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BHVR, why do you continue to force for SBMM ?
I mean, why do you keep trying to test the SBMM settings to give DbD a competitive environment ? The game is totally not designed to be competitive, in fact there is nothing competitive in it.
- Maps are unbalanced
- RNG is broken (some tiles mixes are stronger than others)
- Perks synergie is broken, some perks stacking way too much together
- Killers are not equal, some are strong, most of them are weak or really weak
- Survivors items are completely shifting the balance when used
So, in such a bad environment for competitiveness, why do you keep trying ? Go back to the old emblem system, it was good enough and way funnier.
Comments
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This is a sentiment I've seen a lot, and I just have to know - what about an MMR system is inherently competitive?
Any game that pits players against one another is going to need a way to separate players of different skill levels, regardless of how explicitly competitive it wants to be - that's what the emblem system was for and completely failed to do, after all - so what exactly makes an MMR system inherently competitive?
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"in fact there is nothing competitive in it."
Dude, people get paid millions and make careers out of throwing a ball through a hoop, or hitting a tiny white ball with a club into a hole.
Gaming is considered an esport and by nature PVP gamers are HIGHLY COMPETITIVE
When humans go against each other doing ANYTHING, it is considered competitive.
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Yes. This game isn't esports but it is competitive. There's 2 sides going against each other where one wins and the other loses. That is the definition of competitive.
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I think honestly the MMR system being unknown to players makes them feel its more competitive. The problem most people have with the system is how low of a bar they set for determining the win. Kill=skill and escape=skill means that despite me looping the killer really well and sacrificing my self to finish the last gen so my teammates can get out means I had no skill. That is what most people have problems with. I did this last night as I am a iri 1 and it didn't matter if I got out. I got a message from the little ash player that got out with the other 2 and laughed because being Iri and being that trash to die. They told me I should quit and give up on the game. I finished that last get looped the killer and got NOED but I have no skill (this little Blendette got down three seconds into chase). The other fact is that when players escape against new or easy killers the MMR can be inflated high enough that they play against players who are higher then their skill. I think give a ranked and un-ranked section would help because you can give more points to the ranked matches and less for un-ranked. Your grade would go up in un-ranked as away to incentivize play in the un-ranked matches just for you 1m bps and pips should be easier to get.
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Nope, a competitive environment is when both sides are on par.
DbD is not competitive at all.
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Yes, the old emblem system was good enough. Rank 1 players were players that knew the game's mechanics. It doesn't mean that they were high skilled but they were good enough to play at a good level.
SBMM brought this to the next level where both sides optimize their gameplay to the maximum, using anything, sometimes abusing broken things, just to win.
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I'm not sure I understand how it being unknown makes it feel more competitive. If you don't see it, and it had to be datamined before it was even officially commented on, the only logical explanation is that you're not supposed to be taking it seriously and you're not supposed to be trying to max it out. It's not a progression system, it's only there to measure your consistent winrate.
I'm not here on this thread to point out why the way it measures your number is fine, that's a different topic. I just don't understand why the emblem system isn't considered "inherently competitive" but the MMR system is, when their goal is exactly the same.
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Oh, don't get it twisted- the old emblem system was a complete failure. It had the same job as the current MMR system and it categorically, objectively didn't work; "rainbow ranks" was a common complaint because it failed to match properly, and even when it did, it was a common talking point that the iridescent rank had a gigantic gulf of skill inside it because the system did not work.
And no, the SBMM system did not cause that. Players were already doing that, and the SBMM system made literally no difference outside of letting you see it more often because you're getting less wildly mismatched games. Not none, mind, the system's still not working properly, but less.
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SBMM is fine. It's just match making system that pits up players of equal "skill" with each other and doesn't promote "competitive" gameplay. It has one big problem though.
SBMM biggest problem is being called "Skill-Based Match Making". A better name would be KBMM, or "Kill-Based Match Making".
Most things in DbD don't take much skill. Sure, most of them require game knowledge, but they're not 'skillful', like objectives. Sacrificing and escaping isn't skillful, they are among the things that require the least amount of skill
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The devs caused the clutter at red ranks by only resetting everyone back to rank 5. The emblem system could easily be tweaked to be a much better system than we have now. Escape based matchmaking was a mistake.
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Whether it was a mistake or not (it wasn't), that's not really what I'm asking- what makes it more inherently competitive than the emblem system? If anything, it's objectively less competitive because you're not given any information at all about how your performance affects anything.
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If bhvr put money and effort on something good or bad for the game, they never go back.
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Playerbase has started to decrease just after the SBMM release. It is the only thing that has changed, and it is the only thing that could cause that especially because the last chapters have added great IP : Pinhead, Sadako, Nemesis.
The game has just became unplayable, for both sides. As a survivor, you are facing campers every trials, every ######### trial it is a camper/tunneler. As a killer, if you play fair well, you have a hard time.
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Its seasonal, always goes down till march April, then goes up. It already start to happen
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It is more competitive as the community took this SBMM as if it was a 1 millions $ tournament and try hard all the time. Why do all survivors play DH at high MMR and not in the lower levels ?
Why do killers camp and tunnel amssively at high MMR and not in the lower levels ?
Because those ppl are try harding all the time.
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I'm not really here to argue whether that's true (it's not, the player decrease is the falloff from the giant increase the Resident Evil chapter brought in), I'm just confused by the original take. What makes the MMR system more inherently competitive than the emblem system, when their goals are completely identical, and the MMR system both measures less and gives less feedback?
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Going from 100k peak to 50k peak is not seasonal at all.
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They both are but I would say if your one of those competitive players who cares about this rank it being hidden means you don't know where you are so you go hard. As we all know the MMR and Rank system both priorities getting into a game when its slow then being 100% accurate so when you take a high tier killer or survivor and place them with weaker survivors or killers it just make the competitive feeling more. When it was visible at the end in the rank system at least you understood why you got completely rolled on either side. MMR not being seen means everyone is guessing and running into a person really trying can make you feel like the MMR system isn't working.
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Resident evil fans left, also the lockdown flock
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They defined a win condition in the least fun possible way for both sides. The emblem system rewarded spreading out hooks and not just rushing gens. It was a better approximation of skill and felt better in a match to die but help your team escape, or get 1 kill but 9 hooks.
You can hide the scoreboard but everyone knows when they're getting their ass kicked.
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...?
I mean, sure, but that win condition was defined years before the MMR system was introduced. It predates the emblem system too, it's been the case literally since the game released.
The emblem system also... still exists? If you have more fun playing to the emblem system, do that, nothing is making you try to get maximum kills?
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They may have stated that they try to balance the game around 2k but it was never pushed as the sole measure of skill.
Playing for grade isn't rewarding unless playing in a swf. In solo queue you just get progressively worse teammates that reward your altruism and distractions by leaving you on hook.
...?
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What on earth are you talking about? Kills/Escapes have always been the win condition of the game, and it's not being pushed as the "sole measure of skill" even now. Is this because they said they use it as a proxy for skill? Because those two statements are not interchangeable, they're different in a manner that really does matter.
As for playing for grade not being rewarding, wouldn't you agree that's far, far, far more of a balance issue than a matchmaking issue? SoloQ survivor is notoriously kind of unpleasant to play for reasons that have very little to do with matchmaking anyway.
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True and Dowsey are not the best killers in the world but they are decent. Fact that they cannot do much against this SWF WHILE there are survivor perks/items restriction means much.
Where do you see a possible competitive environment ? There is no competition, the game is so unbalanced that there is not a single possibility of winning and i repeat it, with perks/items restrictions.
Now imagine facing high MMR survivors, SWFs or not, without this perks/items/addons limitation, you end up with 4 DH, 4 DS, 4 BT, 4 IW + 2 full of charges add-ons toolboxes.
How are you supposed to win ? Well you are not and most high MMR killers are loosing those games.
But as there is a softcap in the SBMM system, those SWFs will still face lower MMR killers as there is not many, maybe even 0, killer to their SBMM level. They will continue to stomp middle/high MMR killers, everyday.
Oh and look at the lengh of the trials... 6 minutes 😂. Ye, everything is okay, let's implement a SBMM system... rofl
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No they haven't. Kills were never coded as the win condition until mmr. You could 4k by playing basement Bubba and depip. What about the giant "entity displeased" text in the end game screen after a 4k says "kills/escapes are the only win condition"? This was a good thing, and encouraged more fun play by both sides.
And no, it is a matchmaking issue. No amount of hud icons, chat ping systems, etc, will get the baby claudette to leave her self care corner, unhook you, and lead the killer on a decent chase.
It's clear the devs know players are leaving due to mmr from the survey questions they just released. Goes to show maybe the Steam charts aren't wrong after all.
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I think not seeing your rank is doing its part in hiding balance flaws. If I can clearly see my rank and how long it takes to rank up and all that it helps to see if your balances is flawed. When I main trapper and I see I hit a brick wall at silver and I just can't climb anymore but then I learn blight and suddenly I climb again u see trappers is to weak. So they hide it to further hide the unbalanced stuff
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The problem here is that you're assuming the win condition is inherently, directly tied to whatever progression system the game in quesiton has, which simply isn't how it works. Your goal as killer is and always has been to kill more survivors than escape, and if you get a 4K with Entity Displeased, that doesn't mean you didn't win- it means you won with a low score and are being incentivised to win through other means.
No amount of matchmaking in the world will give you good teammates, it'll just give you teammates that are good at whatever the matchmaking system is measuring. This was the case before, and it will continue to be the case, nothing about the game can fix bad teammates for you.
The Steam charts aren't wrong! What they're showing, however, isn't what you think it is. It's showing that a lot of the players who joined because of Resident Evil didn't stick around longterm, and that the playerbase overall is stable trending towards growing slightly.
I'm not here to argue any of this, though, so I'm going to leave this here. My only point going in is that an MMR system isn't inherently more competitive than any other system, and saying it is somewhat betrays some misunderstandings about how this game works in particular and how games as a whole work in general.
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Because you see this with the premise that Resident Evil brought hundred of thousands players which is not true, there is not a single IP capable of bringing so many players.
Especially when the month before Nemesis release there were already 86k peak players.
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Very true the hiding of your rank def makes it so the flaws go 'unseen' but most killers should be able to tell when someone has looped them for four or five gens without getting hit (or as I do to be toxic give a freebie hit so you stick to me) they are not in the right group of people. Honestly I do not think I am top tier but middle ground and when I get a baby trappypoo I laugh cause they try to trap a loop I am looping so you leave take them to another. Hiding the MMR system only benefits players who want to play against babies for w/e reason.
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Exactly. If I can see i am stuck at x rank when I only play my Favorit killer and other people say the same there is a reason to change
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This game is as competitive as Tic Tac Toe. Do you know why Tic Tac Toe isn't competitive? Because when both sides are playing optimally, one side will always win, 100% of the time (whoever moves first). DbD is the same. When both sides are playing optimally, survivor will always win. The most a killer can do is capitalize on the survivors mistakes. Except Nurse, she inverts that relationship which is why survivors seethe at her so much, but that's neither here nor there.
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a killer can do is capitalize on the survivors mistakes
This sentence summarizes what DbD is. Killers can only capitalize on survivors mistakes, no mistake from them = killer losses.
For me it is ok in a casual environment where the matchmaking is "soft" and wehre good survivors (not doing many mistakes) and average ones (doing more mistakes) are mixed together. In this case and only in this case the game is enjoyable for both parts.
In a competitive environment (with SBMM), the game is jsut frustrating for the killer and at least for 1 or 2 survivors (the ones being camped/tunneled).
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Honestly, the game state is unbearable, 20 survivor trials in a row (in 2 days), 20 campers/tunnelers.
That's just how the experience is as a survivor. How does BHVR think that this state is sustainable on the long run ? Sure it is not.
And when i play killer, i play fair = 2k at best. 0k if the survivors are really good.
Both sides are against a wall, facing a game that has become unenjoyable.
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I would like to add this point :
DbD game design doesn't involve skill, a killer without anti-loop cannot catch a looping survivor if he/she doesn't do any mistake. Nothing is about skill, it's all about "let's hope the RNG is okay".
Skill is involved when you 1v1 a survivor on a dead zone, will he/she be able to avoid your hit or not and will you be able to land your hit or not. Once a loop with a pallet and/or window is involved, skill is away.
All tiles + jungle gym has an optimal loop way. Once both sides know it, you end up with a 50/50 lucky guess that some call mindgame but that is not mindgame. Does flipping a coin involve mindgame ? I don't think so.
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Cause their ego is too strong to admit it doesn't fit a casual game like DBD
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