Solo Survivor Experience
Since I've started playing this game I've only really played survivor with my only killer experience being challenges for rewards during an event. I have 800 hours in the game now and I wanted to share my experience with the game so far.
I'll start by saying the game is getting less enjoyable as a survivor player when I solo queue from when I started playing the game to now. It used to be that I could solo queue and it would be fun, nobody is all that good but everyone is doing their part and trying to win. But now when I play the game I struggle to even find a lobby where it's even gets close to end game. I've been playing for about 2 hours the night of this post and all my games so far have not made it exit gates powered.
I'm not sure entirely what is planned for survivor but it really just feels like this game is heavily balanced towards the killers side leaving survivor players to suffer. The only times this game is even fun anymore is when I can 4 stack and actually communicate to my team or else it's just impossible to play.
Additionally when survivors decide to troll and ruin the game for others there is no detection for this so there are no punishments given and there is no way to abandon a match earlier. For example if I get left on hook to second stage when a player is standing beside me or starting and stopping the unhook action should I not just be able to abandon the game and go next? Even after a game if I report someone I don't get notified that any action was taken and that a player was punished in some way (unless it's cheating related or the report system actually does nothing).
For a game I really enjoy playing it's sad to see how slow these issues are handled. There should not be a sacrifice of content in the game to solve these issues either. Both should be in development at the same time. What do you think? I'm hoping by making a post here the devs will see this and use it to help to future development decisions being made.
And please remove Henry Creel this killer adds nothing to the game except ruining the survivor experience. You can't even loop this killer on a tile it's just 50/50s the entire chase.
Comments
Yeah game balancing is an absolute mess, problem with asymmetric games. Soloq has never been a particularly fun way to play, random team mates rarely play well. I almost never play soloq anymore because it's such an unpleasant experience.
Thing is that high skill, co-ordinated swfs absolutely dump on killers. This skill split is a huge problem. Killer mains demand the game is balanced so they can still compete with these survivors. But getting that good at survivor requires thousands of hours. And not everyone is going to want to put that kind of effort in. There were plans to add survivor buffs, specifically harsher anti hook camping and antislug protections. But killers argued these would make high level swfs unbeatable, so they got scrapped. Beating a killer requires requires a good balance of co-ordination to work gens and make sure you're completing the right gens, and good chase skills which are not easy to develop.
So you end up with a game balance where low to mid level survivors have basically no chance in most matches and mid level killers still end up getting slapped by high skill survs. I've got maybe just over 11k hours in the game and split roughly equally between killer and surv. I'm at the point where I can counter high level swfs as killer, IF I run a killer I'm good with and use a meta perk build. I can compete but it gets tiring, I don't have breathing space to play with builds or get use use low tier killers without constant 1/0k games and relentless BM in from survivors.
My surv experience is pretty rough, I'm distinctly mid as a survivor. My tactics are on point and i know how to avoid three gens and co-ordinate a team, my chase skills are ok at best, i can run a halfway decent chase but am not particularly good at looping killers. And in all honesty it sucks, soloq aside from the odd game is just a long parade of losing games that are obviously a loss 4 minutes in. My swf games are a little better, but my friends who i play with regularly generally struggle with chase. So I do marginally better as swf but not by much.
It doesn't make for great game balance but unfortunately that's what we have 🤷‍♂️ can't see it changing anytime soon. Personally i reckon a playlist split between ranked and casual would help but a lot of people seem against that.
Hm, I can see your perspective regarding soloq even though I have said time and time again that I enjoy soloq. I can play SWF, but most of the time I am playing soloq. As people are aware, schedules conflict and sometimes I just like to play without information overload. (by this I mean tilting, backseat gaming, unnecessary information) - doesn't mean I'm robotic, I naturally am someone who laughs a lot and can have conversations with friends without it being optimally about the game all the time.
For me, as a survivor who enters soloq - I like to focus on what can I do, what do I bring to this team, what actions can I do to make this game more easier. I like to think of myself as someone who can operate on my own because I do not like to depend on dependent variables (map, killer, other survivors, etc).
So, for me and I say this all the time a lot of the time I come in with an information perk (most of the time, it's Deja Vu so I know for 100% certainty that gens will be done whether it's myself or my teams - I know progress will be done). I come in with an exhaustion perk, sometimes two depending on what build I'm creating. However, most of the time I use Sprint Burst (it is the perk that I use the best in the exhaustion perk class) - again, I can use anything but Sprint Burst is my favorite perk. Lastly, I just make a duo synergy build (Leader/Botany Knowledge / Borrowed Time (even is survivors say it's a waste but still complaining about tunneling)/Babysitter, We'll Make It/Second Wind / Troubleshooter/Alert / Any Means Necessary/Alert. I'm not going to continue naming every duo synergy but you get the point that I'm making.
I optimize myself to know I have a chase perk to extend my chase, an information perk to know where gens /killers /other survivors are, and then whatever two perks I like to use in tandem on each survivor. Every single one of my survivors have a different build because that is how I enjoy playing the game. I like to be challenged and I like to improve, so my level of reasoning is top down. I do understand that how I play is not the norm for the average casual player base - it's why I am disappointed that no content creator does deep dives to explain how to counter perks/killers, which feeds into this defeatist mentality that I see survivors having.
For your Henry Creel point, even though I have issues with the killer. I have learned, in my few games that I have had against the killer. When you get to a pallet, do not pre-drop. Greed it because once you drop the pallet, you are going to get hit with the power. The killer is similar to Nurse, which is why I love the killer (even if I have issues with some of his power mechanics - such as how fast he is underground, the fact that he can see scratch marks/survivors) - honestly, to me he seems like an easier to play Spirit with zoning capacity.
I do not agree with your sentiment to remove the killer, but if you are going against a Hens build (which I have seen some do) then yes, I will agree with you that you will struggle with the killer. I honestly think surprisingly the only thing way to beat that build is with Boons. You bring Counterforce, doesn't matter Henry has the mobility to relight the totems. You ignore the totems, Henry has the mobility to push you off the gen to trigger Ruin. Luckily, from what I see many Henry mains are not using this build (I've only seen this build twice) but whatever, you get my point.
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Greed pallets, do not drop the pallet when you know that the killer can use their power (I'd even say spam it to an extent), and stop hugging the loops and break LOS.
The problem is survivor mains want Solo Q improved, but they don’t want to touch what makes high level SWFs so strong. Most of the suggestions just turn into survivor buffs or killer nerfs, which doesn’t actually fix the issue.
The real problem is the pace of the game. Coordinated SWFs can push gens way too fast when they play efficiently. To fix that, the game would have to be slowed down so that even if a SWF does everything right, the killer still has a decent amount of time to get pressure before gens start popping.
That kind of change would require adjustments on both sides, not just buffing survivors or nerfing killers. Until then strong killers and strategies like tunneling will be needed just to keep up at higher levels.
I've been soloing lately because no one wants to touch survivor anymore and the tone has been steadily getting worse, particularly since the failed anti-cheese ptbs. The matchmaking has been particularly horrendous, which makes matches feel terrible. I usually know a survivor match is a wash a minute or less in. To make it worse, I'm getting humped and hit on hook every time I play. Very often, these are matches where survivors also threw out of frustration, so it's doubly terrible. I don't know why there's been such an uptick in unwarranted crappiness. I'd really like to enjoy both sides of this game, but I'm currently only playing survivor for the iri grade, and I stop the moment I'm ranked up. Though I do exactly the same percentage-wise in SWF, the experience is just far better with friends to talk to.
Part of what your experiencing may also be mini-burnout. Once you hit a certain amount of hours and the charm wears off, you'll likely start to see the issues with the game emerge and no longer roll with the punches so well. I feel there's a kind of threshold people hit—that tends to be anywhere around 1k to 3k hours—where the charm wears off and people either stick around or the taper off.
As for Henry, I can say as someone who's played him almost exclusively since he's come out, he's very manageable if you know what you're doing. Hold W, break LoS, move erratically, don't cling to walls or checkspots. My KR with him is the same as most of the killers I play regularly, but I've never had so many 0ks on a killer. Good players who prerun with exhaustion and know how to move against him wreck me.
It's because people can't see the bigger picture. Low mmr survivors get stomped constantly by basically every killer, complain game is killer sided. Newer killer players get constant 4ks until they ramp their mmr, get 5k+ hour survivors, get repeatedly bullied then complain the game is survivor sided.
Doesn’t help that so many players only focus one roll.