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Solo Survivor is Infinitely Harder than Killer
I have recently come to the conclusion that playing soloq survivor is infinitely harder than Killer ever could be. I want to say that every 2/10 matches I play soloq they're enjoyable and skillful. The rest are just the most braindead people on my team. Soloq is filled with people who do not play for the team, run meme builds, run builds with playstyles that they are incapable of pulling of, or are just outright bad at the game. I honestly don't know what can be done to fix this issue. I mean 99% of people I play with don't even look at each others perks when all it takes is a button press at the start of the match or just do it on a gen. Now, I will say that killer is far more stressful than soloq survivor is. I don't ever find myself being as pressed to try my absolute hardest though unless I am playing soloq survivor. I think the one thing that can possibly change this would be a ranked mode but the issue comes down to how to implement a ranked mode with a proper wincon for both sides that isn't what it is now. Because clearly our current MMR setup is just incapable of putting you with proper teammates.
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It's been like that for years. Because you as a solo survivor essentially only got roughly a quarter of the power of the killer you don't get to dictate the course of the game that much.
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I don't find SWF easier per se, I actually end up with a higher ER in solo. What solo is that SWF isn't is unpredictable. You get to know how people play and what sort of perks they'll bring. Instead of four wild cards you only have one in the killer.
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One thing I've noticed is it's almost impossible to coordinate an end game rescue with solo survivor. It's crazy how many people don't know the proper play. But that's even assuming they try to rescue you. Most solo survivors will just stand at the door like cowards.
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Well sure, generally speaking, solo queue surv is the clearly the hardest role to play in DBD, but "playing soloq survivor is infinitely harder than Killer ever could be"? That's too much hyperbolic generalization.
I mean I've only played surv solo since 2020, but I'm here to tell you that playing a D-tier killer on a bad map against strong survs is worse. It's the most helpless I've felt in DbD, and I've played this game from just about any angle possible.
But that's the thing; playing killer isn't as consistent an experience as playing surv is. How hard it is varies wildly based on the killer you're using and the maps you get. Playing Blight on Fallen Refuge or Nurse on Midwich? Cakewalk, a trained monkey can win.
But try Myers on Badham, Onryo on Mother's Dwelling or Trapper on Eyrie against survs who aren't braindead and you will know pain.1 -
Literally everything you mention that makes killer inconsistent makes survivor inconsistent. Nurse on midwich or Trapper on Eyrie effects the survivors too, its just that the trapper on Eyrie will be easy and the nurse on midwich will be impossible.
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We need a ping systems / comm wheel in the game yesterday that would at least make my solo q games more enjoyable.
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I play solo survivor to de stress from 4x Finesse abusing pre runners. The thing about solo q is the variance and not understanding your team roster but as a rule of thumb, if everybody on a team plays in good faith then I don't think its so bad. But people genuinely can have thousands of hours in dbd and never strive to improve or reflect on their gameplay, always use the same perks and strategies and never adapt etc. this makes losing as killer more bearable.
I get worked up and get misanthropic but that's because I actually try. For example, on the weekend I had a Vittorio getting tunneled out by Jason after somebody else got tunneled out on Lerys, a map infamous for being hard to coordinate. However, I like to pretend I'm a SWF so I like to roll Strength in Shadows+Bond. With perfect Discord accuracy, I kept taking hits for him and running back to the basement. I could only do this thanks to perks, but the tools are there if people want to try. I've also been the world's biggest Empathic Connection fan anybody who plays in my games can count on me.
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Solo queue is a wasteland because BHVR continue to refuse to improve 1) how skill is measured and 2) the matchmaking system itself. So most of the time the skill level of your teammates will be completely random. That’s the way it is in nearly all my solo queue matches. This is a terrible, broken system. BHVR have told us for a long time that they “plan” to do something to improve it, but I lost hope a long time ago that they are really serious about it.
The #1 thing the devs could do to improve the system is end the insanely stupid “escapes = skill” way that MMR is calculated. Give people incentive to play well in matches even if they are losing or if they don’t like the killer so that they have a better chance of better teammates in future matches. In the current system, as soon as the survivors think they are going to lose, they give up because their MMR is going to decrease whether they fight hard in the loss or give up lying down in the loss.
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At this point I'm convinced the real strength of swf isn't the increased communication but rather knowing that your teammates won't quit and will be at least somewhat competent.
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Solo queue is the worst of both worlds, which is the problem. Killer is lonely and at the mercy of RNG, but there are lots of little boosts to help them (camping/tunneling/slugging always being on the table, immunity to items, gen regression, stronger endgame, etc.). Solo Survivor is lonely, at the mercy of RNG, and has none of that support (unless they're lucky with matchmaking). Often times, you are left with no way to turn a bad situation around and nothing to do other than wait for it to end.
I could be off-base, but I feel like that's part of the machine that ensures the 60% KR. Which is another way of saying that they do not care and will not improve it.
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solo q survivor is the equivalent of getting sent into D-Day with a pistol
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So your complaint is just that people are bad. Cool. Would you be surprised to hear that this is most popular complaint in EVERY game with team and matchmaking?
Hell bro even outside of videogames, your school or college mates never complained about losing a volleyball match because they had bad team?
Eventually you people will get over it.
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Personally I can play solo survivor all day and still escape at least every once in a while, but playing killer gets me so anxious and worked up that I just can't do it for long anymore without making myself miserable. Whether it is objectively harder or not, killer just kinda hits different and gets my blood pressure up every time, and I don't usually have that issue with solo survivor.
Tho I suppose my issues have less to do with difficulty and more to do with stress, one just feels far more stressful than the other to play to me.
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Myers isn't that bad on Badham, especially if you use Scratched Mirror. Ironically enough, the amount of times the houses and the school are more detrimental than helpful against SM Myers is hilariously high. Sure, patroling the street is hard, but when you get to hold the houses locked down, it is fairly easy to foil the survivors.
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Usually my escape rate is around 40 percent, but the last 30 days I've been doing a lot better, maybe because I kind of thrive against ranged killers since i play them mostly.l
I do also play with friends in some sessions though, so it's a mix of both. Seems their balance is working as intended overall, my high escape rate probs comes from all the newer jasons since he just came out. Not to mention I've been really selfish recently and left if I felt I couldn't save solo.
p.s. I love vigil don't hate me, it's a great perk for helping randoms with debuffs <3 I've used it in most of my builds since it came out, even before the live balance changes, that will never change.0 -
My Last 30 Day escape rate is 45.59% and thats with even trying some saves I should had not tried. All are solo queue matches and I play random builds too so I am not stacking the deck for my benefit. So have to admit everytime someone complains of soloq being impossible or similar I just roll my eyes.
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one of my fav builds atm is Flow State, Counterforce, Boon: CoH and Boon: Shadowstep coz of the uptake in hex builds with jason.
Honestly that is an impressive escapre rate for being altruistic, mine is usually a lot lower when I try to be.2 -
Flow State is the one I often pick as the any perk option that can happen in my builds. Love that perk it just fits in with most perks.
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Flow state is pretty underrated imo
Getting a 30% increase in unhooking speed after a few gens might not sound like a lot, but if you pair it with something like we'll make it - you reduce survivor downtime even more.
Only downside of running it together with Counterforce is diminishing returns cripples the perk with the lower numbers.
My boon build is usually Flow state + Shadow Step + COH + An altruism perk (babysitter, we'll make it, bt). All good options.
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As you said, killer is far more stressful especially with the constant exhaustion perks that feel like you spend twice as long chasing as you should while also having to manage facing 4 others, whereas even though solo survivor is difficult and I am at most an average survivor I still have way more fun because I just don't feel as pressured to perform perfectly every time. If I have a poor chase I at least have three others to support me, if the rest of them make a mistake I can help them, and if the game snowballs in the killer's favour very quickly it takes a fraction of the time to get into another game once its wrapped up. It may be harder but it has been such a relaxing break from killer that I might just stick to survivor for a while because a loss doesn't feel as bad than getting destroyed as Trapper on Badham
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at its worst it's like 5 percent faster with 1 stack, so an increase is an increase, probably one of the more balanced perks with DR
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I can relate to the helpless feeling. I play SoloQ more than Killer (really only played Killer when I got burnt out with bad teammates) and never have I felt as miserable as I did when I was playing Hag and faced a fully coordinated SWF. They basically neutered my power and all knew how to loop. Nothing I tried worked and when they got to one gen they stopped working on them just to come and t-bag and harass me when I was doing my best to salvage the match.
I ended up giving up and they still took their sweet time with the gen just to drag it out. Now I only play Scratched Mirror Myers because I can’t handle the stress of trying to win and playing the normal tedious run around the pallet routine.
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I agree, in the sense that its harder for you to escape and killer's should on average have a Much easier time. Its a lot less stressful for soloqueue survivor because your not always IT, and so can spend downtime, whereas killer feels like you have to feel much more constantly on it.
However, the amount of sway (i forgot the technical term) you have over the match is balanced by there being 4 of you against 1.
This is why i love playing survivor as you wait, because ill play 1-2 games of survivor, match up for a killer game, play another game of survivor, then play some killer. Stops me tilting from either side too much tbh. One bad survivor/killer game wont automatically make me tilt out of my mind. I can destress in survivor the issues i have in a bad killer game, and if i enjoyed the killer game ill just queue killer again and play a survivor game inbetween. Really helps my mental.
What site/app is this, might use it to track my games and get some stats.
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When people say soloqueue is impossible i agree to an extent:
If your playing well, you remove one variable from the 4 survivors playing badly. Statistically, you should have at least 1 other decent teammate who can loop ect, so around 40-50% escape rate sounds about right.
It is however more down to chance, and when you only play on weekends ect, you get a larger pool of rando's who play extremely casually so your more likely to have bad players ect.
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Official stats website, all stats from your previous matches will be here after a certain year (can't recall which one). However do note that any abandon on the survivor side treats the match basically the same as you DCing (it completely ignores that the match occurred) and therefore inflates your escape rate. If you abandon on killer it treats the match as if all survivors still alive at the time you abandoned escaped, so even a four slug where you obviously won is treated as the survivors escaping if they abandon and then you abandon from all remaining survivors being bots. Official stats are claimed to not be counted this way but no specificity on exactly how they differ.
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I get your point, today I played soloq with randoms and the sh#t they did was absolutely insane, I looped the killer for like 5min and when the killer finally got me, we were still on 5 gens. For the rest of the match my team mostly stayed in lockers or on the corners of the map.
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I’ve said this before, but I think it applies here too, the community’s expectations for casual players, especially in solo, are completely out of touch.
People constantly talk about how bad solo is, and a lot of the blame gets placed on the players themselves. But I don’t think enough people stop and ask why so many casual players struggle.
DBD has over 40 killers, each with unique powers, addons, perks, and counterplay. There are hundreds of perks, dozens of maps, status effects, countless tile variations, and looping itself is a skill that takes hundreds of hours to develop. Even if you stripped the game down to base kitsonly, there would still be an enormous amount to learn.
And to be clear, I don’t think this is about one role being easier than the other. Both killer and survivor can be difficult and stressful in completely different ways. One doesn’t invalidate the challenges of the other.
What I do think is that the game’s structure makes it easier to become proficient at killer than it is to become proficient at facing killers. And people don’t consider that.
As a solo survivor you don’t control what killer you face and you don’t control your teammates. Learning is random exposure, it’s trial by fire every time. Meanwhile a killer can repeatedly play the same character, with the same addons, and even practice agaisnt custom bot without the pressure of live matches, so you can try going against the craziest perks on your killers worst map. You can pick every element in the game to practice with until you feel comfortable and confident in your skills to go into live matches.
So we’re asking casual survivor players to keep up with a massive amount of knowledge and mechanical skill, while giving them no way to practice it. Then we get frustrated when they play like they don’t know what to do.
If we want a healthy playerbase and not just veterans with thousands of hours, so every match isn’t a sweat fest, we need to seriously consider what a new or casual player has to learn just to survive a chase longer than 15 seconds.
Right now DBD demands an unreasonable amount of game knowledge, matchup knowledge, and mechanical skill before an average survivor player can be considered competent. And I think a lot of the community has lost sight of that.
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Ive never abandoned a game so dw about that, thanks a tonne
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Eh, while its true you leave with a higher ER when solo, I'd argue the average ER per match is lower while playing solo. Because you're more likely to be willing to sacrifice yourself for 3 of your friends, but not for 3 strangers.
As for unpredictability, that is what IMO makes soloq overall more fun. I have the most fun with SWF if we dont tell each other our (full) loadouts. Sometimes I do still say I bring X because if I dont they will unknowingly sandbag me (like if I bring Deliverance, I HAVE to say it, otherwise my friend will race me for any unhook).0 -
Yes, I'm more likely to die for friends. I'm also often screwing up becuase I'm laughing or talking. Soloq is all business. I don't know about the average though. As far as I know, the killer is determined by the person with the highest MMR. So if three people are low and one is high those three players will be in over their heads. SWF probably makes for some very wonky matchmaking.
I'm not saying unpredictability is good or bad. It's just a thing.
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Oh, the killer is as much determined by the person with the highest MMR as the person with the lowest MMR. As far as I can recall (which, I am not fact checking, this is pure memory, not a source), DBD does a rough calculation based on the lobby average and tries to match it as close as possible. Which, lets say you as a killer have 2600 MMR and your opponents have 1500, 3000, 2250 and 3250. Then the survivor average is 2500, with 2 survivors that are going to be a slight problem, 1 survivor that is an obvious weak link and the other survivor being quite likely to lose more mindgames against you than they would win. As long as you can decide which survivor you shouldnt be chasing, the game should be easy to tie and require a bit of effort to turn into a win.
There is a bit more to it, like, how long people have been q'd up, how long they havent been playing, how well their recent matches have been going etc etc etc.0 -
Other news, water is wet.
Generally most of the community agrees:
SWF > Killer > Solo
It's how its been for a long long time and probably nothing will really change that other than flipping to something like: Killer > SWF > Solo or SWF = Killer > Solo or SWF > Killer = Solo. All of which would probably not be good for the game.
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Hell bro even outside of videogames, your school or college mates never complained about losing a volleyball match because they had bad team?
Spoken like someone who hasn't spent much time in school.
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