Hate Against SWFs
Comments
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Fun has nothing to do with balance. The SoloQ experience isn't something that can entirely be solved by balance changes.
There's no evidence to support that. Killers are balanced primarily around kill rates and how strong, or weak, their powers feel.
Everyone was exploiting that. It didn't matter if they were solo or SWF. Any bug that can give a player an advantage will be exploited once it becomes well-known.
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But you said the game is balanced. So solo queue should be fine. All metrics of the game should be fun to play given balance.
And anyone found exploiting should be banned right?
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I mean that is not necessarily exclusive to swf... Exploits like that happen by all kinds of players, to blame that solely on swf is a bit off, I agree though that some stuff is stronger because of coordination... Boil over for example was problematic in other spots, there were maps with no hooks in certain areas so boil over was a free escape for solos as well when they ran it.
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There is no recent hate of SWF, people have hated facing SWF since its creation. People also don't think every SWF they face is "squad". People tend to strawman that a lot. Even just "casual friends hanging out" is a massive advantage. People don't like playing against someone that has an unfair advantage, they want a fair game. Against SWF, even a casual one, it's not a fair game.
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This sums up the issues with SWF really well. Yeah, being in SWF doesn't necessarily mean the survivors are great at looping and extending chases, but the communication and coordination provide and insane advantage vs. everyone playing solo. Anyone who denies this is not being honest. SWF effectively get a bunch of free perks, on top of the 4 perks that they bring into the match. And killers get no compensation of free perks or anything else on their end.
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SWFs have always had a bad reputation. There were these super coordinated teams a few years back that would go out of their way to make you miserable (some bully squads still exist) and others were just pretty much unbeatable because they stacked everything in their favor. This was fixed for the most part.
What we see now is a remnant of that combined with some killer players coping that every group they lose to is a highly coordinated SWF. In reality, most SWFs are just normal players. Yes, they do have an advantage but this advantage alone doesn't completely scew the balance towards them. Especially since MMR isn't perfect and always has some variety in the skill levels of each individual player.
What's really scary playing killer isn't the full 4 people SWF but 4 people that all play well.
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What defines fair in that sense? Usually I would say fairness involves playing along with the rules of the game, and the game rules don't forbid players to play with their friends while sitting in coms... The only thing you could say is that the game is not balanced around that information, which would be true, but that is not something you should hate the players for but the devs... But all they would say is that the killrates don't indicate that communication gives an advantage... Which is ridiculous to say the least.
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Well the devs denied that in a rather recent reddit FAQ and stated that it is not communication but coordination and willingness to take one for the team, which is not there for solos... Which is a completely useless statement, considering that communication allows for coordination and benefits altruism, because you can coordinate it easier... As you may or may not know, nobody believed their statement, as it is fairly obvious that it is nonsense and a sad excuse to not introduce new mechanics to close the gap in information and communication between solo and swf, because according to them lack of information is not the deciding factor when it comes to success :)
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Again, as I already explained, fun and balance are two different things and a more balanced game isn't necessarily a more fun game.
No, players who abuse exploits shouldn't be banned. That would kill the player base.
There is plenty of recent hate for SWF, on here at least. People do think every SWF they face is a squad, though, because if they didn't there wouldn't be people demanding killers be able to opt-out of playing against SWFs.
Casual friends hanging out is not the massive advantage you think it is. Not since the HUD update. If people wanted a 'fair game', they wouldn't be playing Dead by Daylight. As an Asymm, it is inherently unfair.
If people didn't like playing against someone with an unfair advantage, there would be no survivors. Killer, by default, has an unfair advantage over the survivors in that they are faster.
I would argue that anyone who exaggerates the advantage of communication and coordination has only ever played optimally.
People who play casually are not:
- Tracking the killer's location
- Coordinating their perks
- Coordinating where they go down
- Tracking everyone's location
- Using an established callout system
For the most part, they're talking about things that aren't even related to the game. So, no, SWFs are not getting a bunch of free perks. They have the potential to, but then they wouldn't be casual players anymore. Killers do not need compensation for playing against SWFs, least of all free perks.
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That fully depends on your definition of the exploit... If we define as things like running outside of the map, like people did it in garden of joy to hold the game hostage, then of course they should be banned... Are we talking about going down in a place where they cannot get hooked then ofc not... I would not even say that that's an exploit to begin with.
The faster speed gets evened out by the faster window vault on survivor side, as well as the smaller hitbox and the ability to drop and Vault pallets... I would therefore not say the faster movements peed alone is unfair... Just because something is not exactly the same does not mean it is not fair.
Most likely... When you sit in a voice chat with your friends you tend to talk about everything, unless you are playing ranked and want to win... But since this game has nothing to gain out of winning, as you don't even see your MMR, I don't think it falls under the same category as ranked modes in other games.
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So you want to balance around win streaks?
Fine, a Streamer got more than 1.900 wins on blight. Sure, most people would say that Blight is a strong Killer, but 2.000 wins would warrant a massive nerf if we balance by winstreaks, wouldn't it? Same Guy got more than 600 wins on Oni, so Oni OP?
I have two issues with win streaks:
1. The people who do streaks are usually very experienced and good players. Matchmaking sucks though, so in many cases they will be matched against Players that can't really compete anyway even if the better player does not bring strong stuff.
2. There are many things you can do to make your win more likely without looking at the skill or the killer or the voice comms like map offerings, addons and items. And sure SWF has an advantage in this regard because it is really unlikely that 4 Solos will coordinate in the pregame lobby to all bring a good toolbox with a BNP, but If a signifikant amount of SWF would play in this way you should see that in the stats (just like if most people would play like the 1900+ hours Blight his killrate should be very high). I do think limiting items to two per kind in SWF wouldn't be a bad idea and map offerings shouldn't be a thing in general, but it is not as big as a problem as people are making it out to be.
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I think the 2000 wins on Blight were before Blight got nerfed 3 times...
Any limitations you bring forward for when people queue up together will always feel like getting punished for playing friends, that will just never work.
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and while I'm not sure why, I thought I'd address it
seems kinda hard to address it when you don't know why, don't you think?
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The issue is as you said, the game is not balanced around it.
I think it's actually not hate for the SWF themselves as you are saying, it's hate for allowing an unbalanced feature to persist, so whoever would be allowing said unbalanced feature to persist in its current state. IE the game not being balanced around it. The hate isn't generally targeted at the players themselves, even though people do get a little heated in the moment.
As also mentioned, kill rates are a terrible reflection of balance for a multitude of reasons.
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Oni wasn't nerfed as far as I know…
Otzdarva released a video about the streak in Dezember at about 1600 wins, the streak ended in March at 1947, Blight's nerfs started in January so I'm pretty sure that quite a few wins happened after the addon nerfs (hug tech nerf was after the streak though).
Blight is maybe not the best example I admit that, you probably wouldn't get that high with any other Killer than Nurse but my point is less about the crazy high number and more about win streaks in general. Otzdarva mentioned a 350+ win streak on Wraith in the video in mentioned above. My point is simply "win streaks are possible as killer aswell and they are not a good indicator of balance".
I don't think limiting items to two per kind would be too restrictive, but that might just be me.
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"People do think every SWF they face is a squad, though, because if they
didn't there wouldn't be people demanding killers be able to opt-out of
playing against SWFs. "That is a false equivalency. People demanding to opt out of SWF does not mean they think they're all squads. People do not think every SWF is a squad. That is a strawman repeated ad nauseam that simply isn't true.
"Casual friends hanging out is not the massive
advantage you think it is. Not since the HUD update. If people wanted a
'fair game', they wouldn't be playing Dead by Daylight. As an Asymm, it
is inherently unfair."Sorry but it is. Casual friends is still a ridiculously large advantage that the game is not balanced around. Saying all unfairness is fine because it's an assym game doesn't really make since as a point for what we're talking about. I could just take any extremely unhealthy and overpowered thing that has existed in the game in the past that needed to be removed and just say, "oh yeah it's actually fine because this is an assym game so unfairness is baked into it". Don't like insta mori's on first down? Hey that unfairness is what an assym is so it should stay in the game.
As you can see that wouldn't be a rational point for me to make.
"If people didn't like playing against someone with an unfair advantage,
there would be no survivors. Killer, by default, has an unfair advantage
over the survivors in that they are faster."That's another false statement. Killer being faster does not equate to an unfair advantage. It's just an advantage. Survivor has their own advantages to counter that. You are comparing things as oranges to oranges when they are not.
What makes something an unfair advantage vs just an advantage is if the game does not have an equivalent counter balance of advantage on the other side to compensate. IE "counter play" you could say.
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Yeah but such streaks don't mean much... Mainly because matcaking is so bad and the odds to go against a 4 men comp squad regularly are just so low... That is also why KNightlight managed to get 500 wins on perk less addon less Nurse... From the beginning he said the streak will end when a 4 men comp team snipes him, and otherwise not... And I think that is quite fair strenght wise... But it just shows how bad matchmaking is...
It is not about the amount of restrictions it puts on people but just that there are restrictions... Imagine going to the park with your buddies and you get asked if you are friends and then they have you put on a badge that says you came as friends... Not really a limitation but still annoying, it is about the general idea of having restrictions because you play with friends not about it being a big deal.
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Well, personally I see exploits as an oversight of play testing. It never made any sense for there to not be a hook in the RPD Library, for instance, and it is part of a playtester's job to deliberately break the game.
I don't think we need to go as far as banning people for using things like Out of Bounds exploits to "hold the game hostage", seeing as even Overwatch doesn't do that. I'm not sure if it's still possible, but if it is there are a few workarounds. One is to teleport players who are outside the playable area back into the playable area. The other is to automatically kill any survivor who is outside the playable area.
The point I was making in regards to how killers are faster than survivors is that Dead by Daylight has elements that are inherently unfair. Such is the nature of the game, after all. Killer has elements that are inherently unfair for survivors, and survivor has elements that are inherently unfair for killer. It's not a bad thing, by any means.
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But then again people hate on the players far more in general than on the developers for allowing them, they should get far more criticism than they currently get for still not fixing stuff after 8 years...
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I don't mean ban them for doing it once... Maybe even on accident, but when this was a thing there were people who send themselves to this map just to do this... Game after game, until the killer either dcs or they die after an hour, because the game just ends... And if you do this repeatedly then maybe you should get banned. But ofc best case scenario is that such things are already countered by certain things not allowing for such things. But in all honesty, I have no faith that such mechanics will get introduced to this game, we still don't have a proper options menu, how can we expect such mechanics from the same game that "accidentally took out anti aliasing" wanted to bring it back shortly after and then took 3 years to do so...
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I do agree. It's human nature to get heated in the moment and take it out on the swf themselves. It does happen a lot and I can be guilty of it myself. I would say that if you took the majority of all those people and asked them later after they've calmed down they would all agree it's not really at the swf and that they're really angry at whoever allows it to continue. I think another reason it can be taken out on the swf more is because that's generally speaking the only outlet they have. The few outlets that exist that can reach the devs in any way feel generally ignored most the time and I would say players don't really feel heard most of the time. I think there's been a large disconnected between the devs and players for a long time. Even the devs and game itself for that matter. I think those are statements most players would agree with. I do however think the devs have been improving a lot lately in those areas, just still a long way to go.
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Killers do not get balanced around swfs.
They have just released a killer that passively reveals his aura so swfs can call out his locations when solo q players cannot. Killers are just not made nor balanced around swfs. They are balanced around and also created based on what seems to be the easist pill for the community to swallow at the moment they are changed for better or worse.
It's why Billy got his rework, it is why they tried to rework the least popular killer in the game in twins, it's why Prymid Head came out with the ability to deny off-the-hook perks when people were complaining about the small pp build, and it's why they tried to rework skull merchant.
But its also why the perk meta never shifts they just nerfed the 2 best killer perks in the game from S tier to at worst if im trying to put them as low as I possibly can using every contrived excuse….
A tier but pain res is still S tier no matter what I can think to come up with.
Sprint burst has never left S tier in its whole existence.
Every part of this game is just balanced to not rock the boat.
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This is why SWFs counter Stealth Killers especially in Comms. It's a problem. I'm not sure how you would fix it though; I like SWFing and I don't want to have it go away.
The real issue is that SWFs can exploit some really unfun ######### in a way SoloQ can't. I'm talking sabo boil over builds on awful Killer maps, coordinated saves all the time, stacking offerings in ######### ways. In addition they coordinate in a way that SoloQ just cannot, it's unfair they have this advantage because SoloQ has to take what they can get.
It's lowkey kinda stupid.
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I mean not just in the heat of the moment ^^ People on the forums where you typically have more time to think about what you will write do the same thing and tend to complain about the players...
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And once again, why not give soloq the information swf has and then balance the game around having that level of information...
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I literally said that streaks do not mean much and that matchmaking is bad in my original comment, am I misunderstanding something?
Yeah, I get what you are saying. Limiting items to two per kind in general would probably be annoying for solos, three Medkits in one lobby aren't uncommon in my experience, so I don't see a solution.
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Well nothing is spoken in a monolith. There are always exceptions. I just think in general more blame development than the swf themselves if we're comparing.
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I just wanted to further elaborate on the why of "streaks don't mean much", I agreed with you in the first sentence ^^
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In deed, how dare they have the standard of how options menues work from the early 2000s instead of what we have currently, where is my view distance slider bhvr???
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Okay, got it :)
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Lol I totally feel you. There are quite a few just fundamental features that should've existed in the game years ago and we're still missing.
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Exactly, there are games from 2003 with better option menues and more stuff the player can adjust, but for some reason this game manages to be worse when it comes to those things, like how is that even possible?
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If it were massively unbalanced, the data would reflect that. And it doesn't. At some point players have to reconcile the aggregate data with their beliefs.
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It is an imbalance in opportunity for sure, not necessarily in outcome…
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That's just it though: players are either not coordinating at a statistically relevant level to reflect that, or it's not nearly the boogeyman people make it out to be. Even if we're talking DbDLeague level 4 man SWFs, we're talking less than 10 teams in a server region in a game that sees anywhere between 40k-80k peak players on PC alone. That is such an extreme outlier.
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If SWF gives no advantages, we can start balancing the game around SWF vs. Killer, right?
Solo queue players for sure would love it.
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Ok, so lets say you play a game, let's say volleyball… And while the opposing team is allowed to communicate, and you are not, in the end you still win… However do you think this was fair? Does it matter for it to be fair or not whether the result was majorly tilted by the benefit you had opportunity wise?
Because I don't think there is a good reason why we should argue about whether or not it impacts the result, there should not be a difference in opportunity when it comes to things that can be fixed by the dev…
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For that to actually be a relevant answer the data would need to be reliable. It's not.
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Based on...what? Why is it not reliable?
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It's based on kill rates. Do you want me to list all the issues with going with simply kill rates and nothing else? I can, it's just already been repeated ad nauseam here and I'm sure you've already seen it plenty here with how active you are just like I am.
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Aside from matchmaking being all over the place, especially depending on the time of the day?
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I think there have been equal amounts of hate for everyone, SoloQ for using Distortion, killers for playing unfair, BHVR because of the event.
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There is at least 2 other maps that have the same issue.
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"People don't like playing against someone that has an unfair advantage, they want a fair game."
i don't know about that. Your playing an asymmetrical game where one side is balance around losing 60% of the time.
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I don't think that it being asymmetrical or a 60% kill rate goal contradicts my point at all.
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I think if your point was true there wouldn't be many people playing solo q.
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Not true. The game is in fact balanced around solo queue. So doing solo queue is not an unfair advantage.
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That is a false equivalency. People demanding to opt out of SWF does not mean they think they're all squads. People do not think every SWF is a squad. That is a strawman repeated ad nauseam that simply isn't true.
It isn't a strawman when it's true. If they didn't think that every SWF is a squad, then why would they blame their losses on SWF? Surely they'd blame their losses on their own lack of skill. That just doesn't happen, though, and any time there's a discussion about SWF it's always that every SWF is a squad, and out to bully the killer without exception.
Sorry but it is. Casual friends is still a ridiculously large advantage that the game is not balanced around.
Let's break it down, shall we?
- Casual friends hanging out get to know each other's perks
- Casual friends hanging out have the potential to coordinate
- Casual friends hanging out share information
Given that casual friends hanging out aren't coordinating, often play altruistically, and the only information they're sharing is who the killer is, if they're in chase, and if they're getting the rescue. That leaves us with knowing each other's perks. The top 10 perks according to Nightlight don't have any sort of coordination requirement to get value.
That leaves us with perks like Head On, Saboteur, Background Player, Breakout, etc. All of which have a less than 5% usage rate. The statistics simply do not reflect this "massive advantage". SWFs are more likely to pick perks that are beneficial for the team as a whole than perks that are only beneficial for them. So, rather than running Resilience, they're more likely to run Prove Thyself.
So, that massive advantage isn't so massive after all. It's a very neglible advantage.
Saying all unfairness is fine because it's an assym game doesn't really make since as a point for what we're talking about.
Not the point I was making. The point I was making is that unfairness is part of the game, and if people wanted a fair game, they would be playing a game that prioritizes skill expression above everything else instead of a game that prioritizes stacking advantages to win.
Don't like insta mori's on first down? Hey that unfairness is what an assym is so it should stay in the game.
Extreme example, but I'll bite. What makes Insta Mori's on first down unfair? The killer will always inevitably catch the survivor. There is nothing the survivor can do to play around this. SWF, however, is not nearly the same thing. Unless they're playing like they're Seal Team 6, their overall skill level is not going to be much higher than that of a team comprised entirely of solo's. In some cases, they're actually worse.
That's another false statement. Killer being faster does not equate to an unfair advantage. It's just an advantage. Survivor has their own advantages to counter that. You are comparing things as oranges to oranges when they are not. What makes something an unfair advantage vs just an advantage is if the game does not have an equivalent counter balance of advantage on the other side to compensate. IE "counter play" you could say.
So then you would agree that SWF is not an unfair advantage, then. Since, you know, it does have counterplay. There's nothing you can do against an optimal team, which is true, but that's not all SWFs now is it? Just like there's nothing anyone can do against a 9000 hour god-tier Nurse, it doesn't mean that applies to every single killer, now does it?
At some point, the community is going to have to come to terms with the reality that SWFs are not escaping significantly more than their solo counterparts, except at high MMR; which the game isn't balanced around anyway and there's really no reason to desire to be high MMR.
Do you want me to list all the issues with going with simply kill rates and nothing else?
Disconnects are not counted. Matches in which there was a DC are not included in the data for kill rates. That leaves with hook suicides. If kill rates average 60%, and Nightlight has recorded 654,884 games, then you would need hook suicides to account for at minimum 10% of those statistics to make a significant difference. That's 65,488 games. That's 16,372 survivors, and if there was a hook suicide in every single one of those games, that's 4093 hook suicides.
That would put the kill rate at 50% average rather than 60% average, but then we'd have to make an assumption about the outcome of those games. Would the survivors have escaped had someone not given up on hook? If so, how many would have escaped? If a 1k is a loss, a 2k a draw, 3k and 4k a win, then a 50% kill rate means killers are averaging a 2k rather than a 3k, yet the statistics from Nightlight show that killers are getting a 4k on average 30% of the time.
So either SWFs are not the big bad boogyman the community thinks they are, or the data is wrong. I think we know the answer is far more likely to be the former rather than the latter, especially since MMR differences are not nearly so extreme that low MMR survivors will ever be placed against the likes of Tru3, Hens, Otzdarva, Tofu, Ohmwrecker, etc.
A 1400 average survivor group might be matched against a 1550 average killer under extreme circumstances such as a long wait time, or excessive lobby dodging, but it's highly unlikely that a 1400 average will be matched against a 1800 average. The difference is far more likely to be within the +/- 50 point range.
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Regardless of personal opinions or experiences (that cannot be proven and have a bias), the statistics show that SWF is not as overpowered as you claim, at least in the current state of the game. Even among the top 5% of players, a four-man SWF team has less than a 50% chance of survival. Balancing the game based on the top 5% of survivors but not considering the top 5% of killers is a clear double standard. Yes it's true, statistics aren't everything, but those numbers do not come out of thin air.
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Killers literally discard 2000 win streak Blight.
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