95% of DbD's problems grow out of one ridiculous design oversight that has never been fixed.
SWF. It all starts with SWF.
As a killer, I need to go into every match loaded for bear because there's a good chance I'll be facing a 3-4man squad out for maximum annoyance and destruction and if I don't tunnel, defend hooks and be as mean as possible I'll get teabagged all the way to the exit.
However, what'll also happen is that I'll just bulldoze right over solo players.
This sets up a really weak, impossible scenario where I don't want to play like this, but I also don't want to get humiliated and have people telling me to KMS in postgame because I got 1 hook against a SWF with 40k hours between them. And I'm sure it's miserable for solos too, because they just get roasted.
I wish I had a good solution, but the best I can think of is some sort of significant MMR inflation to people queuing as a team, which will throw them up against a significantly better killer player and my matches won't vary so much, and I can play a little bit more chill.
Comments
Always the same. Killer player who is not as good as they think they are is losing against Survivors, so they HAVE to be a strongly coordinated team with an insanely amount of hours. Because god forbid Killers can lose against casual SWFs or Solos.
It makes 0 sense to inflate the MMR for SWFs so that they go against Killers which will beat them all the time. The vast majority (almost all of them) of SWFs are just friends who play together and who are not in an SWF to gain a competitive advantage. It makes no sense to make their game miserable for the small amount of sweaty SWFs people encounter in Pubs.
All such a change would do is push away casual SWFs and would keep the sweaty SWFs. Yay, this is what people want I guess… /s
(Obviously ignoring the fact that MMR is a broken mess and asking for a "significant MMR inflation" just shows that you dont understand the fact that there is a Soft Cap and many players are at this Soft Cap, so inflating their MMR would not change anything…)
Most of the time you aren't facing an actual coordinated SWF like ever maybe 1 in 50 matches give or take. Either way MMR is built in such a way that you will get lobbies most of your lobbies with people 10x your skill or 10x worse than you. Plus as long as you are still at 60% kill rate ish you're doing fine (if that matters to you)
Schrödinger's killer: if they win, it was all because of them (either they "DESTROYED A TOXIC SWF" or they "PLAYED 10D CHESS AS SINGULARITY"), or if they lose it's never their fault, it's because of "4 man SWF," Shoulder the burden (because tunneling is "required" lol), bad map rng (this affects survivors too), or Vigil is broken among many other excuses.
Exactly, this is the far bigger issue. Once at the Soft Cap, you basically get random Matchmaking. People who barely reach the Soft Cap are thrown together with players who are far better than them. DBD is really the only game I played where you can get really good opponents in one game which are then followed by utter potatoes.
Where's the strawman?
The game always intended for SWF to exist and has always been at least partially balanced around it. Voice chat apps have existed since long before DbD has and their usage will be reflected in the stats matches produce even if not directly.
If you want a real place to start looking you have to look at tunneling, camping, hard slugging, and the strongest killers since those are things that actually occur within game. So long as a Blight or Nurse is capable of tunneling or use these other strategies then the survivor role needs to be balanced in such a way they can possibly win against them, even in solo queue, and gen speeds are part of that balancing. Counterplaying these strategies is simply much easier and more gen efficient within a SWF since you can call out exactly who is doing what.
I also want to ask, if the 40k hour SWF doesn't have comms do you think you would win? Lets say these players just randomly got match-made together and you faced them. I know I wouldn't but also know that there are people that absolutely can win against the 40k hour swf even if they do have comms.
Regardless, I don't expect matchmaking to change (it was promised but we have heard nothing for basically a year) so how about a comeback mechanic alongside some anti-tunnel and anti-slug mechanics. Perhaps something similar to 2v8 but with some changes since it doesn't take total gen progress into account only completed gens. A significant boost to gen speed once a survivor dies as a tunnel deterrent without removing it. The anti-slug mechanic becomes necessary unless you want to take bleed out timers into account for the comeback mechanic. This would harm swf a lot more than solo queue since swf are much more likely to be ahead on gens and harms the stronger killers more than the weaker ones since weaker killers are more likely to be behind on hooks.
As a killer main i agree with this comment for miles. The amount of killer players that say they are cracked at the game but will flop in a match like a dying fish out of water is insane. they then proceed to blame the survivors instead of them. MMR is just a slobfest and i swear to god people need to stop bragging about high mmr or what not
Most of the gross steamrolls have their roots in improper matchmaking. The soft cap needs adjusting and lobby shopping needs to be dealt with. Prolly have to give their system more time to match everyone up better as the priority rather than faster queue times.
Once all this is done over time everyone's MMR will filter players to where they belong much more often. This would include SWF gradually, as about half of all survs are either duos or solos, with trios rarer and quads even more so rare.
As others have pointed out, one and sometimes two survs escaping is the goal overall.
Yea I'm tired of the excuse from people saying "well its not BHVR's fault because when asked players say they prefer faster matchmaking over quality". They may say that on a survey, but player behavior in matches (lobby shopping, DCs, giving up, etc.) show they don't actually tolerate it unless they're the ones stomping the new player(s). We can have a system that waits a couple minutes for a decent match without making a certain Twins player wait 2 hours.
i dont even like Otz if im being honest sure his tips and tricks videos are useful. i find him quite boring to watch
It goes to character and credibility.
Our game was some time ago. You called me an exploiter and your friend was dropping wild slurs and saying that I must be black or something. You were laughing along with him so don't pretend now, I remember that 'lol must be'.
Regarding Otz, I'll take 'things that never happened' for $500, Alex.
You and your friend are absolutely, astonishingly toxic. Otz beat you, and both of you went off on him in postgame. He absolutely never called you a cheater, you called him a cheater and your SWF buddy dropped some absolutely wild stuff in postgame.
Ah, he makes good content. And his builds are always useful to use. Like, if I start new on a Killer (which is basically every new Killer released), I look at his builds what he would suggest as a starting point. And he is knowledgeable. I was just confused why his name was dropped.
Oh for sure no questions hes very useful to learn from, other then that i dont watch him much. i mostly enjoy people like DrussNBubba or Laculan
however if a beginner always asks me what to check out for tips or what not i gotta say Otz
it was indeed a random name drop
Not the issue, I'm pointing out that Aven is known to be the exact sort of wildly toxic, hatespeech endorsing, accusation making SWF player I'm referring to. This isn't intended as an insult, merely to contextualize how defensive he's being here.
Otz is one of the most wholesome streamers around, like him or hate him. Man does nothing but good. Aven's friend said some racial stuff about him and Aven was laughing along. They dropped racial stuff in postgame with me too. I'm just going to mute him and get back to the actual discussion. Cannot stand people like that.
That may be your thoughts on Aven but i highly respect their opinions. they are quite a helpful person and have proved me wrong with a reasonable comment on many occasions and find their input respectful. i have not seen any sign of toxicity from them so excuse me if i find that hard to understand.
Ok mate, I will stop you here. I will not engage with you on that terms if you make things up. I dont mind if you dont like me, you can call me stupid, you can say that my opinions on the game are #########, that I am a Survivor Main who never plays Killer, whatever.
But I never called anyone an exploiter and my usual SWF-Friend also would never use racial or sexual slurs or in general slurs in that way. And IF that would have happened (as I said, it did not), I would certainly tell my friend off if they would do something like that.
Seriously, making up nonsense like that is extremely low. And I dont really understand what would prompt you to do that, I just disagreed with you on your take. Pretty big to then make up slurs and whatnot…
"I'm pointing out that Aven is known to be the exact sort of wildly toxic, hatespeech endorsing, accusation making SWF player I'm referring to"
I've been around this forum long enough and have never seen any such behaviour from Aven. Not once. So I disagree that they are "known to be" that sort of person. And Otz is a big boy, I'm sure he's moved on from whatever incident you're referring to so it's probably time you do as well.
I really wish people would stop blaming the SWF boogeyman for their loses. I play in both SWF and solo and average the same escape rate in both. Maybe slightly better in solo because I won't die for randoms. I've been in solo matches where we synchronized perfectly and the killer surely thought we were SWF. Just the other day I popped into a killer's stream after a match to hear him complaining that we were clearly communicating. I was solo.
It's not SWF. It's that the players outdid you.
About two years back they made the MMR stricter. The result was indeed complaints about wait times, but also about much more stressful trials. Turns out the sweats don't actually like going up against the sweats back to back to back.
Many of DBD's issues stem from a players mindset.
The complaints were mostly winstreak streamers crying they couldn't steamroll through 50 solo queue teams while chewing doritos into the mic and reading chat.
I think one thing that gets lost in the SWF discussion is that some players act like voice communication provides no advantage at all.
I'm not saying SWF is unbeatable, and I'm not saying every killer loss is because of SWF. Killers absolutely make mistakes, overcommit to chases, mismanage pressure, and sometimes simply get outplayed.
That said, I don't understand how anyone can argue that real time communication isn't an advantage.
Dead by Daylight was originally designed around incomplete information. Survivors are supposed to make decisions based on what they can personally see and what information their perks provide.
In solo queue, a survivor doesn't automatically know:
Where the killer is after a hook.
Whether someone is already going for the rescue.
Which pallets have been used.
Which generators are being worked on.
Where traps or hazards have been placed.
Which teammate is currently being chased.
A SWF on voice comms can share all of that information instantly.
He's leaving hook.
He's heading toward main building.
I'm going for the save.
Trap at shack pallet.
Gen is 80%.
Those callouts effectively provide information that would normally require perks, line of sight, or guesswork or even seeing the info on the HUD
To be clear, I don't think this means SWF should be removed or that friends shouldn't be allowed to play together. Playing with friends is one of the most fun parts of the game.
My point is simply that voice communication is undeniably an advantage. Whether that advantage is small or large can be debated, but pretending it doesn't exist at all doesn't make sense.
The real challenge for balance is that solo queue survivors are significantly weaker than coordinated SWFs. If survivors are balanced around solo queue, strong SWFs become very powerful. If survivors are balanced around strong SWFs, solo queue gets destroyed.
I don't think there's an easy solution, but I do think the first step is acknowledging that real time communication provides a level of coordination and information that the game itself was never originally designed to give survivors.
I've always believed that the true power of SWF isn't comms directly, but midigating the randomness of solos.
You know if a teammate is doing a challenge or daily etc. You know they won't let you get to second stage if possible, and that they will come back for you. Over time you learn your mate's tendencies and weaknesses too. Hard to approximate all that solo.
Thats the thing, there is no way for them to ever make MMR stricter again. It would be horrible advertisement, not because sweaty people would go against sweaty people, but because the game would basically be impossible to stream. Currently the biggest Content Creators are doing things like viewer builds or challenges, because they win almost every game and it keeps the game more exciting. This would not be possible with stricter MMR and while those Content Creators would probably still play and stream DBD with stronger opponents, the wait times would just kill any interest in the game.
Just imagine someone wants to check out DBD, starts watching some Streams and instead of a Content Creator doing some fun challenges they see a Content Creator waiting in the Lobby for 30+ minutes while playing a different game during the wait.
Exactly. I feel that people who say that comms are the big advantage either dont play Survivor at all or never played DBD with a friend. Most SWFs dont talk about the game constantly while playing, especially not with some callouts or anything else. I have gone against 4 man SWFs with a Streamer so I was able to see directly what they were thinking and doing during the match when I watched the VOD and they sometimes did not talk about the game at all and were just playing.
Common op dialog while in a SWF:
"It's Wraith he just left me Where? Next to the thing, where you were. By the downed pallet? No, the other side. Here? No behind that. Oh there. No other side."
"Y'all see that Warhammer update? Took almost an hour to get it's so huge this time. Why is that?"
"Ranch Doritos are peak. The Sweet & Spicy ones are my fav. You're crazy Team Ranch all day."
"I might be able to play another round after this. But I should get off soon I have to work early tomorrow. Jake ready up. That's not me I left I'm playing Helldiver already, loading in now. Back out I'll join you."
"Anyone have any Coins left I'm doing a challenge need four more. Yeah sure I have one. I do too but I want points I'm keeping the Envelope on. Run the Coin and I'll bring in a Spoopy Flashy for you. Double battery please you know I'm crap with them."
Fear us Killers FEAR US 🤣😂