Things Solo Survivors Need

ppmd

Hello, I am making this post mostly aimed at BHVR in an attempt to help out the weakest role in the game: Solo Survivor. However, I recognize that some of these changes will either marginally or slightly buff survivor overall. Much like how introducing the HUD still helped SWFs but mostly helped Solo players, these changes will largely be aimed at making the information gap by communications closed so that the gap between SWF and Solo Survivor can be closed and balancing can then be made for this new group of survivors. Ideally what I suggest here will also make the game more intuitive for newer players, which is a plus in the modern era of DBD with so many perks and maps and killers!

To start out, I'll be focusing on things that I believe to be less controversial. These are:

1. Allow survivors to see their teammates' perks and activation statuses in game.You mentioned before you do not want survivors to see their teammates' perks in the lobby, and I agree with that. Once they are in-game however, it is good to know what people are running so they can play around it. Does someone have Botany Knowledge? You can find them for a heal. Does someone have bond? You can teamplay with them better. Does someone have Balanced Landing? You can let them work upstairs generators. There are lots of ways that knowing your teammates' perks is very useful that can only be done by telling people right now. Steam players could tell one another in the pregame lobby, but console and PC cannot talk right now.

Additionally, allowing survivors to see the activated conditions of their perks would be useful. If someone has deliverance active, now they know not to go for the save. If We'll Make It is active but only for a little longer, then they can allow that person to heal them first. There are again lots of ways this will help close the gap between SWFs and solo players and this already is very easily done in SWF so it wouldn't affect SWF much at all while helping solo players immensely.

Ideally, seeing the perks could be implemented in the escape menu and their activation status could be on the hud so we only have relevant information there.

1. Update the HUD to also include healing, mending, gate, totem cleansing and blessing progress.This is a simple update to the already-existing HUD and it can use the circle bar that is already used. I think this one is simple but helpful.
2. Chat Wheel Commands.This idea was inspired by DBD Mobile where you can use commands similar to telling your teammates to "focus on repairing generators" or "I'm going for unhook." If you think the text will take up too much space since I am asking for a lot of HUD things, perhaps you could instead allow for an icon to pop up. Generator icon means focus on generators, a hook with a question mark would mean is anyone getting that unhook, with a hook with an exclamation mark meaning I am going for the unhook, and so on. This is already very common in SWF communication so this wouldn't be used by them at all, but it would be enormously helpful to coordinate your solo teammates.
3. An Improved Tutorial.This one has been long overdue. Many survivors do not learn much in the way of how to break 3 gens, how to loop any killers or any basic structures or pallets, or how to improve from the tutorial. It doesn't even help you look behind you while running, which is something that could greatly benefit many players! Even learning how to take a hit would be a fun experience in a tutorial and encourage more exciting team play. I think many would agree there is room in both Killer and Survivor tutorials to improve the basics for players and this is a just a sampling of things to choose from.

Other tutorial topics could include:
-how to learn map rng
-how does bloodlust work and when does it break
-what do you do when you become injured, and do you always need to heal?
-Alternate ways to play the game such as sabotaging and flashlight/pallet saving
-some fun perk combos to keep people excited about trying them out and exploring the interesting variety in survivor perks
-encouraging teamwork and the idea that people have different priorities in the game at different times, such as a person being hooked twice might be better off playing more carefully, but someone in the same match not being hooked at all can be in the killers' face more.-how to use stealth well. some people only play by stealth, and stealth is good, but it might be useful to highlight some of its strengths(can waste some of the killers' time and also make them lose you in chase) and weaknesses(forces the killer to focus on your teammates who may have already been hooked, and keeps you from getting better at chase if overdone).-etc

1. Improved Matchmaking.
   This one is being asked for often and it is what impacts solo players the most. Because the matchmaking prioritizes speed over accuracy, you get wildly imbalanced matches quite often. Additionally, because MMR is only measuring escapes or kills it can sometimes be quite inaccurate at measuring who is truly higher MMR. It may be worth changing how MMR works or at least tightening the MMR bracket again. Of course, it does not need to be a perfectly accurate system, and the lobby prestige change has shown me that matchmaking can already be okay more often than I expected right now, but still there are many players that I and other survivors get who seem to be newer players and it would be better for their enjoyment and the killers' and their survivor teammates' if they were separated. Even if you made something like a ranked mode(something which I don't know if you'd ever want to do), improving matchmaking in the current mode might still help more players as I have seen stories of new players playing by themselves getting matched up with 4 or 5 digit-hour players, and that's something I think is not very fun for anyone. I highly encourage looking into this in whatever way seems to make the most sense.

OKAY NOW we have things that might get a little more pushback, but ones that I also feel can be very very helpful for the solo experience as well. These are:

A. Making Bond, maybe Kindred teammate aura-reading basekit.The reason for this is much like the reasoning for making old shadowborn basekit for killers: it's a quality of life feature that grants more information but not in a harmful way.

In a SWF with communication, you already can know where your teammates are, so it would generally be a better version of bond or kindred anyway. You wouldn't get much out of this unless you are newer, and that's also not such a bad thing I think.

If you are solo though, there are many instances where it's extremely helpful to know where your teammates are. Does someone need a heal? Do you? Where is the chase happening? What gen is someone working on if you are in chase to either take a hit or avoid the area? Who is going for the unhook? Where is the generator that is being worked on so you can double it? Which exit gate did someone run to? And so on.

As you can see, this information is absolutely vital to playing as a team, and while you can intuit a lot of things even without communication, it makes teamplay a lot more possible especially on indoor maps. This is not something exclusive to DBD either; many games have features which allow you to see your teammates even through walls to coordinate with them.

If we wanted to extend that possibility we could even include a minimap feature that shows where all of the survivors are. This would allow the map item to be able to ping locations and would make the item actually more useful than it currently is, but it is an even greater help to survivors so if you wish to be more cautious that's fine.

Incidentally, this would also buff the blindness status effect because it would guarantee it takes information away from the survivors. I know that status effect mainly hinders solo players and this would continue to be the case if this change got implemented, but it may be an interesting point to consider here as well.

B. Update the HUD to include status effects induced by the killer.This would include things like mangled, blindness, incapacitated, and so on. It would help teammates know which perks the killer has, which addons they have, and/or which killer it is if they didn't have someone telling them. I guess you could also have some sort of search bar in game to suggest a perk/killer to the team so they are aware of what they are playing against but that seems like it may take focus away from the gameplay.

Anyway the "issues" with adding some of these effects are it may take away a useful element of surprise, and it could crowd the HUD. I would assume perks which rely on lack of coordination just need to be buffed or reworked, and if the HUD gets crowded then maybe it needs to be reworked, or more of the on-screen area needs to be used.

Alright well, this is another long post that I hope will be met with fair analysis and consideration. I am wishing for the best for survivor improvements and overall game health, and I thank you for taking the time to read.

(also this post is not meant to try and place survivors above killers, please refer to my earlier comment about balancing for a more informed survivor playerbase.)