Why is the “lone wolf” strategy something the devs are promoting in this game?
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/353291/news-upcoming-matchmaking-improvements#latest
Why is the “lone wolf” strategy something the devs are promoting in this game? How am I supposed to feel like I’m on a team, if there’s a teammate that’s excessively hiding and waiting for everyone else to die?
And when I’m playing killer, some of these “lone wolf” survivors will even let people just die on a hook, even if I’m not anywhere near the hooked survivor, because they want to be the last survivor by any means possible.
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There's a few layers to this question, so I'll try to hit all of them:
A) "Lone wolf" doesn't mean hiding in a corner and trying to sneak out. Your chances of survival drop significantly when another survivor dies - this is a fact. Even if you're looking out for yourself, it's still in your best interest to keep your teammates alive so you have a better chance of escaping. That said, someone who's playing this way might see someone hooked at the end of the match and decide, "Yeah, no, too risky, I'm leaving." That's a totally valid choice.
B) Like the movies that inspired the game, sometimes people will do whatever they can to survive, even if it means leaving other survivors behind. This is something that has always been at the core of DBD: Although survivors have a common goal (escaping), they aren't required to prioritize their team (though again, teamplay will still help them achieve that goal).
C) That said, freedom to choose your playstyle doesn't mean that's the way we're telling you to play. Most regions have gradually shifted towards a more team oriented mindset over time (though it's not the same all around the world), and so has the game's design; this matchmaking change being a perfect example of that. We do not design the game around folks who completely neglect their team. In fact, if you do that, your chances of escaping will be horribly low and you'll probably end up losing the vast majority of your matches. But even still, this is a choice you, as a player, are allowed to make.
Long story short: There's many ways to play the game, some of them less effective than others. It's not our place to tell you how to play, it's up to you to decide what you enjoy and what works for you. Whenever possible, we try to avoid eliminating different playstyles because player agency (choices) is important.
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1st case: Im also not sure how to feel about this. Me playing mid-low MMR just to have fun. If killer is too weak and we have 4 escape, my MMR will increase really high and instantly face try hard killer.
2nd case: I know many people dont aim to get high MMR to get more casual match. If 3 of us try to help the 4th one to make 4 escape, it will not be preferred than leaving the 4th one to die, just to have MMR increased less
3rd case: imaging Im not good enough and get tunneled to death at 2-3 Gen left, the other 3 gets lucky to have killer chased the best survivor and make 3 escape, then next match I get even harder match because teammates are so good
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I feel like the quality of my solo q matches would increase dramatically if matchmaking threw the frequent ragequitters and the lone wolf survivors somewhere else.
Lone wolf survivors aren’t required to hide in a corner and trying to sneak out, but some people are doing this, and it feels bad being on their team.
And I don’t ragequit, so I’m not sure why matchmaking is sometimes placing me with survivors that ragequit at the slightest inconvenience.
Are there any plans for survivor matchmaking to go beyond just looking at MMR numbers, and consider additional things, like how often a player does unsportsmanlike behaviors?
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Do you have some reason to believe that your MMR is going to significantly increase or decrease just because of the result of 1 game? I didn't think Bhvr gave any specific numbers.
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Today I did 3 matches as survivor. I ended up dying at the end in all of them because I did that late game save since I play as a team (4v1) instead of the 1v1v1v1v1 thing. If the killer gets 1 (example: me) and 3 of my team escape, I still count it as a win because my team escaped and the killer lost.
I also try to take in consideration hook states. Let's say I haven't been hooked at all. I will be happy to even get downed in order to save my teammates.
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I think the matchmaking needs to be a lot tighter ob the survivor end if you're introducing team based ratings. As it currently stands, 1 or 2 survivors are usually far below the skill level of the other 2 survivors in a solo lobby. If the killer finds them early, the game is essentially over at that point. The only way a survivor can carry in that scenario is if the killer has no game sense and commits to the better players for no reason.
At least 25% of my escapes come when my teammates somehow die at 4 gens and last a collective 10 seconds in a chase. I don't see why I should be punished for bad matchmaking in those instances.
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Im pretty sure that thats not the case, MMR wise at least.
if i remember right from a video i saw, BHVR said something like the survivors mmr are indvidual, so if you die you loose, if you escape you win.
The killers on the other hand are playing 4 matches in 1. so each kill or escape counts as a win or loss. So if the killer gets a 4k their mmr will adjust 4 times as high from 1 match than a winning survivor.
So for the killer a 2k is a draw and the mmr should stay where it is.
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This. 2 high skilled players can only carry their teammates so much. When I'm in a 2 minute chase and the only gen to get completed is the 1 my swf teammate worked on solo there's only so much we can do to pick up the slack of the other 2 players.
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The MM is completely broken right now, you never face a casual or noob killer even if you die 10 times in a row. So imo i think this change will at least give you slighty more decent survivor in your teams. That would mean less DC, suicide and trolling around.. i hope.
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This.
They could make a million changes to how rating works but in the end it's completely meaningless when matchmaking doesn't even work the majority of the time in the first place.
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I may have missed it if it was mentioned, but moving forward will the overall parameters for SBMM continue to stay flexible to alleviate que times or will they be static prioritizing accuracy?
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I think matchmaking works often enough, which is why the top 5% MMR stats are so close together. When half the killer roster is only off by a few %, MMR is absolutely working as intended.
The problem is MMR is based on a lone wolf win condition instead of a team win condition, so solo q will never actually feel like a team.
Imagine if solo q did get voice comms, and we would just have a bunch of matches where people would just scream at each other, because the lone wolf survivor refuses to help the team, and tells the rest of the team that they’re all trash, and that it’s every survivor for themselves. Because that is what many of the lone wolf survivors are thinking, and that’s the type of people that ruin games for the rest of their team.
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I think a lot of lone wolves would just turn their voice chat off.
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I'll only turn into a "lone wolf" when my team reached a certain point in the match where it's very unlikely to finish all gens.
The longer you play, the better you'll understand when that point happens.
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Or they would keep voice chat on so they could use everyone else's call outs to lone wolf better, and just refuse to talk. And if survivors got action icons, they would just refuse to touch a generator unless the icons showed someone else being chased by the killer, because that is the level of excessive hiding they want to do.
One of the major problems with this game is that when there are only two survivors left, and there are a few generators left, the game can turn into a 10 or 20 minute hide and seek slog, because both of the remaining survivors refuse to touch generators, and want to wait for the other survivor to die. I get it that we want people to have playstyle options, but if BHVR wants to review unfun things like slugging, they should also look into the unfun things like survivors refusing to progress the game, because they have a higher chance of survival if they hide in some random part of the map.
We're told it's reportable if survivors refuse to progress the game, but does that really do anything? How long do survivors need to be hiding before I can report them?
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I would argue that if someone is properly committing to the 'lone wolf' playstyle, they actually have a decent chance of escaping. Running Sole Survivor, Distortion, Spine Chill, Urban Evasion, bringing a hatch blueprint and a key and just hiding in a corner/basement/locker all game, you'll be able to escape most matches pretty easily.
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Hey man, I play lone survivor style right now too. Not in the way you describe, where I just hide and do nothing, but I do measure how the match is going and if I do or don't do something, how will it affect my survival. For example, the infamous slug 3rd teammate for bait hoping the final survivor will come out and attempt to save. In a lot of those situations, thats like death knockin on your front door. You go for the save - you will die. And so will your teammate. Whats the lesser evil of that? Instead of handing a killer an easy 4k, I leave him with a 3k. Yea he technically 'wins' but I still get out and increase my MMR. Even made a thread highlighting the build because I think its insanely good.
Now if you really do mean people are hiding and not doing anything, then yea that sucks. Trying to play the match and get objectives done, help your teammates, etc feels like a slap in the face when you realize there's 1 teammate just doing nothing but running around. But you have to also understand there are many builds people come up with and that reinforces the way they play sometimes. Doesn't mean the playstyle you're describing is promoted.
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You need to fix the MMR system. I think making it based on escapes was a horrible idea. Now these *lone wolves* or whatever you want to call them are getting out of doors because they simply just hide throughout the game. Maybe killers find them cute and lets them out. Their MMR increases and they will come to a place where they dont belong.
I've had these hiders multiple times and its frustrating. All you are doing is is carrying this hider and letting them maybe even escape for free.
Is the team based thing thats coming up also going to fix how the MMR works? So people who obviously didnt put much efford into the game even if they escape wouldnt get higher? I think this would fix alot of issues in soloQ when people like this wouldnt be where they shouldnt be.
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Just a note, the new team based MMR will, in effect, "punish" lone wolf survivors.
The win condition is still escaping, but you'll have been considered to win by more if your teammates escape too. So a lone escape through the exit gates with your entire team dead will give less MMR than a 4-man escape.
So if you lone wolf only (never helping your team) it'll generally be pretty hard to get to a higher MMR. You're already at a disadvantage because it's easier to escape when you act as a team. Hatch doesn't count so the only way to get a "win" according to the game is through the gates. When you do manage to escape, you'll get less MMR since you just waited around until the end and escaped with Sole Survivor.
If you start to lone wolf when your team is just getting destroyed, well at that point you're just playing smart.
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Thats a bit of a reach when it comes to unsportsmanlike behavior involving rage quitting. There are ppl that probably just believe that the match is already lost even if they continue the match so they just wanna go next. Its also why they nerfed reassurance because you could potentially force a player to stay in a match when they dont want to stay.
Now when it comes to dc, they devs already have a proper penalty syatem for that.
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Had a distortion gamer in my match last night. Hid the entire match, never got hooked once and ended up getting hatch. Distortion is such a nice perk, especially with so many killer aura reading perks that keep get released, it's handy if you don't want your aura revealed 80% of the time in a match. But my god, the way most distortion users play make me want the devs to nerf it.
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Why does this game promote ragequitting so much? There are a bunch of people on these forums that admit to doing this, and there are a bunch of streamers admitting on recorded video to doing this, but I don't see BHVR reminded people that it's against the rules. The DC penalties obviously aren't good enough, and people can bypass the DC penalties by directly running towards the killer and giving up on hook. Ragequitting should be considered sandbagging the team, because that is what it ends up doing.
Is this game supposed to be so casual, that we don't want to stress people out by expecting them to play a game when they no longer find that game fun?
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You could argue that, but we also have data from millions of games that show the correlation between the number of survivors alive and your chances of survival. I have no doubt that it'll work sometimes, but the deck is seriously stacked against you.
But even so, assuming you do manage to sneak out the hatch a bunch, the hatch is considered a null- neither the killer nor survivor gains or loses rating from it. By doing that, you'd still lose rating from your deaths, but you wouldn't gain anything from your escapes.
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People who hide for hatch all game don't care about their MMR so it doesn't matter if it doesn't increase it.
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Making an actual team based MMR wouldn’t fix these lone wolf survivors, because they don’t care about MMR, and they only care about whether they escape or not, even if they won’t gain any MMR from escaping.
The actual question is whether or not some of these lone wolf survivors are sandbagging their team, because their game strategy can be team destructive. When lone wolfs are purposely letting people die on hook when the team still has a decent chance to win the game, should that be considered sandbagging? When lone wolf survivors are excessively hiding instead of helping fix generators when the team still has a decent chance to win the game, should that be considered sandbagging?
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It doesn't seem to matter. Even if someone is outright hiding from the second they load in, do zero gens, zero unhooks, zero healing, only trying to get hatch, that seems to be perfectly fine for BHVR. A little odd.
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To be super honest, I would be happy if BHVR changed exit gate escapes, so they give 0 MMR if the survivors didn't repair 5 generators.
The meta lone wolf strategy is to equip sole survivor and wake up, hide until everyone else is dead while making sure you are hiding somewhat near an exit gate when the last survivor dies, then wait for the hatch to be closed so you can use sole survivor and wake up to open the gates at turbo speed. Because, as far as I know, when people do this strategy and escape through the gates, they are getting MMR even though there were still generators left to be repaired, and the gates were only powered because the hatch was closed.
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It's still a gamble, even if you load up on the right perks and optimally strategize for a solo escape. There are a lot of variables, and the best predictor of whether you escape is how many of your teammates remain alive.
That said, there is a point where you realize that one of you has a chance of getting out, and then only maybe (usually when down to two survs with multiple gens left). At that point, the calculus changes, and looking out for yourself becomes a sensible play. The way I usually play it is if there are two of us remaining, I will do whatever I can to makes sure one of us gets out, usually determining which one of us has the best odds (depending on hook states, health status, whatever). So I might give myself up if I feel the other has a better shot.
But to enter a game the plan of winning through attrition/luck? That's super lame, and poor strategy.
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I'm not sure why you need data from millions of games to figure that out.
The problem is that not only is the Survivor playing this way not increasing nor gaining MMR, in the process they are also tanking everyone else's MMR that HAVE decided to play as a team.
This is the problem with basing gain/loss solely on escaping.
To make matters worse with this new system, you are now going to lose even more MMR if everyone dies.
That makes absolutely no sense at all, the game was never designed to be based SOLELY off kills and escapes.
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You can always report ragequitting on the unsportsmanlike behavior button in end game and go beyond by sending enough tickets. I just believe nothing will happen because they know there may be circumstances that ppl just dont want to play that match but not resort to dcing. Now i suspect they probably have done something if that same player keeps getting so many ragequitting report tickets with video evidences piling up that they will do something. But i never seen it though. One would suspect if you do that every match, you'd probably just quit the game by now lol
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yea I had to dc for the second time this week....because tunneling is just too much even at 5 gens and nothing is getting done because people are dropping like flies or running the killer into all their teammates to save their own hides. I just can't. I understand they are trying, but this ######### gets ridiculous after 70% of my games I'm the one run down after being sandbagged over and over, then of course the person who killed their team gets hatch. I love this game but this game goes from fun to crippling depression the majority of the time. I want to remain hopeful but it's hard when the solo queue is as bad as a syphalis-infested swamp Petrie dish with every virus known to man that ######### you over again and again. Come on devs I'm still rooting for you, please don't let us down...
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I'm not a lone wolf - and i dont believe lone wolf = hiding and doing nothing fwiw - but I used to play completely altruistically/team-based until more recently. Too many bad team mates now. I'll still die for the good ones though. I don't see BHVR as promoting some sort of selfish play, just acknowledging that it exists and that it's okay. There are dailies and challenges that also encourage lone wolf play.
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People will moan about killers sweating for the 4K, but in my opinion “sweating” for the escape is just as tedious. If it gets to the stage where there are two survivors left and multiple gens need to be done just take your medicine and accept a very likely defeat. Work on gens, try and get in a good chase as practice and see what happens. It’s 50/50 on whether you or the remaining teammate will get caught first and that’s how it should be- if you wait for hatch before the point of the other teammate getting hooked then you’re lame.
And in the essence of fair criticism, if the killer slugs to look for the last survivor to ensure they don’t get hatch then they are also incredibly lame. The difference is however that slugging one survivor will at least see them bleed out in a few minutes causing the hatch to open. This is still not good (but base-kit UB will kill this off anyway if it ever comes) but people really shouldn’t be taking the game so seriously that matches are extended by 10/15 or even 20 minutes because survivors are locker hopping and not doing anything to progress the game.
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Main problem with the "only 2 survs left scenario" is, the surv who actually does the objective (working on a gen or wants to be chased) WILL die in most of these scenarios. Because it's not smart. When i do it, it's mainly to finally get out of the game as i find hiding boring aswell. Same with killers slugging for the 4K. The problem here isn't the killer, the problem is the hatch.
There's a simple solution. Survivors should be revealed to the killer (by killer instinct, not auras as survs can just hide in lockers) when they didn't touch a gen for like 3 minutes. It's just too easy to avoid or work arround the "crow system" we have since DBD was released.
It's only an idea ofc, would need some tweaks.
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However, you do have an influence over how players play.
One thing i havn´t figured out yet is this: 2 survivors are left, 1 or 2 gens left to do. I usually lose this, because i try to do a gen, while the other guy hides. So to survive, it would be far better to hide too. However, if both player hide, its holding the game hostage, and a bannable offence.
So basicly the other guy is doing something that is bannable, but only if i do the same, and then its bannable for both. But if i try to hide and dont know if the other guy does the same, why is me being banned reliable on the action of another player?
Maybe i got this wrong, and you can clarify this scenario for me.
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If it's not your place to tell us how to play, then why did we have a PTB that heavily nerfed slugging, and put killers in lose/lose situations when they are forced to slug? In addition, BHVR even buffed some of the survivor perk interactions, to make it even easier for killers to be punished when they are forced to slug.
The following are reasons why I'm forced to slug, where I literally can't get the survivor to a hook, that basekit unbreakable would punish me for:
1) Hook deadzones: which are sometimes there at the start of the game, or it can be created by a sacrificed survivor, a survivor currently on a hook, breakdown, or sabotage.
2) Artificial hook deadzones: which are created by a combination of boil over, flip flop, or bodyblocking survivors. Sometimes I can't pick up a survivor right away because of teammates, and by the time I can pick up the survivor, they have too much flip flop progress to hook. Sometimes a survivor is under a pallet with flip flip and power struggle.
3) Flashlights or toolboxes: sometimes I'm out in the open, and a survivor is in the area, and I need to leave the slugged survivor to deal with the flashlight user. And sometimes a survivor will be far off at the only hook in range, holding a toolbox and waiting to sabotage, and I need to leave the slugged survivor to deal with the toolbox user.
4) Survivor is missing: sometimes I need to leave a slugged survivor to chase someone else, and when I get back, the slugged survivor is hiding somewhere else, and I can't find them.
None of the above things were addressed in the PTB, so every time I was forced to slug, I was placed in a lose/lose situation. And there were Unbreakable/Flip Flop/Breakdown/Boil Over survivors that purposely tried to create these lose/lose situations, and it felt awful.
TD;LR That basekit unbreakable PTB told killers how to play, by telling them they would be punished for slugging survivors even though they sometimes literally can't hook a survivor and need to leave them slugged on the ground. So if we can tell killers that it's cool to heavily nerf slugging, can we also tell survivors that it's cool to heavily nerf lone wolf strategies?
Post edited by Coffeecrashing on1 -
Did you seriously just try to lecture a member of the BHVR team on how the game was intended to be designed?
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Hmm, in my experience the killer and survivor MMR work inversely to one another: while as a killer you could just let everyone go and thus tank your MMR till you reach a bracket were you are comfortable or even go all the way down and start stomping newbs, the same isn't true for survivors.
Yes, loosing will tank your MMR here too and pairing you off with more inexperienced killers, but so will your teammates. The rock-bottom is colloquially known as MMR hell, a place were your teammates are so afraid of the killer that they might hide in lockers all game, be scared of the sounds the gen makes while it is being repaired and am too frightened to approach a hook, even though the killer just injured a survivor on the other side of the map.
If you reach MMR hell, you'll need a lot of luck to win enough games to be paired of with halfway decent players or you might linger there for all eternity (imagine this being said in a spooky voice and with a reverb effect). At low level killers are much more deadly and even the best looper will eventually create a dead zone and get hit by a bloodlust boosted killer... and if your teammates are too afraid to do gens while you're chased for a solid 2min, then you might indeed stay in MMR hell for longer then you anticipated.
That's why losing as a Survivor is so much worse then losing a the killer. In both cases your MMR will take a hit, but in one case this will lead to easier games, while in the other one it will lead paradoxically to harder games.
I think BHVR has tweaked their MMR formula a bit, as it seems more often that you are paired of with at least two decent players and two newbies, massively increasing the chance of success, but the team MMR will help a lot in this regard.
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It's not 'them telling you how to play' it's that a small portion of the community is abusing the system and ruining it for everyone.
I personally don't think infinite unbreakable is healthy and should be scrapped, but the devs have been targeting a number of game mechanics lately that are used in 'toxic' and 'abusable' ways. Flashlights are the most recent example. The click delay in the last patch and the new 'immune to locker saves' in the newest PTB are all because *some* survivors are abusing the system and ruining it for everyone else.
The slugging changes are the same thing, but for killers. They want to cut down on slugging because some killers throw hatchets at a downed survivor for 4 minutes, and you're being affected by that change too, whenever it finally goes live.
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How is this different from the portion of the community that abuses the lone wolf strategy, to excessively hide the entire game, purposely let everyone else die, then try to escape as the last survivor?
And I can tell everyone right now, that when I play killer, that 100% of the time I let someone bleed out is because I couldn't guarantee a hook. There are a lot of survivors in my games that will purposely place themselves in situations where I can't guarantee a hook, and they will wiggle if I try to pick them up. The mori rework fixes the situation where all 4 survivors are dead or on the ground, but it makes forced slugging feel absolutely miserable in every other situation.
And the really big question is, why are there so many situations in this game where I'm forced to slug a survivor, and why did the mori rework completely ignore most of them?
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In those sorts of scenarios - 2 survivors and multiple gens left - I will always sit on a gen, even when the other person hides. It means my likely death but i dgaf at that point, as I consider myself dying while being the better (wo)man. Like okay, you can have hatch but just know you didnt necessarily deserve it. I'm not sure if my MMR has gone up recently or if people have had a change of attitude, but I'm finding more and more the other survivor will join me on my gen and it's pretty much equal opportunity lol
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