ELO / rating system

Sincool

Hello,

With the actual state of the ranking system, I believe it's way too easy to reach rank 1 for either killer or survivors (easier for survivors in my opinion, but the killer isn't hard either). I believe that reaching the "top" in the ranking system shouldn't happen for just about anyone, but only if you really are in that top 1% of the players (or even less depending on how many people actively play the game)

With that said, if we look at other games (arguably more competitive games than this one) like League, CS and any other... more competitive game, you will notice that reaching the "challenger" or "global elite" or whatever their top ranks are is not actually that easy. On League, only 200 people can be "Challenger" on each server while on CSGO albeit anyone can get global, it's still much harder to reach than DBD. Although it doesn't show the "rating", it does have it, with some globals being matched with some other ranks while other globals are being matched almost ONLY with the same rank. For many other games (like LoL) which admit only a limited amount of players into the topmost rank, they can't match you with ONLY other challenger players on the server since matchmaking would literally take hours, so they will match you with lower ranks as well, however there is still a good sense to ranking.

Hence why I'm making this suggestion. Although DBD was not meant to be some uber competitive game, mostly catering to the casual players (which, arguably, is a casual game) - there is still a competitive community out there. Back in 2017 I stopped playing the game because it became INCREDIBLY boring to me. The reason? The only matches I'd actually have fun were the pugs on .. I think it was called the Maverick Warriors community or something like that. They had their own "ranking" system and there were some actually really good players present. God tier players like JD from those times or other truly good players (the only nurse of that time I acknowledge to have been better than me, which was Apex)

However... people weren't playing many matches there. On one hand, one would need to expend much more energy for those matches as they were of a much higher level than anything you could find in the "pub" matches. And on the other, there weren't really that many players playing. Sure, the players actively playing PUGs there were really good, but they were few players. So what happened? That left me playing 1 or 2 PUGs a day and having to do pub matches to fill the rest of my DBD time back then. After playing with "god tier" players, playing pub matches was incredibly boring. I would end killer matches in less than 5 minutes on average and I'd literally chase the killer around the map as a survivor, it was like I was trying to hook him or something. The skill level of pub killers and survivors was SO low that I wasn't really enjoying the game anymore. You may think "isn't that the point, to ######### on the other side whether you're a killer or survivor?" Well, that is the point but the more you do it the more dull it becomes. Unless you're one of the youtubers or streamers which make money from getting any kind of highlights, and just have a general audience which assures their livelihood, shitting on killers or survivors match after match after match gets really boring.

Shortly after I stopped playing DBD I picked up Deceit. I took I think about a week or less to get to Diamond and there I noticed something weird. I was kinda sick of the grind since I didn't have as much time to play anymore as I used to during my DBD times, but I noticed on Deceit that I had gained a rating. So basically, after reaching the top rank on Deceit, you were thrown into the ACTUAL ranking system. So, you needed to have the fundamentals down to get there, but that was just the beginning. There were people with as much as 3400-3500 rating while I found myself unable to pass about 1800-2000 unless I put much more time into the game. And having played with those 3000+ rated players, I could see the difference. Those were actual veterans which knew the ins and outs of the game and generally just got better results than I did.

I think the same thing happens to DBD as well. Look at the rank 1 players. Sure, getting rank 1 for the first time is satisfying depending on person, but how big is the disparity in skill between rank 1 players? Some players are outright godly and will destroy any killer or survivor based on the side they're playing, while others ... you come to the realization that they should have never been allowed into the red ranks. Like seriously, using urban evasion to go towards a hooked survivor and you're like 20 meters away, see that there is no heartbeat and the obsession has the bony things twitching meaning that the obsession is most likely being chased on the other side of the map clearly shows that's a new player into the red ranks, someone that shouldn't yet be allowed there. Or having those players that never learn. you see the killer hooks someone, goes STRAIGHT towards the other end of the map towards 1 of the survivors, rinse and repeat and you still don't realize that he has BBQ and chilly?

Hence, my suggestion for this is simple. Follow Deceit's ranking model. Bring a rating to rank 1 players. I think it isn't that hard to implement on one hand and it shouldn't have too much of an impact on the other - other than probably improving the matchmaking system. I'd like to be matched against and with properly decent killers/survivors which are around the same rating as I am instead of the random bullshitery that goes around these days. I know many times there just aren't enough players to match players of a similar rank, but with a proper numerical value I think this can be made easy (and if there are no players around your rating to be matched with, then sure, match with lower rated players or non rated players in the end, so we actually have matches rather than waiting endlessly, but we'd get at least some matches with players rated around us)

Despite whatever someone might say, I think rating in any kind of game is one way to observe someone's skill level. Some people might say "won't survivors just ignore hooks so they don't risk dying themselves in order to gain higher rating?" to which I'd only laugh, as any actual veteran of this game which has attained a decent skill level knows that the highest and easiest points come from rescuing others. What gives you a faster 1500 points than safely rescuing someone from the hook? On the other side someone might say "so won't survivors just swarm hooks to get those juicy points?" - well ,then there's nobody doing generators and such cases mostly end up in 4Ks for the killer. So the survivors need to have a decent amount of coordination in order to properly do this (or a good game sense and decision making)

In the end, people that are truly good will reach the top while people that aren't as good will stumble on the way. This is how rating goes in any kind of game, from chess to any game with visible MMR. In some games it will be easier to climb than others, but the fundamental fact that it measures one's skill to some degree remains.

TL;DR: Implement a rating system once people reach rank 1. Some ELO system where people gain / lose it as they play. Would improve matchmaking and give higher quality matches for the strongest players in the game as well as allow lower skilled players to slowly climb instead of being placed randomly with some godly killer/survivor. (randomness for the sake of improvement would still happen through SWF on both sides)