4 Man SWF. How prevalent and how do you know?
I'm curious how often killers run into 4 mans and how do they know. I've had a few games where in EGC the topic of being a 4 man is brought up. I do not play in 4 mans and generally only solo or duo with a friend. I'm curious what signs make killers feel like they're against a 4 man.
Is it the altruism? The play style in general? Matching outfits? Coordination? Loading into Lobby? Other?
Let's assume they are somewhat normal games and it's not the obvious 4 man bully squad only playing to farm clip montages.
Comments
There are a few signs, but few are concrete.
Matched cosmetics, matching names, four flash lights are all indicators. You can check a steam players profile to see if they are friends with people who have names similar to those in the lobby. But really what gives it away is gameplay. If, for instance, Dwight finds my totem in shack and I run him off, only to immediately see Meg and Sable sneaking around the shack while David King tries to lure me away, I have a pretty solid grounding to believe they are using out-of-game communication.
Equally when I see people running body block squads when I fake a tunnel, that's another indicator.
It really comes down to just watching for communications that clearly could not have occurred in game naturally for the better part.
There's a lot of signs, @NeverSolus said a lot of them.
There's quite a lot of signs during the match as well like if there's constantly someone trying to get a flashlight safe (sometimes it's not a swf but normally it's obvious if they are in swf) or when you play ghostface or any stealth killer and survivors just know to run when they had no signs (someone in swf said the killer is going somewhere).
IIRC, BHVR stated that the vast majority of players were solos, but that was quite a while ago and it may have changed in the meantime.
the most obvious tell are survivors who are aware of your perks when only 1 survivor should know about it.
Yes I believe about a year ago they released party size stats. In the world SWF make up about 11%. Solo 41%.
What are the other 48%?
killers accuse my solo queue teams of being SWF all the time. it's loser mentality honestly. "i lost so must be SWF."
Outside of it being a streamer whose videos you can watch, I think its generally just a guess. Frequently it feels like 'I lost, most be a SWF' type of deal. Something like all similar names is pretty close, same outfits maybe but I've done that in soloq as well.
There's definitely things that happen that make it more likely, but lots of time randoms also just play well.
32% 2 person SWF, 16% 3 person SWF.
The Japanese stats from the start of the year are the last info we've received (encompasses 2024 - 2025). The top block is Japan specifically, the bottom is worldwide. It shows percentage of each group and their escape rate. So solo is 41%, duo is 32%, trio is 16%, and 4-man is 11%.
When i went through my Hubris stage, I could pick the friend by who suddenly started pre-dropping lol
I think matching outfits is super fun. I love loading into a lobby and seeing the elf Dwights emerging. Or the basekit Claudettes! The silent comradery
I remembered that before it was nerfed so drastically that it became useless, if you used "Franklin's Demise" to attack just one person with the M1, you could immediately tell who was connected via voice chat.
Honestly, i can only say its a 4 man when i know all the players in the match or when its a streamer with VODs and i can confirm they are a 4 man. Outside of this, i usually thinks its just 4 good players i went against.
Biggest giveaway for me (apart from the obvious, matching cosmetics etc) is if you keep getting locker stunned. People constsntly running you past lockers with someone waiting for the head on is 100% a giveaway.