New Stats! (Feb 15th 2024)
Comments
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I said more accurate not perfect. Can't make the perfect system, that doesn't mean don't make a better one.
Also if all the survivors are slugged, that's still the killer getting 4 kills. Why would you exempt those?
We're talking about self sacrificing that undermines the match. If you're the 2nd to last survivor the match is already over, so no those would be counted normally.
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Stats are fun. They can only show things to look into not what needs adjustment. These stats do this big time. I am glad we get to see them but am worried about too many focusing on the wrong aspects of them.
My favorite spot is what are the most used perks. I do feel that adjusting the most used leads to more people diversifying their play which can help to spice the game up for all.
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You're just repeating the same mistake.
The average match =/= average win rate. Kill rate =/= win rate. They are incredibly loosely related. Some killers have higher win rates on lower kill rates.
That means IF killers all had a 62.5% kill rate on average, then on average, they would be winning every other match, as the 2 isn't enough to win, but the .5 carries over into other matches (averaging, remember) which would then be a 3k for a win.
This is not true. This is blatantly, demonstrably, not true. That is the mistake I was pointing out. You are using the outcome of an average match to substitute for the actual winrate. They wouldn't be winning, on average, every other match. They would be winning every other average match. But the 'average match' never gets played. Think about it: If your theory was true, the overwhelming majority of matches should be 2Ks. How many 2Ks do you encounter, compared to all the other outcomes?
Again, they are unrelated. And no, a 62.5% kill rate would not become a 50% winrate. It'd likely sit closer to 60% winrate, if not higher, going by current statistics.
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sorry I mean I’ve been in a good bit of matches where they are letting more than 1 person go, and it’s very noticeable they weren’t trying(maybe a daily or something). Like the whole team is out. Not saying it’s like an issue or anything but it’s noticeable. Also the amount of times I’ve seen a killer purposefully not 4k is a very large amount. Again not saying it’s positive or negative but it’s still a good amount also skewing the data.
and like yeah maybe possibly you’re right bc 1 person suiciding on the hook basically dooms everyone else but that one person at the end that could possibly maybe get hatch.
in my survivor experience though most matches end with hatch spawning with the gens not being completed. So to throw out that very large amount of data would be wild, which is kinda another reason I want hatch gone bc it messes with data. The survivors suiciding idk they should make it impossible to do if it’s that big of an issue? I rarely(maybe 1/10 matches) see it, but I do see it. Could be different numbers for other people.
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If you seriously think the amount of kills in a match has nothing to do with a win or loss, then I don't know what to tell you.
Also, the 62.5% is the halfway point between 50% (a 2k, not a win) and 75% (a 3k, the minimum needed for a win). That's an average of 2.5 kills a match. Over the course of several matches, that averages out to winning half the matches.
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Also, the 62.5% is the halfway point between 50% (a 2k, not a win) and 75% (a 3k, the minimum needed for a win). That's an average of 2.5 kills a match. Over the course of several matches, that averages out to winning half the matches.
You can keep re-stating it, it's still wrong.
If you seriously think the amount of kills in a match has nothing to do with a win or loss, then I don't know what to tell you.
I know what to tell you though.
2 matches. 50% win-rate.
Match 1: 2K -- Match 2: 4K -- Killrate: 75%
Match 1: 0K -- Match 2: 4K -- Killrate: 50%
Match 1: 0K -- Match 2: 3K -- Killrate: 37.5%
All of those datasets set up for 50% winrate, with a killrate as low as 37.5%, up to 75%.
This is why you can't infer winrates from killrates. Sure, higher killrates make it harder and harder to have a low winrate, but you can't take a certain killrate and say 'This should result in X% winrate'. It doesn't work like that.
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And alarm clocks grant permanent immunity to falling asleep.
Perfectly balanced.
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In my experience, the amount of the games where a killer is memeing is far rarer than the ones where a survivor kills themselves on first hook.
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We can just agree to disagree fundamentally on that because I'm unsure who decided that 75%/3k is the criteria for a win but I disagree. A 2k that ended with 7-9 hooks is still a win and a close game in my books but that's where I'm sure we just disagree on mindsets.
And with the way I play survivor, especially against a really strong killer, if I'm able to make a play that allows even 1 person to escape because I kept the killer occupied long enough or took them far away enough for a teammate to complete an objective, that's a "win" in my book. But again, that's just a mindset thing and I can see your definition of winning is different from mine.
My whole point was that it seemed like a silly argument to say that one side of an asymmetrical game should be this monumental challenge but for some reason, not want the other side to be???? That was my confusion
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The amount of times I see someone sending themselves through hookstages probably is equal to the number of times I see the killer give up their guaranteed 4k for a hatch for the last survivor.
In my experience the experience between them suiciding on hook, and the killer tunneling out early on is both equally miserable and has the exact same outcome(just my teammate was the real killer this time). So like from a player perspective nothing new really as far as outcome being in a 3v1 early on. From a statistic perspective yeah that skews data, I’m not saying it doesn’t.
why does it matter what happens more the killer meme,survivors meme, suicides, or intentional throws on both sides, or the killer giving mercy outs? It all skews data from legit representation. I can also say that killers “tunneling” also inflates kill rates and is harmful bc they wouldn’t get the buffs they actually need if they used other tactics(ie pressuring survivors outside of the hooked survivor areas) so that they can be genuinely looked at for overall performance. There’s a lot of variables to consider is all I’m saying.
TBF I also don’t think they should consider any data off new killers within the first 90 days bc ppl don’t know how to play them, and ppl don’t know how to counter them. So any feedback within the first 90 days should be taken with a grain of salt.
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The devs decided that a 3-4K is a win for the killer. A 2K is a tie and anything less is a loss.
That's the criteria they outlined when they released the MMR system. The number of hooks isn't important, the number of kills are.
Just for more info on the survivor side it only cares if specifically you escape, nothing about your team.
Hatch is considered a null entry. Not a win or loss just... Hatch I guess lol.
Just answering your question, not taking a stance. I think hooks should be factored in. But rn they're not.
Post edited by MrPenguin on1 -
While I agree that tunneling is probably preventing other strats from getting stronger, the difference there is that tunneling is fully intended and allowed by the Devs and you're still trying to win/participate in the match.
I don't think giving up at first down because you got Skull merchant, got the Saloon map, or whatever other bad vibes fits into the same criteria.
Not saying I agree with that decision completely, but I'm not the one making the rules.
From what I've seen and seen others say, for the majority of players survivors sacrifice themselves frequently enough to be a concern and killers giving mercy escapes are a rarity. Especially if it's anything more than hatch.
Which if that's the majority that means the kill rates would be a lot more inflated than the escape rates could be. In comparison to a normal played out match at least. Which would mean in normal games survivors have a higher than intended escape rate a.k.a. are stronger than they should be. At least going off of this.
Could the survivor voices of the community be massively over exaggerating? Yeah. They also were saying solo is incredibly weak and almost impossible to escape in yet here we are with it pretty much at the goal escape rate.
Post edited by MrPenguin on0 -
Yeah. I see what you mean.
Survivor's pretty easy to view as a team game. Even the devs talk about it like its a team game. The surprising part to me is that the MMR doesn't view it that way. Probably the root of some of its problems (but not all of them).
If a large number of people are in the "4K or bust" mindset, then no wonder they're unhappy as killer. I rarely 4K, partially because I give hatch in, like, 80-90% of the games where I could 4K. Based on hatch simply existing, I'd say the game is balanced around killers getting 2Ks and 3Ks.
What I don't understand is, people don't tend to talk as much about winning all the time in other PVP games, like Destiny 2 and Overwatch (I'm using those because I played them). Is it just because those games have designated casual playlists (Control for D2 and Quickplay for Overwatch) and designated sweaty plalists (D2: Trials of Osiris, OW: Comp)? Is it something about DBD's lack of a specific "win" condition for killers that makes people focus about winrates? Or is it because DBD is asymmetrical and that just lends to "us vs them"?
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At which point can we use data to start talking about balance. Either side could have 100% win rate and they would still defend themselves with this nonsense. Surely at some point a high percentage means something is going on.
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Use them to discuss balance whenever you want. Just don't go around making up stuff about them to fit your narrative or using them as a way to insult people.
If you want to talk about how you think the stats show X Killer is over/underperforming and why or why you think one role might need some changes, go for it.
I'm talking about the people who are using it to say stuff like "SEE??? KILL RATES ARE OVER 50% I KNEW KILLER MAINS WERE ENTITLED LIARS!!!!" or using it as a way to insult people. Or twisting the stats to suit whatever narrative works best for you. For example there are people here saying 3% difference between SWF and solo means all killers are bad and SWF is balanced, and others saying it means survivors are liars and solo is easy. Same statistics but used to fit whichever narrative they want. Don't do that.
Discuss balance all you want, just don't use them as a weapon.
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I don’t disagree with you in a large majority of this.
Idk though solo is pretty rough the lions share of the time, experiences may vary based on other variables. Which we can get into if you want. I imagine people that haven’t been playing for years and learned a large majority of the rosters counters, or how to counter certain tactics especially are not having a good time if their goal is to survive the match. So unless a bunch of ppl are lying about tunneling being the only viable option to get that 3k-4k consistently, tunneling being a doom for the entire team basically, and the sheer amount of people that complain about it, plus mix that with needing everyone on the team to pull their weight in a normal match against a killer that knows how to pressure, plus having in game knowledge, I’d say they aren’t lying about not having a good time considering a very large amount of the player base isn’t an 8k hour streamer or someone that exclusively plays this game for hours on end and learns(no shade to them, I appreciate them) just saying the experience levels are going to be night and day and therefore experiences are going to be drastically different.
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Individual experiences may vary sure, but for the overall game this seem to be the general state of things. As far as I can infer at least.
I think solo just feels worse than it actually is for many and it's easy to blame solo que strangers or the killer than look at yourself for things not going well. That's true of every team based game I ever played, "blame the randoms" is the go to for most players.
The same average survivors who are giving Pig, Freddy, and Dredge top 10 kill rates are also the ones giving solo que the goal survival rate. It's not 8K hour players who are disgusting at the game and know every counter and every loop like the back of their hand, it's the average low skill Andys. They're the same players giving solo and SWF near identical rates.
No offense intended to anyone, but some of these claims made by some (or many) vocal members have to be either large over exaggerations (intentional or not) or just a big case of "skill issue". As much as I don't like throwing that term out.
You can't have supposedly basically every killer tunnel (a very common claim), have that be OP and "dooming the entire team", yet still have the current balance goal survival rate.
Killers in general can't be viable without tunneling when supposedly with almost every killer tunneling they are still only around balanced level, averaging a little under. Either killers aren't tunneling much or tunneling isn't OP if they are.
Solo can't be super weak and almost impossible to escape in and SWF hugely advantageous by comparison, when both their escape rates are only ~2.5% apart and at goal. Unless you're talking about high level play where SWF is actually way stronger but solo is still fine. But most players aren't there.
As far as I can tell at least, these things are non-compatible. Even more so if the kill rates are actually inflated.
That said, solo feeling like trash is still a problem. But if the problem is the players themselves and their mindset I don't know how much we can do to change that.
If the problem is just that too many survivors are bad at the game, you can't really fix that either.
Tunneling feels bad to most to be on the receiving end of, that's a problem we can maybe actually do something significant about. But that's a whole different conversation about majorly changing the game, not just stats and what we might be able to infer from them.
Post edited by MrPenguin on2 -
BHVR staff doesn't work on weekends, fyi.
But if I had to guess, I'd say they are counted as escapes.
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It doesn't count for MMR, it wouldn't be surprising if it doesn't count here as well. It would be nice to know for sure if they ever get around to answering it.
Although my guess is also that it does.
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We don’t really know what the cut offs are for low to mid MMR. More players could be in the “low” MMR category than mid.
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A 2k is a tie as it's the very middle of the road. 3k and 4k are wins and 1k and 0k are losses. 60% kill rate comes out to an average of 2.4 kills per game. This means killers have an average win rate of 40% of their games, and survs are winning 40% of their games.
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The boops are greatly appreciated! 🐷🐽
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That is not how that works, that 2.4K is the outcome of the average match, it is not the average win rate. The average win rate is considerably higher, judging by the Nightlight statistics.
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@Firellius points out that this presumes an even distribution, which is unlikely true.
But even if we had an even distribution, you can't just take 2.4 and round it down to 2.0. If the distribution was roughly even you'd need more games on the 3k / 4k side.
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Fair point, but it seems to be the math they're using. Nightlight doesn't provide the full picture, either.
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The thing about Nightlight, and I agree that they have limitations, is that when BHVR releases stats we can compare Nightlight and the ones that were released. BHVR had an overall kill rate of 58.5%, while Nightlight has it at 56.93%. So Nightlight is actually a little lower than BHVR on the kills, but they are in the same general area. So if they are in the same general area of kills, they should also be in the same area of wins, which means we can get a rough comparison between kills and wins.
If you go killer by killer on Nightlight their win rate is usually 6 to 8% lower than the kill rate. There are a couple of outliers, with Wraith, Skull Merchant, Twins, and Sadako whose win rates are only 2 to 4% lower than the kill rate. The only killer who has a higher rate is Cannibal, whose win rate is 9% less than his kill rate.
Now is it possible that BHVR and Nightlight's data lines up on the kill rates, but for some reason the win rates are wildly different? Sure, I just have no idea what would cause that. Thus it seems logical that if you have the killer's kill rate, their win rate is probably 5 to 10% lower than that. Then you'll have 11 to 16% 2ks.
Now that is two ranges with a 5% variance which isn't great, but it does roughly give you the rate of killer wins vs survivor.
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The mental olympics of pretending stats don't mean anything have begun again.
The game is (and has most of always been) statistically killer-sided in its main gamemode. That is simply a fact, that is what these stats mean. Even an average player is expected to kill more survivors than escape against them over the course of their matches, even at "high MMR", and regardless of the killer character they choose to play. Even regardless of the map the match is being played on, at least according to past stats (the least deadly killer on the least deadly map still boasting a killrate above 50%). If you're better than average, you are likely killing the majority of survivors you get. And if you're good, you're likely barely ever having anyone escape. This is also a demonstrable fact as winrates of 90+% and winstreaks (at times of hundreds and thousands of matches) are completely commonplace among good killer players, evidenced by streams and videos.
The fact that even high MMR 4-player SWFs (which constitute a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase, and the strongest configuration survivors can present) on average aren't getting 2 survivors out of the gates is staggering. Consider on top of this that matches with disconnects (which typically happen when survivors get demolished, or regularly mean that they will get demolished thereafter) are excluded entirely, deflating the killrate, and that hatch escapes (which typically happen when survivors got demolished) are included, inflating the survival rate. And yet still, even high MMR SWF groups consisting of 4 players are not averaging 2 escapes. That suggests a grim reality for the average survivor experience.
To address a few things that can regularly be seen in response to stats:
Nurse not having the highest killrate across all MMR ranges does not mean the stats are nonsense. It is nonsense to expect that. Why would we expect the average player to play killers to their full potential? It is obvious to understand that the most deadly killers on a global average will precisely be those that do not have to be played at a high level to be strong. The ratio of the ease of playing a killer as compared to their lethality (particularly in the sense of the difficulty of playing against them) is the majorly determining factor for average killrates. It makes perfect sense that killers like Merchant and Plague are high up in the stats because their abilities are very easy to use and very problematic for survivors. Nurse particularly is the only killer in the game that can never fall back on normal chase mechanics, it could not be more self-evident why she tends to have some of the lowest average killrates. There's just countless new, average and intermediate players not doing well with her because she requires a wholly unique skillset. What has to additionally be considered is that console stats are of course included here, and Nurse is among various killers that are significantly limited by the input potential controllers provide. Even just looking at PC-only stats would in all likeliness already bump her rates up quite a bit even on a global average scale. And last time we got stats on killers in high MMR, Nurse obviously was among the top 4 most deadly killers. The further up in MMR you look, the more the killrates would line up with common sense on who the strongest killers are. There are Nurse and Blight 4k streaks spanning thousands of matches, those players will have the highest MMR, meaning Nurse and Blight at that point would show up as the top 2 killers with 99.X% killrates.
"A 60% killrate isn't a 60% winrate" is not the argument some may think it is. The higher the killrate, the higher the winrate, that follows imperatively. What also follows logically is that the higher the killrate, the lower the survival rate - and the lower in turn the winrate for survivors. So if you want to make an argument about the winrate, you have to keep in mind that the 60% killrate means killers also have a higher winrate than survivors. So it's ultimately a moot point. Just because the killer winrate may not be above 50% (we do not know this, and there is no way to infer this from the stats without seeing actual kill distributions) does not mean they are underperforming, because the survivor winrate certainly would also not be above 50% (again because the killrate statistically dictates that the killer winrate is higher than the survivor winrate). It would just mean draws are fairly common, with killer wins being more common than survivor wins.
The people that argue "well, a 60% killrate is what BHVR aims for so things are in a pretty good spot" I can appreciate for at least not letting their bias run wild and claim the stats to be meaningless, instead saying the game is supposed to be killer-sided on average so it being so is not an issue. But for one thing you have to actually embrace what that means and in the future try and refrain from assuming the position that the game is survivor-sided and BHVR caters to survivors, since it is factually killer-sided (in its main game mode, meaning public matchmaking) and BHVR intentionally caters to killers on live balance. And for another, you will surely understand that "BHVR aims for it" is not a be-all-end-all argument. There can be arguments that their target is misguided. Personally I think 60% average killrates would be a fine target if disconnects were to be included and hatch escapes excluded. These things significantly affect the survivor playing experience in any match in which they happen, so to design the game in a way where stats completely ignore these realities to me renders the game too one-sided. Think of all the matches in which survivors get demolished with multiple gens left standing and the last survivor happens to get the hatch - all of those have a 25% survival rate, meaning even matches which survivors lose horribly can still contribute significantly to their overall survival rate. And one more reason to exclude these escapes is the fact that the killer can go out of their way to make hatch escapes nearly impossible, if they simply so desire. Many players don't, but since they can refrain from killing one of the two last remaining survivors virtually indefinitely and circumvent the hatch mechanic fairly reliably, the hatch balance-wise should not inform decisions being made to benefit killers based on their killrate that is deflated by the hatch. To note: I won't argue they should aim for a perfect 60% killrate with disconnects included and hatch escapes excluded (if anything they should improve the 2v1 game scenario that is often a stalemate tilted in the killer's favour, such as by enabling the survivors to kill themselves in the dying state), but at the very least they should look at those stats too and make sure the deviation from the 60% ideal is not more than 2-3%. Hell, maybe count hatch escapes as half an escape. If the killrate without disconnects and with hatch escapes then turns out to coalesce around 50-55% for most killers, so be it. I also think 4-player SWFs should have a 50% average survival rate, although disconnects can be excluded and hatch escapes included in this instance (because full premade groups are only screwing over each other by disconnecting rather than strangers, and because full premade groups can actually coordinate hatch escapes fairly reliably). The game at its core is balanced for the idea of 4 random survivors that have no means of coordinating their builds, plays and strategies, nor to have external communications. If the balance target for that is a 60% killrate, that is fine. But once you have full premade groups of survivors, the game changes completely, and to try and maintain a 60% killrate in that environment would lead the base game balance far astray.
"Solo queue is fine and the gap to SWF has been bridged" is not quite accurate, in multiple respects. First things first, even a difference of 3% is quite significant when looking at sample sizes of millions upon millions of matches. Just think of the fact that 3% can literally be the difference between a killer being top 5 or top 20 in terms of killrate. And in the high MMR bracket, the difference between solo and 4-SWF is 9%. Secondly, like I noted in the previous point, disconnects and hatch escapes affect these rates, and they should be treated differently for solos and SWFs, widening the gap. Then the experience is also different: If in solo queue you die, you will not all too regularly care or even know whether your fellow survivors escaped; in SWF, people are more so actually playing for the team result. A 40% survival rate in solo feels much worse than one in SWF because in solo that means on average you die more than half the time and consider the match a loss, whereas in SWF even if you do die you can still be happy that 1-2 (1.6) of your friends made it out alive. And finally, the gameplay gap between SWF and solo cannot be bridged and it would therefore be asinine to try and bridge it statistically. The differing experiences and potentials simply yield a completely different game (which is a good thing, solo being much closer to the survival horror theme, SWF making it more of a competitive strategic multiplayer) - if a 40% survival rate is the target for solo, it should always be expected that 4-player SWFs will be notably above that, and that is fine. That said, I do want there to be loadout restrictions implemented for SWF, such that any offering, perk, item or add-on can only be present at most 1 time between the party members. At the very least for 4-player SWFs. I don't actually suspect this will decrease their survival rate all too significantly. But it would limit their ridiculous potential ceiling, and at the same time free up design space to make perks (and items/add-ons/offerings) more powerful since they then don't have to be designed with the possibility in mind of coordinated premades abusing multiple instances of them. And more powerful perks existing of course help solos, especially since they can still happen to have multiple instances of them.
"The game is survivor-sided at the highest levels of play so this doesn't matter" - Quite a few issues with statements of this sort. Above all, it's ludicrous to say millions of players' playing experience should not matter for the balance design. Even if the game were to be survivor-sided at a base balance level if you have the best players competing, BHVR designs the game for the live balance environment that actually matters when it comes to the actual playing experience actual players in your game are actually having, which is what these stats capture. It is absurd to even entertain this idea because the "highest levels of play" simply do not exist in this game's matchmaking. Actual top teams of survivors basically never play pubs, and in the exceedingly rare cases where they do, they basically never actually play like they would in a tournament (much the opposite). You can go for 8 years and 10000 hours of playing this game without ever encountering even just 1 top tournament team in your pub matches. Ask any player that has played since 2016 how often they have faced an actual top tournament team in pubs. It never happens. And even if it were to happen 1 time in 8 years or whatever, it still in all likeliness wouldn't be a match where they bring 4 BNPs, do gens and get out - it would more likely be a match where they bring 4 flashbangs and 4 Head Ons and all die after having fun in main for 15 minutes. Moreover, that is only half of the equation of course: for it to constitute an actual "highest levels of play" match where the balance for this would be relevant, not only would you need to have such a top tournament team with top loadouts, but they would also have to meet a top tournament killer with a top loadout. I would not be surprised if this has not happened even just once in the history of this game. The next issue is that not only does balancing for the highest level not matter even in tournaments (balance is established by the fact that both teams play both sides, plus tournaments can implement custom rulesets), but tournaments go to show that the game is not even all that survivor-sided at the highest levels. In tournaments and showmatches without loadout restrictions, Nurse, Blight and Spirit have outperformed survivors. And in tournaments with restrictions (applying to both survivors and killers), most killers perform perfectly well, with 3-4ks being commonplace, average killrates being above 50% and skill still making a huge difference in the results. These killer players can compete with top survivor teams that practice together all the time, have high levels of coordination and communication, and we want the entire game balanced around that when even just 4-player SWFs using voice comms are unlikely to constitute even 1% of the overall playerbase, let alone then also being highly skilled, coordinated and playing like they are in a tournament?
"Killers are better at the game than survivors so it's a skill issue not a balance issue" - First of all, nobody is a "killer" or "survivor". There are simply players and they may (and countless of them do) at any point choose to play either role. Furthermore, every player is simply human. There is no reason whatsoever to assume players playing killer are better at the game on average than players playing survivor. Statistically, both have to be assumed to be precisely that, average skilled. The only way skill could then relate to the rates would be that playing survivor is simply more difficult for humans than playing killer. Which I don't really think is true (killer is easier at the beginning because survivors have to proactively lead the most mechanically skill-based aspect of the game, namely chases; then survivor is easier at intermediate levels of experience because killers have to battle against mounting gen pressure; and at the advanced and expert levels killer and survivor can be said to be about equally difficult, much in dependence on killer, map and loadouts at play). But even if it were true that survivor is more difficult for humans to play and that's why the rates favour killers, and hell, even if it were true that for some reason players playing survivor on average are just worse at the game despite survivor not being more difficult to play, the reality would still be that with the current game balance state, the result favours killers to the detriment of the average survivor experience, so if the rates were to be deemed undesirable, the reasons wouldn't matter, they would still be looking to improve survival rates.
To touch on some of my opinions surrounding these stats:
The "high MMR" range is simply still much too broad a spectrum to actually show problems that experienced players are aware of. Even if it is only 5% of the playerbase, it has to be kept in mind that huge swathes of the playerbase are sub-100-hour newbies. Look at the 1% and 0.1% of playerbase and you will see that there are a lot of killers out there that are basically never losing or even having anyone escape, especially on characters such as Nurse and Blight, as well as a whole bunch of SWF survivors that are almost always escaping. The issue precisely is that "high MMR" is capped and matches the 0.1% among the 5%, meaning a Knightlight even 500 matches into his "no loadout Nurse 4k streak" can regularly face a Meg that thinks hunting for dull totems is a great idea to counter NOED (all the more so against Nurse, of course). There is a plethora of players in your game that can and do demolish 99-100% of the opponents they get, that is a huge problem. It has to do with the matchmaking (remove the "soft" cap, make the matchmaker less lenient), and with the overpoweredness of specific killers (nerf them - most of all Nurse, Blight and Spirit), specific strategies that still need rebalancing (mostly tunnelling and camping, 3-genning to a lesser extent), specific maps (a few being too killer-sided, a bunch too survivor-sided) and SWF (implement loadout restrictions for SWF, at the very least for 4-SWF).
On the flipside, there are also quite a few killers that will need to be buffed to be able to compete in such an environment where the matchmaking is less lenient and tunnelling/camping rebalanced. Same for solo survivors. Billy is a great example for a killer that was lifted to a state where he is now viable in a competitive matchup. The same thing would have to happen for about one third of the cast (for most other killers slight basekit adjustments and add-on changes would suffice). Solo survivors would already benefit a lot from tunnel/camp/3-gen rebalancing, and more HUD improvements (such as seeing each other's loadouts) can be a great help (the latter can even be part of the solution for the former).
The major reasons why killrates are and have most of always been as high as they are I think are the following: Skill and sweat is much more impactful on the killer side. This is simply because on the survivor side you have 4 players, which have varying levels of skill and of trying to win, with weak links of subpar players that can doom an entire match even if the other 3 players are better than the killer player, and with people not playing in earnest (i. e. not trying to win, but to do funny or stupid things, or tome challenges, or at least not trying hard to win, or just playing for hatch). On the killer side, there is 1 player, their skill level therefore obviously determines 100% of their skill-based performance potential, their degree of "trying to win" 100% of how sweaty their side will be. Any survivor on the other hand can only determine 25% of their side's skill and sweat levels. There is the disparity in strategical game approach as well - again, with 4 players things can be very disconcerted and downright chaotic, whereas on the killer side, even if their approach to the game may not necessarily be good, at least their approach is as concerted as can be, the decisions they make translate into the game as well as the gameplay design allows for them to. The asymmetric nature of this game favours the killer player's skill, tryhardiness and decision-making to have a more notable impact on the outcome of matches. And this of course starts before the match has even begun, at the loadout screen (it is infinitely more common to have a killer that has the best thing equipped in every slot than an entire group of survivors doing the same, again simply because they are 4 players - when have you last seen even just 4 BNPs in a match?). From this viewpoint a 60/40 ratio may also seem sensible, although it further supports the idea that remedying the tunnelling issue is paramount to alleviate the negative impact a weak link can have on the survivor side (and this wouldn't necessarily have to happen by nerfing tunnelling itself (although that seems like the preferable route), it could also be something like increasing generator repair speeds for the remaining survivors if someone dies). The next major reason for the high killrates I think is simply that the game is actually a bit killer-sided in its basic competitive premise, which is the idea that all 5 players are roughly equally skilled and experienced and trying to win, and that the 4 survivors are randoms that have no coordination or communication. Of course it depends on the killer, map and loadouts too, but as long as the killer is using good add-ons and a sensible build, I think about half the killer cast is actually favoured to kill more often than not in that base balance premise.
There is much more that could be said but I've clearly already said too much as is. I don't really care about balance bickering much anymore anyway, these days I mostly play 4-SWF with voice comms with other good players so I have no issues winning 80-90% of our matches, and on killer I haven't in years had issues winning to begin with. If this post has a purpose it's saying BHVR has to do something about the atrocious matchmaking that allows good players to basically never lose (as killer or in 4-SWFs). They don't even have to have it affect 99% of the playerbase, just make the matchmaker much more strict at the highest MMR levels. And bring down the performance potentials of some of the most egregious killers, maps and 4-SWF. I guarantee BHVR knows this perfectly well, they have the stats, they can see the kill and survival rates of the 0.1%, and the fact that they are almost never facing each other.
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@zarr your post is probably too long and too late to make much of an impact, but I read it and thought you were spot on pretty much everything.
A few comments:
Consider on top of this that matches with disconnects (which typically happen when survivors get demolished, or regularly mean that they will get demolished thereafter) are excluded entirelyYeah, I wonder why this doesn't get pointed out more. Survivors sometimes DC just because they don't like the killer, but lots of times its because they got downed early. Which means if they actually played it out, it likely would have resulted in a 3 or 4k, and removing those games delates the kill rate.
not only would you need to have such a top tournament team with top loadouts, but they would also have to meet a top tournament killer with a top loadout. I would not be surprised if this has not happened even just once in the history of this game.That's an interesting hypothetical. I agree that it would be vanishingly rare, but interesting to think if ever. I'll say given the propensity of people playing for streaks its probably happened where you have killers and SWFs trying win streaks running into each other, but that's really the only circumstance I can think of to get the sweatiest level of each style of play randomly matched up.
Stream sniping trying to break streaks would be the only other possibility of such a matchup, but that isn't really getting randomly matched.
killer is easier at the beginning because survivors have to proactively lead the most mechanically skill-based aspect of the game, namely chases; then survivor is easier at intermediate levels of experience because killers have to battle against mounting gen pressure; and at the advanced and expert levels killer and survivor can be said to be about equally difficult, much in dependence on killer, map and loadouts at playOne thing I'd like to add to this good point: killer and survivor are improving different skill sets. Survivors are improving reflex/response time. When looping around pallet/rock the success is going to depend basically on the survivor response time. The killer can throw mind games in, but the key is how fast the survivor can respond to them to determine whether a hook occurs. The killer, especially outside the throwers, don't have a mechanical skill, success comes down to things like game sense. Is it worth it to keep chasing around that rock, or is there some other issue that is more pressing?
It's one of the reason I think there is such a community disconnect on which role is harder/more stressful.
Skill and sweat is much more impactful on the killer side. This is simply because on the survivor side you have 4 players, which have varying levels of skill and of trying to win, with weak links of subpar players that can doom an entire match even if the other 3 players are better than the killer player, and with people not playing in earnest (i. e. not trying to win, but to do funny or stupid things, or tome challenges, or at least not trying hard to win, or just playing for hatch).One other thing I'd add, soloq also just suffers from the randomness. With camping many killers would say 'just bring reassurance'. Okay, who? If we all bring it that's a huge waste. Likewise players have different skill sets. I'm not a great looper, but I'll go crack a 3 gen from the start and bring healing skills to help the loopers. If I get paired up with other survivors with the same skill set and no one can take the killer on chase, we're in trouble. I imagine it is the same on the other side if everyone comes in geared just for chase mode.
They don't even have to have it affect 99% of the playerbase, just make the matchmaker much more strict at the highest MMR levels.I suspect the reason they don't do this: the viability and growth of the game has a lot to do with streamers. Many streamers, especially the most popular ones, are high MMR. If they had to wait the extra time stricter match making would take, it would either harm the viewership and/or move them on to other games. From a game growth standpoint I just don't think we'll stricter matchmaking around the top level.
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Cheers, appreciate you spending the time going through and responding to some of the points.
Survivors sometimes DC just because they don't like the killer, but lots of times its because they got downed early. Which means if they actually played it out, it likely would have resulted in a 3 or 4k, and removing those games delates the kill rate.
Absolutely, tons of disconnects happen on early downs, as well as when a player gets downed on death hook (particularly if they got tunnelled), or when the match is basically over and people are slugged and whatnot. It's obvious I think that overall the majority of disconnects will happen in matches where players are frustrated with losing. Filtering these out deflates the effective killrate significantly (it supposedly was around 5% in the - albeit more distant, pre-disconnect-penalty - past).
But it can be argued that even filtering out all those instances where players disconnect without the game having been lost or as good as lost, simply because they don't like the killer or get frustrated with trivial things or whatever, does the survivor experience a bit of a disservice, because there are still survivors left in that match having to fend for themselves. Just because the reason for the disconnect is not based on game balance doesn't mean the survivor players in those matches have a better time, there is still a factual negative impact on the playing experience. And again this naturally doesn't mean one should want them to balance the game such that survivors still meet the target when including all of these matches with disconnects, but it at least shouldn't be ignored entirely, either.
I agree that it would be vanishingly rare, but interesting to think if ever.
It is interesting to think about, although I suppose my measure for "highest levels of play" is a bit far-removed from what the average poster on this forum may think. I think of survivor groups that are actual top 10 tournament teams facing off against killers from those same teams. I struggle to think of a singular instance of this having happened, and I really would not be surprised if it actually hasn't. Again, those teams playing pubs together at all (and let alone with voice comms, stacked builds and trying hard to win) is already vanishingly rare, and them then meeting a top 10 tournament killer doing the same makes it an astronomically low likeliness.
Of course, that was just an argument to highlight how absurd the idea of "balancing for the highest levels of play" is for the public matchmaking environment, and yes, it is a bit of a hyperbolic premise, there are good players out there playing in 4-player SWFs, but the actual point obviously is that for one thing, people often make the mistake of thinking balancing the game for the highest level should render them able to compete with such a strong team even though they in all likeliness are nowhere near close to that level, and for another, even just decent killer players that are nowhere near the highest level of skill can and do win the vast majority of their matches with the state of balance and matchmaking as it is, so the idea that we need massive killer buffs because the game is oh-so survivor-sided at the top level (which it also isn't actually) just flies in the face of the reality of what actually happens in people's matches. I've found that much of the time, the people that incessantly complain about balance and make things out to be bleak for killers are pretty mediocre players that however already win most of their matches, but apparently feel awful about not winning one every then and again, and think them losing clearly must mean the game isn't balanced and there was nothing they could have done differently or better. I wonder how they would feel in a game that has actual competitive matchmaking, where players that are worlds better than them are not getting winrates close to the ones they do in DbD.
Anyway, while I do think the game isn't all too well-balanced for the idea of 4 highly-skilled players coordinating and communicating and do want SWF loadout restrictions for that reason (as well as a few other good reasons), it for one thing also is not nearly as imbalanced as people often take it to be (again, some of the killers ridiculously enough can actually compete with and even outperform the best survivor teams on the strongest builds, and with loadout restrictions most killers are competitively viable, with some of them actually needing nerfs to be balanced at that level), and for another the basic balance premise is not the idea of a good 4-SWF on voice comms, and it shouldn't be because they in all likeliness make up 0.X% of the public playerbase, if that (whereas good players playing strong killers is obviously vastly more common).
It's one of the reason I think there is such a community disconnect on which role is harder/more stressful.
I think I agree with your basic point here, which is that killer and survivor require different skill sets to succeed, and the skills generally more pronounced on the killer side (at least in the average public match) can be said to be of the more cerebral kind, whereas those on the survivor side of the more mechanical. And yes, many people I suspect will find thinking about and analyzing games and making smart strategical decisions especially when under pressure more difficult or stressful than making mechanically good plays, and having quick reaction times and good split-second decisions.
Although I do want to point out that the macrogame aspect (the "cerebral" stuff) is actually much more important on the survivor side at a high level than even I had suspected it would be. For a fairly long time I had simply intuitively thought the survivor players that are the best at leading chases will also be the best in the 4v1 setting. But that I have had ample opportunity in recent years to find out is far from true. There is a tournament team called Torment, consisting of some of the hands-down best 1v1 players there are, and while they are a good 4v1 team, they are not performing nearly as well as one may assume they would, losing to teams the players of which they would absolutely demolish in a 1v1 competition. The same can be said for a team called Aeternum. There are also players like Knightlight, Zaka and Dan, some of the most prominent players in the tournament community, "comp royalty" so to say, undoubtedly some of the best players in the game, and none of them are 1v1 gods, they don't even all too regularly play 1v1s. Don't get me wrong, they are still incredibly good in 1v1, but that is not what they are best at. These just as examples that go to show that at the higher levels of play, the notable survivor skill set increasingly gets to be about tactical decision-making, strategy, teamplay, macrogameplay, too.
The fact that macrogame aspects are so important for survivors in high-level competition is part of the reason why I think that the game is actually killer-sided (or killer-leaning, if you will) in the basic balance premise where the four survivors do not have means of coordination and communication beyond the ones the game itself provides them with. Take 4 top tournament survivors (preferably not from the same team) and pit them against a top tournament killer, without giving them the ability to discuss their loadouts and without any means of communicating outside of the game, and I am reasonably sure that the killer will win most of the time (depending on the map and killer character, of course).
One other thing I'd add, soloq also just suffers from the randomness.
Absolutely, and this is implicitly included in what I meant with the greater degree of disconcertedness among survivor groups as compared to the killer, for the simple and obvious reason that there will be much more randomness in the loadouts, mentalities, intentions, decisions, skills and so on of a random group of 4 players than in the 1 player. As long as the killer player doesn't have 4 personalities or is in 4 different minds about what and how to play, they will on average be about 4 times as concerted as the survivors, ha.
This sounds obvious at best and silly at worst, but to highlight in simple terms what this means using something you also brought up in the example of loadouts: just think of the fact that the killer's loadout consisting of the killer character, 4 perks, 2 add-ons, and an offering is the equivalent to the survivor group's loadout of 16 perks, 4 items, 8 add-ons and 4 offerings. How often will the killer player have a (more or less) perfectly concerted, synergistic loadout, where the character, perks, add-ons and offerings each and all make sense together, are well-rounded and can even serve very precise strategic intentions (e. g. Mirror Myers with a Lery's offering), and how often will the same be the case for the survivors' loadout? For killers, most matches. For survivors, outside of 4-player SWFs, basically never. As you said, some perks can be overrepresented, others underrepresented or not represented at all, all of which detrimentally so, there can be multiple conflicting offerings, and in any case, it will essentially never happen that all perks, items, add-ons and offerings will be perfectly synergistic and fine-tuned, let alone serving a preconceived strategy. In my SWFs we will sometimes use 4 luck offerings alongside 4 Up The Antes and 4 Slippery Meats. This allows us to unhook ourselves on the first hook every time. It's an incredibly strong loadout. How often do we think random groups have used this build in the history of this game, among billions of solo queue matches? 0 times, in all likeliness. Even having something like 4 BNPs in a solo group is vanishingly rare, and that despite the fact that everybody knows how good BNPs are, and they cost nothing to bring and are merely an add-on for an item. It's easy to understand from this that killer loadouts will most of the time be enormously more optimized than survivor loadouts, and from there the jump to understanding in what other ways killers benefit from their concerted approach, efforts and decisions as compared to the more disconcerted survivor groups is easier.
Many streamers, especially the most popular ones, are high MMR.
While I agree that streamers are likely a pretty major part of their concern, I will say that many of the popular content creators we know would not be at the highest MMR anymore if the matchmaking were to actually be strict. Content creators can generally be said to be among the "1%" of players, but without a "soft" cap that matches the 5% among one another willy-nilly and with a more strict matchmaking algorithm, the 1% would fall behind the 0.9-0.1%, there would be more nuanced high MMR brackets forming that are much beyond the level someone like Otz for instance plays at. He's good, but he's no Zaka, not least because he doesn't regularly actually use the strongest stuff and strategies. I obviously have no idea what queue times would actually be like under such a system, and frankly I have no real clue how the matchmaking algorithm functions and what other variables BHVR has to keep in mind that I am not aware of, but in my mind if they were to simply remove the soft cap on MMR and have the matchmaking look for precise MMR matches for, say, 1 minute before expanding the range, that would already change things a lot, and without creating prohibitively long queue times. Especially if we also consider that they could make the algorithm stricter the higher the MMR is, such as spending more time before expanding the range, or expanding the range less per unit of time. This to me would mean the more extreme wait times of an average of 5+ minutes would be experienced mostly only at the very top of MMR, and even that I'm not so sure about because when the players that currently almost or actually always win meet other such players, they would obviously not win quite as much anymore and not end up in some astronomical bracket where too few players dwell. That said, I of course also don't know how many players this "0.9-0.1%" would actually capture, how many cracked players like that that regularly play pubs are out there. Maybe there really are too few to match them among each other consistently without queue times growing prohibitively long.
What I do know however is that things absolutely could be much better than they are in this regard, because they already had been - there've been times when they tinkered with the MMR specifics and more competitive matches happened much more consistently, without notably long queue times whatsoever (although notably longer than the couple of seconds to at most a minute it usually takes right now). There were times when I faced known tournament players pretty much every session. And things could be even more strict than they had been then, given that even at high MMR queue times had been 1-3 minutes at most. Alas, they do seem to prioritize <1-minute queue times over match quality, and Knightlight still gets Totem-Meg in his 500th loadout-less Nurse 4k streak match. Maybe the "solution" really is to have a casual and competitive queue, where the casual queue has completely random matchmaking and the competitive one employs strict MMR. Whether we will ever see such a thing I highly doubt myself. The most I can hope for is that BHVR at least changes their stance on the current matchmaking paradigm to degrees. They have before.
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Sorry for the long delay, didn't see this reply. As for what could cause the win rates to not be approximately the same between BHVR stats and Nightlight stats, newer players are probably not using it, and therefore raising the win rate, if they're losing, or lowering it, if they're winning. Anyone who's not using it would also probably be affecting it in some way, too. It does seem to be more reliable than I was expecting, though.
This is also valuable info, though.
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As for what could cause the win rates to not be approximately the same between BHVR stats and Nightlight stats, newer players are probably not using it, and therefore raising the win rate, if they're losing, or lowering it, if they're winningSure, but that's a general reason why nightlight stats might in general be wrong.
As an example: If DbD said SM had a kill rate of 70% and nightlight had it at 45% we could use logic to try and figure out the discrepancy - for example the idea that nightlight is likely gathering just high MMR data.
But if one aspect of Nightlight and BHVR's stats line up, in this case the kill rates, why wouldn't the other elements line up? Mathematically this would require the skew of games (0k, 1k, 2k, 3k, 4k) to be very different on Nightlight than it is in general, but that the different skew still achieving pretty much the same kill rate. I think that is highly unlikely.
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Fair enough, but these are still things to keep in mind while looking at unofficial stats, or even official ones. People can try to manipulate things, and these are rather easy to do so. The official stats would be awkward and I'd assume boring to do so, though.
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I almost never respond to you, because i dont think there is much to add. Spot on and as always an unbiased point of view. Hard to deny any of those facts.
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That's not true king wolfe2 Freddy dominates in high mmr bracket go watch him He does well with majority of killers he plays.
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They tend to look only at kill rates, so a hatch escape is not considered a kill.
I suppose you can consider this an escape for the purposes of this thread/discussion, however... BHVR has specifically stated multiple times that the hatch counts as a 'draw' as far as MMR is concerned.
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Literally any above average killer player will dominate in high MMR, and most dedicated DBD streamers are well above average.
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