How to make Solo-Q and SWF closer to balance the game overall
The last week i really enjoyed the new feature of being able to see my teammates perks and i just thought for myself if there could be any other easy adjustments to make the flow/gain of informations between solo-q and swf closer together.
So i was thinking about the following: Let's imagine the situation of the killer chasing a survivor and he is hitting a basic attack: The Survivor notices the killer using Sloppy Butcher (because it gets shown in the HUD). in a SWF the Player would tell their mates him using Sloppy Butcher, but in Solo-Q it isn't possible. But what if this perk gets shown in the Perk overview after this HUD Event triggered on any Survivor? Their could be a notification (like the quest progress notification) "Killer Perk detected" or "Sloppy Butcher detected" and the Survivors could look at it.
Just for clarification, i do play Killer and Survivor round about 50/50 and i am pretty sure it would be a strong buff for Solo-Q Survivor, making it harder for most killers to take advantage of the solo-q aspect, BUT i am pretty sure as well we need to make solo-q and swf as close as possible to balance it in a good and fun way.
Would be curious to hear your thoughts about it.
Have a great week gamers!!!
Comments
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I can get behind this for perks that specifically appear on the hud. It's a good shout.
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Yes! I think it should also tell other survivors when someone is exposed. If I'm the obsession and I know the killer has friends til the end, I'll usually jump in to a locker and people have questioned why. It's silly that this information isn't given to other players.
Even in end game, if I'm exposed and the team expects me to go for the unhook, I have no way of explaining why I can't, I just look like a jerk. The HUD could do so much more to help solo survivors.
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Why not just let us see our teammates perks in the lobby? Seems less useful to see perks once the game has already started.
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I believe this was avoided due to the possibility of your teammates lobby dodging if they don’t like your perks.
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If solo and swf were equal, impossible as you can't mimic team experience, how would bhvr balance the game after? What nerfs or buffs would each side receive?
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That's actually a good suggestion, though reciprocally I'd like it if certain perks on the Survivor side were revealed to the Killer, especially ones where a Survivor gains Endurance. Given that there's so many sources of it and most of them have additional effects, it would be useful for Killers, especially less experienced ones, to be able to understand why a Survivor they just hit went into deep wound and isn't dead.
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I would never try to make swf and solo equal, because its just impossible. I just want it to become as close as possible, so Bhvr gets better data for their statistics, so they can look at it and react to things being good or being bad.
In my opinion the game is Swf-Sided at the moment. Survs are in general pretty strong because of the gens being done so damn fast. So on the survivorside i'd look for Solo-Q Buffs in general, like the one i just talked about or status effects being shown in the Hud.
The first thing to focus on imo, after getting Solo-Q and SWF as close as possible, is the main objective. Gens are going damn fast, thats why the meta is almost everytime Killer running full antigen builds. In my opinion every single perk regarding Gens should be deleted and the objective needs to be redesigned or extended. But not in the simple way by just raising the timer for a gen to be done. I'd say nobody likes to do a gen for 2 minutes. The first thing coming to my mind is for example an additional objective, f.e. Survivors need to open chests to find a Genpart and they need to take it to the gen to start repairing it (its just a random idea coming in my mind to make the games last a little bit longer).0 -
It would allow bhvr to balance the game more accurately. The whole point is that soloq is, as a rule, extremely bad for survivors. It's obviously never going to be balanced the same as swf. Currently the average soloq team has a worse escape rate than average swf. It skews average escape rates. But bringing it closer allows for better game balance.
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I understand the why, but I'm asking the how and what would change for either side after this equilibrium between solo and swf had been reached?
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The parts idea already has a surrogate in the blood event fuel cans. Would your example work in the same way or does it just unlock the ability to repair?
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Idk off hand, no one does yet because no one knows exactly how such a change would affect the game. Bhvr would look at the escape/kill rates, see what the feedback from players is and go from there.
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Except for some edgecases like hubris and ghostface especially
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Yeah i wouldve loved to know why a survivor got endurance from x perk.. meanwhile the survivot knows if dissolutions is active...
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If we are talking about BHVR then they will bhvr'd it. My question is to the concept that once solo and swf are equal we can balance the game. The issue is, no one wants to pitch ideas on what that would look like.
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Its not making sence that meh perk gets revealed way before its effect its even used but endurence stays hidden and only as killer you will know there was some if you damage survivor who is effected by it, its very unlogical.
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To be fair, I think the argument is less that fixing solo queue will open up new balance options that weren't available before, and more that fixing solo queue means any changes which are made afterwards will land better because solo queue will be in a better position to feel the effects appropriately.
For example, any survivor nerf won't disproportionately harm solo queue (at least by as much, realistically) if solo queue isn't operating at an active detriment. Same for survivor buffs, they'll land better if solo queue can more adequately benefit from them compared to SWF.
Obviously complete parity is impossible but it can be a hell of a lot better than it is now, at least.
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We're in complete hypothetical territory already on equilibrium being established and this is asking another hypothetical on top of it, that's why its so difficult to answer.
It depends on how big the change would be to kill rates. If the drop is minute (like 0.25%), probably nothing. If its something like 5%, wide scale buffs to basekit killer mechanics. If some killers drop and not others (say GF compared to Nurse), then those killers who dropped could be buffed in a way that would make them healthier in all situations without changing the killers who remain fine.
This is of course looking only at kill rates, there are other factors that might arise but that's the easiest one to look at.
I think situation 3 is most likely, so we'd need to go killer by killer to discuss what could be changed. But its a hypothetical on top of a hypothetical, so there are lots of presumptions that need to be made and it would be a massive amount of changes to list in a forum post which would require more data than we have access to.
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Sry i dont really want to think about how to balance the game, after swf and solo-q got closer, because its a new topic itself and i cant really build my opinion on it without knowing how the statistics will change with it. It makes no sense to me to think about something which is 2 steps ahead if i need to take one step first, which could lead into a complete change of direction, so thinking two steps ahead would have been a complete waste of time.
I focus myself here on buffing solo-q while swf is not really getting benefit out of it.-1 -
I like the idea but I don't like it naming the perk. For instance, there are alot of ways to inflict expose, blindness, oblivious, etc. I'd have no problem with a pop up saying something like 'Killer using hemorrage' but naming the perk is a step too far. If it outright named the perk this would instantly tell the survivor the counter-play of the perk, and whether they need to hunt a totem down, etc.
I'm not against counter-play mind you, but there's a difference between call-outs and hand-holding that shines here. Game Knowledge shouldn't be replaced where viable, as it's a valid form of skill expression in and of itself. I'd rather see the condition. "Expose" goes out so now you're looking for when. Was it after a hooking? High likelihood of Friend's Til the End then, by example.-2 -
Post edited by Carth on-2
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So what exactly does SWF have that SOLO doesnt?
The only thing that comes to mind is comms. The rest like "team mentality" or "teamwork" is skill/community issue the devs cant touch.
AS for comms, cynically said: Survivors dont want it to change from an added benefit ontop the balance to being part of the balance.
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My whole point is noone can pitch ideas because you'd meed to see how it affects the game first.
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I personally would like 2 things:
Kindred as partially basekit, without the killer aura reading. Maybe just some hud indications when there is a survivor trying to save and the killer is next to the hook
We can see when survivor have perk ACTIVE. Imagine someone with Deliverance not being saved because the whole team thinks the person has Deliverance active but he couldn't activate it during the match? We need to know what is active and what is not.
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At one time, I think this may have been possible. Synergy is something that can't be manufactured, but you could've gotten just short of that. These days however Killer is balanced to have the most agency and less macro play and Survivor is balanced to have the least agency and more macro play. That creates this disparity where Killer is balanced assuming most are low skill, while Survivor is balanced assuming most are high skill (some systems fall outside of this like the pallet density update, but those are always eventually reverted).
Any changes you make in this state to balance solos and SWF aren't going to matter much. Comms won't change the amount of knowledge, skill, and dumb luck required to even match your opponent. And that's before we even get into matchmaking. If we could level the playing field, it would give us a lot more to work with.
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Imagine every game the survivors have knowledge of the killer's location and their teammates location. No second guessing if someone is going for the save or that they should go.
It's not hard to think what the game would be if every match was like an average swf game.
The advantage for the killer is to create chaos to limit efficiency in gen repair. Solo being like SWF is to give the ability to coordinate. The killer will need something to compensate. We could at least speculate on what that may be.
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What makes you say that killer has less macro play than survivor?
If anything I'd probably have said it's the other way around, the changes made to the game over the past few years push the killer role harder towards macro play.
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Imagine every game the survivors have knowledge of the killer's location and their teammates location.So a hypothetical situation that the OP is not presenting and (with killer location thrown in) I don't think I've ever seen and there being no chance of something this extreme happening?
Yeah, it this occurred there would have to be radical changes to other elements of the game (not least of all a whole array of perks, totally changing certain killers, and redesigning maps), but no one is talking about anything approaching this level of change.
Post edited by crogers271 on-1 -
Because there's a stronger emphasis on SWF and more punishments for not being as efficient as possible with more help in Killer's direction, which tips the scales. Camping/tunneling/slugging being addressed properly would shift things quite a bit. Having a stronger endgame for Survivor would also balance it back a bit.
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Some people just don't understand what making solo more like SWF actually entails.
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Would encourage lobby dodging. We should get rid of lobby to begin with anyway, it serves very little purpose beyond messing with matchmaking and making it take much longer to get into a match. For killer it's essentially a complete waste of time beyond letting you metagame and check profiles to lobby dodge, which shouldn't even be a thing in the first place.
I'd say we should be able to see teammate perks on the loading screen, but you can actually crash your game during loading and not receive a penalty so I guess not. Would be nice to be able to show off your perks straight on the HUD manually as survivor while in-game though, like "pinging" in a moba or something, so your teammates don't have to open the tab menu to check.
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More like does not mean same as.
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