My Concerns With SBMM/MMR Specifically Short Term
So I 've kind of incoherently complained a few times on the forums and then also bunched my short term concerns in with my long term concerns and then had responses completely be for long term, so I figured I'd write up a coherent thing about my concerns with MMR specifically in the short term. To note, I have concerns long term too, but they mirror a lot of people's concerns, while the short term I've seen less cohesion over.
To preface this, I didn't get to play a ton during the last MMR test. What I did play was on one killer: Deathslinger. Now, I had only recently picked him up since I had been working on other killers, but decided I wanted to learn him since I have auditory problems with Huntress and I did want to learn a ranged killer. I had started to try to learn him off and on the last few weeks prior to the MMR test and had very mixed results - a combination of mediocre perks, not being great at FPS games, and bad survivors giving me wins anyway. As a result, I expected Slinger to be roughly near my baseline MMR.
The few games I got to play of Slinger with MMR on were miserable ...teams I would have struggled with my mains were all I faced. And it wasn't getting better after 3/4 games so I stopped and waited for the test to be over before coming back to DbD.
Now, let's generously assume my Slinger MMR was halfway between my mains and my baseline, somehow. That tells me three things: my mains are too high because they would have struggled against the teams my Slinger faced, my baseline is likely too high, and my casual pickup killers are definitely too high. This means that every killer I play even casually is likely going to be too high at the start of MMR. This is devastating to my enjoyment of this game in the short term.
I've seen people's reactions to the short term complaints be "just accept you'll lose a few games until MMR balances." And you know, that's totally fair. I'm willing to lose a few games to get to where I need to be. But here's the problem: if I'm correct in my deductions, every one of my killers is too high up in MMR. And MMR is completely unique per killer, outside of the baseline MMR (though we don't know afaik if baseline MMR is lowerable, only that it raises). So what does this mean?
After MMR, I want to play Wraith, one of my mains. I'm going to get stomped for at least 3-4 matches, judging from my Slinger games the last MMR test. Once I'm done getting stomped as him, I should, supposedly, get fair games with him. BUT, Legion and Blight, my other mains, are still going to be up way too high. If I want to play them, I have to accept getting stomped for multiple games all over again. My Trapper who I play once every few weeks? I win most of those games, I'm probably too high there too, gotta get beaten down again. My Hillbilly who I explicitly meme around on and still do decent with? He's definitely too high, gotta lose a few games there...my Pig/Myers/Slinger/Demo/Oni, all of whom I was trying to get better with? Slinger confirms they're too high, beatdown time.
This is where my issue is. For those of us who have too high of baseline MMR, we are going to have to "just lose a few games" on every killer we have. That's absolutely awful. When Cenobite releases, will I have fair games on him? Probably not, judging from how high my "learning the killer" MMR seems to be. If I played Leatherface for the first time since late 2017, would my games on him be balanced? Somehow I doubt it. Though admittedly, Cenobite and Leatherface, the two killers who i am 100% confident I will have at my baseline MMR, are the most likely to be playable without "just losing a few games" first.
This is a huge problem in my mind. I would be ok losing a few games on my mains to get to where I belong on my non-sweaty builds I run, but one of the big draws of MMR is supposed to be you're able to swap to a different killer and not be punished for doing so. I personally did not experience that during the last test that supposedly "exceeded" BHVR's expectations. I don't want to lose 3-4+ games each on 25 killers just to be able to enjoy playing as them (well, assuming I want to play them anyway, Twins...) - that's a ton of time dedicated just to allow the system to figure out what I should be playing at on each killer.
This is my concern short term. it seems as though my personal killer experience is going to be absolutely, completely miserable for the first month or so the system is out, and I highly doubt I'll be the only one. Long term concerns aside, this is why I'm so frustrated they're pushing the system out with the next patch.