
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Definitely newer killers I would say as the average we go against is probably 1,500 to 2,000 hours. I would not say casual because we experience tunneling a lot. And we do have a weak link friend who is pretty bad but every since I had them get WoO they can loop significantly longer, easily double what they can do without it so it makes him a solid link but still the weakest.
We always have flashlights so we him go down in the open so he is basically unpickable and when the killer tries to slug I use WGLF to pick him up. I would genuinely say we have a 70% escape rate being 3 of us escaping on average because it is very rare to get all 4 of us out.
I’ll upload a video of us SWFing and winning whenever we decide to but that might take a few months considering we all work different shifts.
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SWFs is a necessary evil for this game. If people weren't allowed to play this game with their friends then I think the game wouldn't even be around anymore. I know how bad the sentiment is towards SWF. I was recently accused to being in one in a slugfest match even though I have been solo que for well over a year now. It just goes to show how much people dislike SWF.
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that is because pick-rate of the perk is segmented in two perks. Kindred and Bond. If you add pick-rate of bond and pick-rate of kindred, the pick-rate of these two perk is collectively 17.87%. If you add Empathy then it is 20.87%. The reason why i am lumping the perk is that all 3 of these perks *almost * do identical actions with slightly different drawback/condition. Teammate aura reading perks is 2nd most popular perk after window of opportunity. Only exhaustion is more popular which is around 61% pick-rate among dead hard/Sprint burst/Lithe but you can't lump these perks as same because they are technically all different perks.
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I'd say we can discount your points because they don't match the official stats. You say that some of your mates are new, so they shouldn't be high MMR.
4man SWF overall only has a 3% higher escape, so your experience does not match the official stats.
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that is something that killers have also complained about. They've complained that their early game is bad and should be stronger. Scott promoted some early game collapse but honestly lethal pursuer is easier. The other complained is that killer cannot compete vs good teams without gen regression/game-delay. This leads to poor perk variety and the killer feeling they're throwing games for not choosing said perks.
I didn't mention Empathy because it is 3% pick-rate perk.
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That's ... entirely my point.
Solo survivors don't need to rely on Windows and Bond, they have Empathy but they're sleeping on it because they refuse to drop old habits.
It's not that solo survivors need Windows and Bond to make up for not being SWF. Windows and Bond are crutches that hold them back from improving.
Same for killers who refuse to drop gen regresion.
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i do not understand your point. empathy and bond are similar perks. one of them has global range but has drawback of requiring the survivor to be injured but Bond has 100% up-time for both healthy and injured with drawback of 36 meters radius. Kindred also works globally but has drawback of requiring you to be on a hook.
There isn't anything to improve. it is entirely guessing game to be soloq without said perks. SWF removes guessing game which makes them consistently play better in all situations IF their skill-level is high enough. This also shown in statistics for escape rate where 4 man SWF at high MMR have 48% escape-rate while soloq has 39% escape rate. The difference in % comes from extra perk slots and lack of base-kit features for those not using said perks.
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You're already not being honest in the OP if you think anyone is talking about casual duos when they whine about sweaty SWF groups
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Less likely? I only ever get sandbagged by my friends :D:D They once bodyblocked me into a corner so I would die from endgame XD
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You mean those "stats" they provided once without any evidence, those "stats" that basically say "the game is balanced and the devs are doing a pretty good job so far", the "stats" that contradict with general experience of most players, those stats, right?
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SWF, Perks, and certain killers are the great evil of DBD lol I just say do what you want! :) playing with friends is fun also.
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Ok ok ok, so maybe one of my friends whenever against Plague will spend the entire trial puking on me! 😂🤣
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for every SWF there are literally 50 4k stomps on solo q players, killer players only remember the matches they lose while they win 10 more that day, while survivors are pretty much expected to lose unless swf-ing
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The fighting game community: "Looks like I need to work on my combos, study frame advantage, and lab this character some more."
MMO community: Crowd sources fight mechanics, optimizes rotations, checks each other's math, etc.
DbD community: "I lost because comms."
The DbD playerbase is mentally cooked.
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Nah you have plenty of people in the FGC crying about things like this. It's just instead of SWFs it's "cheap characters" or whatever.
You just don't really see a huge amount of organised, high-level play, which is kind of the antithesis of this attitude. DBD doesn't have an EVO. It's a relatively minor part of the community, for better or worse, and kind of stigmatised.
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here's the reason i think SWF are bad for the game.
because killers get balanced around SWF.
and i play the game mostly as a solo queue survivor.
i've played over 100 matches of killer during the anniversary event and only lost 1 game to a 4 man tournament team. no draws.
that's what it takes right now for a good killer to lose a match in this game.
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That's kind of the point my guy. The hate towards SWFs isn't aimed specifically at these sweaty SWF groups; it's aimed at all SWFs. It doesn't matter if they're a casual duo, or a sweaty 4-man, as far as people are concerned SWF is too strong because coordination and information sharing.
It's one thing to say "4-man SWFs are too strong, and should have restrictions on duplicate perks and items." It's another to say "SWFs is unfair and killers should be allowed to see who's in a SWF so they can choose if they want to play against them."
The entire point of this thread is to address the fact that the hatred is unjustified for the most part, and that most SWFs are, in fact, playing casually. That not every SWF is a 4-man bully squad.
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- You don't use clock callouts but you still have an established callout system for tracking the killer.
- You tell your friends what items and perks to run, then say that it isn't fun.
- You make a point of ensuring that you coordinate your every move.
- You can always win if you choose to, except against Blight, Nurse, Plague
Mayhaps you haven't realized it yet, but you're not playing casually. Also, having a few hundred hours is not being "almost brand new" to Dead by Daylight. I can make blanket statements about the majority of SWFs because we have official statistics that show that the overall escape rate for solos, duos, trios, and 4-mans aren't significantly higher. In fact, duos had a lower escape rate than solos did.
The only actual outlier in the data is High MMR groups who have a 48% escape rate, which stems from information sharing and coordinating. The reality is that most just don't do that, and that isn't why they play together.
There is a distinct difference between something that is OP, and something that has the potential to be OP. SWF has the potential to be OP, but most SWFs are casual players who care more about a fun experience than they do about winning and optimizing every aspect of their gameplay.
I discounted your points because they aren't representative of the majority of SWFs, and because your play style is indicative of high MMR strategies.
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The game is arguably more balanced than it has ever been. Kill rates are at an average of 60% while escape rates are at an average of 40% with the only outlier being High MMR 4-man SWFs with an escape rate of 48%. I'd imagine the only thing stopping that number from being higher is how strong tunneling is as a strategy.
The stats are pretty close to Nightlight where the lowest kill rate is Singularity on 50%, and that's just from 652,234 games. Imagine how much more accurate that data could be if everyone, worldwide, recorded their match results.
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Oh it is, is it? That why its so much fun in solo queue.
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How exactly is the game balanced around swf? Please explain... Because I don't think there is any indication for this being the case.
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Solo queue obviously is the weakest role in the game, and it will stay that way until either the game commits Sudoku by preventing people from playing with their friends or by closing the gap between solo and swf when it comes to communication and coordination.
And another reason solo queue feels bad is because you don't know what you are going to get... Not only is the matchmaking all over the place, it also cannot properly tell apart good from bad players.
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Wel they normally have to balance i mean "fix" bugs tthat get exploited by swfs, rpd boil over etc,
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Without SWF, I don't think there would be enough soloQ survivors to keep the game moving. Wait times would take forever as you would need 4 soloQ survivors for every killer.
SWF games can be frustrating for the killer at times, but it's part of the challenge. Video games are generally too easy these days so I think a lot of people aren't used to losing or working hard to win.2
