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Balancing Against SWF
It is a universally accepted truth that SWF with 3rd party communications break game balance. This has been settled in the years since SWF was implemented to prevent survivors from lobby dodging to match up with their friends.
Unfortunately, SWF provides teamed up survivors with massive amounts of free information. This results in:
- SWF survivors having the equivalent of aura reading on their teamed survivors.
- SWF survivors having the equivalent of partial aura reading on the killer when the killer is in view of a teamed survivor.
- SWF survivors having the equivalent of aura partial aura reading on gen progress for gens near a teamed survivor.
- Higher sacrifice rates for Solo survivors and less enjoyable matches.
- Less enjoyable matches and lower kill rates for killers who feel they are powerless against organized SWF teams.
BHVR has stated that SWF is now a core part of the game. This would be a perfectly fine stance IF there were a plan in place to solve the disparities caused by SWFs. As there is no such plan on the roadmap, this becomes a problematic position. But what is the solution for balancing the SWF power disparity?
Some have suggested a SWF-free killer queue with a BP bonus for killers who choose matching against SWFs. This is a poor solution as it increases queue times astronomically on both ends.
My personal suggestion may be technically difficult to input; however, it is hardly an impossible feature to implement, and it would improve the health of the game significantly.
Required Proximity Comms for SWF
A brief explanation of how this would best be structured:
- Any SWF would be required to have an active microphone input before beginning a match.
- Microphone input would go out to X meters.
- Survivors could be reported for comms abuse (blasting music, etc).
- Muting microphones in game would not be possible; however, muting the microphone from the device itself would be possible.
What are the benefits and the pitfalls?
- SWFs would be easier to locate for killers, and killers could hear callouts if survivors aren’t careful.
- Solo queue would be a stealthier way to play, giving solo an advantage to even the gap with SWF.
- SWF would need to be quiet when the killer was nearby. This would increase immersion and add a new dimension to the party game aspect (think Quiet Library or similar). It would also make streaming more entertaining, imo.
- SWF could communicate with solo, giving them information in critical moments.
- This would create a new, more level playing field for SWF and solo queue, and BHVR could then balance from that point.
- Unfortunately, SWF survivors COULD mute their microphones specifically for DBD from their machines; however, assuming that this is a party game and not competitive, this should be the minority because there’s no fun in that.
From my perspective, this is the easiest to implement solution to the SWF-Solo disparity they alsoincreases game enjoyment for all parties. In open for critiques, though. Let me know your thoughts!
Comments
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I don’t this would ever go into effect. You can’t force someone to use game chat, at all. If it were implemented killers more than likely would not be able to hear survivors at all. That’s silly.
However- proximity chat would be a good add on in the game to help other players whether they are solo, duo or trio or even a whole swf in game. Solo especially it would be helpful. But then I feel like everyone will be together and the legions mains will come out 🤣🤣 as they know everyone is going to be grouped up talking 🤣🤣
but whole swf teams are more than likely not going to use proximity chat, why would they if they could use say discord to talk wherever they are on the map and not having to be close by2 -
Easily circumvented with virtual sound cards.
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- The Strength of SWF is NOT communication, it is to remove teammate RNG. You will not have to deal with a Claudette who self cares herself in the corner or a Meg who throws down all Pallets immediatly. THIS is the strength of SWF that you have consistently good players in your game. (Even tho, most SWFs are casual teams anyway, so they dont have a reason to play with each other aside from being friends)
- The idea of ingame comms was made multiple times and it will never happen. For reasons, just use the search function. It is really not the case that you made an incredible idea nobody has talked about before. It was discussed already, multiple times, and there are big reasons to speak against it.
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SWF with 3rd party communications break game balance
I just want a chill game after work with my friends.
Also with something like this, when I'm punished for playing with my friends I'll just go play something else.
Is there any game that punishes playing with friends?
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Firstly, your first sentence already made me tempted to just nope out of here. It wasn't added "to prevent survivors lobby dodging", it was added when it was ready in less than a month after release as they could only have it or customs/KYF ready for launch, and they chose the latter. It was a multiplayer game released in 2016, thinking it wasn't planned from the start is honestly almost unbelievable.
And your entire forced proxy chat idea simply doesn't work. On consoles there's no way the devs would be allowed to implement it, consoles really don't let devs interfere with party chat and people's preference for party chat vs game chat in any way. Call of Duty no longer does it in its more "tactical" game modes despite doing it in the past, games like Among Us can't do anything beyond asking extra nicely that people don't ruin the game either. So you'd basically be asking them to take the game off consoles, because if Call of Duty as a huge franchise and Among Us type games as ones where the gentleman's agreement is essential to not completely invalidate the point of playing the game doesn't get special treatment DBD stands no chance of getting it.
And on PC? Easily circumvented in several different ways, so what's the point? Believe me it's not the casual squads that just hang out while playing DBD that might not bother to bypass you'd want to "nerf" anyway. And even they would probably do it to be able to talk like a friend group does without having to be near each other in-game assuming that'd be a part of it as well.
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last time we checked, SWF didnt really increase win chances by much.
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I only play this game with my duo and we don't use comms at all, so I'd be quickly uninstalling the game if this ever got implemented.
I don't even own a microphone…
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Survivors could just have 2 microphones, assign 1 to DBD, and the other to Discord…..
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The biggest request I have ever made for SwF's and honestly I don't see how this negatively would impact them it would just give me a heads up beforehand. Player names should be colour coded.
Match 1:
Nancy and Meg - Green
Mikaela - Orange
Nea - Blue
Something like this in play could make me look out for if I down one of the Green's there is a potential chance the other will come in for a flashlight, flashbang or pallet save. Sure solos can do this too but a SwF is more coordinated for timing.
Match 2:
Ace - Blue
Yui - Green
Sable - Yellow
Jane - Orange
Awesome I can see this is a solo team, means I can look at putting the meta build away and perhaps try a new build created, meme build, no build perkless or something like that. I potentially have a bit more freedom with builds.
Match 3:
Ace - Green
Nea - Green
Adam - Green
Steve - Green
Okay this is a full SwF, I can now either go the try out new build, meme route and be cautious of what i could potentially be up against or run a meta build to combat a potential Eyrie picking SwF.
"Yeah but not every SwF is a godlike sweat swat squad" and every Nurse player wasn't a godlike, never miss blink, wins at 5 gens player but she has still received nerfs over the years, SwF has never been touched once since day 1 it dropped. SwF's existence only makes Solo queue games more miserable as Killers don't know what they are against.1 -
Not every swfs is a top tier, most of them just chill, stop ruining the game for surv mains just because you main a certain killer and won't live without 4k, game is already killer sided no need to make it even more one sided!
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Listen they cannot in any way mess with comms on the consoles, as mentioned above, and that's the vast majority of the playerbase. Even if this was implemented somehow for the PC players they have 1387 or so ways to work around such things. Unenforceable.
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Yeah, or you know… not having a microphone plugged in.
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Are you new to DBD? The community is known for being VERY toxic. I as a killer would NOT want to be able to hear SWFs screaming obscenities at me for what they deem unfair play.
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I will say this on every qq swf post=only game that people complain about family and friends playing with them. Killers as usual just want to stomp baby solo q potatoes. Can yall stop live in this fantasy world that swf should not be a thing. It has been a thing ever since super nintendo days via 2 player mario games, get over it.
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Then you don't have comms to begin with.
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Imagine if the survivor side was balanced with solo queue in mind. BHVR would have to undo most survivor nerfs that happened over the last four years or so, and still break half the killer roster's kneecaps, just to make it fair lmao.
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It is a universally accepted truth that SWF with 3rd party communications break game balance.
… here we go again starting with some false assumptions.
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Post like these makes me wanna sing mariah carey song obsessed. You know the part when she says your delusional, your delusional, your wasting your time? It what I think everytime I read a qq swf post.
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just give survivors a comms wheel with basic messages, having the 2 point and wave emotes is a joke.
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Proximity chat would be funny, yet foolish. If the game wasn't meant for teamwork to escape then they wouldn't have allowed SWF to exist in the first place.
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No SWF's aren't an issue outside of gen momentum when snowballing happens. There needs to be anti-snowball for both sides implemented instead of relying on perks to fix their bad base game. Deadlock and Corrupt intervention would be a step in the right direction.
Survivors need the anti slug from 2v8 on a CD maybe tie to exhaustion, and the anti face camp made visible to everyone.1 -
Me when I’m chilling with my friends and some random on Internet that can’t live without 4K tell us that we broke the game because we’re just friends that are chatting while playing 😔😔
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The OP was suggesting that having a microphone and have it turned on by the game would be mandatory to enter a SWF. That would be absolutely not possible for many people, and most streamers would absolutely not be able to play, because Twitch holds you responsible for the content of your stream…
"But Twitch, the racial slurs were screamed by a person in a random DBD voice channel, I had no…"
BANNED.2 -
Right, that angle. Naturally, you should be able to turn that off and mute people. I was pointing out that the suggestion doesn't even do what OP wants. You can simply plug in a device that doesn't exist or is silent while your actual microphone goes to your stream/voice chat as usual.
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At the end of the day, like other people have said, there’s literally no way you can nerve SWF. When I play with people, we’re literally in the same room. Plus, you’ll increase killer queue times if you punish a bunch of people for playing with friends. They’ve already nerve survivors into oblivion, that should be good enough for you.
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You base this essentially on the premise that "swf"="Hens and frens on escape streak". This is an untrue premise.
The proposed solution is, with all due respect, nonsense. Between a game policing people's hardware, privacy issues and the potential for serious abuse aside, this is just not practical.
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Ugh. The devs dont intend to ever Split survivor into SWF and solo. The Problem ist comms. The Problem always will be surviviors sharing Intel in a way thats not part of the Game.
Its like a dead Player in among us telling the other on discord who the imposter is.
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