How to decrease power of swf without it affecting solo que

It's no secret that a party of 3-4 non-casual players was always an outlier in power in dbd, and with BHVR aiming to make the game not as wide as it I believe a change could be at least tested to see if it works out.

The main idea of the change came to me after playing survivor in 2v8: the limit. In 2v8, you can only pick up to 4 of the same class, so why not try something similar for 1v4? It's not an original idea to be fair, many unofficial tournaments and competitive leagues play with a limit for a long while, and I find this change will end up healthy for the game

How the limit should work: It only applies if at least 3 survivors are in a swf. If you are solo, or in a duo, there is no limit, naturally. Maybe for simplicity, all the perks and items (Could be changed for less impactful options) would be limited to 1 per party, so that in a team of 4 only 1 could pick let's say sprint burst and medkit (Though items could probably use a limit of 2). It can also apply to addons above very rare rarity, though that can be done later or not done at all.

The pros of such changes:
1) It will drastically reduce the power of people using same perk with great impact, like decisive strikes, dead hards, etc. In turn, it will give more freedom in the design of the perks themselves, since the issue of thinking how 4 people could use this perk in a group will be lesser

2) It will have an effect on the meta, I don't have any data to say for sure that majority of player base always play in a group of 3-4 but I strongly believe that to be the case because solo is misery

3) It will open potential new ways to improving the experience of both survivor and killer since the outlier which is swf would have less of an impact on the game balance

Of course, there are also cons:
1) It is a forceful limit, so naturally people will not like it. I am unsure if anything can be done about that, at least I couldn't think of anything

2) It will kill certain strategies, and while I will not shed a single tear over gen rush strategy with the stakeout + hyperfocus, some are definitely not as problematic (Maybe the perks which are part of them could be buffed)


A very important note - a change like this absolutely MUST come with something to decrease the power of the outliers on the killer side. It just wouldn't make sense to make swf weaker, and then leave S/A tier killers running around with 4 slowdowns, strongest addons, and hard tunneling right away. However, I am unsure myself how to change this in killer side, an idea I had was to classify certain perks and then put a limit on the perks from same class, say 1-2 maximum. Addons I don't think can be limited, it will be same as removing them, or maybe a certain condition like facing non 3-4 swf lobbies? I will think about it more and maybe create a separate thread regarding killer side