A serious critique and suggestion for the current MMR system
Hello fellow members of the fog. It's been quite a while since I've posted on here, and for good reason.
I first played Dead By Daylight several years ago and I've been playing the game off and on for a long time. However, I eventually became disappointed with the game and stopped playing completely a few months before the Nightmare Rework, which was over 2 years ago.
However, about a month or so after the release of the Resident Evil chapter released, I picked the game back up as I was looking for something to play, and I was genuinely enthused to play once again. I had fun learning about and how to play against all the new perks killers and mechanics, and I was delighted at seeing several killers and perks changed from how I once knew them. I was sincerely enjoying the game again and I believed the game to be in a better state then when I had left, even if I still identified several core issues with the game that had still not been addressed or had even been worsened.
When the new MMR system came out, I was neutral, albeit a bit concerned about the change. I had assumed that improved matchmaking would benefit the playerbase at large and would make the game even better. Thus, I was greatly disappointed when it was activated, and I was even more upset when I learned more about how it worked.
To put it simply, I have found this new MMR system to be an incredibly disappointing and harmful addition to the game that I can now only contribute either to severe incompetence or rushed due to the usual business practices. In fact, I find it to be one of the worst additions to the game so far, and I place it on the scale of the Lunar New Year event patch where flashlight and pallet saves had no timing and footstep sounds were broken.
I was ecstatic to see that a game that had once held a place in my heart was beginning to seemingly redeem itself and change for the better, but this new system has now drained all of that enjoyment and excitement out of me, not necessarily because of its concept, but more because of its implementation.
The new MMR system disproportionately rewards unhealthy and uninteresting playstyles such as camping and tunneling, which reinforces the meta of perks that address the game's most glaring issues. As a survivor, I now feel like I have no choice but to bring Borrowed Time, Unbreakable and Decisive Strike, because the base game now has nothing to counteract the issues that these perks resolve.
On the Killer side, which I now predominantly play because of this system, I in turn now am forced to use the meta perks, almost all of which are slowdown perks like Hex: Ruin, Hex: Undying, Tinkerer, Discordance and Corrupt Intervention to buy me even a fraction of the extra time I need to actually enjoy this game. Once my MMR climbs high enough, I can no longer use builds I use for fun. I genuinely enjoy playing Scratched Mirror Myers as a meme build, but when it comes to the point where I can't even play it for longer than a few minutes because I'm up against coordinated teams who bring my to Coldwind and Haddonfield all the time, suddenly Dead By Daylight loses the charm that brought me back to playing it.
However, the most egregious and indefensible error of this system, in my opinion, is its heavy use of simple kill/escape count.
Several years ago the developers spent several months on a system to refine the win conditions of the game fore both sides. They called it the Emblem System. It wasn't perfect, but it was refined and tuned over more months and it was easily a vastly superior system than the one we had before it.
So, if literal MONTHS were spent on this system to account for several variables the old one did not, why on Earth would anyone ever completely invalidate all that work by replacing it with this objectively worse and less effective system? It makes absolutely no sense to me from either a business or consumer perspective to replace months of hard work with a new system that makes the game worse for everybody.
As I said before, the concept in and of itself is not an issue here, but the fact that it disproportionately rewards unhealthy playstyles and punished healthy ones and even further reinforces the meta perks that are band-aid fixes for the most glaring issues of the game is undeniably a poorly thought out, wasteful and harmful error.
I truly believe that an MMR system based off of the Emblem System would more properly discern and punish the more unhealthy and unskillful playstyles and behaviors. Even if it didn't completely solve the issues I've already listed, it would at least be a step in the right direction. Just because a seatbelt isn't going to save you from every car accident doesn't mean you shouldn't wear one.
Dead By Daylight is truly one of a kind and I sincerely want to see it succeed, but if these poor decisions continue then I have little hope for the game's growth and success, especially considering the ever-increasing push from Dead By Daylight community figures to alternatives.
With all that being said, I thank anyone who takes the time to read this post all the way to its completion, and I hope you are doing well.
Comments
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This.
Not only that the system is completely a failure, but will have a big impact on the new players.
I have 1,5+ hours yet I'm matched with survivors that, not joking, had literally 64 hours. I still have a few screenshots.
The old matchmaking system was a better option instead of this one.
All the new players are matched with toxic and sweaty survivors, when in reality, they should be against experienced killers.
At this point I lost hope in BHVR.
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