Versing SWF is artificially miserable due to the myriad of easily abusable mechanics + meta perks

Killers have been more balanced against SWF's, and good ones at that.
Solo survivor is a nightmare.

For me, at least, that is not the experience (as much as I want it to be) there are never really any close games anymore where everyone is on the edge of their seat seeing what will happen. It is usually me destroying the survivors because the game hands me solo potatoes/ semi decent chill SWF players or me getting annihilated by a cracked team.

I have noticed this too when playing killer. Either you get a soloQ team / chill SWF, or you end up with a comp-level god-tier SWF who does all gens lightning-fast, and are ultra-cracked at chaining loops. There is no middleground there.
This is sadly due to how the MMR brackets work, and the highest bracket spans 700 points (1401-2100 MMR). So a player who is around 1400 MMR, can face players who are around 2100 MMR, due to this. The matchmaking does not discern between the actual MMR numbers (which would be much more fair), but instead prioritizes matching you against players within your bracket, to reduce queue times.

Read the edited post. That is why SWF is miserable to face against.

Maybe at some point there will be a more accurate MMR(or even a special competitive queue for full swf) that will solve your issue.

But they also would have to address the hacker/cheating topic at the same time.

Here we go, lets balance the game around SWF

It's kinda the point of balance though is it not?

If both teams are played to their max potential, where both sides take the best tools available to them, then they should tie, but it's still widely accepted that at max potential DBD is still a survivor sided game... the old SWF > Killer > SoloQ.

So this leaves us with a quandry... how "bad" should survivors be allowed to be in order to still consider the game fair?

Fundamentally SWF has to exist for DBD to thrive by being able to play with your friends, but because it exists, the game has to be balanced so that the killer can compete with an organised SWF does it not?

The only way you could make it fairer for SoloQ is if you literally made DBD a true soloQ at base.

Maybe if a ranked mode banned SWF the game could be balanced around that. Course we can't do that, cause that would mean SWFs would dominate casual games, so what killer in their right mind plays casual?

Yes, and I agree with that in all points.

Other games have had their problems too in that a good MMR leads to all matches feeling identical and variety being lost.

That's why there should be an extra competitive mode/queue for people who really want that. But I think that the priority for this will not be too high now and I also see that there are much more important topics than that.

The thing is that soloQ suffers, because of how strong and efficient SWFs can be. There are still neigh infinites in the game, and if a group is dedicated and efficient enough, one long chase along these lines will hand them the win on a silver plater, especially if even one early flashlight/flashbang save robs the killer of all their momentum.

Most often with SWFs their best looper tries to get the killers attention early, either by running straight at the killer and flashing their beamer (easy to spot) or by sneaking/slow walking straight through the middle of the map, looking around and acting surprised when they run into the killer (tough to spot). Best counter is to just ignore this players, as getting caught up early in a pointless and unwinnable chase around mainbuilding or shack is indeed a skill issue.

Things get spicey, though, if the whole team is dedicating its whole build to a one trick and play accordingly, this is when things turn really ugly and unfun. 4 DH, 4 UB, 4 Head On and the killer will spend most of the game doing nothing but being laughed at by the whole team. Most of the time they don't even touch gens and do their utmost to make the killers experience as miserable as possible, at other times one or two will do gens in the background and only join in once they 99% the last three gens. Some others have brutal builds that slam out 5 gens in 4 minutes and where the killer has no real chance to even get the foot on the ground - while dedication to the game should come with some rewards, this are the games that just feel unfair and unwinnable and eventually you killer might take their pent up frustration to the next round of soloQ that cross their path.

I think of two way of how this could be remedied, without hurting soloQ or punishing players for playing together, with the first one being super easy to implement, and the second probably takes a new game enginge, for all we know ^^":

1. Don't allow multiple instances of the same perk in premade groups. Done. Simple as that. No more 4DH in one game, no more brutal 4 Head On ring around the rosy bullying, while everyone can still find their own way of being useful. In my regular duo and tripple SWF we all play vastly differently and hardly ever have the same concept in mind. Yeah, some perks double up, but its no big deal and we could easily coordinate that away. It would help immensely, though, if we could see the others builds for this. As a bonus, this easily makes soloQ a little stronger by not implementing their own builds, so four soloQ players getting matched could all have the same strong perks.
2. Give the game a game director AI like so many hord style shooters have and let it act as sort of a comeback mechanic. Survivors are doing too good? The Entity eats a couple of pallets. The surivors are getting tabled? Some pallets could respawn, the survivor on hook could teleport away from the camping killer and into a more favorable spot or a hurt survivor huddling in a dark corner could spot a mysterious medkit just a couple of feet away. The game is designed in a way snowballing is encouraged and while comebacks are sometimes possible, its pretty rare, so this would lead to more fun and interesting games that are on the edge, instead of just letting the winning side stomp the other hard. I understand the sentiment of "why should I get punished for playing well" or even more likely "why should THEY be rewarded for playing bad?", but in the end everyone would profit from a game director.

We learned from the last 2v8 mode that the game cannot support split queues as the wait times get bad fast. Also what killer would willingly play in a comp-ish queue that would be guaranteed SWF looking to sweat when they could just pillage and steamroll mostly solos in a casual queue?

Oh yeah, I absolutely understand your point, and it's completely valid… but this disparity is basically my argument… I didn't really wrap it up to a point, and left it to hang so my bad, but to try and clear that up:

1. If you balance the game so that soloQ can win 50% of the time vs. the killer, then you put the Killer at a significant disadvantage vs. an organised SWF, and a slight disadvantage vs. a normal SWF.
2. If you balance the game so that the killer can win 50% of the time vs. an organised SWF, then you put the survivors at a significant disadvantage for soloQ, and a slight disadvantage for a normal SWF.
3. If you go halfway in the middle, and you balance so the killer can with 50% vs. an normal SWF, then the killer has a slight disadvantage vs. organised SWF, and soloQ has a slight disadvantage vs. killer.

However the problem of what I'm describing in these 3 scenarios is we're assuming the killer is playing optimally each time… and this is where we get into philosophical and subjective terms and what is best for the game. A truly balanced game would be that the most optimal way to play both sides would result in an equal chance to win… this is by definition balanced… Note: I'm deliberately avoiding individual killer strengths, since this muddies everything.

However as you correctly point out, this is not the average game experience in DBD; it is an asym, so the respective sides have very different set of skills. Both need to perform respectively well in chase, but the survivors need teamwork/coordination and map/tile awareness skills, and the killer needs greater predication/time management and objective/area control skills.

I don't think anyone would disagree is much harder for a survivor team to coordinate and bring their full strength to bear compared to the killer… one player can completely snowball the game out of the survivors hands, and it is why we have such a difference in killer being easier to learn to begin with. Thus the way it goes is we have to deliberately gimp the killer somewhat to allow survivors a reasonable chance at success despite them not playing optimally, and what we need to debate, is how far should the killer fall so that everyone is relatively happy?

After all, if at the very top end of play the killer is defaulted to being weaker than the survivor, where the only way to win is if survivors make mistakes…. what incentive is there to play killer? We could ask this same question for survivor the other way… but the incentive for survivor is that, if you play well enough with no mistakes, you should win.

Option 1 is simply not tenable, we can't have a game where the killer is so much weaker than the survivor team that 2 good players with a disorganised pair of yahoos can realistically go even. What incentive is there to play killer is you're at such a significant disadvantage where you playing at a consistent level can be beaten by mix of performances from soloQ. If SWF didn't exist, this would be perfect… but unfortunately SWF must exist, so this is off the table.

Option 2 is the one where both sides are played optimally and both sides have an even chance to win…. but as you point out, most players can't play optimally on survivor side, so killers win the game most of the time… and SoloQ gets very much buried more often than not… This is also not good.

Option 3 is where I believe the game currently sits, and is where it kinda must sit… and it depends how much value you think a SWF team has. Based on the stats from yesteryear, a SWF swings the game by about 9% kill rate. (Escape rates of 39%, 40%, 43% and 48% for solo, 2, 3 and 4 man teams respectively if my memory serves).

The questions at the end of all of this is:

• How often should an organised 4 man SWF team beat the killer? 50%? 55%? 60%?
• How often should a good solo player beat the killer? 40%? 45%? 50%?
• Should we be doing more to limit the SWF advantage?
• Is it even possible to limit that advantage, and how much by? (I think so, but it'll never go completely)

My argument isn't necessarily that I disagree with SoloQ having it tough… it's more how do you not make it tough with SWF making the chaos of solo Q not a thing?

"

I don't think anyone would disagree is much harder for a survivor team to coordinate and bring their full strength to bear compared to the killer… one player can completely snowball the game out of the survivors hands, and it is why we have such a difference in killer being easier to learn to begin with. Thus the way it goes is we have to deliberately gimp the killer somewhat to allow survivors a reasonable chance at success despite them not playing optimally, and what we need to debate, is how far should the killer fall so that everyone is relatively happy?

"

Just a small thought trown in here: the game is already doing that a LOT by the way killers have a bigger hitbox then survivors during looping, the way killers can be fat shamed at narrow paths, the killers POV is so high above ground and, before the POV slider, was so narrow that survivors could reasonably expect corner techs and crouch techs to be effective.

Also, many killers power, who are somewhat the masters of their respective craft, are very, very clunky and programmed with artificial limiters, in order to allow counterplay, like Huntresses windup or Dracula needing 0,9s to open or close his hand between fireballs, or Pyramid Head needing 1,0s to lower and raise his sword from the ground, or how Wesker just BARELY can catch up in SOME loops to survivors after vaulting a pallet, due to his tentacle slithering back into his arm.

If you at any point play a solo game or a co-op shooter against zombies or anything like this, you feel it especially grating of how DBD holds the killer artificially back, so that survivors can dance around them and feel like the "clever and agile" role. It is probably needed for this game, but it also severely limits players skill expression and lowers the floor by limiting viable options.

I feel if Killers got any more limiters, they would feel so clunky to play that it would severely encroach on the joy of playing that role and lead to even more bitter killer players ^_-

It can be fun, if you are lucky and play the killer that kinda counters this, or if their tactics are a bit lacking and you can still get a upper hand, but in general these SWFs goal is most of the time to have fun on the back of the killer and they don't care if they all die in the process.

I once played Amandas Letter Pig against four Distortion and Urban Evading Blendettes on Dead Dogs — the game was KINDA fun, because it was a big cat and mouse game and I sometimes saw the glimbs of a Blendette while crouching and I thus could slowly, slowly whittle them down, but with any other killer this would have been a miserable experience. They later claimed in the post game chat that they usually try to make killers DC with this tactic, while just hanging out and talking.

BTW, this solidified my stance on Pig needing Wallhacks while crouched as base kit :D Just be bold and brave once, BHVR, and try it out! Would make her the coolest and most fun stealth killer by a long shot.

For real! Not trying to defend other mean gameplay styles, like killers who let everyone bleed out for no reason at all etc., but that Blendette squad was pretty hardcore unique. Luckily I never encountered anything like that ever again, and with the way Distortion now works, such a game would be over pretty quickly, but STILL! Some playstyles are just beyond your normal pettiness ^^"

Taking this in reverse order.

The questions at the end of all of this is:

• How often should an organised 4 man SWF team beat the killer? 50%? 55%? 60%?
• How often should a good solo player beat the killer? 40%? 45%? 50%?
• Should we be doing more to limit the SWF advantage?
• Is it even possible to limit that advantage, and how much by? (I think so, but it'll never go completely)

To answer these I think we need to look at the way the game is played. This isn't a 'balance around average', but what type of people are actually playing the game.

Like I always play soloq or killer. On a purely personal level I'd like them to ignore SWFs entirely, but that's not realistic. If you told me that the majority of players were in 4 man SWFs, I'd say that's what you design the game around.

So the first answer to your question: you do the least amount of harm possible. If four man SWFs are rare, then you treat them like they are rare. This is kind of the survivor side of the 'stopping nerfing all the killer perks because they're broken on Nurse' argument.

The second: encourage players to view the end game result based on who they matched against (being the game has no official win conditions). 4 person SWFs should be looking at anything less than a 4e as a loss, a 3e maybe being their draw level.

The third: on limiting SWF advantages. Sadly I think that ship has sailed. When SWF was introduced way back, that was probably the only opportunity the game had to actually limit SWFs. But if we're just discussing hypothetically, I'd limit SWFs to no perk more than twice and that they must each have a different item type. Give that a few months and then reevaluate.

After all, if at the very top end of play the killer is defaulted to being weaker than the survivor, where the only way to win is if survivors make mistakes…. what incentive is there to play killer?

I guess I'd say that to get to this level you've probably put in 1000s, maybe over 10,000, hours and if at the point you just move on that's a pretty good result for a video game.

While that might sound flippant, I think it is easy to overestimate getting to this mastery level would take. Not only would you put 1000s of hours into the game, but given the variance that is built into the game, you'd need to spend a lot of time at that top level before it became truly noticeable.

Or to look at it another way, would it be any more fun if a player was at the optimal level, and they were matched against optimal players, and the result always evened out to a draw? The moment we begin to talk about hypothetical optimal levels of play we're really leaving the realm of game design.

After all, if at the very top end of play the killer is defaulted to being weaker than the survivor, where the only way to win is if survivors make mistakes…. what incentive is there to play killer?

What incentive is there to ever play a video game?

If you're going just off balance and wins, its taking a lot out of video games. Like there are reason we're playing Dead by Daylight and not Call of Duty or Overwatch or Concord or The Sims. Games theme, mechanics, and experience are all meant to be fun. Balance is a part of that, but not the only part.

Thus the way it goes is we have to deliberately gimp the killer somewhat to allow survivors a reasonable chance at success despite them not playing optimally, and what we need to debate, is how far should the killer fall so that everyone is relatively happy?

Everyone is relatively happy is the key question, but its really hard to debate beyond guess work.

Happiness is the most important and most subjective element. It's why so many video games fail because trying to find the correct spot for multiple game elements to appeal to a large enough audience is an incredibly difficult task.

We're also hampered by how realistic this discussion is based on. Like if we are talking redesigning DbD there are lot of things I'd do differently (and I suspect the devs probably would to), but in a more realistic sense we have to deal with the game we have now.

But if I was to boil it down to a simplified answer:

-pick whatever kill rate / win rate / end result you think the game should be balanced around (my personal is 57.5% kill rate). Treat all MMR as equal, the number should not sway more than 7.5% in either direction along MMR (and to be clear, a rate of 50% or 65% is not good, more like barely acceptable and needs looked at, but anything outside would be an emergency).

—possible exception: BHVR has designed certain killers as 'starter' or 'end game'. While I don't like that design, if it exists, those killers should be judged off the MMR bracket they are designed for.

-run the kill rate numbers without and with SWF (and break it by SWF groups)

-If the total kill rate is less than 5% difference between those two, its not statistically significant enough to worry about (in this way we're measuring not just the advantage but the overall impact).

If I had that number I could give an opinion on how big of a problem I think it is. From there you could also look at individual perk breakdowns, like if something is really bumping up the SWF survival rate and not impacting soloq (Deliverance being a likely example). But again hard to talk about without the numbers.

If that's happening that early in the game, the survivors deserve to lose. Straight-up. Because clearly the killer knows how to down quick, and the survivors don't know how to loop or do gens.

I use to play in a swf myself an when you get to know how the people you play with play unless you make a mistake you basically just walk all over most of the playerbase it would get to the point if we saw certain killers we would be like oh ok this is a definite win an that becomes unsatisfying but when you go back to solo que it can be utter hell with terrible team mates.
hard to find a happy medium

I would only queue for a ranked/comp queue. I think anyone who enjoys the actual competition aspect of PVP games would queue for it at some point. I personally see zero appeal in instant queues for easy stomps.

As a survivor, climbing up through the MMR is hard as hell. It's a steep learning curve and you're often put with terrible teammates who don't do gens, don't go for unhooks, let you die on hook, etc. To make a long story short, it's some miserable stuff. To get to the top as a survivor, the game kind of makes you run the same small handful of "meta perks" you have to run unless you want every game to be a miserable fiasco. Because the higher up you go in the MMR, the stronger the killers are. So you have to bring the build that match THOSE builds.

I feel like this is a good area to have dialogue about how the different experiences of killers and survivors can create misunderstandings and conflicts. On your end, obviously, you're seeing sweaty try hard swfs that are running you into the ground. The swfs could just as easily be saying to themselves, "These killers have been giving me hell in this game and nobody is gonna tunnel, camp or stomp on me ever again!"

Those high level squads are statistically non-existent.

To me, it's more of the opposite problem.

Perks cannot be buffed a lot due to SWF making every possible perk combo OP.

They can even take advantage of Up The Ante, a.k.a. one of the worst perks in this game.

I get what you are saying, but your complaint seems to be about the game itself. To use an example:

I know the killer can do that too but unless you are playing some very select killers then your tools will never match the strength of theirs.

Let's look at very select killers. Those killers still exist even if you're a soloq survivor and in that case you are incredibly over matched.

This isn't just SWFs, its the game. Most games have a very clear balancing: there is a win objective and various strategies to accomplish that objective. DbD doesn't even have a win objectives, people can play for multiple goals (bloodpoints, pips, as a survivor if you care if the other survivors escape or not). Then you have things like addons - top level addons are meant to be broken. Addons / items are not designed to be balanced, different ones (higher levels) are clearly stronger than others.

Throw on that killers are designed so that there are beginner and end game type killers.

DbD is designed much more as an experience that emphasizes gameplay variety over a design to compare skill levels. MMR is the clean up mechanism that exist to try and keep it under control.

It's understandable to dislike/hate that. It's why I didn't get into the game until a few years ago because a lot of older design elements I think were considerably worse (though they definitely have their fans). But just calling out one elements seems to be missing the forest for the trees.