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Hate Against SWFs
Comments
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It depends on the quality of Survivor who's in the Swf. Since I have more hours in Killer as compared to Survivor (70%:30%), I know how to identify what add ons Killers that I'm more familiar with are running when I go up against them (Legion, Wraith, Pinhead, Sadako, Dredge for example) so I tell my swf the counterplay for such addons if it exists, I also have a swf mate running distortion so I use the information from when distortion procs to figure out what aura perks the Killer is running (I've managed to identify Gearhead before)
I wouldn't be too worried if I go up against a swf team like my 3 swf mates but I would be worried if I go up against someone who has some knowledge of the Killer I'm playing and calling out the counterplay in comms.
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I've seen you cite the "383 survivor win streak" stat a number of times. Funny story, there's a couple reasons why that's not a good argument for the current balance of the game being fair. Let me list them. Heck, I'll even start with the one that seems to make your point stronger.
First, the guy who did that escape streak ended up doing another escape streak that got over 500+ wins. Why not use that number instead of the smaller number? I only bring this up to point out that you need to do your research better.
And I point out you need to do your research better because Second, the rules for that escape streak were actually quite interesting: the streamer would queue up in a Survive with Friends, and the win condition was him escaping. Unlike other streaks like Hens et al. requiring a 3 escape, or Tony and his SWF requiring a 4 out, the only condition for that streak to continue was him escaping. His entire team could get wiped at 4 gens left and if he got the hatch he would still keep the streak. IMO having a team goal of getting a VIP out as your win con is like a killer streak where the goal is to make sure the obsession dies - you're not playing DBD at that point, you're playing Protect the President.
To be fair to him, the scenario of a team wipe with a hatch escape rarely if ever happened, he was a quite strong player and so were his teammates, but there were a fair few 2k games, and 500+, or even 383, are not numbers indicative of the level of balance survivors have as a team against killer, because those weren't team wins.
Third, those streaks were played on a version of the game from over 4 years ago. Gens took 80 seconds, DH for Distance was a thing, DS was active in endgame, Hatch spawned midway through the game and multiple people could escape using a key. Also, MMR simply wasn't a thing. Even if you could use that number as a barometer for game balance (you can't for reason #2 above) it would at absolute best be an indicator of the game balance and matchmaking from before 2020. The game has changed so much since then it's just inaccurate to compare them IMO.
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Well in that case we take the escape of Hens and his friends which was like 230 or so... Still quite massive, I would assume that there could be higher ones out there as well. However Hens streak had limitations, quite big ones even, no items and offerings brought from outside unless gained during the match, no replicate perks and what not... I would assume their streak would still be going if they brought the strongest stuff only...
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That's going to be statistical noise with a large enough sample size though. The outlier games players experience on an individual basis aren't going to make a dent when they're sampling hundreds of thousands of trials from all regions.
They have to quantify the results somehow. Kill rates are going to be the most consistent way to do that across all regions and MMR brackets.
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Killrate only mean something when you take into account how they happened, if a noed kill with 1 hook action is just as good as a 1 K with 9 hooks then this whole thing is pretty worthless...
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"Kill rates are going to be the most consistent way to do that across all regions and MMR brackets. "
100% disagree. Hooks, while still with some flaws, would be significantly more accurate for gauging balance. There are also multiple other factors that should be used in the data as well.
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I think lots of people, including me, have trouble with the inherent unbalanced nature of the game. It's not designed to be fair.
As an example: if you imagine everyone is on a scale of 1 to 10 on skill levels, imagine a player of skill level 4. They could probably play on level 5 if they joined a SWF with other 4s, probably get to a 6 if they all brought top level add-ons (same exists for killers). For many, this seems wrong. BHVR though works on the idea this is okay and MMR will clean it up because from a game balance stand point it doesn't matter if the game has a killer of skill level 6 hitting 4 skill level 6 survivors or 4 survivors boosting their level with add-ons and SWFs.
I think MMR works better than most. In my soloq survivor games I noticed I tend to either get matched with excellent killers running no add-ons, or killers who aren't so good running the best possible builds.
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In my opinion if BHVR would finally make MMR working much better, SoloQ wouldn't be bad at all. Sometimes SoloQ players are much better than SWF-s, because of pure skill. But yeah, if you put these "SoloQ" good players into Voice Call it will be very strong Team.
About toxicity from SWF-s. There are many SWF-s that bring awful map offerings and that's already not good at all.
Additionally, there are some SWF-s that abuse EVERYTHING they can… Like EVERYTHING. Toolboxes with BNP, Syringes, all meta perks and map offerings.
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I believed that statement from BHVR. Solo q is more likely to have lone wolf survivors and rage quitters, which can reduce the escape rate of the rest of the survivors. Solo q is also more likely to have a lone survivor that is throwing the game to complete a rift challenge, even though the other 3 players actually want to win the match.
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I'm glad other people see this and it's not just me, these people never want to accept responsibility when they make mistakes it's always something or someone else's fault.
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I would still say that it is way easier to work around such things with communication, you can get your teams help in completing the tome challenge. Rage quitting becomes less likely when you can Rel on your team because they have your back and a lone wolf in a coop game is not something that should be wanted, because that guy can potentially ruin the game for everybody else.
I don't think their statement was true at all and even if it was it would still not be a reason to not close the information gap, not having the same tools will always be viewed as a two class system, no matter if it changes the outcome.
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If someone wants to ragequit or lone wolf, you likely aren’t going to be able to “talk it out”, and convince them to change their mind.
The more likely scenario is that when a player gets frustrated with their solo q teammates, they’ll very loudly yell bad things about them, and let them know they are ragequitting because of how bad they are. Then the teammates will start yelling back, and people will try to report each other for bad language, and BHVR will be stuck with sifting through a whole bunch of voice chat related ban requests.And the more likely scenario for lone wolf survivors, and their teammates will try very loudly yelling stuff like “why haven’t I seen you touch a generator in the past 5 minutes”, and “why are 3 of us on death hook, and we haven’t seen you in a chase even once this whole game”, and “are you just sitting in a corner waiting for us to die”? But, of course, more swearing will be involved. And then the lone wolf survivor will will start swearing back, and they’ll report each other, to get each other banned for bad language. Or the lone wolf survivor will stay silent, and just report the other players for verbal harassment.
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Well you will never know if you don't try, but when they would do that anyway you might as well give it a shot. If people don't want to do their best that is fine, it is not like you gain anything out of an escape in this game anyway.
Oh no poor bhvr needing to moderate a voice chat… Come on man, there is a mute function for exactly that reason, every other game also manages to provide a voice and text chat and those companies also don't cry about having to pay people to moderate stuff… To have such features is the bare minimum you can expect in an online coop game.
Maybe you took a bad example there, but if that person seriously never touched a gen in 5 min, never was in chase for the entirety of the game even though everybody else is on death hook, then that person kind of is the reason they are losing the game, because next someone of the 3 remaining guys is about to die on hook and then it is a 3 v 1… which could have been avoided if that person did their job of taking a hookstage/chase…
It is easy to only focus on all the bad things that could happen and fully neglect the benefits of having communication.
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SWFs are only OP when they sweat, and SWFs rarely sweat. I had 5 games in a SWF the other night, and 2/5 matches someone brought No Mither, and the remainder of the games someone brought Invocation of Spiders. We had one 2 person escape as our best result that entire night (and one of the 2 people out was the random in a 3-man SWF, not even 2 SWF members).
When I play Killer, SWFs are easier to face usually because I can weaponize their empathy. They want their friends to have fun, so if I put a little pressure on the weak link, the other chains will fall and give me a free hit or waste pallets or whatever. Failure to adapt is a lack of skill. Soloq players are the true monsters. That Soloq player is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until they clicky clicky t-bag you! They don't even care about each other, so why will they care about you?
You have to have 2 mindsets at the same time whenever you hit the "Play" button. 1: I can lose any match. There can be cheaters, or people way better than me, or I have to stop a fire where I live, or whatever. 2: I can win any match. I am human, which means I will make mistakes, which means I can learn from those mistakes and make better choices later in this match or for future matches. Also my opponents are human, which means they are just as prone to making mistakes as I am, so I have to do is outrun the other person, not the bear, or make less mistakes than my opponents.
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The whole point is that anything BHVR does to close the gap between solo q and SWF, should primarily revolve around addressing the lone wolf survivors and ragequit survivors, because they are the main reason the gap exists.
Giving solo q more information doesn't address that problem. The benefits of having more communication, would help the survivors that want to work together, way more than it would encourage the lone wolves and ragequitters to be team players. And that's why it's a bad solution.
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Why not both, why not give soloq the same tools swf has while also addressing the issue of people playing selfish.
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I actually do think about those duos you speak of. 2 mans are the most common and 3/4 mans are rare. The rarest would be a full solo queue game based on stats from a couple years ago and based on that we can infer based on the community that swfs are at least slightly more common now.
Just like how I dislike people referring to killers as a whole when freddy/wesker are dimensions apart, I think about the differences in swfs. 2s are the most common and it allows me to discount people claiming 4 man solo games majority of the time as gas lighters. 3 and 4mans who actively coordinate to the extreme are beyond rare.2 -
I wonder if this would ever happen tbh
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You guys all cry about swf but often information people give each other is:
- hey, where are you getting chased?
- uhh, i dont know? in a corner
- which one?
- i dont know!
- okay
xDDD
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Hey watch out he's running Knockout!
You recovering? Where are you?'
I'm behind the thing. Where you were earlier. No no the other thing, next to the broken pallet. Not that one, on the other side, by that vault you used at the start.
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The gap between solo q and SWF has already been addressed well enough. For the majority of the players, solo q and SWF are off by less than 3%.
4 Survivors at high MMR, are a very small percentage of the player base. Most of SWFs are only 2 players, and they might not even be using voice comms.
We need to address the fact that when many people use the word SWF, they don’t actually mean SWF. What they really mean is voice comms. People are asking for the game to be balanced around voice comms.4 -
I mean fair, but it is more about having the potential to give or get that type of information, and not necessarily getting it every game.
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Obviously, but most people use those synonym… so it dos not relaly matter much which one gets used.
Once again, I'm not talking about equality of outcome, but equality of opportunity… And no that gap has not been adressed…
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SWF only seems to be an issue when their communication and mechanical skills far surpass the average level of a survivor to the point it feels like they’re using cheat codes. Outside of that issue, it seems fairly rare to consider SWF a major threat to getting hooks before the game even starts.
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I mean anyone thinking they're losing to comms doesn't know what they're talking about. In reality there isn't a ton of relevant information that you're not getting from the survivor portraits. The real reason SWF can be frustrating is when you get 4 people that actually know what to do with that information and are actually good at the game that can be very frustrating to go against.
It doesn't matter if a team of four 500 hour survivors can talk to each other it's still 4 goobers that would all screw up a flashlight saves and get easily baited into dropping pallets. But when you get those teams that all know what they're doing and when to do what? Game can be miserable then and in a 4 man SWF that can be more common because they actually play this game enough to want to put a team together.
Cuz let's be honest killers don't actually have any idea when they're facing a SWF, they see any level of coordination whatsoever and think it must be a SWF. Like I had a game the other night against a Xeno where we were at one gen left and the Xeno was playing very hit and run and I ran into this Ada with Prove and I had Botany and we just kind of spontaneously created this strategy where she would setup the turrets while speeding up my gen progression and then the Xeno would come out she would hang back and take the hit and I'd stick around and heal her quickly with botany. We just repeated that until the gen got done and we did that with no comms whatsoever. We also got accused of being a SWF after because how else could two people with two teamwork perks that could coordinate be in the same lobby together, it was clearly impossible. And that's just one case I have maybe a dozen of that happening.
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It's not "obviously" because the majority of SWFs only include 2 people, that might not be using voice comms. 4-SWFs that are all using voice comms, and are using the voice comms for extra game advantages, are a very small percentage of the SWFs that play this game.
Equality of opportunity was already addressed with the Survivor HUD, and also by the anti-face camp changes and anti-3 gen changes. That should be enough for now. We've finally reached a point where the primary issue is no longer revolving around solo q's lack of information. It's fine for something else (lack of teamwork) to be a more important issue for Solo q.
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Like I said before.. Obviously... People tend to not complain about duos... So when they complain they call it swf but mean 4 mens on coms…like I said before, people use it like synonyms.
Equality of opportunity was not achieved by those things... Considering it also in parts buffed swf... The information gap still exists... Lack of teamwork is a result of lack of information though, it is way harder to work as a team without communication...
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do you know that swf also rage quit when their teammate die? It is not any different then soloq. Sometimes you outplay the swf as killer and the game is quicker then expected.
lack of information is by product of lack of teamwork. team coercion is more likely to form when the player is able to read the map and play around their teammate decisions. Some teammate decisions may bad and other may be good but important aspect is ability to adept to multiple situations in a match. information and teamwork are closely linked. you need one to do other, otherwise the plays are just random. You might as well roll dices if everything your action doing is accidentally working blindly. To be fair, playing blindly does work vs bad killers because bad killer make mistakes. You don't need to play 100% effectively if your opponent is not playing 100% effectively.
In any case, i highly dev balance around 4 man Voice on SWF because they continuously produce frankly odd negatives changes for killer such as weakening game-delay perks or nerfing killers for no reason.
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It doesn't matter if it's harder to work as a team without communication. The primary reason for the gap between solo q and SWF ISN'T that solo q is less efficient at teamwork. The primary reason for the gap are the players that aren't even trying to work as a team.
And it's fine if there is still an information gap between solo q and "4-SWFs with voice comms that are specifically using voice comms for extra game advantages". It would be much healthier for the game, if changes were made to actually encourage survivors to work as a team, even if it nerfs some of the lone wolf survivor strategies.
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Of course it matters that is harder to work as a team, like how could it be otherwise... If teamwork is the issue then the accessability of teamwork is what it comes down to...
Well I disagree on that, I don't think there should be groups of players that don't have the same tools at hand, that just leads to things being fine against one group but maybe busted against another one... For example if Legion actually was like it was presented in the trailer: able to pretend to be a survivor, completely useless when there is communication involved, but possible when not... It gets made less reasonable with the HUD already, but just to give a general example of a situations where it matters a lot and no amount of game sense can make up for it.
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Accessibility of teamwork isn't the problem, because lone wolf survivors and ragequitters aren't playing selfishly because of the lack of communication.
Any solutions to bridge the gap between solo q and SWF, should have the PRIMARY GOAL of addressing lone wolf survivors or ragequitters. Things like harsher DC penalties, a special queue for frequent ragequitters, nerfs to lone wolf perks like sole survivor and wake up…. those things have the primary goal of addressing lone wolf survivors or ragequitters.
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I would assume that majority of soloQ players don't fall under those two categories, so it is not really relevant for that point is it?
Adressing sich playstyles that are ineffective and not wanted has nothing to do with the issue at hand... There are several other ways to get rid of them, either by being reportable, by being taught that you should not do that stuff or by some other way of social control. This however has nothing to do with the gap in potential information between a group of players on coms and soloQ who don't have the option to communicate in any way.
Yeah great those things might help Adress those problematic playstyles, however this has nothing to do with the information gap between those two groups of players...
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The information gap has been addressed enough. Solo q survivors have been given extra information already, and it is enough.
Yes, there is still an information gap. But the goal never was to fully close the communication gap. The goal was to evaluate the communication gap, and give some free information, which BHVR already did.
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I don't think it is enough and I don't think it is appropriate to leave the gap open in any way, as it will always result in a feeling of it beeing unfair, because the other players have something I cannot access.
If we agree that inequality of opportunity is always an issue when it comes to tools being available to the players then there is no "enough" while it is not fully closed... If you played a game with voice chat, but 25% of players, decided randomly game by game just did not have that feature, don't you think that would be seen as an issue? It won't necessarily cost you the game but it sure is annoying that some people have access to it and others don't.
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BHVR said that the game will never be balanced around voice communication.
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OK so what? It is not like we are debating what their intentions are currently? Just like everybody else they can be wrong and I think their reasoning is wrong in that case... Because no, voice chat should not be the sole utensil to balance the game, but in combination with text chat and a chat wheel it could... Sure not everyone speaks the language, so how about we put a "preferred language" setting so you get matched with survivors you are able to communicate with... This is basically the same as people saying voice chat means people will scream in my ear all day long, no you can just mute them, just because a feature does not work unconditionally does not make it a bad feature... The good solution is not easy and needs adjustments.
Also the Europe example is the silliest thing I have seen in a while, because guess what percentage of people in Europe overall speaks English... 370/450 million... That means more than 75%... And based on how the school system used to be the remaining ones are probably mostly the older generation... Yes not everyone has the same mother tongue, but completely ignoring that the majority of people learn English in school or through self study is a hilariously bad take... I'm not saying that's the case in other regions as well, but Europe was the worst example to use... And even if it was not it could be adjusted to work as I explained above.
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