http://dbd.game/killswitch
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
Comments
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My only problem with this is restricting players to 1 perk across the whole team. People have a preference for their preferred exhaustion for example, what If I want Lithe and it's taken by the members of a SWF? I understand your motive of wanting certain strategies gone, (like Head On bully squads on certain maps or full flashlight and flashbang SWFs who constantly Die under pallets with Background Player) but what about the people who are running those perks just because they like to and find it suitable to their personal playstyle? That's where things like these need individual changes, like maybe a certain form of save can only occur once every 30 seconds or so (for example, one pallet save for a while, or one flashlight save for awhile)
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Certainly this suggestion is raw and can be improved upon, something like a synergy with mmr levels perhaps? Or a limit of 2 for certain perks. Either way there is room for polishing, but I believe it could be done well. Your suggestion is imo too hard to adapt into the game because a lot of individual things would require covering with it
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I would just have the limits apply to the SWF only and let the solo players use things normally. But in my version i would have them active once its a party of 2 not 3, SWF is a SWF afterall and you still have the unfair external comms. No duplicates of any kind in the SWF of any size.
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I always held the opinion this would make SWF more interesting, where you have to decide between you which perks you're gonna take each.
Some people for some reason see it as a "punishment", whereas I just see it as a rule that makes the game more interesting...
The argument that always made me laugh is "well what if someone insists on keeping/gating all teh best perks for themselves?". Erm... doesn't sound like much of a friend in your Survive With Friends group? You're an adult? You can leave... 😐
But hey ho...
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Nerfing SWF shouldnt be a thing because 99% of them are just goofing off and not taking it serious. It would be better to close the gap between swf and solo queue.
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all you need is an action speed debuff applied to all members of a swf and it increases the more members in a swf this has been proposed for years the problem is every time it's proposed survivors come out of the woodwork saying pwople shouldn't be punished for playing with friends
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they are not going to do any of this, they dont want players to have major difficulties while playing a casual game with friends, so no they are not going to implement changes to make swf confused in the lobby or fight each other for perk usage
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I don't think SWF specific nerfs are really the way to go, mainly due to the fact that SWF penalties need to be balanced around the most competitive (Coordinated squads with synergistic builds) and the most casual (Occasional players that only get on to play together).
However, there was a variant I saw suggested at some point that could work at least a bit better for this: Instead of strict perk limits, have the tier of a perk decreased each time it's stacked in a 3 or 4 man SWF.
So for example, if 2 people in a 4 man have DS, both have their perk become the tier 2 version once they're in the game. If 3 or 4 of them have background player, it becomes tier 1 during the game.
From there you could rebalance perk tiers around that concept. Lower tiers of Deliverance could increase the safe unhooks needed, or tier 1 Sprint Burst could give you a slightly shorter sprint duration.
Do I think it's a good idea to put into the game? ...not wholeheartedly. But it's at least a concept I found interesting to consider.
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You cant nerf SWF, unless dbd can make a deal with discord to make it not work when they are playing dbd.
You have to bring the power of Soloq up too what SWF levels of comms are.
but if these changes did come to the game, can soloq survivors get the same treatment if a top tier killers are just sweating with the best perks? limit them to one perk if they are versing soloq :D-1 -
It might be ancient knowledge by now, but didnt the devs explicitly state they will not balance survivor differently for solo or swf?
For the devs there isnt solo or swf, but only survivor. Technically theyre already the same too, since comms are 100% third party tools.
You'd rather start balancing survivor around good players like people demand for killers.
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Oooooh that's a curious idea as well, and less invasive, I can see this one being healthy for the game as well, though a lot more work too, to change the levels of perks
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There is no way to bring power of solo q to even close level of swf, without it directly buffing swf as well. Best example, pallet density before it did a 180 in current patch: It was a huge buff to solo q, bringing it closer to swf level before the patch, but at the same time, it also sky rocketed power of sfw to such height that it was honestly laughable. And quite frankly, not a lot can be done that will increase power only in solo/duo que without it affecting swf
One thing that they can certainly add, is something similar to what exists in Carnival Hunt, a system of specific pings which tell the entire lobby what you are up to. This will definitely make communication clearer for solo q teammates, HUD does that somewhat well though I am afraid some people are blissfully unaware of it0 -
If that's really their design philosophy regarding survivors, then there is sadly no real hope then, it's same like saying trapper and blight are same thing since they are both killers. But oh well, nothing we can do about it.
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Best way to tackle perk restrictions in a SWF would be to just restrict the perks that are problematic to 1 instead of covering them all in a singular umbrella/blanket term. Perks like Decisive Strike and the Exhaustion perks would be able to fall under this restriction pretty easily, but perks with less match defining qualities like Deja Vu or Blast Mine should not be restricted to 1.
There is also the fact that I do not believe this would be coded properly, as I have no idea if the game can already define who is and isn't in a SWF post queue. Go Next Prevention was killswitched for a similar reason, as killers could hard tunnel someone to make the system trigger a false positive.
This would also have the downside of the devs needing to keep in mind what new perks they're introducing or old perks they're changing to add to the ban list. As we've seen with Wicked in the recent PTB, keeping old perks in mind is not something they're capable of doing.
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Ok... but how? There are changes that can be made to bridge the gap, things like perk sharing and Blindness can be looked at... however ultimately the core issue is whatever changes you make for SoloQ, you are buffing SWF too... so SoloQ can never catch up to SWF because nobody is willing to add any extra rules or compromise SWF in any way... Perks always have to be kept dialed back for SoloQ cause they are abusable by mass stacking in SWF.
Its basically not really possible to level out SWF and SoloQ unless you effectively give perfect information to the Survivor side at all times, and remove basically all gameplay elements related to reading the trial. This would obviously be ridiculous and insanely boring, effective info relaying is a skill in of itself... but where precisely do you cut off the SoloQ information limit in the name of closing the gap? Cause unless you remove all potential callout advantages the gap will never close.
The logical extreme of what I'm saying is to do things like:-
- Have permanent unlimited Bond on all Survivors at all times so no one has to call out their position.
- Have all killers, irrespective of stealth/undetectable, be revealed by the white aura whilstsoever another teammate can see them.
- Have all pallets that have been used have their splinters highlighted for all Survivors permanently.
- Have any gens touched by a fellow Survivor highlighted permanently, with the colour shifting to indicate progress.
- Any hex totems seen by any Survivor is now permanently highlighted fir all Survivors.
This is obviously incredibly asinine, but you see my point... this is what it would take to "bridge the gap" between soloQ and SWF... you simply just can't bring SoloQ up to SWFs level by only buffing soloQ. The only way you can is to impart additional rules on SWF to offset their comms advantage.... which no one wants to do because of a persecution complex.
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This is a plausible solution....
.... that will likely never get put in the game because the flood of complaints would drown us all.
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I was talking about this exact idea back in 2020 of primarily playing survivor. This would greatly reduce the "innovative" 4-stack builds and add-ons, and encourage the usage of more underrated and unique perks to form some fun and surprising combos; it just takes a little push to get to that point. Though, I would apply this to solo as well so we don't all have the same smooth brain idea of running the same perks, and same with prohibiting killers from running the same perks per game.
Definitely something BHVR could potentially do to drastically adjust the whole metagame as we know it. And sure, players who aren't confident in their own raw knowledge and abilities will scurry to the "best" perks for themselves to save face from folding in a game, but they wont learn anything other than what's meta, therefore hurting their own growth as a player running on training wheels. The same applies for killers who only run the same dry perks every game because of the shaky knees if they remove them, granted, some perks ARE necessary to keep up, but that is an issue that could be easily remedied by BHVR if they locked in on doing this.
If we're all goofing off and not taking it serious then using non-meta perks and prohibiting the ability to stack staple perks/builds wouldn't be an issue. Bridging the gap between solo and swf isn't an easy task and never will be because SWF will ALWAYS be more organized than solo, and to truly catch up or bridge the gap between the two would essentially be SWF getting handicapped/nerfed.
The biggest issue imo to tackle if implementing this meta-reduction idea would be to adjust the powers of killers, reduce the power-creep, reduce the release of curb-stomping killers, and further adjust mechanics to where it complements the change and increasingly balances the gameplay experience, but I'm sure that would be a major issue with the players, goofing off or not.
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if we’re going to do that then high mobility killers should lose access to perks like friends til the end, startstruck and lethal. I think the entire perk system needs a radical overhaul.
killers should be classed and perks should be altered based on the class type. Same goes for survivor. Problem is bhvr would never get it right and most people would hate it.0 -
The big problem with your plan is that there’s no way to track SWF versus non-SWF. If the system triggers for people who connect their thing with a certain platform, those players will just use another platform. Unlike other edits that they can make, there’s nothing they can do about people playing with friends. When I play on a team, they’re usually in the same room as me. Plus, with them like completely deleting survivor quality of life updates, you can only squeeze the survivor so far before it drastically affects killer a cue times. If everybody switches to killer, it’s gonna be like multi- hour wait times. I guess they could always bring back the bots like what they tested in 2v8.
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Why people keep asking for this when is a terrible idea.
Why would I play a game where I'm punished just for playing with my friends?
Why would I spend money on characters with perks I can't use because someone else is using it?
And if that's the case, any killer ablve A tier shouldn't be able to use regression/aura perks then 🤷♂️
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The reality is that SWFs aren't performing that much better anymore over solo, so this would be the experience for most SWFs.
I think SWF is a catch all for all frustrations while playing Killer (judging by the posts on social media where everyone is in top MMR, supposedly) and sadly judging by how this "year of health" has gone down, it's inevitable that SWFs will be punished eventually. In my opinion, the future of DBD is very bleak and depressing.
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That’s because swf is the boogeyman of many killer mains. Of course they didn’t lose against a group of Solos that know how to play the game, they always lose against a coordinated team that only queue to bully the killer. They are always the victim 🤷♂️
And BHVR said clearly that they won’t implement something like this because it would kill the game.
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Swf doesn't need to be nerfed nor does solo need to be buffed.
The information gap between the two needs to be reduced so the advantage of swf is lessen.
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Yes you are correct that some swf play it for funsies, and yes you are correct that some swf do not perform well, and yes you can absolutely lose vs 4 solos who are just good at the game. Saying that majority of swfs are playing only for funsies, and as high as 99%, is just blatantly lying and doesn't help your point.
The bigger picture however, is that power outliers like non-casual swf and top tier killers, for some reason do not get addressed, and with time (thanks to mmr system) it created a rather big bubble when bhvr started to bring everything closer to the level of power outliers, which is far less healthy for the game than simply reducing what's strongest. As a result we have killer like clown who got a rework and can absolutely stomp pubs, yet still struggle vs coordinated teams.
You can't and absolutely shouldn't balance around those best at the game, that's never been a good idea in literally every game ever. Yet, those killer/survivor changes are absolutely revolving around best levels of gameplay, all the reworks overbuffing killer into oblivion, all the changes they made this year for survivors which giga buffed swf, those are exactly what balancing around best is. Both highest tier killers and highest tier survivor players are shackling this game, it has always been like that, however this issue greatly escalated with the mmr system. Which is quite an issue on itself too, can you tell me how many middle ground games have you had recently? Me personally, it's either 4 good players, or 4 absolute newbies struggling to survive. Either way, there is no fun in such games, since they end up too one-sided-1
