Question for the community: How should survivor gameplay be balanced?
Should the game be balanced around 4 individual survivors who MIGHT work together against the killer but mostly do their own thing, or should the game be balanced around the idea of a team of 4 against the one killer?
Please understand, there is no middle ground here. It’s one or the other. The two styles of play are, by definition, diametrically opposed to each other.
As soon as that question is answered with a majority opinion swinging in one direction or the other, then we can start talking about survivor buffs. Because frankly, survivors can’t get any meaningful buffs until it’s decided how the survivor gameplay needs to be balanced.
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Please understand, there is no middle ground here. It’s one or the other. The two styles of play are, by definition, diametrically opposed to each other.
We can answer this as soon as all survivor players unanimously choose the same option. Because both exist, and can exist in any given match, so balance has to account for both.
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Just going by your selfmade rules: as you cannot expect that people just play as a 4-man SWF and making calls on voice like a Seal Team 6, the only answer would be around 4 individuals.
Also survivor can always get buffs depending on the situation. Thats never tied to any selfmade rules.
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Add action debuff to swf lobbies. 2 survivors queu up together a total of 10 % action debuff aka instead of doing a solo gen in 90 seconds it now takes 99 seconds a third member makes it go up to 15% and a fourth one to 20%. This way playing against swfs will be a lot more manageable. Buff Solo Queue….add things that solo queue survivors could profit from. Add comunication tools, pings, new emotes for communication somethiiiiiiiiiiiiiing. Show us in the UI when a teammate is running because you never know whether someone is going for an unhook when you are doing a gen or not… Solo Queue is just overall terrible right now. There is a lot they could improve on without making it close to as broken as swf is. It is literally 2 different games. Balance killers and incentivize them going for hooks and not for kills as that would allow a more enjoyable experience for both sides. It takes away the stress of getting kills and gives survivors more room to breath. Give an action debuff for every hook the killer gets or something until someone dies. The moment the survivor dies, that debuff is turned into a buff for the survivors: Getting 1 hook → 1-5% debuff to gen speed. Killing that survivor turns it into a gen speed buff for all remaining survivors.
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There is a middle ground. "Too strong" for solo queue and "too weak" for full SWFs isn't perfect but it is a possibility. I'm putting this on quotes because there are a lot of factors that can shift the balance in a different way, so we can only focus on balance as a whole and not the individual cases.
I think that's also the best way to balance. You can give solo queue more tools so that they come a little closer to SWFs and then try to sandwich killers in between. That would mean that solo queue players will be at a slight disadvantage while full SWFs have an advantage on the killer but it would improve on the overall balance.
More important than the actual balance in my opinion is game health. Both sides have issues that should be looked at regardless of who is stronger.
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killer main here and i say 2 teams of 2
think about it at least, im not memeing either
i play both sides including with friends and solo Q so 2 teams of 2 sounds like a good reference to me
because we shouldnt assume everyone is communicating but we shouldnt assume nobody is either
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Majority of the survivor playerbase are solo. And those that play full SWF seemed to matched up often against the top MMR killer players, if what those killer players say on the forums is true, which seems to make sense honestly. If you're in the top MMR, best 5% of players in the world I would expect those crazy hardcore 4 man SWF to be there. They did release statistics awhile ago about the percentages of those who play solo, 2man, 3man, and 4. And 4 man SWF seemed pretty rare. And the escape rates were about 8% more than completely solo, even in top MMR. Standard average 4 man escape rate was at 43%. So I'm not really sure there is any "balance" to be done, because a 40% escape rate is what the Devs want, which is right where survivor is. If 40% is "fair" is completely subjective and is a very hot topic and eveyrone has a seperate opinoin about it. Top SWF is at 48%, which is still less than half and it's important to consider that it is a small minority of the survivor playerbase. It wouldn't be right to balance the game around Nurse so I don't think it's right to balance around SWF either, both are a very small minoirty of the playerbase though both can be strong (can, not are, because not all Nurses are p100 Gods, and not all 4man SWFS are comp players).
So I guess it depends on what you think the survival rate should be, because depending on that will be the baseline on what "balance changes" would be implemented for either experience.
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Should the game be balanced around 4 individual survivors who MIGHT work together against the killer but mostly do their own thing, or should the game be balanced around the idea of a team of 4 against the one killer?
Please understand, there is no middle ground here. It’s one or the other. The two styles of play are, by definition, diametrically opposed to each other.That's not how you balance games.
But if we're just treating this as a pure hypothetical where those are the only two options? Unless the amount of 4 person teams radically increased you'd have to do the 4 individual survivors.
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I'm more of a unapologetic killer main, but even i can see that it's unrealistic to balance around survivors being a full fledged team. Not even the game currently treats survivors as such (a dead survivor doesnt win or get rewarded when 3 others escape)
But we shouldn't make the balance such as 4 random headless chickens having an even fight with motivated Supaalf on Nurse. For the balance, we must consider both sides being "good players trying to win".
Gotta keep the solo-swf and killer-tier gaps in mind tho. Ideally, when all players are good and trying to win, the "power level" of "4 randos vs skull merchant" shouldnt lag too much behind of "4man swf vs nurse". (this isnt meant to suggest nurse nerfs)
Edit: the solo swf gap is mostly comms and player mindset. Adding comms to the game or mechanicas currently emulated by comms usage (chatwheel, radar, permanent survivor aura reading) may close the gap, but will warrant some killer compensatory buffs.
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game balance just doesn't work that way
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