The real reason why some don't like SWF's
SWF is a fun game mode and no one with a sane mind would argue, that you shouldn't enjoy the game with friends.
Everybody should get this.
The real reason why SWFs in DBD are so controversial is, that they change the fundamental rules of the game.
For the majority of players the game is about information management.
You need to know where the gens are, where are the pallets, where are the rest of the survivors and what are they doing. Who is the killer and where is the killer and what is he doing? Where are the totems, what perks are in use, where are the exit gates, which one is open and where is the hatch?
To aquire and deny that information is the core of the game and for many players the reason why they love the game and keep playing it.
SWFs change those basics of the game.
All of a sudden you cannot rely on the individual knowledge of the survivor but you have to face a hive mind.
This is frustrating for survivors and killers alike.
The argument that not all SWFs are sweaty tryhards is in my eyes invalid.
There is potential to break the game and this potential can be taken by any SWFs at anytime.
Unfair rules are ok, as long they are consistent, but because you never know if the next game is just a normal match, a fun to for tat between some friends or facing a squad is making the game really unpleasant and stressful.
This uncertainty is the main reason why so many cannot enjoy the game.
Solos who cannot count on their teammates, because they only safe themselves and let you die on the first hook.
Killers that have to assume always the worst and play accordingly with all their meta killers, perks and add-ons and thus killing all creativity and diversity, because right now DBD don't have that many viable killers. (Fun killers are viable, change my mind).
And for beer and bretzel SWFs it's just unfair when a killer unloads his frustration on them and we end up in a cycle of salt.
So how can we change that?
If we look at other games with variable team sizes like League of Legends their solution is multiple queues.
You can queue up as solo or in a team of 2 for solo queue or go in with 4-5 players in team queue.
For DBD this could look like a queue of solos and teams of 2 SWFs and a queue with SWFs of 3-4.
Yes this can increase the lobby times, bit would make the game more fair and even for everyone. If one queue lack players you can give a BP incentive to play it.
I hope we will find soon a solution that is better as the current state of SWFs and we all can have fun in the fog.
Cheers
Cymer
PS. If you down vote please state why and how you would improve the SWF controversy.
Thank you for joining the discussion.
Comments
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If a SWF ques with 3 players then where does the 4th player come from?
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Basically the exact problem with SWF. I usually just dodge to avoid all the stress.
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Also League of Legends does not have variable team sizes. The games are always 5v5 no matter how many people you initially qued with.
The only reason why SWF is a problem in DBD is because Survivors don't have the means of communicating with each other by default. In games like League this is a non-issue since that communication exists for everyone no matter how many people you que with.
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The problem with SWF is that it completely invalidates some killer perks like Knockout; and it gives the survivors a few extra perks for free like a pseudo-Kindred.
Even the casual SWF groups tell each other where the killer is, what killer they are going against, whether or not the killer is camping, etc. That extra information drastically speeds up the survivor's game plan because they can now make decisions immediately without having to do the extra information gathering required by a team of solo survivors. Now do they always use that extra information to its greatest potential? No. No they often do not. But that doesn't mean that extra information isn't there or that it is a fair advantage over solo players.
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Swf isn't fun, not in any reality.
too easy as a survivor (auto win)
not fun as killer.
you want to know the real reason ppl play in swf groups, because they want to gang up on one person.
that's right, the real reason you want to play in a SWF group is cause you are a bully, no other reason
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Humans are social animals. We like to play with friends. Communicate, have fun. Playing DbD with friends is one way to do so. And no bullying the killer isn't everyones main goal. There are bullies in DbD (or in every online game), you can meet in the game. Maybe some are swf, but I also experienced toxic solo survivors or killers. Don't tell yourself it's otherwise. That's the wrong way of thinking and leads only to more miserable environment.
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I'm sorry but, what a ridiculous thing to say.
I play with my friend because I enjoy the experience of playing this game with my friend. Nothing more, nothing less. We don't play to 'bully the killer' - so you can keep those assumptions to yourself.
9/10 I don't even see my friend in a match as she always seems to be on the opposite side of the map to me.
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I agree with you, but tell me, how often did you face a salty killer because they got bullied before by another team?
You may play the game for fun, but I am pretty sure you and your friends fell victims of some killer bias towards SWFs.
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But how can you possibly know why a killer is playing the way they are playing? Again, you're just ASSUMING it's because they encountered a team of tryhards before your match, but that isn't always the case. Some people just like to tunnel / camp as that's their play style, nothing made them do it.
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I literally never play swf, and guess what, i bully the killer. OOO, Dead Hard, Mettle of Man, whatever else there is to just torture the killer.
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I don't think the devs refuse to add different queues because it would take long.
I think the devs refuse to add different queues because it would destroy the SWF queues.
I used to dodge SWF, but not anymore.
But if i suddenly have to choose between those 2, i'd go against solos.
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The only solution for swf to make the game fair in both sides its a penalty repair speed only for swf team why? The reason they have communication its a big deal for them and alot of info its like combine Object of Obession, bond etc they can desteoy that killer if they are very good and some maps are a big problem since alot of them have a big infinite
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which incidently is why SWF should be removed, in fact it's probably a legal requirment for it to be removed.
ppl in a swf group actively engage in bullying 1 other person as a group of 4
now
to address this bullying behaviour should take preventitive messures and remove SWF from the game
instead
they retain SWF actively encouraging bullying. in fact we could conclude that behaviour interactive are, in fact, pro bullying.
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Excellent points by OP & well articulated.
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@Cymer afew points here, although I will say your post is pretty accurate. The "hive mind" as you put it, breaks any information denial strategy a killer may use, whether that be a specific killer or perk. It doesn't matter if you down someone with knockout, cuz they can just say "I'm at shack". If you really on stealth, like when trying to get out of tier 1 as Myers, a single survivor spotting you will alert the hive mind of who you are and to be on high alert, that their spinechill won't work yet. This is why the top killers are the ones who don't rely on trickery, but rather can just brute force it. As far as the whole viable killer thing though...I've hit and played at rank 1 using only Freddy. I love juggling them and Imagining the confused chat over VC as everyone thinks I'm after THEM, and I get that sweet 4k with a "joke" of a killer.
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yelp, i had some good time, facing swf squad, where everyonne runs no mither.
That was quite fun.
But, being serious, so many people said, that it could stay the same, but give the solo\killer player BP bonus, for hard time probably. (tbh, when i play SWF with friends, we always save the solo random)
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Those claiming that SWF is an easy win are either really bad at killer, or don't realize how often they stomp an swf. Most suck. They are mostly filled with casual players who just play for fun. The really good ones are in red ranks, with a few griefers groups hanging around lower levels.
I used to play with my wife and sons before they quit the game. Nobody could call our swf good. We spent half the time trying to sandbag each other. Unfortunately, they quit playing when 8 of 10 matches were with a camping or tunneling killer. The fun was gone. It was gens and 3 escape. Before that, it was usually 3 of us die.
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Stop whining about SWF.
Team size is 4. You can queue SWF as 4.
Limiting survivors to queue as 3 or 2 will never happen. Unless u wana kill the game ofc.
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The New Mettle Of Man?
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A good thought out thread overall,but you forgot to mention that 2/3 men SWFs are not that big of a problem (especially 2,trust me,with all the random teammates that suicide on hook/DC 2 MEN swf are ALMOST as powerful as a solo surv can be ,Imo)
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This is the most ridiculous and uninformed claim I have seen so far.
Sorry but no, wanting to play with your friends does not translate into wanting to bully the killer, you can tell yourself and everyone else that over and over again but that doesn't make it true.
Are there Bully SWF teams?...Hell yes, and I have faced a few of them myself, they suck. But i have also faced teams who have simply played well and sent nice messages, some even when they didn't do well because they enjoyed the game.
I play in a three man. We suck, because we go out there to have fun and generally refuse to use insta heals or many of the meta perks because god forbid we get the bully brand for simply using whats available. We've been camped, tunnelled, mori'd over and over during the BP event and even had killers slug and not hook us all because it was funny to watch us bleed out.
Wanna know what we did in response.....Not. A. Damn. Thing.
Here's the problem with saying that not all SWF are bullies is irrelevant. Say you get what you want and we get penalised for playing together. Wanna know the ones who will be lobby dodging so they don't get those penalties? The ACTUAL bully squads.
You don't get to tar every survivor with the bully brush because it simply isn't true. You don't like the imbalance, thats fine, i can understand that, but branding us all as toxic killer bullies is not only ridiculous, it exacerbates this whole damn viscous circle of us Vs them that has plagued this game for so long that is pretty much a meme at this point.
I'm not saying you have to like SWF, but you do not get to throw us all in to one pile of as**oles. Some of us are grownups who don't have to find ways to pick on people to make our games satisfactory.
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There isn't that big of a difference between SwF and solo play at high tiers. The difference that does exist comes more from the fact that more often than not the players who are already really good and could already run circles around most killers in solo play just happen to play SwF more often than not. They don't have a higher winrate, but it's a lot easier for a killer who lost to blame it on SwF being unbalanced than admitting they got outplayed by individual players. The problem comes in survivors having a significantly higher skill cap than most killers.
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No one should be punished for wanting to play together with their friends.
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Be honest would you choose to face a swf team? Probably not. I don't understand why people actually think this is a good idea, it baffles me.
As @se05239 said no one should be punished for wanting to play with their friends.
Information is good but if none of the team can loop then it doesnt matter. Normally a swf team at the higher ranks are all good players and that's why people cry about it. If a team has no weak link then you have to either play amazing or just accept your not good enough.
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I lost must be SWF darn
and then you tell them its a solo xd
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I actually think that playing against SWF is fun! you have so much more challenging gameplay, and also this helps you to have a mind whenever you're playing against another one. Normally SWF wants save all the team, wich you can abuse this for your advantage. But I still think that maybe if you're playing against one, you should have a reward for killing them, like team destruction points.
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Ok let's even the odds then. You want SWF groups to stay just the way it is. Being able to talk to other survivors telling every step the killer makes. How about if a killer has to face a SWF team, after 3 gens are done, the killer gets a buff and can insta-down?!
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I started reading what you said, but then just after 1/4 of reading of what you said and your responses to some people, was just starting to sound like nonsense and utter crap and sounded really survivor biased
You completely act like as if SWF is not a problem at all for anyone but survivors, because they have fun knowing everything the killer is doing or what someone else is doing, but not what the killer is feeling. Saying that SWF is not just an easy win is ridiculous, unless you going up against SWF that are in the low ranks or mid ranks then I don't know what makes you think that SWF is not just an easy way to win.
If you were to go up against SWF in the high mid ranks and the red ranks, you would see how sweaty and egotist they are at wanting to win the game no matter what, as long as they can tilt you and cause you to stress out more then you need to, work harder then you need to, they can have almost anything in their way. Playing killers in the mid ranks and red ranks is already stressful enough, adding SWF to that just makes it a whole lot worse then it needs to be and more stressful then it needs to be.
And don't forget about the map offerings survivors can bring to choose the best (for them) survivor sided map at their will and make it all the worse when they bring Broken add-ons COUGH insta heals COUGH which makes killers requires to do more work when that happens and often when that is not dealt quick enough, can really hurt the killer more then it needs to.
Dead by Daylight is a 1 v 4, not a 1 v 1, and having to go up against a SWF makes it feel like you are going up against a 1 v 8. You can play the top tier killers, you can be the best nurse killer, you can be the best killer in general, but when it comes to going against SWF, its like all that real skill you have learned and build up over the time played you have, just dose not matter anymore most of the time because they have communication 24/7, they know what you are doing, they know where you are going, they just know what you are gonna do 24/7, and so I really want to know how that is fair at all in anyways, killers have very few perks to tell and see what survivors are doing and were they are, but SWF can basically have OoO on them without having OoO perk itself.
People saying that you losing to a SWF just means you got outplayed are plain stupid, full of crap. If I as killer, went up against a SWF, doing everything I can to win, hooking people as fast as I can, kicking a gen every time I see one that has been worked on, downing survivors as quick as I can, quitting a chase when I need to, but in the end, if they all escape, people just say "Oh well you just need to get better" or "You just got outplayed that's all" when in reality, its just comes down to the simple fact that I had a huge disadvantage to who I was going up against.
You don't need a SWF to be able to know where the killer is (Most times), to know where loops are, where a pallet is or where survivors are (Most times), if you play the game long enough to know generally where loops are and where pallets spawn, then there is no need to be in a SWF at all, SWF is just basically a way to just to reassure you of where something is and to avoid what should not be avoided (Most times)
Playing killer is all about time management, to make sure survivors don't do their objectives as quick as they can, but in high mid ranks and red ranks its really obvious to tell that time management is a high maintenance, but then when it comes to facing SWF, time management just doesn't really matter anymore. By the time you find someone and hook them, one or two gens are already done, by the moment you walk just far enough away from the hooked survivor, they are saved and you are faced to having to go back and hook them again or the savior or go find someone else only to see that they are almost already finishing another gen or halfway to finishing it. You can kick a gen all you want, but with SWF? That does not matter, you kick a gen, and once they know you have left completely or have been notify on comms that one of them is being chased, they get right back on it again and sooner or later, that gen you just kick seconds ago is somehow finished and you are left to wonder how and start to stress out.
And I have said this before on other places and to other people, in high mid ranks and red ranks, there is nothing casual about SWF, its all about sweating and wanting to win and it leaves the killer to want to quit or continue to play and get stressed out and start to tilt and in the end it just feeds their ego about feeling "good" or they are the "best" And the problem with SWF is that most times, it does not promote any real skills to the user, cause half of the time in a SWF team, especially a 4-man, you are always carrying each other to win by coms, not by your own will and wits or knowledge, that's why you have people here that do SWF most of the time and the moment they do solo, they are garbage because they don't have their baby bottle microphones from other people to help them out to what is going on and it leads them to saying that X needs a nerf. Killer is all about time management and survivor is all about team management in a very limited way possible, cause in the realm of the entity, it shows very well that you can't even speak, SWF completely eliminates that.
There is a huge difference between a game having a 5 v 5 with party's and a game having 1 v 4 with only one team party. What needs to be done is just having SWF change to SWAF, nothing more, nothing less, changing SWF to a duo does not mean it needs to still have the current state of a full SWF.
And by the way "SWF is a fun game mode and no one with a sane mind would argue" is a really big insult.
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I was playing Michael, and as I decided to do so, started the game, looked for a minute for Survivors, found absolutely nothing, no one, and 3 gens popped, on Haddonfield.
No skill involved, they all intentionally gen rushed as SWF, I only got two hits that game, 1 unhook just for them to try and lead me away, t-bag me, the works, I wasn't upset by the BM, the game being done before I even started was the issue.
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@ShrekIsHot if you dont find anyone its not gen rush your just not getting any pressure :P
They might be using urban evasion as soon as they hear you the might go away and leave no scratch marks btw
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You can't apply pressure on Haddonfield without a high mobility Killer. It was just a unlucky game, usually I never have problems with SWF, worst I have is trying to get flashlighted with Nurse, so I bring Lightborn. Everyone loves flashlighting Nurse more than anything else.
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@ShrekIsHot that map is really small tbh I never really had a problem with putting on pressure on that map. Using lightborn is something you never should, its just wasting a perk slot. Whenever i see flashlights in my lobby i get happy because its very easy to dodge a flashlight and the people using it are not on a gen so you gucci. If i get flashlight i give them credit cause i find it really easy to dodge a flashlight attempt.
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Small?! Gens are spread out, almost all gens are in houses or underground which makes for complicated looping, I bring Shadowborn for Nurse because she is so slow that as soon as I go for a pick up, I get flashlight blinded, yes the perk works. It's definitely not hard to dodge but I get blinded during the idle pick up animation. I am going off the account of me being newer, have fun with 4 Balanced Landing Survivors on that map.
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Huh. Haddonfield is pretty universally regarded as one of the worst maps for Killers, mostly because of the possibility of a true infinite when Balanced Landing is used.
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That's not directly related to map/gen pressure though.
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This is similar to my suggestion as well. It's the best solution to the SWF problem.
The game wasn't balanced for SWF so to me and many others it's basically cheating.
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SWF really doesn't offer that big of an advantage. It's just an easy blame for poor performance.
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I mean Haddonfield has pretty bad pressure for Killers too. If the Survivors smartly do the middle gens first, then it becomes much more difficult for the Killer to pressure. Sure. You can say he can just focus the middle gens most of the match, but he's still gonna get infinited and not be able to down anyone.
Im curious OP, do you actually have advice you can give to the person you made this thread for? You tell him he just isn't applying pressure, but provide 0 feedback for him to fix this issue.
Generalities dont help anyone.
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@Weirdkid5 yeah with balanced landing it can be pretty bad i agree, but otherwise i never really had an issue as killer i like the map cause its cinda small
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The reason why I don't like many SWF is because often they are a bunch of annoying pricks
Some are pretty chill and fun to play against, way too many still think O***do is funny or something
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Yes. Every single swf is out to bully the poor defenseless killer. None of them could possibly want to play a game with their friends. It couldn't be they like to joke around with and talk to people they like. No, it's clearly because they're the worst kind of scum imaginable.
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Thanks to everyone for the constructive input.
Instead of different queues, how would you like the game be adjusted?
I read a lot of gen or action speed reduction, but in general I strongly believe that nerfing isn't fun for anyone and if the pain becomes too great the SWFs either leave the game or just queue up simultaneously until they are together, like before SWFs were a thing.
A killer buff would be cool, but the issue are the other solo survivors.
A killer on steroid would be fun for the killer and a challenge for the SWFs (hopefully fun too) but for the solo it would be a nightmare.
Different queues with BP incentive is the only way I can see right now, that could be somewhat implemented in the game.
Yes we could go down the fantasy route and buff solos to the level of SWFs and by doing so truly overpower the survivors and every killer and most of the perks would need a rework to adjust to the new power level.
Maybe in a DBD2, where the game revolves around surviving as a team of 4 but not in the current game.
I really wish someone comes up with a better solution that would fit everyone better.
To all those comments about SWFs aren't op, you just need to git gud.
Survivors in red ranks are usually really good and strong and you need to bring your A game if you face a motivated pure red rank SWFs team.
That's maybe a flaw of the game balance but this is debatable.
The majority of players and SWFs aren't top rank players and I agree with you, a yellow or green rank killer facing SWFs teams with yellow and purple/red rank survivors often lose due to their inexperience, but there is a reason they are on low to mid rank. If you face a team of 2x2 team of SWFs you could face up to 2 red rank survivors, way above your skill level and if you are unlucky and run into them first you just get looped for ages, because a green rank killer usually don't know how to mindgame or run certain loops. This experience frustrates beyond belief and is the source of most anti-swf posts.
One solution we could test out is matching those SWFs against more experienced killers instead of the average.
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I've always wanted to limit what SWF could bring into the match. In my opinion SWF groups of all size should be limited to a max of 1 of each item type per group so no full toolbox/flashligh/instaheal squads. Groups of 3 or more shouldn't be allowed to use killer aura reveal perks cause then essentially everybody gets use out of it and only one person needs to bring it meaning they could just combo them all into the game and almost always know where the killer is. Groups of 4 should probly be restricted from using ultra rare (or maybe even just rare) items and addons.
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How would you prevent that the SWFs just stop using the group lobby and start queuing up like before SWFs to get no penalties?
I certainly understand why you would like such a thing, but unfortunately those things can be circumvented and just increases lobby-dodgers.
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I am against sweeping changes to the game for practical and principle reasons. In practice, they do more harm than good and there is never enough testing or debate before they go live. In principle, we do not know the actual state of the game and can't possibly predict what will happen. We can only guess.
Some killer-mains have a much better track-record than others at making those guesses though, but aren't listened to because they don't hide that they're killer-mains.
SWF was an unjustifiable sweeping change to the game, probably the worst, but it's now been in the game for almost it's entire life. I am not in favour of an equally-blunt pendulum swinging the other way.
However, SWF would be much less of an issue if the devs were more consistent already. The Pig was a killer designed according to the devs 'to turn survivor on each other because the RBTs trigger when a gen is finished. The Pig has not provided this purpose because of excessive compromises to the design: too much time and it freezes under certain conditions. It's already too forgiving, yet was made more so recently. The RBT is however is really good on-paper against a premade team who are communicating; if there was a real danger of someone dying because a gen got finished, they'd be letting each other know and lengthening the match more. A SWF would have to make catch-22 choices just as the killer is forced to.
Solo survivors don't have that problem as much; they don't have an investment in keeping others alive and taking such risks, especially towards the late-game.
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I disagree. We see the impact SWF makes on survival. You say it has potential to break the game, yet the data shows that it doesn't justify the amount of outrage. It's an average of 10% extra survivals for 5% of all games. This forum would like for you to believe it's quintuple that number.
I don't like playing versus SWF because they're more likely to be toxic. Getting an advantage is just the cherry on a ######### cake.
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Easily.
Make it so Survivors can't see each other in the lobby or talk to each other. You can't even see what items others are using.
This would instantly rectify this issue.
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Many times we fall victim to the last group or what the killer believes to be true from what they may have read.
If i am honest when i play with my friends whether it is one friend or three we very rarely get one of us to escape much less all of us. Yes we use voice chat, perhaps we share who the killer is or something else but really is the information used? Nah not really, why because we are usually four or more in our group chat playing 2 to 3 games and enjoying one anothers company. We could care less about escaping but more focused on just trying to have fun.
But the truth is 9 out of 10 games, we see insta downs, mori's and last 2 to 3 people are slugged. Because we don't carry all the meta perks we suffer for it. If someone does happen to get lucky and find the hatch or get out of a gate (which has happened only once since end game, due to our luck with gate spawns), we indeed do get the nasty behavior from the killer accusing us of anything and everything or just being nasty in general.
Just to show how we play we had a game this morning with four of us and at the end the killer got a 4k and instead of taking the win and gg he had to go and make salt. We left him in his own chat to soothe his ego. Honestly it is not about a 4k or escape it's a game you are supposed to have fun.
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In other games its not a big problem.
Rainbow Six : Voice Chat
LoL : Ping System
But in DbD is unfair for the killer player.
Because SWF destroy ~50 killer perks and have ~30 survivor perks for free.
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I just get tired of the constant suggestions to kill myself when I'm playing against SWF.
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