THE SIMPLE AND MOST EFFECTIVE SOLUTION TO SOLO QUEUE
Solo Queue is a problem
Solo Queue right now is the weakest side of the game atm, originally you had to deal with incompetent survivors who are either new, or misguided players who may think they know or who may not know what they are doing. Now however, you have to deal with the recent killer buffs stacked on top of that.
Many people (including Dowsey and Scottjund) have recently posted videos stating the fact that solo queue survivor in the state it's in right now is the biggest problem in Dead by Daylight, Dowsey gave his idea of what kind of buffs solo queue should get in order to fix this problem, which are his own idea, not gonna go into it, but the main takeaway that I 100% agree with is that the only way to fix this problem is to provide the same level of cooperation that you would get with a discord swf, and bring it to the game.
What if I told you there’s a simple change that could fix all of these problems with one single added mechanic?
Well… it exists, and it’s probably what you’d expect.
The Best solution to the Problem
The solution to this problem is a voice-chat system
Don’t click away just yet! I know it sounds foreign adding vc to DBD, However if you consider the hidden benefits the game would receive from this implementation, you might be on board with the idea.
Adding a vc would not only fix the problem with solo Q, it might also add to the health of the game in general.
First of all, I just want to clarify that a vc like discord might be a bit overpowered for solo queue, I think the best solution to this is making a proximity chat instead. And also the Killer shouldn't be able to communicate or hear the survivors, THAT would be toxic, but maybe disable vc when in TR or something idk.
- Think of how many times you’ve solo queued in dbd and come across a Claudette hiding in a bush, a David unhooking you when the killer is right next to you, or a Dwight who is completely clueless and doesn’t know what to do.
Not only would a proximity chat allow you to make the game more survivable, it would also help these new players get into the swing of things, and feel more comfortable playing the game, adding to the overall health of DBD.
- When a trapper has set a trap near your hooked body and the Nea coming to rescue you is on a direct course to step on the trap
In this situation, the only thing you need to do is warn the survivor that there is a trap, but you simply cannot. Adding a proximity chat would help survivors learn to be more aware of killers power within the game, and avoid stepping into a trap that would more than likely put the game in jeopardy.
- Think of the times where you had a perk such as deliverance, or the “try to hook me build” (flip-flop, boil over, unbreakable), but the survivors you were playing with had no idea, so you try to use these perks against the killer, they try to unhook you when they could be doing a gen, they don’t body block for you because the hook seems too close. Ultimately, these perks become useless and get no value in many situations.
If you were able to just simply tell a survivor next to you, or while you’re on the hook, what build you are running, not only would new survivors be able to learn about different perks in the game and what they do, it would allow for a plethora of coordination where originally it would be absent. Also the argument that you could tell people before the game is kind of dumb, as there are so many inconsistent variables, such as, they may be a console player, or they are afk and not looking at the screen.
The Immersion
One problem with a vc that some people may have, is that it might ruin the “horror” aspect of the game, but here's the thing, players can choose to turn it off if they wish to experience the horror. The thing you also have to remember is that most of the time, people don’t want to deal with new players who don’t know what they’re doing, or players who are misguided or don’t know something, with this proximity chat, people can CHOOSE themselves if they want to keep dealing with infuriating clueless survivors, or not.
Also can we just be real for a sec and admit that no one who plays this game on the regular is ever immersed? Like EVER?
Yea… no
Toxicity
If you play survivor you might tend to think that a prox chat would increase toxicity within games, I however, completely disagree and believe it would help reduce toxicity within games. Please read below to see what I mean.
First to clarify I want this to be addressed to a average survivor, you know the people who might be really good and nice survivors in one match, but also salty and toxic in another (you know, normal humans), as this is the majority of players in dbd. What you shouldn't do is compare what I'm about to say to players who are ALWAYS toxic and no matter what will always be unhappy and pissed off because they suck. On to my point.
First of all, I want to say that if a prox chat was added, a lot of people would already stop being toxic, because if you think about it, more people are comfortable talking ######### through line of text, rather than through actual word of mouth, with the addition of a prox chat, many people will be kinder to others purely because that's how people work socially.
Second and lastly, I want to address what causes toxicity in DBD, this toxicity imo is a lack of communication, in the game right now, when you have a couple teammates who are kind of bad and are a little lost on what to do, you have to deal with it. This alone causes infuriating games to play, and is what I believe to be the main cause of toxicity atm. Adding a vc would COMPLETELY change everything, because once survivors gain the ability to effectively communicate, they can get out what they need to say in the moment to tell survivors what to do, rather than having to bottle it up, watch the survivor go down, and add it the pile of rage they plan on unleashing at endgame chat.
Conclusion
I believe that many people are not for this change because it feels foreign to add something like to this to a game of dbd where the concept of a vc was never discussed, mostly because it was never needed. But now I'd like to say IT IS needed, and people need to start talking about implementing it. Dowsey gave his ideas about implementing a system that floods the screen with a bunch of text bubbles and hud changes, let me tell you, adding a vc is way more simple and way WAY more effective. It teaches new players how to play the game, some perks that were once useless on solo q will now have a purpose, and IMO will help reduce toxicity in games.
P.S.
Many of my friends who play on console played this game one time, they said it was fun and liked playing it, so I asked them, “Why don’t you keep playing it?”, the answer is always something along the lines of “oh, there's no way to talk to people” I truly believe that if players were able to talk to each other it would bring a surplus of new and interested players into the game.
Please comment below whether you agree or disagree with a proximity chat, I would love to hear different opinions on this and see if this idea can go anywhere.
Edit: Responses in the comments have changed my mind, and I believe it should be both a scroll wheel and a prox chat, Scroll wheel to help streamers who can't have a vc turned on, or people who have it turned off in general, and a prox chat to help the new players and whatever I said before.
Comments
In my post I suggested a proximity chat, rather than a discord like voice chat, please tell me why you still think that would be broken.
I want random voice coms because some people who are on console CAN'T use discord, or there are some people who aren't on a swf because 1. They don't know about dbd discord servers 2. They know they are bad and don't want to burden people on discord with bad skills (which was me for a while) and plenty of other reasons I'm sure, all I know is that a vc within the game would fix a lot of issues. Also plenty of my friends who liked playing dbd said they stopped playing purely because there was no way to talk to people. There are plenty of reasons to add a vc to a game, but you haven't really given a good reason as to why not, so please, I insist.
The way i would do it is if someone pings saying that the gen is at 90% it gives a sound and image notification letting the other players which gen is close to being done they don't have to go looking for it.
Useless survivors will be useless survivors obviously, but the perk is going to work well for those who are paying attention. Kindred gives critical info to people when it is needed the most. Not everyone you play with is going to know how to play due to no proper mmr system, but the ones who do will get good use out of it.
There are plenty of reasons to add a vc to a game, but you haven't really given a good reason as to why not, so please, I insist. Voice comms lead to harassment, some gamers just want to rage, some feel the need to racially/sexually harass others, etc.
You act like this doesn't happen, but it has happened and will happen again.
Even if players could just turn it off, that leads to harassment in post-game chat.
BHVR implemented chat filters for a reason, voice comms would literally be a step backwards.
"There are plenty of reasons to add a vc to a game, but you haven't really given a good reason as to why not, so please, I insist."
No game needs VC, and there are almost no good reasons to add VC to DbD. The only thing survivors would benefit from is knowing who is in chase. The most common dialogue in a try-hard SWF. All the game needs is mini-tentacles for non-obsession survivors.
Why would I want to hear someone saying "I'm in chase" while the HUD could tell me in less time/effort?
I would suggest making a walkie talkie item. Needs to be turned on to work, uses batteries (add on items) different clarity speakers (another add on) and has an effective range (tier 1/2/3) Can be dropped or lost, possibly found in a chest. It will bring voice coms into the game in a limited fashion, and give BHVR a way to limit its use if need be. And if you don't want to run it on a build, you don't have to.
imagine there were a toggle where you could -
press one to say : I am on a gen
press two to say : I am going for the save
press three to say : I am being chased / the killer stopped chasing
press four to say : I am healing
People who have been playing the game a long time have a sense of what needs to happen and when. They can tell if someone was saving and got interrupted. Just one of these events can save minutes per game. How?
If you know exactly when the killer leaves chase then he's going to change targets. This gives you 10 seconds to get ready before they can even possibly ever see/hear you. Not getting into a chase immediately can force the killer to go to a different part of the map. This sometimes happens several times in a row vs a SWF with good communication.
Imagine a scenario where 0-3 people go save. If three people go save then 30 seconds are not used to repair by three people. That's 60 second of objective lost because two people should be working on generators.
Why is all of this problematic? The killer objective is longer than the survivor objective by minutes even after the generator changes if you play efficiently as survivor.
Exactly; you can do a Quick Chat system; in which it comes up with prerecorded messages. (Not voice dialogue, more premade text messages that will be notified to the team) in which the Survivors could update the team on their status. It also comes with Status icons that will be implemented on the Survivors portraits, to let everyone know what they are doing and what is happening.
The Quick Chat option, can be used when you get the free time; to send a to your team or a particular surviving teammate; like.... "Claudette, let me heal you!" Or "Dwilight, Help me do a Generator" or even "Everyone, I will distracted the killer!" (You can also mention whom the killer is also, once the Survivors see killer for the first time). Equipping certain perks, will also notify your teammates on what you can do and what you have and can do. It even more useful, if the game can detect multiple Survivors in close proximity of each other, reveal to everyone that you are running certain perks and builds too.
Example: Just imagine you started healing a Survivor, both of you are injured; until you realize the other Survivor has Autodidact, as the perk icon will appear above their heads when you two or more come close to each other. Same can happen with Generators, when more then 1 Survivors is fixing a generator, you can see the Dwilight also happens to brought along Prove Thyself.
As nice as Voice Promixity chat is more immersive, it would make killers more strong and it will be somewhat of a weakness to solo ques; plus SWF can simply use third party applications without using game voice chat if enabled.
Anyway to buff Solo Que to be on par with SWF, when it comes to information gathering without perks; as well as giving Survivors a means to communicate without spamming crouch button or two emotes. Or even shaking your camera in any direction to mess with the heads nods.
And my point is that a vc or prox chat will help those useless survivors be less useless, you make a valid point on how it will help people who know what they are doing, do better, but I'm saying thats not the biggest issue with solo Q, which I believe are the useless survivors doing things that arent going to win the game.
Look, VC gamer rage is a thing in almost every multiplayer game out there, how do you think their player base survives? The reason why is because Voice comms actually help more than it hurts, YES I GET IT, there are some toxic people out there who will rage, that will never change, and if someone is worried about harrasement in endgame chat after turning vc off, the simple fix is to have an option to disable endgame chat. There are work arounds to these problems that you aren't considering.
"No game needs VC, and there are almost no good reasons to add VC to DbD. The only thing survivors would benefit from is knowing who is in chase."
This statement is just completely wrong it boggles my mind. Lets say you take vc out of overwatch, or out of any modern FPS for that matter, but especially overwatch due to its focus on teamwork, taking out Voice chat in that game is basically the same as taking out coordination period, I know because I played competitvely in overwatch. Saying no game needs vc is just dead wrong.
And I list like 3 good reasons as to why we should add vc to the game:
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Not only would a proximity chat allow you to make the game more survivable, it would also help these new players get into the swing of things, and feel more comfortable playing the game, adding to the overall health of DBD.
In this situation, the only thing you need to do is warn the survivor that there is a trap, but you simply cannot. Adding a proximity chat would help survivors learn to be more aware of killers power within the game, and avoid stepping into a trap that would more than likely put the game in jeopardy.
If you were able to just simply tell a survivor next to you, or while you’re on the hook, what build you are running, not only would new survivors be able to learn about different perks in the game and what they do, it would allow for a plethora of coordination where originally it would be absent. Also the argument that you could tell people before the game is kind of dumb, as there are so many inconsistent variables, such as, they may be a console player, or they are afk and not looking at the screen."
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No matter what way you look at it, these are good reasons to add a vc to the game and will also add to the health of the game in the long run, and I just want to point out that I'm not really focusing on the 'relaying info' part of the discussion, but rather helping new players and knowing the perks you are running side of things. I also suggested in my edit that a scroll wheel should also be added for those who don't want to play with vc on to compensate.
And how is the only thing you can benefit from a vc knowing who is in chase? Have you ever played a swf? If you have, you know this is completely untrue.
I like this idea a lot
Absolutely not.
Between players who dont speak english, players who sinply ignore it, players who use it to be racist, homophobic or otherwise offensive, and just flat out children, there is absolutely no way this would improve solo survivor in any way, purely negatives all round.
What soloq needs is info, not garbled slurs screamed at you in Russian.
That means:
Being able to see your teammates loadouts.
Contextual action icons over player portraits.
A quick chat function that includes maybe 4 to 6 preset messages.
Some kind of limited ping system, like killer instinct for survivors.
Soloq doesn't actually need that much, it just needs to be able to convey some limited but crucial information. Its still up to the players to act on that information correctly, but you can never fix that.
I like your straightforward response, but to say that there is no benefit to a vc is straight up ignorant, you didn't bring up why any of my points I made are invalid, so I have no reason to believe that you actually took the time to read the post.
Baseline aura reading sounds better than VC.
Last thing I need in this game is Claudia on hook yelling at me in Italian while Im being chased
Yo, this is exactly the problem with VC. I responded to someone else's message and you feel the need to change my opinion.
You can think you're right as much as you want, but this is all your opinion. In no way do I want to hear people who think they know more than others talk down to people in DbD.
If I heard you in VC on my team, I'd just DC and watch something on YouTube/Twitch.
if a prox chat was added, a lot of people would already stop being toxic, because if you think about it, more people are comfortable talking ######### through line of text, rather than through actual word of mouth, with the addition of a prox chat, many people will be kinder to others purely because that's how people work socially.
Completely wrong. If the voice chat was added the toxic players won't wait for the end game chat to talk **** about you, they will talk **** about you in the game the moment they feel like it. Have you played other competitive games with voice chat? Being able to speak rather than writing in chat never ever stops the trolls and toxic players to talk ****. On the contrary, they love it! Especially considering that reporting people for bad manners doesn't do anything in dbd, there is no in-game moderation system like in most competitive games.
It will increase the toxicity tenfold.
You yourself state that no one plays this game immersed. Voice chat will not be used solely for in-game strategy discussions. It will be used to talk **** about others who make a single mistake. Especially considering the frustrating nature of this game.
If you want to hear children swears every match or some incredibly loud music or some trolling when someone will play the terror radius heart beat sounds the whole match then yes voice chat is a good idea.
100% agree with this. More (and clearer info) and some kind of quick communication feature (e.g. "I'm on my way to the hook" or "they found me!" or "heal here" etc... with reasonable cooldowns/anti-spam measures). It needs to be easy to use, encouraged, and obvious. That would help way more than voice chat without the downsides.
thanks for assuming that i think I am smarter than everyone... this is a discussion, the entire reason I did this was so I could change your mind, for the record I don't assume I am smarter than anyone, that is the way of an idiot
This would fix nothing.
I don't think even 5% of the playerbase will use it