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Honestly speaking, the whole "matchmaking system" experiment is a joke and failure.
It has been said many times before they're updating it. Recently they've made a system for player who haven't been playing for quite a long time. And what do we face? New players are still getting matched vs high MMR tryhards, returning players are still facing those who have high MMR and play every day.
Stop acting like you are actually "fixing it" when it's a complete lie and it literally NEVER worked, never works and will never work.
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Sometimes there seem to be only good killers around.
I fear the system will never work like it should. Maybe i simply can´t.
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Haha what?
I played before MMR.
I played after MMR.
It's a million times better than it was under ranks, especially factoring in one week of every month being complete chaos due to the reset.
MMR isn't perfect, but it's definitely an improvement.
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As someone who played extensively under the rank system and under the MMR system, they feel the same.
Matches are completely random.
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Having played under old ranks and SBMM through its inception til now, they both feel similar at this point. They've continuously tweaked SBMM to resemble old ranks at this point. SBMM was good when it first launched, and it actually has great potential with a higher soft cap and bidirectional matchmaking. But I think the average forum user is someone who plays a ton and is fairly skilled, and that has never been BHVR'S target audience. Their target is likely newer players or sub 500 hr players, and that isn't anyone here as far as I can tell.
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Most people hate the new MMR system.
The old system was random assortment. Over a long enough timeline random assortment is the most fair model.
The current SBMM sucks. Why? Because the cap is way too low in an effort to make matches fast. In so doing fairness gets thrown out the window. As an aside : there is no MMR "adjustment" given to 2 man/3 man/4man SWF teams and there most certainly should be.
SWF bully squads who win over and over again should be sitting in the match making queue for 10+ minutes. And when they get a match it should be try hardiest tournament Nurse or Blight. The fact that they play with "regular" killers hurts the system. Why? Because if 100 survivors leave then 25 killers have fewer people to play with. But if 100 killers leave then 400 survivors have fewer people to play with.
Monthly rank resets were refreshing. You had good players playing bad players and the good players won and were quickly sifted to the "better player" pool. This was healthy for the game because new players could see how a strong killer played. And they could learn things by watching better players in their matches. The only bad side about this arrangement was that it led to people losing and then crying on the forums : why did I play against a 2k hour killer?
You had good players playing good players too. Generally speaking people got sorted into their appropriate colors quickly and everything worked well. When you got to "red ranks" in the old system everyone there was a pro. It was a very fun experience for high level play even in solo queue. There were no "pretenders" that could stay at red ranks for long if they didn't have the skill to play in that league. (we're talking about your stereotypical immersed claudette running self care with no botany who uses urban evasion to walk around the exterior map edges).
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Not sure how to break up posts, but okay. Let's drill down.
- Do they?
- Hahahaha what? No, no it isn't. I started out under ranks. I was facing reds within 10 games thanks to the ridiculous monthly reset. Within 3 weeks, I was in purples, and facing reds again. Me, with maybe 40 hours against people with 1000-2000, in SWFs.
- Is the cap way too low? AFAIK, we don't know what our MMRs are.
- MMR used to be a bit more fair, but they relaxed it after exactly what you're asking for happened. Endless queues.
- Right now, survivor is the unpopular role.
- You say 'refreshing'. I say 'awful'. It was probably fine for the experienced players, but it was an absolute misery as a newbie. It wasn't even something I could learn much from - just endlessly getting rolled.
- That is an entirely valid complaint. New players and 2k hour folks should not be getting paired up. I'm also confused. You condemn the MMR system for not being strict enough, but then say that newbies and experienced players constantly getting matched up was a good thing?
- And that's before how quick and easy it was to smurf your rating down. You can probably see some of my first forum posts were of the endless ultra-experienced folks in SWFs endlessly roflstomping newbies, then AFKing/suiciding matches out to drop rank again.
- Appropriate colors...what? I got into purple within my first month of playing, meaning I was facing red rankers half the time. And I barely had any idea what was going on - honestly, until red, the odd lucky streak could quickly inflate your rating, and it took a while to go back down again?
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-"You say 'refreshing'. I say 'awful'. It was probably fine for the experienced players, but it was an absolute misery as a newbie. It wasn't even something I could learn much from - just endlessly getting rolled."
"You condemn the MMR system for not being strict enough, but then say that newbies and experienced players constantly getting matched up was a good thing?"
It was totally fine to see good players as a noob when you were doing your "placement" games for the month when everyone was in the "white" zone.
Average players will develop bad habits that they think are good. But when they watch good players they will learn tricks that are actually much better. If good players never play average players then average players take a very long time to learn anything. Take a friend who has never played this game and give them a month with no instruction and just let them learn from playing (and no watching streamers or reading guides). Take a different friend and give them about 4 sessions of an hour (one per week) and let them play the rest of the month. The friend you teach directly will be miles ahead because he will know things that take hundreds if not thousands of hours to pick up otherwise.
If this game were going to be fair we would have MMR caps for certain killers. Let's say for example that Clown can't play against anyone over 1200 MMR as long as you are not using pinky finger. The numbers are arbitrary but you get the point. That would be fair for that killer as long as you don't use his uber addon. Doctor would probably need to have a 1000 MMR cap. Until we have some kind of protected match making where the game doesn't think Blight= Clown and Doctor=Nurse then random would be more fair.
-"And that's before how quick and easy it was to smurf your rating down. You can probably see some of my first forum posts were of the endless ultra-experienced folks in SWFs endlessly roflstomping newbies, then AFKing/suiciding matches out to drop rank again."
Smurfing is a big problem in almost any online competitive game. I've seen so many streamers play rainbow six siege in a team but they alternate who is smurfing so they can look good. Overall smurfing was really the only problem with the old system. I had a friend who played "no hook" Michael Myers for like an entire year and only about 30 people escaped. Most of the people who did were also smurfing.
To be perfectly honest SWF is kinda like smurfing because you're massively increasing your power level without being better at the game as an individual player.
The reality is DBD is probably never going to be balanced for anything other than very new players and the "middle" players who have not really learned how to play efficiently yet.
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Hmm...
I don't think you understand how a human brain works, or how we really learn things. If you give a grade schooler an advanced calculus question, they will get it wrong - but they aren't going to get much out of it. Similarly, if you put a newbie up against a 2k monster, they will lose, but not in a way they'll be able you understand.
The term often used is 'scaffolding' - you put someone up against something slightly challenging, and even if they fail the first time, they'll learn. Then, once they've surpassed that challenge, you move them up a level. This allows both the motivation of success and incremental learning to occur.
If you can find an archive, Otz did a fantastic series where he tutored a new survivor - and he wasn't charging at her and wiping her out from the get go. And sure enough, she improved - and that was the series that actually made me play survivor on and off.
Different MMRs for different killers...it's an idea, but not an elegant solution. And how would this account for survivors?
My point about smurfing was that then it was so easy that even Fog Whisperers were doing it openly. Now - it's both a bigger time commitment and a much less exact science.
That said, 'SWF is like smurfing' is...a take.
I play...probably intermediate-low MMR survivor and intermediate-high MMR killer (naturally no way of knowing, but the Steam profiles I check sometimes have about 1000-2000 hours) and I mostly get decent matches. Even when I lose, it seldom feels like I couldn't have won if I'd done certain things better.
The odd game that goes sideways and I either get paired against newbies or a monstrous TTV SWF are just that - exceptions.
This was not the case under ranks.
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So make ur own if it that easy 🤷♂️
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I think not putting out a system based solely off of Kills/Escapes would be a good start.
Have a map weight system. Total loops and strength of tiles/number of pallets or windows factor in to the total weight. If you lose as Killer on a highly Survivor-weighted map, you lose less points than if you'd have lost on a different map. If you win, you gain more as to reward you for overcoming a challenge stacked against you.
Give bonus points for high hook stages. Getting 10 hooks and 2 Kills shouldn't be weighted the same as getting 4 Hooks and 2 Kills. Reward fresh hooks as well, every fresh hook gives bonus points for being more skillful but going after the same Survivor doesn't detract points.
Record chase times for Survivor (or times where a Killer is within X meters). Give points per X seconds of chase. Give points per X seconds of gen progress. Points for sabotage plays within X meters of a Killer carrying a Survivor. Reward individual power counterplay, ie, taking a hit for a Survivor speared by Deathslinger, solving Pinhead's Box, etc etc. Reward altruistic actions, saviors shouldn't be punished by being put in lower MMR tiers.
This is just stuff off of the top of my head.
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Indeed the MM is either a complete lie or a broken thing that should be scrapped because it doesn't work at all. My experience is that the MM only "works" to match me with decent killers, but fails to match me with good teammates.
I don't know if this is on purpose (it definitely looks like) but the only thing that this promotes is very unfair and unbalanced games, people that dc or suicide, yes.. we blame our teammates for doing it but the devs are the ones to blame.. We need a working matchmaking and/or soloQ buff.
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"I don't think you understand how a human brain works, or how we really learn things"
I grew up playing games in arcades. If the person on the machine was too good for you to learn anything from your best bet was to just watch until they stopped playing. DBD is a rather easy game if you follow the simple premise of "money see, monkey do". Did you see the AT&T tournament where Dowsey turored some dbd noobs? They slaughtered the competition. One of the streamer's in the tournament was known for playing DBD as their main game. They came in something like 10/15th place.
-"Different MMRs for different killers...it's an idea, but not an elegant solution. And how would this account for survivors?"
Survivors are a skin so no difference. Your MMR would be inflated just for playing SWF. Your team total goes up by 200 MMR points for 2 linked people and it scales dramatically for each linked person. Three people in a swf would be at least 600 points and 4 people would be +1000 MMR. Yea that's extreme but that's one way to balance solo queue.
Alternatively we could have fair rules for the game so no MMR adjustement is needed. All I have been asking for a very long time is to make it so that when playing in a SWF there can be no repeats for : characters, items, perks or offerings. This would have almost zero impact on 2 man SWF teams. Along with this add a UI graphic to show what everyone wants to use on the ready up screen. When the party queues the game would lock all their selections except their costumes.
"the Steam profiles I check sometimes have about 1000-2000 hours"
You're playing in the goldilocks zone. I get mostly 3 man SWFs when I queue as killer. It's common for me to see players with 5000-10000 hours. I don't play nurse or blight so it's just not fun when I get handed a BS map that pretty much throws the game . In order for me to play a weaker Killer I often will instantly leave a lobby that has 3 medkits (and usually they have a boon too).
In short we're playing a completely different game. If you could log into my steam account you would probably lose 4/5 games in a row with 0-1 kills.
Every game is 4 survivors who want to try and finish three generators by the first hook. Which means I have to camp that hook to stage two and then when they get off I tunnel them out. It's so boring.....
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- As did I. And yes - the operative word here is 'tutored'. If Dowsey had just stuck them into a match with him and slaughtered them, they wouldn't have learned anything. My point being - why exactly do you think putting brand new players up against highly experienced players is good for the new players? I don't think either side would get much out of that arrangement.
- I've actually suggested ramping MMR for SWFs, but one of the devs responded that they tried it as a solution but didn't like it. About a year ago if I recall.
- They've also conclusively said that they will never balance SWFs differently to solos. It's another idea I...don't hate, and has been suggested many, many times over the years but it's not going to happen.
- 5000-10000 hours...uh. You must be pretty damn good at this game, because even Otz and co. don't face 10,000 players regularly at all. It's usually 3-4k, with anyone above that generally being another streamer. If that's the norm, then well done I guess.
- Not trying to be a jerk here, but your whole 'I wish new players still got put up against experienced players' thing does come over now a bit like 'I want easier matchups'.
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I played before and after MMR aswell and my survivor matches seem relativly random, so there is not a huge difference (but I dislike the lack of information, with the rank system atleast I knew if I was dealing with someone who was not playing like you would expect someone of their rank to play or if the system did weird match ups. The lack of info in MMR makes it imposssible to judge, are my matches like they are because of my rank or because the way they match me with other players?)
But as someone who does not play Killer much my experience got worse.
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-"They've also conclusively said that they will never balance SWFs differently to solos"
I understand why they have decided to "balance" the game this way. It's literally about keeping the 4/5ths happy. The result is that long term killers stop playing. The game needs new people cycling in to play killer because most people either don't want to play that role or can't play it well.
Literally everyone knows that premade teams are better than random teams with no communication. That's why most games limit how many friends you can bring to a match unless both sides are bringing a pre-made team. For 5.5 years the dev team said SWF isn't a big deal and offers little to no advantage. And then in year six they said : yea SWF gives up to a 15% escape rate - oops our bad. We're still not nerfing SWF tho.
-"You must be pretty damn good at this game"
I've been playing for 6 years and I watch lots of streamers to get better. I had 2x prestige 100 players tonight and a 8,900 hour player was my highest that was not private. I played Nemesis for 10 games and I killed everyone except 3 people got away on Torment Creek. I seem to lose every game on that map as Nemesis unless the opposing team is far below my caliber. I tried tunneling one survivor out but they did comp blocking and saved her twice. It was a SWF of at least two people (the rest were private profiles). The boons and medkits did not help.
"Not trying to be a jerk here, but your whole 'I wish new players still got put up against experienced players' thing does come over now a bit like 'I want easier matchups'."
I can see why you would say that. I want fair games like in the old days where I could focus on chases and not have to focus on 3 gens every game. The current meta is punish gen before friends by forcing someone to stage two and tunneling them out as a response to losing 2-3 gens when I get my first hook. That is just not fun to do every single game.
Aside from the smurfing problem DBD was more fun when your rank reset because you didn't have to dry off with a towel after every game. Every rank reset I feel like I'm going against the dream team in ash ranks.
I had a 20+ minute game on Abattoir in my 10 game set where the gens almost got completed about five times. I did not even have a proper three gen. This was really not fun I think for anyone in that game. Eventually most of the pallets were broken and I had full stacks/infection so it was impossible to escape a chase.
Several games later I had a 30+ minute game on Rotten Field where I had a three gen in a corner to win the match. They used an offering to start together , used voice coms to relay my position and then blasted the gen when I had pathed away. I lost two hooks - from some very clever and inventive SWF play (but not from their flashlight). I lost count how many times the gens went up to about 70-90% and I just walked the very close three gen circle until they completely reset. Then I chased someone for no more than ~35 seconds and either got a down or went back to the generators.
After this game my friend linked me the Hens game that lasted an hour. I immediately though : that looks familiar.
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- I think it's more that they want to incentivize SWF play, not discourage it.
- Yeah, you are probably MMR capped or close to it. Keep in mind that this puts you into the vanishingly small minority of elite players. The game...can't really be balanced to cater to you and this minority.
- I think you and I have a very different definition of 'fair'. Putting a newbie against someone with over 8,000 hours wouldn't be close to fair. It may be fun for you to have an easier, less sweaty time of it - but it's not going to be fun at all for the other players.
- Again, less sweaty for you. For your opponents getting completely and effortlessly rolled...not so much. This is unfortunately the big complaint I see from the crusty forum veterans - 'it was less sweaty for me before', without realizing that those crazy meme 50 win streaks came at the expense of players like me, at the time.
- Yes, at the top MMR, there's going to be a rigid meta and it's going to be sweaty. That's...high MMR play in most games. If you want less sweaty games, you'll need to ease up - and take a few dozen losses. But then you're basically smurfing.
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"I think it's more that they want to incentivize SWF play, not discourage it."
Fine: make a mode where you and 4 friends play against 5 other players. The killers exchange survivors and it becomes a mini tournament.
When I play vs 4 man SWF streamers I notice that listening to their coms makes for fair play. "He left me so I will use unbreakable" - immediate 180 turn to hook that person. "If he picks me up I have DS" - proceed to slug and wait out DS timer. One player announced they brought deliverance in a stream so I made sure to hook them first and slug anyone else I downed.
The simple reality is that SWF breaks the game. Bad SWF players who can rush gens on an unfair map will win vs a very good killer. That's not right. Take away the coms advantage and they melt. If DBD had a change: when your microphone activates your aura is revealed for the duration of your message +5 seconds that would make people rethink the situation.
"you are probably MMR capped or close to it"
-MMR doesn't cap. It's just that once you hit 1600 every rating is technically 1600. So if I see a 4 man 10k lobby with 4 medkits (40k hrs) and dodge it - the next one might also be 1600 with no items and 2 solo players. The game tries to match you up with someone with fair skill. The problem is that there is no adjustment for SWF. That's not fair.
"-Putting a newbie against someone with over 8,000 hours wouldn't be close to fair."
Noobs get protected match making so that's a non issue. Getting a top tier blight once per month at the start of rank reset is a good learning experience.
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- It's a cute idea, but it would be a lot of work for a very niche game-mode. The 4v1 APVP thing is sort of what DbD's identity is.
- The mic idea is impossible to implement, and I can already think of 4 easy ways to bypass it.
- Tomato tomahto. MMR was a lot fairer initially, but people complained bitterly about 8 minute queues so they relaxed it. It's still better than ranks though, even with me starting to (probably) push into higher MMRs on my Hag and Artist, and facing forum familiars and the odd streamer group.
- That protected MMR doesn't last long at all. And no, no it's not. Firstly, it's not once - it's basically a week. And secondly, it's a massive motivation killer.
Look, I get it. You used to have more 'fun' matches under ranks, because you're an elite player - due to the randomness - you were facing substantially easier opponents, and could just meme around and still win. That may be fun for you, but it's awful for everyone else.
Elite players should be facing other elite players. New players should be facing new players. Intermediate players...you see where I'm going with this. Because those are fair matches, as so far as this game can be fair.
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"You used to have more 'fun' matches under ranks, because you're an elite player"
- It's really not like that. Imagine we played a card game called I win you lose. It's possible you would win but you don't know the rules so you almost certainly will not. This is a rigged game (and yes it actually has a list of rules). DBD is a rigged game as soon as you're no longer talking about randomly arranged solo queue players. Dbd is rigged even more as you move out of the "middle MMR" bracket.
It would be one thing if they refused to balance high level play and you could just "opt out" of the match maker. Your games would be fine and whomever you play with would probably not have fun. DBD shouldn't be a game where after X rank you can play less than one third of the killer roster and feel you have a fair chance of winning.
On some level it's like what the computer says at the end of the movie : War Games.
In order to attempt fair games I have to look at everyone's friend list to deduce who is paired up. That's a 3 man with lots of items dodge. That's two teams of 2 swf each and they used a heart locket - Oh no that always makes my game crash.
The reality is that dbd has balancing befitting a game you will play 20 hours and never play it again.
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In terms of APVP games like this? DbD is astonishingly well balanced. Think back to the infinite stuns of F13 or...well, Evolve.
SWF is tricky, but the current balance philosophy seems to be tuned around killer versus SWF - and, even compared to a year ago, it's not bad.
I watch a lot of streams, and Otz and co (who have a similar number of hours to you) do pretty decently on weak killers like Sadako, Knight and Trapper.
Could MMR be better? Sure.
Do I agree with your assertion that ranks were fairer overall, or that putting a 50 hour player up against people with 20x those hours is something good or worth aspiring to? Absolutely not.
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