How to limit swf?

I'm not sure if you would want to include the Killer in the proximity chat, but when the Killer isn't included there is zero reason for a 4man to use proximity chat instead of discord, and in my experience discord is more comfortable than game chat systems. I don't think including the Killer would be a good Idea, it would just lead to more toxicity.

For Duos or Trios the people they get matched with might not speak the same language. Sure, everyone talking english might be an option, but I think most people would just prefer to speak their language in a private call and just give occasional call outs to the randoms. Also, usually SWF do talk about more than just the game, I don't think the randoms necessarily want to be involved in that.

So I don't think people would prefer proximity chat over discord (and toxicity would obv be an issue aswell).

You can't "limit" SWF. Punishing people for playing with their friends is never the answer.

The overall escape rate for SoloQ is 40.34%, followed by Duos at 40.10%, Trios at 40.56%, and 4-mans at 43.09%. That means that there is, at most, a 3% difference overall. Duos escape 0.24% less than SoloQ, and Trios escape 0.22% more than SoloQ.

High MMR is where we start noticing a difference, but at that point survivors are basically Seal Team 6, and killers are employing every meta strat and perk to increase their chances of winning.

If you're someone who plays this game religiously for several hours a day, and wins 90% of the time, then you're probably high MMR. If you lose more than you win, however, you're likely in that middle bracket where you're playing against experienced players who play on a more casual basis. People who play more casually are likely to have a lower MMR than their skill would seemingly indicate.

It doesn't mean wins are rare though. It could mean several 3-4ks, several 0-1ks, and a couple 2ks. Or it could be 2ks across the board. It could also mean a bunch of losses for one player but a bunch of wins for another. Balancing out overall to 50%.

I do agree that what we have with 4 man swf, at top MMR, is pretty close to a 50/50. That's if we go by behaviors stats. Which I am willing to do in this case, though I'd like to see them updated more often.

They can try things to help out the solo queue experience. I just think while there is only one game mode, and survivors can play how they want, that 60/40 is fine for everything else.

My issue here is that some people think a 4 man swf, at high MMR, should be brought down to that 60/40 level. When there is no real reason too. The thematic experience is pretty much gone at that point and the scare factor thrown out the window. So being close as it is to a 50/50 balance when both sides are trying their hardest, seems fine to me.

There's no mental gymnastics. If the only thing stopping solos from crushing most killers is the matchmaking and lack of communication, then clearly swf which auto-includes both is like a super duper advantage.

Be that as it may, they are wrong. And so are the people who gobble that up. A swf debuff is the solution to the "SWF OP" problem. This strategy they're currently using, to buff survivors until solo just does better until they're SWF-level, is not working. At all. It's why you see posts every other day, "Solo teammates, am I right?" You're never gonna give survivor enough buffs to where garbage players perform well, and even if you did, isn't that a bad thing? Matchmaking needs to be fixed, and the balance needs to be fixed, but neither are being addressed. The way you get the devs to address these things is to encourage these discussions, not shout down the handful of people saying it.

I used to favor this balancing strategy, too. But they won't, they refuse to, buff the killers. So survivor's getting all these straight-up increases or "reworks," golden example being DS or Buckle-Up's change, and killers getting their own nerfs or "reworks" of a different kind, like Hag's traps or Pop/Pain Res, but everyone insists survivor always gets weaker and killer always gets stronger. It's really the opposite. Solo can work, as soon as the matchmaking gets fixed. Good survivors vs a good killer? Survivors win 9/10 times. That's why these broken perks survivors use are so strong, because SWF on average has the game sense to abuse them and become invincible. And the killer perks, which they need rather than want, like gen defence, mass aura perks, NOED/Rancor, etc, there's no reason for their getting nerfed. These perks are getting nerfed due to a lack of survivor skill, like of course they think Pain Res is OP because letting go of a gen takes too much thinking power, and these are the same people who completely fall apart as a team if 1 survivor gets hooked. 15-second chases, nobody's on a gen, spend all match healing with no healing perks or items, the works. Killers are a lot more reasonable in their complaints about the survivor meta. 1 DS stun costs you the whole game, with few exceptions. Getting hit by 2, those exceptions go as well. No killer, no matter how skilled or strategy oriented, can survive that disparity in momentum. They'd be playing for the 1k.

All this to say, because of the devs' refusal to make killer strong, or change up the survivor meta even a little, nerfing swf is 1 direction we could go in to fix the game.

Penalizing people for playing with their friends is not the solution. It already takes 90 seconds to complete a gen solo. In order to see any meaningful impact, you would need to change that to 120 seconds when playing against a SWF. This would result in kill rates going up across the board, and killers getting some heavy nerfs.

It is punishing people for playing with their friends, though. You're penalizing them on the basis that they are playing with their friends.

You are free to believe what you want, but the official stats come straight from bhvr themselves. As a reminder, the statistics are global and not isolated to one particular region. A 4-man SWF has an overall escape rate of 43%, which increases to 48% at high MMR.

Something to note about high MMR is that survivors are not playing casually. They're playing to win. They will employ every means necessary to that end. The same applies to killer. Nobody at high MMR is playing casually. The only thing someone at high MMR cares about is winning.

I'm a survivor main. I dabble in killer occasionally. I'm in the OCE Region, and games often feel very sweaty on account of the lower population despite being around average MMR. I care more about having a fun experience than I do about winning, and a fun experience for me is simply not being tunneled or camped.

But the stats do tell the full story.

I'll break it down for you. Under the assumption the stats still hold true:

For the period of June 29 - July 27, there were 714,239 games recorded by Nightlight. Each of those games requires 4 survivors. That gives us 178,559 survivors. Of those survivors, we can reasonably assume that SoloQ and Duos account for at least 75% of that number. There are more 3-man swfs than there are 4-man swfs, so let's say that 3-mans make up 15% of that number, and 4-mans make up 10%.

That gives us 26,783 and 17,855 survivors respectively. That's 107,135 and 71,423 games respectively. If the escape rate is 42.46%, and 48.30% respectively at high MMR, then that means high MMR trios have escaped 45,639 trials. High MMR 4-mans have escaped 34,497 trials. You would need 223 High MMR SWFs (Note: That's 223 groups of four, for a total of 892 players) to throw just to make a 5% difference.

At this point I don't even know what the argument is for nerfing SWF. The numbers prove that SWF isn't overpowered. I have been around long enough to remember when people said. "If they released high MMR data then it would prove how overpowered SWF is". Then they released high MMR kill rates which showed us that four man SWFs in the current balance LOSE more than they win. Now the goal posts have been moved and the mental gymnastics have gotten even more ridiculous. The most common narrative is that a four man SWF is unbeatable/unfair to the killer. How does this narrative make sense if these teams are losing more games than they win at the highest level of MMR? I could understand the argument if four man SWF had something ridiculous like a 75% escape rate.

7% is huge tho, you want less than 5% for it to be considered equal enough and preferably less than 3% difference

because at the end of the day survivor bad killer good. Survivors are OP in a lot of peoples’ heads, despite what the evidence says. You have people in this conversation saying BHVR’s information is ‘wrong’ and ‘not the full picture’ and trying to illustrate the initial point I made: survivors are OP, they/SWF needs to be nerfed, survivor bad killer good. It’s all the same brain rot.

You believed the escape rate was wrong. I proved it isn't. What you're saying amounts to, "It's wrong because I said so!". Say less, my guy.

I definitely got confused with the 43% and 48% on high mmr SWF.

Also, that does kinda prove my point.

Solo Q is so abysmally weak, but even High MMR SWF's aren't doing well.

extreme measures!! lol

They do tell the full story, though. What you're saying is that the stats are wrong because they aren't accounting for people giving up, but I just proved that you would need a lot of people giving up to make an impact on the statistics.

People remember games in which something negative happened far more prominently than they do games in which nothing negative happened. This leads to people believing a problem is more widespread than it actually is.

I think you're committing a common mistake with large data sets. Just because one portion of the data set might have a reason that is not the obvious one, does not mean that is true for all portions of the data.

Why is Skull Merchant have such a high kill rate? Is she that strong? No, people tend to quit against her.

Why is Doctor so low? Is he that weak? No, probably because he's used to farm Iri shards on Asian servers.

Why does self-care look like a meta perk despite many players never seeing it? Again, Asia, where it's viewed as meta.

You need a reason to back up why the data should not be taken at the most straightforward explanation. @Kaitsja breaks down the numbers a little bit, but you would need an unreasonable level of throwing to actually impact the numbers. A few percent? Possible, but unlikely more than that.