Queue times
Why is killer queue times so long? Is it just me?
Comments
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In my region (Australia) they have honestly been long for a few months now if not most of year.
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Not enough Survivors playing. Usually it is a bit better in the evening, because more people play SWF. But in general it is longer and you have to wait at least 3 minutes in EU. (Evening, I dont try to queue up midday, will probably be way longer)
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Survivor is not lucrative enough, especially in soloQ. This is due to several factors like killer power creep, matchmaking and MMR.
During SWF-hours, the queue times do go down, but it is generally less fun to play during that time.
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Also there is more people playing during weekends so that makes more for both sides still killer is one and survivors you need four so it usually is going to be killer waiting because of that fact.
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The devs over the last several years made playing survivor hot garbage for solo q and barely playable for a full swf.
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Before Jason, for me at least, the queue times were about equal with it being faster on killer most of the time. So I assume Jason's popularity really threw things out of whack.
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Realistically its just the consequence of it being an asym with a large and healthy playerbase, for the queues to be even killers need to be around 1/5th of the people matchmaking, ANY higher - even 1/4th - is going to be decently long queues. If you look at survivor queue times, they're instant, but lobby fill itself is instant as well even after players leave, so theres no shortage of survivor players queuing up for matches. A lot more people are willing to join the killer queues with the 'play while you wait' feature added to 1v4 as well, which drives up the times a bit ever since (not that its a bad feature, just that theres more people in the queue at a given moment, especially during daytime.).
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Killer queue times went up a lot with the Jason release, which is to be expected with a new killer with a popular license. They still haven’t gone back to “normal” yet. Will be interesting to see if the SB/vigil meta nerf will keep the killer queue times higher for an extended period of time.
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NA west here. Always pretty fast queue times at least I've noticed 2-3 mins tops.
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As someone who only gets his info from the forum for years now, I would say 2vs8 is partially to blame aside from the rudimentary 1vs4 aspect and the overall balance shift from survivor over to killer.
It made playing killer with a friend possible. Just one pair of duo survivor wanting to play killer together shift the ratio. In an isolated example it goes from from 1:4 to 3:2 and suddenly you need 10 more survivor to fill that up to 3:12, given there would now be a 1:4 normal match and a 2:8 match.
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No, it's cuz of shortage of survivors, the queue times are instant for survivors as there's not enough, not many killers use play while you wait and the bp bonus is given to the side with lack of players (survivors have the bp bonus most of time)
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jasons is playable so people are playing him as well play while you wait lets people who play both roles queue up for both basicly meaning more survivors. my queues are like 2 to 3 minutes if that
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'Long' is relative. Normally my Killer queues have been around a minute tops, but I don't play during the day or at times when there seems to be a dearth of Survivors. But some people's seem to be many times longer than that. Weirdly my Survivor queues are often longer than anticipated even when the BP bonus is on that side.
Don't worry, when the split event queues come in next week it'll all get even worse.
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A lot of my friends who play survivor casually are steering clear of the game, it's been that way since 6.1.0 honestly, as people have mentioned above it's gradually gotten worse.
I don't think people are ready for what the new MMR is gonna change, if it's as accurate and effective it means they'll also get better stats, with these big midchapters I think we are in for drastic changes for better or for worse.
Here's hoping.10 -
Theres a big difference between "There aren't enough survivors for reasonable matchmaking" and "There are an influx of people playing killer at the moment for whatever reason (Jason)", while they have similar effects on QUEUE times, actual time to matchmake - which includes lobbies, not just queues - would be pretty different if the problem was survivors leaving in droves. At least in the EU servers, I have ZERO problems matchmaking from the survivor POV even though I play solo queue - if there were the kind of absence you were talking about, there would be friction finding people to fill out lobbies, and even with backfill multiple people leaving a lobby would cause things to stall significantly, which is not my experience at all. As it stands, the only thing extending my time to get into game from the moment I hit the queue button is people not readying up, the system just isn't having trouble finding survivor players.
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I play during the day and the current killer queue times are abnormal. Several months ago I'd wait max of 1-2 minutes, now it's anywhere from 4-6 minutes. Sometimes longer. In the evenings it was instant but now it's around 1-2 minutes. The cause of it is up for debate, whether there's less people queuing up for survivor these days or maybe they're messing with matchmaking again like they have in the past (which notoriously messes with queue times), who knows. But it's definitely not normal for killer queues in all the years I've played.
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as if. killer queues are higher because there are less killer players needed seeing as for a match they make up 1/5 of the match but carry 1/2 of the reasonability. if killers were just 25% of the player base the queue times would be around 3 to 5 minutes
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This has been my experience, too. It's a complete flip on what it used to be when I started. On average, we had much shorter Killer wait times just a few years ago.
I have a theory that Survivors who've played a lot eventually reach a breaking point and crash out entirely or they convert into Killer mains, accounting for the potential shortage of Survivor players. It's only a theory, I don't actually know if there's a lack of Survivors, it's just what happened to me and I think I'm probably not the only one. Survivor is just for Killing time between Killer matches for me these days because I can't hack it otherwise.
The overwhelming strength of every new Killer vs the average lobby and things like the upcoming Sprint Burst nerf probably won't be improving the Survivor experience anytime soon. I can only see this getting worse. The SB nerf alone would be something that would tip my over the edge if I hadn't already thrown in the towel on Survivor.
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It really just shows the abject failure of play as you wait. Killers would rather tab out or AFK on the loading screen than play a single match of survivor.
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the queues are 5 seconds at night; killers come out during the day and get spooked when the sun goes down.
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hmmm i wonder what role you play the most
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Thats because mat hs take 10 to 15 minutes alot of the time and queues are only like 2 to 3 minutes. As well play while you wait just makes killer queue longer sense it means more people are queuing for killer
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You have to be joking right? Anti tunnel changes pallet density but because the nerf a perk that hasn't been changed in 9 years the devs balance for killer. The devs balance of fairydust because they nerf things in weird ways that dont address problems leave game breaking bugs in the game for years.
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I can agree that playing solo is difficult because there are 4 random people with different playstyles and gameplay perspectives, but calling SWF barely playable is something new. Even if you're bad at playing the survivor, you have all the information about the map and the killer's position without info perks, and being able to communicate on Discord isn't that hard, you know?
The most problematic are fully coordinated SWFs with meta perks, they create a huge gap between solo/casual swfs and killers. Against them, you have to work your ass off, and they discourage most people from playing at all. Not all killers in this game are sweaty nerds who have studied the game inside and out.
Regarding the topic, there might also be a summer factor, in addition to the new killer. People are on vacation and spending time elsewhere, so que times take longer than usual, or people prefer to hide from the heat and come back to play in the evening/night when the heat subsides.
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Play while you wait is actually an amazing system. People can play two roles with minimal que time, experiencing the game from all sides, instead of being suffocated by just one. If you don't want to play the other role, then endure the long queue. In my opinion, this is the best thing they've done. And frankly, discussing the game's balance and mechanics, as many do here, based solely on experience with one side is utter idiocy.
This system at least encourages surv/killer mainers to be flexible
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Yeah I don't know why so many people won't just admit that killer has had a big spike in popularity lately. Anyone who watches the queue times has seen the change since Jason's release. Either more people want to play killer than they did 2 months ago or less people want to play survivor. Those are the two options.
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Im not saying its bad im saying why people dont use it and that it makes queues longer because more people are playing both roles.
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Cool, does not make me wrong.
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Are you a bot? They canceled all the Anti tunnel changes except for a few exta seconds of endurance that they just came out in saying they want to remove next update and the pallets are hot garbage. In case you are brand new to the game the pallets are very unsafe, which would be fine if the devs did not literally bend over backwards to gift killers free kills by making hit registration only matter on killers side. There may be slightly more pallets but they are weaker and largely unsafe due to as previously mentioned all the free kills the devs decided killers need.
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Do… do you not hear yourself when you type? Needing to be in a fully coordinated swf on discord using only the most meta perks to be able to play the game is ass. Sure you are going to have a better experience than a solo q but that does not mean it's going to be good, just not complete ass.
Like even the worst killers in the game can just camp and tunnel to secure at minimum a kill or two depending on their loadout but to counter this survivors have to be sweaty nerds who have studied the game inside and out. It's bad and it should change.8 -
You havent played killer and its clear and even unsafe pallets when yiu have 20 of them are still alot of time saved. And ya they are removing 5 second from the endurance and haste for 10 second of elusive the strongest statis on survivor and the reason is survivors were using the endurance aggressively to body block then complaining when they got "tunneled" as well killer is having perks nerfed and survivor is getting more buffs.
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They're not a bot but they are brand new. I've seen them posting on the reddit sub and they've only been playing for 3 months. They've had zero experience regarding what they're talking about.
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Play while you wait might have something to do with it also, I'd love to see the percentage of players who use it
Coz I bet there is a lot of people who'd not normally play killer if the queues are long doing it coz of play while you wait.0 -
you were only right about solo Q, other than that, just dead wrong. SWF has always been stronger than solo Q and honestly? it always will be until solo Q gets the changes it needs.
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I know? SWF has always been stronger than solo q that's not what I was talking about.
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Lol, sorry buddy but you are getting called out by multiple people for being brand new. Maybe try understanding more basic game mechanics and the history of the game before you make posts. Or just ask more questions, I promise you that it'll be less embarrassing than whatever… that is.
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I'd think pwyw should theoretically make killer queues shorter since more people would be active on survivor instead of clogging up the line doing nothing. The fact that it's only available on killer is also pretty telling. Even when survivor has a queue and killer doesn't (which is currently rare) there's no option for survivors to play killer while they wait.
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???? look dude i agree that the balance team has been literal snails and deaf when it comes to improving the solo q experience properly, especially feedback FROM the actual solo q players like me, but you legit said in your original post that swf ALSO is barely playable, just like solo q, that was the part where i said A) i wonder what side you play most, and B) you were right about solo q, just not swf.
the strongest killers (blight, nurse, etc) make the rest of the killer role feel very noticeably weaker, and it can be seen through the several years of balancing the game around killers like nurse and blight, when it never should have been. this has made solo q feel unnecessarily worse to play because most newer players will only be seeing the strongest killers as survivors because the newer killers or just some killers in general will feel they have more impact with the stronger killers, causing affected survivor players to not know how to play against heroes like onryo or skull merchant.
Post edited by oreoslurpee on-5 -
I didn't think about it that way, you're right
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Time doesnt equal skill. And im sorry I actually look into games and study patch notes to see what's changes from when I last payed back on 2020 and there is a pattern of the devs not understanding data as well calling pallet density a "quality of life" change when its objectively a buff to survivors and a nerf to killers. I also dont care what some no body on the forms says about me they dont know me so it doesnt matter what they say.
Post edited by Domicci on-8 -
Ya before jasons announcement i was getting the bp bonus as killer most days
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I'd think pwyw should theoretically make killer queues shorter since more people would be active on survivor instead of clogging up the line doing nothing.Theoretically it could, but it depends on how people behave on whether it makes it better or worse.
Let's take a scenario - 30% of the players are queued to play killer, 70% of players queued to play survivor. 10% of the players on the killer side are waiting. Now let's say that 10% all select to go survivor, 2% of them get killer matches, 8% of them are playing survivor, things are going quicker.
On the theoretical level, that's how it works and speeds up killer queues and probably what BHVR was thinking. But it gets a little deeper.
Among those 70% of survivors are probably a lot of people who wanted to play killer but didn't because of the wait and/or like to play both roles. Those players now instead of just playing survivor, throw their name in the killer pool as well. This quickly necessitates longer and longer wait times for those who want to only play killer (or how frequently they get to play killer if they were okay with playing survivor).
In a hypothetical 'worst/best' (depending on your point of view) where everyone went to play killer and also go on survivor, people would be doing roughly 4 matches of survivor for every one they got of killer.
We'll never get anywhere close to that extreme, but the 4 to 1 dichotomy works against killer queue times, because there's a lot more survivors who can come over to the killer side and do both roles than there are killers who could do the same thing. Potentially the only thing that prevents it from completely spiraling out of control (from a pure killer only perspective) is the amount of people playing SWFs.
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That's true. I hadn't thought of that angle. Even though I'm one of those people playing both I pretty much never use the pwyw. If the killer queues are long and that's what I want to play then I just won't play.
The one part that doesn't fit is that the original addition of the pwyw didn't seem to change anything. I remember the queue being normal after last 2v8 when it was introduced. The change came after Jason but my survivor matches have gone down to having the same amount of Jasons as pretty much anyone else. Things are mostly back to normal but the queues are still off.
Interesting to think the big bad SWF might be keeping queues at okay levels though. I often wonder what would happen to this game if SWF was nerfed or partying up was impossible. Won't happen, but I wonder.
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But time does equal knowledge through experience, not knowledge through reading Reddit opinons or watching CCS and absorbing other people's opinons so you can regurgitate their views without any personal understanding of what you're talking about.
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Time equals experience, and given you have confirmed with your comments you lack knowledge on basic game mechanics I'd say your skill is questionable at best.
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What mechanic would those be?
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It's mostly down to Surviver entitlement.
No one wants to solo q only for one of their team mates to quit at the slightest inconvenience.
First hit d/c
Hates the map d/c
Hates the killer d/c
Messes up a loop d/c
Killer so much as farts in their direction d/c
Left on the ground longer than 10 seconds d/c
This is 80% of survivor issues.
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