Dev team decision question about escaping survivors
Hello Dev team.
In the recent patch notes, you had mentioned that the reason you were buffing killers was because "too many survivors were escaping."
-How was this data collected?
-Was it from watching solo queu or premade swf teams? Were allowances or considerations made for play time/casual players and hard core gamers?
-Or in the name of efficiency, was there a computer used to tally up stats of who lived and who died?
-Did this counting computer put disconnections into the "survivor did not get killed" category?
In imagining a computer algorithm that spits out a statistic such as "in 75 percent of games, 1 survivor gets out," which then brings the dev team to the conclusion that killers aren't getting enough 4 kill games and, thus, need to be buffed.
-What percentage of the thousands of dbd games played were actually watched with human eyes? Was it 10%? 5%? Were game balances made with information from watching less then 1% of all games played?
Regardless of who was doing the calculations.
In the most kindest of requests; please take into consideration that there are a percentage of games where the killer allows 1-4 survivors to escape. Whether it be:
-playing nice
-farming
-rewarding the last player alive and "giving them hatch."
If these games such as these are not vetted out, the ratio of survivors escaping will be skewed. Because make no mistake. The current state of dead by daylight is:
-survivors must depend on killer choosing not to camp or tunnel
-if a killer has decided to focus down one particular player, there is very little that the survivors can do about it
-survivors with over a thousand hours of game time can and have gone through dry spells of not escaping for hours!
Respectful Regards,
Merciful Killer Main
Comments
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I'll go out on a limb and say it's simply "survivors that escaped".
2 -
Based on what I've seen them say about their data tracking in various contexts, I believe it looks like this:
BHVR has backend metrics that are technically perfect in terms of tracking outcomes and loadouts, compared to the handful of aggregate data collection sites online that only pool from voluntary contributors. They don't have any kind of tool that lets them "replay" a match and see how it went. A disconnection is not a kill, and they have a way to distinguish between a hatch escape (which is treated as a draw in MMR contexts) and a gate escape (a win).
I'd guess they don't have anyone manually reviewing individual matches. They've said they use a combination of internal playtesting, player feedback (from this forum, twitter, youtube, and other platforms), and the backend match data to make their balancing decisions.
That said, I think the presence of these "oddball case" factors are not as much of a danger to the quality of the metrics as you might think. These are all things that have been in the game since its inception. The thing that has NOT been in the game since its start? SBMM. If the devs were seeing a consistent rate of kills prior to the introduction of SBMM (and again after tweaking the system after the SBMM tests) and are now seeing an entirely different one now that the system has been fine-tuned, it's probably safe to guess that the quality of matches increasing has put killers and survivors on more even footing in terms of performance, which has potentially meant a less equitable experience between killers and survivors (the idea being that in higher variance matches of the past, the tools that allow survivors to escape efficiently were not always leveraged to their fullest extent, but now killers are seeing groups of survivors who can more consistently use those tools every match - leading to lower kill rates)
2 -
A most appreciated, and well thought out response, Mosic. In pondering your last paragraph, with oddball cases, and groups of survivors that can use tools to leverage escapes:
How often would you believe these events happen?
-4 squad casual swf that play together
-2 squad swf with 2 randoms players
-solo queu.
-4 squad pro swf that is the end to killer sanity and with 4 escapes 80% of the time?
It just seems like the pro squad is a myth like the unicorn or loch ness monster. Used in math calculations, and forums discussions, but doesn't actually exist.
We must also consider that if match making was a thing, most normal killers would not run into such teams. In statistics. You chop out the outliers and deal with the "regular" people. For the common player doesn't care about what happens to the pros. Common survivors just want to queu up with a friend or two, and have some fun. Common killers just don't run into super teams enough to matter.
Towards the dev team, "in house testing, player feedback, and computer data" needs to be combined with actual human observation. In playing a recent killer play session, as Legion, there were personal player made choices that affected the match outcome. Please note that this Killer philosophy is unusual but far from rare.
-Game 1. DC'ed player made for a bad match and thus allowed the other 3 to escape.
-Statement. Survivors were damaged, chased, and did not realize mercy was being given until late game. Unlikely a metric computer can detect that.
-Game 2. Pre nerf corrupt intervention allowed for 1 kill and all 3 to be hooked at least once. Could have easily been a 4 kill game but the survivors knelt and presented offerings of med kits and toolboxes. Offers of surrender, worship, or tribute shall be rewarded with mercy.
-Statement. Metric would show 1 kill, 3 escapes.
-Game 3. 3 kill game, 4th in carry. Survivor stops wiggling. They have conceded. Their spirit is broken. That is the greatest win. Mercy shall be they reward. With survivor still in carry, found and gave hatch.
-Statement. 3 kills and a draw would still not be 3 kills from a math perspective. Unlikely a metric computer can detect that.
-Game 4. With the way Legion is built now, tunneling is cake walk with feral frenzy swing on found/known survivor => feral frenzy on tunnel target => cancel and walk forward at the same time => chase and melee down said same survivor. In this case, as conscious choice was made to not do that. 0 kill game. Credit given to the survivors. They were better.
-Statement. Computer would log that is a killer total loss. The match difference between 0 kills and 1 kill is infinity. The game result was because of a subtle choice of playing "nice" and that choice snowballing into a loss against skilled players.
Devs. These games can be verified through your servers of 7/1/2022 from 11-12:30pm pst.
There are killers who choose to camp, tunnel, and play with a toxicity that is bad for the game. Even if 3 players get out, the 1 player who had been focused knows that there was absolutely no counter play they or anyone else could have done.
Whether you know it or not. There is a HIGH percentage of your killer main players that have modified playstyles because it is considered toxic or bm.
-Why is noed not being run as much? Because it's too damn good, and the stigma the surrounds it makes it so streamers will look to avoid it.
-Why are killers getting fewer and fewer kills in these modern times? Because we are LETTING PEOPLE GO!
-Why are 3 people escaping more often now? Because 1 player is being face camped! (There is a reason why the Dead by Daylight Tutorial Killer AI itself is ACTUALLY programmed to walk way after hooking a survivor.)
Please know. There is a lesser percentage of killer mains who have taken it upon themselves to help grow the game by allowing escapes BECAUSE the game is so killer sided. Don't make it easier for THOSE OTHER KILLERS to ruin the game's growth and longevity.
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