So is anything going to be done about SWF?

I'm all for buffing solo Q

Whatever it takes to stop these games from lasting 5 minutes. Otherwise I'm just going to start dodging SWF like every other killer (and yes I'm a rank 1 killer with more hours than i'm proud of). Or perhaps I might just give up on this game. I don't feel like arguing for the millionth time about why optimal survivors with Comms have a massive advantage over killers.

So I'm just asking the question. Is anything actually going to be done about SWF?

Comments

  • HawkAyeTheNoo
    HawkAyeTheNoo Member Posts: 731

    First, you cant stop people playing with their friends. Player numbers would drop.

    Im all for buffing solo since its where you'll find me but i dont want comms, if comms came there would need to be an option not to use them. I dont want people screaming down my ear.

    How else do you buff solo?

    Personally, if you're fed up facing them.........dodge. Simple as that, dodge.

  • Drazen
    Drazen Member Posts: 400
    edited September 2019

    literally nurse with her broken addons can face sweaty swf even spirit is gonna have really hard time against them and mostly are sweaty swfs I have never seen some chill ones like literally 1/10 swf are chill others are sweaty tryhards who will bring every crutch to ruin ur experience and btw nurse is getting nerfed soon so lobby dodging will increase even more

  • Drazen
    Drazen Member Posts: 400

    The balance of this game is really horrible they are starting to balance it out now but god its been like 3+ years to achieve this balance god knows how much years they need more to balance it properly

  • Liruliniel
    Liruliniel Member Posts: 3,047

    Not that I care or matters, but figured I would mention I play Killer more then Survivor. Quit dodging and complaining about the game and learn to play it. Once you quit dodging SWF you'll notice most solo groups become a joke.

  • savevatznick
    savevatznick Member Posts: 651

    Nothing will be done.

  • Chickenchaser
    Chickenchaser Member Posts: 391

    Balancing gen speed would do wonders for swf groups. As of right now mid-low killers need to be in three places at the same time to properly defend against an optimal swf team.

    gen speed is currently balanced around Nurse, and billy. That's Why they do well. If all mid-low killers where buffed to billys level gen speed wouldn't be broken. Gen speed needs to be nurfed, and people saying "git gud"or "holding m1 is boring" are a part of the problem.

  • Sauceman_Tim
    Sauceman_Tim Member Posts: 106

    I'm actually not going to argue with you on this subject. "If you lose against SWF, you are bad at the game" I disagree whole heartedly. My problem isn't people having fun with friends its the effectiveness of SWF that is insane.

    You use these little token sentances like "leave your ego at the door, and look at the game objectively", you're assuming that i've just had bad experiences on my own as if hardcore dbd players and streamers don't have this problem. I don't think I want to continue arguing with someone who clearly hasn't gotten the point of my post.

  • Raccoon
    Raccoon Member Posts: 7,713

    They may as well make Bond, Empathy, Kindred, etc all baseline at this point.

    With SWF, the perks do not serve their intended (any) purpose, and Solo Survivors are forced to choose between running information perks or meta perks.

  • RaginRendon
    RaginRendon Member Posts: 279

    Stop complaining about swf already

  • RakimSockem
    RakimSockem Member Posts: 1,998

    sigh. ANOTHER thread about SWF. Here we go again...

  • PhilipOmnis
    PhilipOmnis Member Posts: 22
    edited September 2019

    This. I'm part of the "Buff solo survivors to have the same quality of life additions SWF has, and then adjust the game accordingly" gang. Ideally they should do it all in one sitting, rather than buff solos and then leave it a year before bringing the killers in line...I'm looking at you BHVR.

    As a Rank 1 Killer, on PS4 no less (yes, I'm flexing, suck it up) I feel like the "git gud" comments are both right and wrong. SWF are entirely beatable. I've had my butt handed to me many times, but also doled it out in equal measure. But, the entire premise of "You need to be an entirely different skill level than you currently are" to face SWF literally shows how unbalanced it is. If a killer can play adequately against solos, but struggles with SWF then it shows that the game is different when using this function.

    When I play as survivor, I love SWF. Playing with my friends is great. We don't need to get rid of them. We don't need to nerf them. We need to bring everyone up to the same standard SWF are playing at. And using the argument "Not all SWF are Alpha Squad" - You need to balance from the top down, which is something BHVR struggles with and is also the thought process behind why they're readjusting the Nurse's add-ons for once.

    We'll get there one day, friends.

  • Liruliniel
    Liruliniel Member Posts: 3,047

    @Sauceman_Tim

    Alright let me speak a bit more into detail about SWF in general. I realize I came off extremely rude when I've seen so many of these I just straight up say the direct answer anymore.

    The Dev's themselves if you watch them play are at the bottom of the ranking system not saying all just from what I have seen in the dev streams. They tend to balance around these facts which makes Purple and Red ranks less balanced. Few killers in this game can deal with Hardcore SWF group.

    As for the efficiency of SWF that's more or less pressed onto you. Most people tend to dodge these lobbies because they can be rather harsh and tiresome. They complain about the difficulty in general of these matches without acquiring the set of skills playing against these people gives. This comes from the game being competitive and thus not wanting to lose rank. Though everyone is aware rank means very little anymore.

    The biggest example I can think of is most killers seem unaware that a 4 person SWF has eyes literally everyone yet depend solely on Ruin to help. Another issue is they dont provide additional objectives they play the game similar to a 4 person solo lobby. Everyone assumes this makes SWF unbalanced, but in fact all this does is make you have to learn different tactics for this game. Every game has multiple tactics and levels of play this is no exception.

    Skills you should invest in learning properly in SWF include the following list.

    Identification & Recognition, Map & Gen Pressure, Additional Objectives Creation, Fast Chases, Mind Games, Counter-Looping, and finally Survivor Pathing & Rotation.

    This may seem like a normal list, but learning these specifically against SWF will help. This may seem counterintuitive, but the best two killers for learning these skills are Pig and Spirit.


    If you would like further explanations please dont hesitate to ask.

  • edgarpoop
    edgarpoop Member Posts: 8,349

    That's the thing though. If it felt like it were about skill a lot of times, there would be far fewer complaints. But it often doesn't feel like a skill gap. Comms allow survivors to play more efficiently than the maps were balanced for. Ghostface perfectly illustrates the difference between solos and SWF. Try running Discordance on Ghostface against SWF and watch how often the survivors mysteriously gone even though you were shrouded in the approach. That's not a skill thing. I know some ascended survivor will chime in with "obviously someone just saw you". Miss me with that. I play in a 4 man SWF. One of us usually lasts 10 seconds in chases. We're pretty bad on our own, and our escape rate skyrockets when we're on comms. Most games are 4 outs.

  • PhilipOmnis
    PhilipOmnis Member Posts: 22


    Appreciate that you've gone through the effort to actually summarise your feelings as I know this is quite a re-hashed issue. Apologies if I come across a bit strong, I've not actually had the ability to discuss this issue as I'm still new to the forum.


    The use of skills such as "Identification & Recognition, Map & Gen Pressure, Additional Objectives Creation, Fast Chases, Mind Games, Counter-Looping, and finally Survivor Pathing & Rotation." These are skills that are required at top ranks, irrelevant of SWF and should be something you strive toward if you play the game on a vaguely competitive level (or if you're simply trying to be the best that you can be, which is how I try to play). With regards to: map & gen pressure, fast chases, mind gaming/counter-looping and survivor pathing & rotation, these are all things that are mostly outside of your control at top tier play.

    Map/gen pressure is something that SWF subverts with relative ease, as pressure ceases to exist when you know what the killer is doing. A lot of pressure killers have in the game is through uncertainty, and even top tier killers cannot literally be on three gens at once. A good SWF team will have whoever is in a chase be sure to loop -away- from any active gens, further reducing your ability to apply pressure. Which leads me to:

    Fast chases and mind-gaming/counter looping. These tend to end up being a coin flip on unsafe loops, and impossible on safe loops. My favourite thing to do sometimes as a killer when I've eliminated a survivor from the match is to focus down the guy with the most loop ability, just to see how long it would physically take to down them without leaving the chase. Some chases can last a -long- time. The solution? Drop the chase and revert to map/gen pressure. Only with SWF, the looper can now feed this information of "killer pathing" to make anyone in imminent danger leave the gen prior a terror radius even being detected.

    Survivor Pathing & Rotation is certainly helpful but is a base skill that doesn't actually contribute all that much more to SWF than solo. I can identify those using mics and coordinating, and that definitely affects how I predict survivor movements. But that doesn't actually guarantee anything, it just means I make less mistakes and survivors are doing things more in line with my expectations.

    With regards to additional objective creation; I don't know what you're really saying by this. Outside of picking a killer that has this as part of their base kits (Pig traps, Freddy sleep objects etc) and aside from hexes, which are their own gamble, one cannot create additional objectives.


    Also to clarify, when you say "Few killers in this game can deal with Hardcore SWF group" do you mean killer characters or players? Got a tad confused there.


    At the end of the day, at the top end of the game, a killer is stuck punishing survivor misplays in order to win. You can force a survivor to misplay with mind-games, good map pressure, intimidation and other methods. SWF has the added layer of strength in that it can help to forgive any survivor missteps or bad plays. And this is on-top of all the other benefits that come from it.


    I honestly stand by the fact that we just need to bring solo play to the same level, by incorporating certain perks as base kit and to off-set the redundancy of these perks in an SWF environment. Kindred, bond, better together. Shoe-horn things like that into a solo's base power and then we can give killers the appropriate tools to combat these things.


    SWF isn't a problem for me anymore. I even enjoy the challenge. But I will be stomped at a much higher frequency, and be forced to enjoy the game less than if I were playing against solo survivors. With that in mind, I have zero blame for anyone who dodges SWF lobbies. We come here to have fun, and it's taken me hundreds of hours to get any enjoyment out of facing SWFs. If you can only play 2 hours a week, dodge away. I'm just sorry that they're trying to change the lobby system so you can't even predict SWF prior to the start of the match.

  • Mochan
    Mochan Member Posts: 2,886

    "At the end of the day, at the top end of the game, a killer is stuck punishing survivor misplays in order to win. You can force a survivor to misplay with mind-games, good map pressure, intimidation and other methods. SWF has the added layer of strength in that it can help to forgive any survivor missteps or bad plays. And this is on-top of all the other benefits that come from it."


    Is this some kind of mantra that Killer Streamers are promoting? It seems everyone here is singing this tired old line like it's the truth, but it's not. Survivors can play perfectly well and still be punished by a good killer.

    Those who doubt this, have drank the Kool Aid and are just blaming the game for their inadequacies.

  • altruistic
    altruistic Member Posts: 1,141

    “I don’t like a part of the game, so I am going to avoid it. I want to pick and choose my lobbies.”

    Your sense of entitlement is something else.

  • MemberBerry
    MemberBerry Member Posts: 394

    "If you can't win against an opponent who has an overwhelming advantage over you as a non-nurse non-spirit killer, you suck at the game" Yeah guys, listen to Mr. 10k hours over here, he definitely constantly faces against cream of the crop swf teams all on comms, all optimal loopers all hitting ruin skill checks all with ds, adrenaline, 3 toolboxes and a key.

  • Hoodied
    Hoodied Member Posts: 13,020

    Hopefully not, SWF is fine

  • Sackboy123
    Sackboy123 Member Posts: 472

    People here complaining about SWF are the same people that expect to get a 4K every game when even the devs themselves a while back have said that on average 2 people should die and 2 people survive each game. Not sure where this information comes from but it was from a past dev stream.

  • Steve0333
    Steve0333 Member Posts: 529

    A lot of killers will accuse teams of being SWF when they are not. So many times killers have accused me of playing SWF when I don't know any of the people I'm playing with nor were we communicating. Just saying it's possible to get gens done fast and not be SWF. And perks don't really tell you anything since most survivors use the same perks. I mean there's only a handful of perks that are really good: DS, balanced landing, dead hard, borrowed time, etc...

    And then some people will assume the team they are playing against is SWF if they see a higher rank in with lower ranks but that happens even when the team is not SWF. DBD matchmaking is just not very good a lot of times.

    Maybe the teams you were playing against really were SWF. Just saying I know a lot of killer mains who will complain about it with no real proof just because they lost.

  • smappdooda
    smappdooda Member Posts: 546

    The problem with SWF seems to be the amount of information they are privy to since they can communicate soooo... why not give the killer the equivalent of the same info.

    If it's a SWF team of 3 or more, let the killer see their aura at so many meters (like OoO). Only seems fair that if players can know where the killer is at a lot of times, why not the killer know where players are sometimes? It's all about information and who has it.

  • dinocat2
    dinocat2 Member Posts: 23

    Most SWF’s really aren’t commando squads. Yes I face a lot of SWF, and yes it’s generally more challenging but it’s not impossible. Well unless it’s that legacy 3 group I faced but aside from that. Dodging imo is similar to dcing when faced with a killer you don’t like as survivor. And before anyone says “hillbilly/nurse main! Survivor main!” I’m a killer main that plays the pig

  • StupidButTru
    StupidButTru Member Posts: 366

    *Leatherface screaming* is what will happen if killers get a built in aura Tracking

  • Jago
    Jago Member Posts: 1,742

    Yes.


    They gonna nerf nurse.


    :)

  • Boosted_Dwight
    Boosted_Dwight Member Posts: 3,059

    Rework her add-ons*

    Even then it wouldn't do much as most god nurses use base nurse.