The state of solo survivor is reaching a breaking point
A lot of my time spent playing DBD has been playing as solo survivor, and even though it's always been in an iffy state, I've always managed to still have fun and just roll with it.
Lately though it's just gotten so dire. Game after game of the entire team dying with 4 or 5 gens left. Killers finding and downing survivors within the first 20 seconds of the game starting. Barely even being able to do gens because we practically start off on the back-foot and are just unhooking and healing all game.
I have an archive challenge to get 2 Iri Lightbringer Emblems and the games literally do not last long enough to get them. Even if I ignored my teammates and JUST stuck to gens from the start, I couldn't get them. It's just highlighted how weak solo survivor is thesedays and after even a handful of games I just give up.
Comments
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That does sound like bad matchmaking as well. Solo survivors can still perform well if everyone is good enough.
With that said, I do agree that solo survivor is in a bit of a rough state at the moment. More information buffs as well as nerfs to tunneling and camping would be more than welcome to help make the experience better for solo survivors.
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Is this against Nurse/Blight/Billy, or everyone in general?
I have the same experience in pretty much all of my Nurse/Blight/Billy games that, I agree it's a bit discouraging and frustrating. It basically goes like this:
- Spawn in
- They downed and hooked someone in ~30 sec with Lethal Pursuer, high mobility, and high lethality base kit
- They have aura reading to find someone else immediately
- One is now hooked, one is being chased/downed, one is rescuing + healing, and we pray the last is on gens
- This repeats until someone is dead, and there is no 4th
Often though, the 4th is not on generators because they're unsure if they should also rescue, the person being chased scares the 4th off a gen, a gen blocker activated, etc.
And that excludes the possibility that someone disconnects, which does feel like a pretty high chance lately.
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I think a part of this problem is because of how chase-oriented this game has become, and how many tools have been included to force chases early and often (Nowhere to Hide, Lethal Pursuer, Floods of Rage, etc.)
You have killers that are overwhelming in chases being gifted perks that reveal everyone's location and cannot be countered aside from Distortion in most situations, essentially covering their biggest weaknesses. On top of that, the only counter to these perks is Distortion, which, even as a stealth player I hate using due to how uninteractive it is - never mind people who dislike the stealth play style. So I'm not surprised if people feel helpless in these scenarios and even give up more.
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I've given up on voicing solo queue concerns. Feels a bit like shouting into the wind at this point tbh
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between bad matchmaking and camping/tunneling killer (you or your teammate), each match just gets more and more demoralizing; the matches compound onto each other
I will say tho that less of my frustration w/ solo queue is killer related and it's more teammate related; IE: 3 min into the game and I've done 2 gens while the other 2 not in chase just do side quests or play very scared like
I pretty much load into each game knowing the outcome. Prob why I find myself not playing as much as I use to
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- a huge amount of killers and different ways to loop them, killers with more oppressive powers (with exceptions), smaller maps (with exceptions), fewer and less secure pallets (with exceptions), survivors who start the game with objectives different (perhaps to do challenges in the tome)... well, it's not easy to be a survivor in 2024, especially if you're new and have minimal experience. I hope that after the "health operation" on the killers in the last two years, Devs will start doing a "health operation" on SoloQ (because they are also a source of income I imagine). in these anniversary days (so new players), I have seen unimaginable things in my SoloQ experience 🤣
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the lightbringer challenge is really dumb due to how it is calculated. The way you get it is by amount of time that you sit on generator. You don't want to bring repair speed perks or anything. you just want to sit on a gen for roughly 3 gens of equal progressiong(270 gen charges).
I suggest bringing the most jacked-up med-kit with the most jacked-up healing perks. Run like Botany knowledge+Build to last+We''ll make it. Unhook survivors that get hooked, instantly heal them with your Purple med-kit with 200% healing speed and don't ever engage in the chase with the killer. Just sit on gens until your team dies. If you finish 3-4 gens on your own while your team suicides/dies to the killer, you will get iri lightbringer.
The challenge is also easier if killer bring 4 regression perks like ruin, pain res, pop etc. because you get more time to m1 gens. The more killer regresses gens, the more time you can sit on gens to get lightbringer.
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it's absolutely miserable to play, yes, especially when your teammates prefer to hide in a corner rather than helping
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perks & killers are more well balance these days yet solo q continue to feel unrewarding. It's a legit wasteland of suicides and DC's. I'm not blaming the devs for the community behavior in game but something need to be done about it. It's like you have to swf to even play this role competitively now or just lose all day in solo q because of blank (Tunneling,Suicide,Matchmaking)
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honestly you just gotta hope they fix matchmaking and people can thrive where they belong
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Why buffs and nerfs? You already acknowledged that it's a matchmaking issue, and that all is good if the team is decent. You can't then say it's also balance that's given solo a bad hand, because it destroys your own argument.
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Yeah the 2 Iri Lightbringer Emblems are an insane challenge, you really need to screw your team to get it and stay on gens or be very lucky. I think the a lot of the Emblem requirements are outdated, and that they dosnt reflect on how the game is in 2024.
As for SoloQ, - im not sure its as much a SoloQ thing or if it is just people being bad at the game.
Atm. im playing 50% SoloQ and 50% Swf (and out swf are temp reduced to 2 persons due to one of our members doing work related stuff). And even in the SWF we see other 2 person SWFs playing really bad, - as in 2 people going down at the same time, over and over again. - This is messing with us, we are down to 4 gens and 2 people are on first hook already, - at the same time. At other times we see 1 person looping the killer around the hook, so we cant rescue the hooked person.
As SoloQ my advice is, - run with Distortion, Deja-Vu, and Windows, so that you can do some hide and seek if needed and be effective at gens and looping.
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I really hate to say it, because I've given thousands of hours of my life to this game—so too have the devs, and they absolutely deserve success for their hard work, but…
Stop playing the game. There are infinitely better things you can do with your time.
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I haven't loaded DbD in about a month. Some things I've noticed after fully dropping DbD and playing other multiplayer games:
- The game isn't supposed to piss you off. That's not a feature.
- The amount of bugs in DbD are absolutely not normal.
- There is absolutely no sense of progression or meaning to the trials as a veteran player.
- DbD could really do better in terms of respecting a player's time. I know this is comparing apples and oranges and they're two totally different games in two totally different genres, but FF14 is really good about this. I can get a lot done if I just want to hop on for an hour, or I can spend a few hours doing more difficult stuff. But at no point does the equivalent of bleeding out for 4 minutes, slugging for a 4k, absolute waste of time matchmaking, etc., happen.
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It's rough right now for sure, most games can be pretty miserable but if you can get 1-2 good teammates the game isn't as unbalanced as it seems.
I'm at the point where I never take off kindred now cuz my teams need all the handholding they can get.
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- Keep in mind you have 0 control over your solo mates nor the killer
- If you're mates are bad the only win condition left is hatch (which i don't like, but it is what it is)
The only thing you CAN do is to bring a good build (1 team aura perk + 1 anti tunnel perk at least is a must)
In general i don't think a bad, not efficient team is supposed to win. And if they are, the killer is either really chilled or bad aswell.
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Kinda funny main issue of soloQ is not really a killer, but rather your teammates.
Issue is soloQ basically makes it impossible to get from ELO hell. All games are such a gamble and more you die, worse teammates you get. That's not something to fix with matchmaking really, but rather MMR system.
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Every week is a new thread about how soloQ sucks and the apocalypse is happening.
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It only shows how determined the devs are in doing their best to completely ignore any issue concerning soloQ, so that by every passing week the problems only get worse.
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Solo survivor and bad matchmaking go hand in hand, one benefit of playing in swf is knowing what your teammates are capable of and playing around it.
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Soloq isn't the problem. It's matchmaking.
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This isn't just a solo q experience either, my swf is constantly on the back-foot in a majority of our matches. I'm the most enthusiastic to play the game of us, and it's to the point I wanna quit for a good while.
The power balance is so severely in the killers favor lately, I've had more fun playing killer than survivor. I'm not a killer main at all, it's just easier to get challenges done as one.
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Like I said before, they go hand in hand... Matchmaking makes it so your teammates are completely random so you never know how capable your team is and you cannot even help them through communication, whereas in a swf you have the potential to help each other out.
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#4 is not talked about enough
In addition to having bad matchmaking, there's the time wasted searching for a game (including situations where 1 player leaves in the lobby or even before the match begins), randomly getting disconnected from my match (penalty sometimes) and then ultimately those instances where you do get bled out. I can play several matches of Apex in 1 hour and at the same time it is possible to play 3 matches of DBD in the same period of time
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I had not loaded up the game since singularity last year, and started playing again a couple months ago. While I didn’t play other games (I’m not really a gamer),, and didn’t look at the forums or Reddit, I did notice a lot of mood improvements because I was massively burnt out, and it really put a lot into perspective. I definitely agree with all of this, especially #3 and #4. After the prestige system rework, I found myself twiddling my thumbs between chapters because everyone just auto jumped to prestige 3+ and unlocked everything. I was leveling Vitorrio and huntress but I had enough addons to last me months without even spending points. I was winning almost every killer match, regardless of killer, and I was getting bored because of matchmaking, even if things made me rage (especially my survivor games) and I just said to myself that this game is really giving me nothing, no reason to win, no reason to keep playing, etc. The outcome of the match never really mattered to me, but if I’m constantly dominating teams, I’m not being challenged and I’m certainly not growing, and I hated that.
But coming back to the game after a so long, I started having fun again. I definitely don’t drop 9 hours after work every day anymore, probably won’t again. Games better in small doses, anyways.2 -
When you play a team based game with players you don't know, don't know their intentions, their playstyle, their perks, no communication..
Its asking for a headache. Proper Matchmaking will put you with players that understand as much as you do.
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I got this done with Prove Thyself, Deja Vu and Resilience. I don't know how it's calculated but I couldn't get it until I added Prove Thyself and Deja Vu.
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Honestly I feel this heavy. I think mmr needs to be adjusted or to add something that everyone in the lobby can see that actually is closer to people's skill level. Steam hours is nice, if they are even public. To be frank, I've seen some questionable games with people who have a lot of hours. My games vary from getting cracked juicers very rare, to people who crouch and hide all game/leave me on 1st hook to hit 2nd phase. I have literally no solace in these games, all I know is if they are high prestige assume the worst.
I would also like more transparency into their matchmaking. How come I, as someone who can at minimum (unless I mess up), get a gen chase+ relatively consistently, get paired with people who, die in less than 20 seconds, insta-throw pallets, dont even look behind them majority of the time, lest I need to mention the crouch/hide/afk gamers?
If it's really as straight forward as, get out and it goes up, die it does down, I can understand why solo queue feels horrible. If it's not taking into consideration anything else but living and dying, people who shouldn't go higher in mmr, get there. They fall down, get spared, and go back up, back down, hide and escape, down. Based on this theory of how it could work, you might even get lower mmr than you actually have.Don't want to do gens, hide, avoid chase all game? Well lucky for you, you can enjoy the best part of the game imo, being chased, eventually going down (haha hope u guys were doing gens and not crouching o_0), rinse, repeat, maybe they commited to genning, gates open, you might get out. If they don't commit to genning, well, lets hope you hid after 2nd hook, if you get unhooked that is.
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Hmmm... not too sure, because regarding the state of SoloQ, I still find the biggest annoyances of mine tends to be the actions or more importantly the lack thereof of my teammates 95% of the time. If I buy 60s of time, I wanna see at least 1 gen progressed 50% and all the team reset/healthy. Sadly that rarely happens.
If you want help with Lightbringer though, I would recommend taking something like Overzealous, Counterforce, Inner Strength and your choice of last perk. A map with tracking killer items add-ons is handy if you struggle with totem spawns.
Cleansing totems gets a lot of points towards Lightbringer and this build isn't a complete throw to justify doing it.
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agreed. I’ve had some brain dead mates but if they can pull just a little bit of their own weight throughout the match than it’ll be fine (even if we all die - let’s just get things done)
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No, while matchmaking is one of solo queues issues, there certainly are some balance issues as well when it comes to solo queue. Solo queue could definitely need more information to close the gap between swf and solo survivor, and camping and tunneling are generally just problematic strategies, as their effectiveness is way too much for how little skill they require. They are pretty much easy ways out for the killer.
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The main reason why SoloQ is in that state is because of survivors themselves. Not matchmaking, not balancing, not how killers play, just themselves.
Average survivors with low game sense (specially not making the right decision at the right time) and not playing as a team (including bringing perks that only benefit them and not even help progressing the true objective, that is doing gens) is what make most SoloQ games a true hell to play. Then, instead of trying to get and do better, they complain about the "40% average escape rate" and how the game is killer sided without understanding what an average means or that they are most likely in the lower half of it.
Coincidentally, Hens just uploaded a video today about the topic:
Who would have thought that if you are good at the game, have good game sense, and try to play as a team (which is the main strength of survivors, being 4 vs 1) would make you and your team mates win more games even in SoloQ?
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So you think we should balance the game around 13K hour comp survivors like Hens who play DBD as a job? Hens also had a stream where he and a group of comp killers did an M1 only trapper challenge. They achieved a 90% win rate at the highest MMR. Does this mean that killers who can't achieve this are just bad at the game? Or does this kind of logic only apply to survivors. Using extreme examples to prove a point like this is just silly and doesn't mean anything for 99% of the playerbase.
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I will apply your logic in reverse to answer: You think we should balance the game around those P100 survivors that, after hundreds of hours, still just press W and predrop pallets no matter what killers they are up against?
You could at least watch the video before going straight for the strawman argument, by the way.
EDIT:
They achieved a 90% win rate at the highest MMR. Does this mean that killers who can't achieve this are just bad at the game? […] Using extreme examples to prove a point like this is just silly and doesn't mean anything for 99% of the playerbase.
The difference is that the 64.8% escape rate they get in the video I posted is not just for his escapes but for every survivor in those 50 games. Meaning, most of those escapes are just randoms from that "99% of the playerbase" you are talking about.
That's why you should have at least watched the video before saying anything.
Post edited by Batusalen on6 -
Yeah, I do think we should balance for the most amount of people. Balancing around a 13K hour competitive player mindset is silly, and I'm 99% sure that Hens would agree.
It's no surprise that Hens managed to escape in a decent number of games. He's a comp player and a good one at that.
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Do solo survivors really need more help, though?
I'd like to point out how many buffs solo que got in the past 2 years. Anti face camp, basekit BT, the new gen regression rework to prevent three gens, nerfs to gen regression perks across the board multiple times, a way for all survivors to see when another survivor is in chase, showing all survivors what specific action another survivor is doing at all times, the visual heartbeat, STBFL was nerfed, mangled was gutted, solo que has gotten a lot of help over the years. The one other thing they tried was basekit unbreakable, but that PTB it was tried in showed why that should never be attempted again.I gotta ask, what more do you want? Basekit 5 second DS? Basekit Kindred? The sacrifice meter freezes when the killer is nearby, thus guaranteeing free unhooks? Killer losing movement speed when they chase the last survivor that was hooked? When will it be enough?
I assure you, I’m not trying to be rude or snarky, but at what point will solo survivors look at what they have and say, this is enough? More specifically, what are they actually looking for
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And solo q will decrease by the next update more
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I just edited to fully answer the edit of @I_CAME, but as I say, the escape rate on the video counts all 4 survivors in the match including him, and the final escape rate is 64.8%. So, you should have at least watched the video as well.
And my point had nothing to do with balancing in the first place, but the correct answer is no, the game should not be balanced around the top or bottom of the barrel, no matter how much of the player base is on either of those sides.
Post edited by Batusalen on5 -
The only things that are left to be added in my opinion is a Quickchat function and being able to see the build of your team mates at the start of the match.
Besides that, totally agree with you.
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Hens does agree. I was watching his stream last week where he said true comp players don't want or expect the game to be balanced around them (paraphrasing).
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There's a bit of a flawed logic when people talk about soloq and matchmaking, where usually people say "Well, if your team mates are bad, then it's normal you lose".
No. That's… that's the entire point of matchmaking. Avoiding those specific situations.
Why are 10h survivors getting paired with 1000h ones? Why are there no killers bad enough that the low rank winrate stabilizes? If matchmaking and game balance are working correctly, then awful survivors would be paired with awful killers and the escape rate would be generally the same as high level escape rate. As survivors win games, they'd face harder killers, die, then drop back down and win a couple extra games. That's just how videogames with matchmaking work.
Then how come it feels like sometimes there's an absolute bottom that is impossible to escape? Why is soloq in such a sorry state that there's a point that no killer seems to be bad enough to match with them?
There's something innately wrong with this game. The survivor skill floor is through the roof, requiring hours upon hours of studying and learning to perform at least at an acceptable level, while the killer skill floor seems to be in the negatives, where the success of the role seems to entirely rely on whether you know how to press W and click at the same time.
I honestly feel something should be done with low level players. It's not an easy problem to solve, but the barrier of entry for survivor players is ridiculously high. Add to that the fact that as long as you're not in a 4-man you have the very real risk of having a random light years away from the median skill level of the other players, and the entire non-fullSWF experience is just terrible for all involved.
This is the game's fault. No game with matchmaking should have matches as imbalanced as these.
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This is very true. If the matchmaker is matching you with 3 awful teammates who don't know how to play the game, it should also be putting you against an awful killer who doesn't know how to play the game.
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Why is that?
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I watched this video, and it honestly makes me feel slightly more validated on when I say survivor side needs more incentives to play as a team rather than the 'everyone for themselves' mindset.
I also play with this mindset of thinking ahead if I should die for the others to escape. And I wish chases had more BP incentives to be in them as well as acting more defensively for your team and even dying to keep another survivor from going down.And my SoloQ games have been better… aside from teammates griefing or not playing the objectives, you can't fix that no matter what buff you give survivors. Sometimes they need to learn to be a team player too.
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Does this matter if every match is nothing but Nurse/Blight/Billy? We need bans if we only get the same 5 Killers in 90% of matches, especially if those Killers are causing teammates to give up at 5 gens/first down.
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didn't count any dc's and early hook suicides. lol even this comp player gotta cherry pick his games so his win record wont tank. Gotta make the vib look good....not mad. Just not accurate solo q experience
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He excluded games with a ragequit at the start of the match. Those are part of the normal solo que experience though and not uncommon.
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meme builds are an excellent coping mechanism to the horrors that bring soloQ
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Most of those buff where general survivor buffs not solo buffs specifically. And some of them came with killer buffs aswell (e.g. the 3gen prevention came with the kick buff).
Anti face camp just killed basement Bubba, it does not help against proxy camping (I'm not saying that it should, I just think people overestimate it's effects in normal matches).
I saw a comment from Otz recently with ideas for solo buffs (not saying that I agree with all of them but you asked):
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Absolutely. One of the best changes DbD could make would be to lose the campfire. You set your build, queue up, and the match starts when you're up. Lose that entire song and dance where everyone just stands there for a minute and people inevitably dodge the lobby. Just start the trial. Get players in and out of trials faster. It would take a bit more doing from logistics standpoint, but they could remove the endgame screen sequence too and save the match results so you can view them as you queue for the next game. Would save 2 loading screens.
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But that's still survivor's fault. My point and all what I said still stands.
Clutching at straws here, it seems.
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