Intentional De-Ranking - What is YOUR Opinion?

Raccoon

Do NOT single out any particular players.
Do NOT be disrespectful.

What's your opinion on intentionally De-Ranking for any reason?

Personally, I feel like it ruins the gameplay experience on so many levels, whether that means destroying lower ranked survivors, frustrating new killers, or carrying less skillful players in matches that should be learning experiences for them.

I'm personally hoping that with the eventual installation of dedicated servers, that harsher penalties follow.

Master

Since nobody cares about my experienced, I have stopped caring about other experiences.

Deranking cant be punished btw, its an intended feature of the rank system. However DCing should be punished and that makes deranking less time efficient.

Derank can only be prevented if they create a "fun and balanced" environment at high ranks AND give ranked rewards

Raccoon

I care about your experiences, and I mean that in earnest

Vietfox

Deranking on purpose is garbage, period.

Condorloco_26

I think it could easily be fixed if intentionally DCing no longer meant losing pips, but instead meant losing BP. If you had zero BP at that point, now you have a negative balance.

For the rare real life justified DC, well, sorry about that, you're playing an online multiplayer game. I'm sure any real life emergency is more important than, let's say, 10k bloodpoints.

That way, the trolls would no longer be rewarded with their precious derank, and would be forced to actually tank the match in order to lose pips, which would come off as incredibly lame and coward, especially for the streamer guys.

I think this could be a solution, tweaks here and there.

Mc_Harty

If ranking actually mattered people wouldn't derank. Currently the only noticeable difference between rank 1 and rank 20 is how long you wait for a game.

BadMrFrosty

Here's my take on it, and I truly believe this is caused by an entirely separate and far more critical issue with Dead by Daylight.

1. Queue times are god awful (though this is not universal for everyone; region/time of day/patch pending).
2. Survivors claim to want more killer variety and play styles to encounter.

I can only answer the second reason I've given, and it's a direct consequence of the game's awful balance. Why do you think the same killers are encountered, using the same perks/play styles at high ranks? Well, most killers are underwhelming outside of the two most popular (nurse or billy), and most players playing at rank one are almost forced into optimal play to get any level of enjoyment out of a game that is so clearly unbalanced. Those are my two cents.

thesuicidefox

I see it as pointless. You have potato survivors and campy/tunnely killers at all ranks. People that think deranking will give them a better experience are fooling themselves.

Vietfox

@Condorloco_26 said:

I think it could easily be fixed if intentionally DCing no longer meant losing pips, but instead meant losing BP. If you had zero BP at that point, now you have a negative balance.

That would be awesome, but i think most players derank by killing themselves or afking. I don't see people DCing right off the bat, only ragequits. So it would still be a problem.
Edit: well, i always go to rank 1 asap, so maybe i just stay with players who want to rank up.

Condorloco_26

Mc_Harty said:

If ranking actually mattered people wouldn't derank. Currently the only noticeable difference between rank 1 and rank 20 is how long you wait for a game.

I disagree. If ranking didn't matter, people wouldn't derank to get easier games. Lame AF if you ask me.

And just in case you're not exaggerating to get a point across, if that's really your experience, I would say it completely is caused by all the usual red rankers playing at yellow or (whatever the color is for 15 - 20) ranks and trolling the new guys there, because deranking exists in the first place.

And I would ask, how can you experience both low and high ranks at the same time, in order to make a statement like that?

PhantomMask20763

Deranking is dumb in general. I dont belive in good players being matched with new/ casual players 

Mc_Harty

@Condorloco_26 said:
And I would ask, how can you experience both low and high ranks at the same time, in order to make a statement like that?

My friends barely play this game, so on the rare occasion that they do, we SWF and play against brown/yellow rank killers. I honestly don't see that big of difference compare to playing against red rank ones. Same on the killer side.

I mentioned que times are a problem (or at least a problem in my region), so I completely understand why killer and survivor derank. I don't agree with it, but I understand their frustrations.

AlwaysInAGoodShape

@PhantomMask20763 said:
Deranking is dumb in general. I dont belive in good players being matched with new/ casual players 

The current ranking system does the same.

Condorloco_26

Vietfox said:

@Condorloco_26 said:

I think it could easily be fixed if intentionally DCing no longer meant losing pips, but instead meant losing BP. If you had zero BP at that point, now you have a negative balance.

That would be awesome, but i think most players derank by killing themselves or afking. I don't see people DCing right off the bat, only ragequits. So it would still be a problem.
Edit: well, i always go to rank 1 asap, so maybe i just stay with players who want to rank up.

Interesting. I would've thought dcing was a more efficient way of doing it. But I don't know since I don't do it, nor I know anyone who does it (In no way I'm implying you do, in fact you state quite the contrary).

I do the same as you, I play and rank up right after reset, so I guess I get to face the non-cheese players.

Condorloco_26

BadMrFrosty said:

Here's my take on it, and I truly believe this is caused by an entirely separate and far more critical issue with Dead by Daylight.

1. Queue times are god awful (though this is not universal for everyone; region/time of day/patch pending).
2. Survivors claim to want more killer variety and play styles to encounter.

I can only answer the second reason I've given, and it's a direct consequence of the game's awful balance. Why do you think the same killers are encountered, using the same perks/play styles at high ranks? Well, most killers are underwhelming outside of the two most popular (nurse or billy), and most players playing at rank one are almost forced into optimal play to get any level of enjoyment out of a game that is so clearly unbalanced. Those are my two cents.

I think that 2. is a little naive to believe, though it may be possible. But unless you're going all the way down to R15, chances are you'll face the same number of Billies and Nurses at any rank, simply because they're superior baseline killers.

And what excuse would deranking killers use? Survivors are skins only.

PhantomMask20763

AlwaysInAGoodShape said:

@PhantomMask20763 said:
Deranking is dumb in general. I dont belive in good players being matched with new/ casual players 

The current ranking system does the same.

I know, and it's just as stupid 

Condorloco_26

Mc_Harty said:

My friends barely play this game, so on the rare occasion that they do, we SWF and play against brown/yellow rank killers. I honestly don't see that big of difference compare to playing against red rank ones. Same on the killer side.

I mentioned que times are a problem (or at least a problem in my region), so I completely understand why killer and survivor derank. I don't agree with it, but I understand their frustrations.

In what region and platform are  you playing? Are you from some far far away place? That would explain abnormally long queues and same skill levels all accross the board, given that the player pool might be very limited there.

I'm on PS4 in NA and I can say there's a big difference between R1 and R20. I recently experienced that by not playing survivor for 3 or 4 months straight and going down to R17 as a result. Neither killers' nor survivors' gameplay there can compare to R1.

What I found out there is that killers manage to 3 or 4k every game nonetheless. But that doesn't mean they're good, it just means new, solo survivors get shortest straw in the game.

Mc_Harty

@Condorloco_26 said:
In what region and platform are  you playing? Are you from some far far away place? That would explain abnormally long queues and same skill levels all accross the board, given that the player pool might be very limited there.

Australia, PC. South Australia, if you want to be specific.

Rebel_Raven

Unless you are bad and somehow ranked up, and/or seriously know how to pull your punches, it's pretty scummy, IMO.
I get it if you have chill, and show it happily, but if you're doing it to smash, and grab, or get your rocks off on lower ranks, no.

At least killer methods are somewhat beneficial to survivors, but the end result is likely not fun.

Survivor methods generally screw people over. when they use their methods. DCing leaving the rest holding the bag, and such.
Plus they can indirectly depip via SWF. Usually this is just to screw over killers, and smash and grab.
I mean y'all could maybe farm, or something instead of being an ass to killers. Try and be fun, maybe?
There's a reason SWF gets so much hate.

Condorloco_26

Mc_Harty said:

@Condorloco_26 said:
In what region and platform are  you playing? Are you from some far far away place? That would explain abnormally long queues and same skill levels all accross the board, given that the player pool might be very limited there.

Australia, PC. South Australia, if you want to be specific.

That's all I need to know, now I see why you have those opinions.

I think the player pool over there is much smaller, resulting in longer queues and facing the same people over and over. The ones ranking up might be no different than the ones with less spare time to play.

I mean, I guess you don't even face Asian players at all, which would be even closer than European or American players, distance wise.

Mc_Harty

@Condorloco_26 said:
That's all I need to know, now I see why you have those opinions.

I think the player pool over there is much smaller, resulting in longer queues and facing the same people over and over. The ones ranking up might be no different than the ones with less spare time to play.

I mean, I guess you don't even face Asian players at all, which would be even closer than European or American players, distance wise.

We do face a couple of Koreans with decent ping, but everywhere else from Asia completely ######### my net.

Condorloco_26

Mc_Harty said:

@Condorloco_26 said:
That's all I need to know, now I see why you have those opinions.

I think the player pool over there is much smaller, resulting in longer queues and facing the same people over and over. The ones ranking up might be no different than the ones with less spare time to play.

I mean, I guess you don't even face Asian players at all, which would be even closer than European or American players, distance wise.

We do face a couple of Koreans with decent ping, but everywhere else from Asia completely [BAD WORD] my net.

Sorry to hear that, mate. I think you're missing facing diverse competition and playstyles as a result.

Hopefully more people in your region are drawn to the game soon.

Dreamnomad

So real talk time. I've de-ranked before. Like a lot. I went so far as to make it into an art form. I came up with all kinds of games and ways to make the experience more amusing. Here is a link to a thread discussing this very thing on the Steam forums:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/381210/discussions/0/1698294337786497895/

and a video example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gjBGvhG_vI

So this was all back on the old victory cube. At rank 1 back then, it got very old very fast playing against the same handful of survivors. It was pretty much loop, loop, loop all day long. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I couldn't cope. I could still maintain rank 1 easily. From my experience, if you actually wanted to play competitively as a killer, you really did have to play like a jerk. I felt the need to tunnel players to death, especially the first one caught. Otherwise gens got done too fast and survivors were too good at dragging out the chase.

That isn't particularly fun for anyone imho. So it was a choice between play like a jerk to actually win, try to play the way I prefer and be endlessly frustrated, or de-rank to a rank that was actually fun to play at. I only de-ranked to 20 once and that was to knock out the killer adept trophies. Good luck getting those at rank 1. Most of the time, I tried to keep myself around rank 10 or so. At that rank survivors weren't total newbie scrubs, but they also weren't super annoying in chases either.

I was the killer that players actually should hope to run against when I was maintaining my rank at rank 10.
I never felt the need to camp or tunnel. I would regularly allow 2 survivors to escape. If they played even half way decent they wouldn't even realize that I went easy on them. There really wasn't any incentive to stay at rank 1. Still isn't. So if the only incentive to play is earn bloodpoints and have fun then it made more sense to do that at a rank where both were more easily achieved.

Like I said though, that was the old victory cube that actually forced survivors to get better in order to rank up. Being a rank 1 survivor actually meant something then. Honestly, the skill level of survivors at rank 1 these days is about on par with rank 10 in the old days. So I don't feel a need to de-rank anymore. It's nice because I have more fun and I don't need to let survivors escape.

WaffleFalafel

I just stay at high ranks for survivor because either one of a couple things happen for me: I get a coward team that does stuff like gen tap, SWF that are there just to bully the killer, or elitists who call me trash and use the excuse "rank doesn't matter" to justify their actions. Don't see how other people get a kick out of deranking unless they're farming.

Killer is a bit different in my opinion. Killer shouldn't be deranking and using that "rank doesn't matter" excuse, however I do see the problem with queue times. As a beneift, those bad survivors who gen tap and stuff get the chance to get gud. There's a problem where a killer deranks past rank 10 though, and that's not right.

The devstream today did say the watch a podcast about this issue recently and are reviewing this problem though, so that's good.

Condorloco_26

I think that once you hit R1 at any role, you shouldn't be allowed to derank past R5, not even at reset, save for maybe not logging in months. You hit R6, you won't derank past R10, and so on. After that, I would suggest to open the matchmaking gates to include said five - by - five ranking brackets, so longer queues wouldn't be a thing to worry about.

RepliCant

I enjoy how big of a deal everyone makes this

I could care less. Like, at all. When I first played this game, my boytoy at the time was Rank 1 on both sides and I was forced to learn at that level, so it's probably because of that I couldn't care.

Is it really a problem in my eyes? No.. Is it still okay to do? Nah.

se05239

I consider it a symptom of a much bigger issue. I cannot think of any other multiplayer game where players intentionally lose or disconnect so they drop in ranks. Something is extremely wrong with DbD.

tt_ivi_99

Some people De-rank because its too hard for them to survive/get 3-4k on rank 1.

This is because ranking in this game is too easy, so in rank 1 you have people who truly belong to rank 1 and others who belong in rank 8-9.

If ranking was more difficult there wouldnt be the need to de-rank because everyone would be at the lvl they deserve.

And then we have those rank 1 good killer/survivors who de-rank to get easy kills. But then again, if the rank sistem was better they would be facing people closer to their skill level, even if It was rank 8-9, because the gap between skill lvls would be smaller.

PiiFree

I personally think it's pathteic because it ruins the fun for the actually lesser experienced players. I see many players & streamers deranking on purpose just to stomp the lesser skilled players and then feel proud about it.

Evidence of incapacity.

OGlilSPOOK20

Who cares? This game shouldn't even have Rank anyways. This game is nowhere near competitive.

Jesp

@Condorloco_26 said:
I think that once you hit R1 at any role, you shouldn't be allowed to derank past R5, not even at reset, save for maybe not logging in months. You hit R6, you won't derank past R10, and so on. After that, I would suggest to open the matchmaking gates to include said five - by - five ranking brackets, so longer queues wouldn't be a thing to worry about.

I like this idea. I feel it'd directly take care of the queue time issues people have, and indirectly give people more variety as well as while the people that only play omegablink noed/ruin nurse with an ebony or depip squad SWF would still be there, but there'd simply be more lobbies going on that people in red ranks could be sent into.

Personally I've always hated deranking/smurfing. Doing it to actually be able to play the game if playing at weird times or in "dead" regions of the world I can at least kind of understand, but doing it to get easier games or even content creators doing it for "better content" is just scummy no matter how you look at it if you ask me. Perhaps the devs could just widen matchmaking range in certain times and regions or something? Obviously there won't be as many people playing at 2am on a weekday as 7pm on a weekend.

krayziek

Just make it where you can lock your rank at whatever you want. That will slow down the de-ranking. But put in rewards like shards and cells that you can get 1 time all the way to rank 1 but put in stops that once you go past it you cant go back below that threshold.

Master

@Condorloco_26 said:
I think that once you hit R1 at any role, you shouldn't be allowed to derank past R5, not even at reset, save for maybe not logging in months. You hit R6, you won't derank past R10, and so on. After that, I would suggest to open the matchmaking gates to include said five - by - five ranking brackets, so longer queues wouldn't be a thing to worry about.

Reducing the ranks of the rank system doesnt help, the devs already tried this by effectively removing ranks 20-15 from the pool and the only thing that has causes were absurd queue times for beginners.

If you dont allow the majority of the community (rank 1 is a joke) to drop below 5, then I dont wanna be stuck on the lower ranks....... I imagine waiting times ~1 hour

LCGaster

I think it's annoying.

Good players de-rank to get into easy games and bully lower ranking players, I don't like it.

I personally like to have a challenge, that's why I try my best every game.

I am very annoyed by this because in one case I ended up against the same guy (Killer) three times in a row, after minutes and minutes of waiting for a match, as soon as the match started he would DC; I was so annoyed, I want to play for God's sake.

Raccoon

Although I'm currently not on board, I have heard rumblings of certain killers planning on going AFK to De-Rank back to (under 10) prior to the 13th as some weird form of counter-protest.

IMO, you don't put out a fire by adding more fuel. 

PiiFree

@Condorloco_26 said:
I think that once you hit R1 at any role, you shouldn't be allowed to derank past R5, not even at reset, save for maybe not logging in months. You hit R6, you won't derank past R10, and so on. After that, I would suggest to open the matchmaking gates to include said five - by - five ranking brackets, so longer queues wouldn't be a thing to worry about.

That's a great idea.

They could also create skill brackets based on how often you reach Rank 1 and then put players together that have similar Rank 1 experience.

Even in Rank 1 there is a huge skill gap between lower and higher skilled players. Players like me that reach Rank 1 literally every season get matched together with players that JUST managed to reach Rank 1 - obviously this creates an uneven playground and even as Killer I must admit that it's tiresome. I don't like stomping players with next to no effort and only on very rare occasions I finally get stomped by actually skilled survivors.

Jesya

@Condorloco_26 said:
I think that once you hit R1 at any role, you shouldn't be allowed to derank past R5, not even at reset, save for maybe not logging in months. You hit R6, you won't derank past R10, and so on. After that, I would suggest to open the matchmaking gates to include said five - by - five ranking brackets, so longer queues wouldn't be a thing to worry about.

People will just depip before reaching the rank threshold to prevent that from happening. There needs to be an incentive for people to stay in their ranks so they don't depip to either a) get "better" lobbies with more variety or b) smurf inexperienced killers or survivors

Opening matchmaking up like you suggested would definitely help solve the problem though. I also think there should be bonus bloodpoints given to red ranks or rank 1's for being at that level as a way to incentivize people to stay at those ranks.

Tsulan

Now that the matchmaking went back to normal, I'm totally against depiping. 

Maybe once we get dedicated servers we get different modes.

We need 3 types of game modes:
- Casual: less punishing for both sides. More hook stages, gens, camp save zones around the hook, more rewarding to hit&down survivors than to kill them, etc.
- Ranked: harder to pip than now. More ranks like R6, longer seasons, end of season rewards. 
- Hardcore: no UI, no scratch marks, no terror radius, no aura reading, no survivor status information for both sides, etc.

lasombra1979

@Tsulan said:
Now that the matchmaking went back to normal, I'm totally against depiping. 

Maybe once we get dedicated servers we get different modes.

We need 3 types of game modes:

• Casual: less punishing for both sides. More hook stages, gens, camp save zones around the hook, more rewarding to hit&down survivors than to kill them, etc.
• Ranked: harder to pip than now. More ranks like R6, longer seasons, end of season rewards. 
• Hardcore: no UI, no scratch marks, no terror radius, no aura reading, no survivor status information for both sides, etc.

That would actually be great. The only issue I can see would be queue times, esp for solo.

Orion

It's partly why the rank system is broken and everyone who does it should be banned.

Tsulan

lasombra1979 said:

@Tsulan said:
Now that the matchmaking went back to normal, I'm totally against depiping. 

Maybe once we get dedicated servers we get different modes.

We need 3 types of game modes:

• Casual: less punishing for both sides. More hook stages, gens, camp save zones around the hook, more rewarding to hit&down survivors than to kill them, etc.
• Ranked: harder to pip than now. More ranks like R6, longer seasons, end of season rewards. 
• Hardcore: no UI, no scratch marks, no terror radius, no aura reading, no survivor status information for both sides, etc.

That would actually be great. The only issue I can see would be queue times, esp for solo.

I imagine that many people would come back to DBD once we get dedicated servers and a casual mode. 
This would solve queues. 

BigBadPiggy

I feel that as long as your intentions are non toxic and you aren't doing it in a toxic way (Dc'ing, afk, etc) there shouldn't be a problem. The problem arises when people want to be douches.

Raccoon

The method that is currently being discussed in "the hot seat" involves starting a game with your swf group and instantly DC'ing, costing the killer both add-ons and an offering...which is apparently fine and non-damaging according to a surprising number of "pro" streamers. 

artist

its fine considering rank doesnt really mean much at 1-10. for me I'll derank to avoid getting the same 3 killers because it just gets boring. also I seem to get into more 200 ping games late night at rank 1

inkedsoulz

@artist said:
its fine considering rank doesnt really mean much at 1-10. for me I'll derank to avoid getting the same 3 killers because it just gets boring. also I seem to get into more 200 ping games late night at rank 1

hardly ever happenned, atleast on EU, usually you get a lot of different killers at rank 1.
Dont know about NA or ASIA.

artist

inkedsoulz said:

@artist said:
its fine considering rank doesnt really mean much at 1-10. for me I'll derank to avoid getting the same 3 killers because it just gets boring. also I seem to get into more 200 ping games late night at rank 1

hardly ever happenned, atleast on EU, usually you get a lot of different killers at rank 1.
Dont know about NA or ASIA.

yeah only really late at night or really early tho and those are times I like to play

Condorloco_26

@PiiFree said:

That's a great idea.

They could also create skill brackets based on how often you reach Rank 1 and then put players together that have similar Rank 1 experience.

Even in Rank 1 there is a huge skill gap between lower and higher skilled players. Players like me that reach Rank 1 literally every season get matched together with players that JUST managed to reach Rank 1 - obviously this creates an uneven playground and even as Killer I must admit that it's tiresome. I don't like stomping players with next to no effort and only on very rare occasions I finally get stomped by actually skilled survivors.

Yes I've made a couple of posts asking for a meaningful ranking system based on skills and stats, for example what's your % of success losing a killer in a chase, how many safe unhooks you've made, what's your kill %, your hooking% etc.

That could be the base to balance the game on: meaningful ranks grouped in brackets. I imagine low rank brackets being more simple and forgiving for new survivors, and adding secondary objectives and difficult skill checks for high ranks, as an example.

But that sounds as a huge rework, and I don't think they would commit the resources needed.

thesuicidefox

There should be a limit to how much you can derank. It's practically impossible to legitimately derank more than like 2 ranks (that's like 10 games in a row, would never happen to someone that's not intentionally trying to derank), so you should just not derank more than 2 ranks. It would just stop at the last pip for that 2nd rank. Problem solved.

Condorloco_26

@Jesya said:

People will just depip before reaching the rank threshold to prevent that from happening. There needs to be an incentive for people to stay in their ranks so they don't depip to either a) get "better" lobbies with more variety or b) smurf inexperienced killers or survivors

Opening matchmaking up like you suggested would definitely help solve the problem though. I also think there should be bonus bloodpoints given to red ranks or rank 1's for being at that level as a way to incentivize people to stay at those ranks.

A ranking based reward system is needed, I agree. Be that BP, shards, certain cosmetics, I don't know. There's so much that could be done about it. There's also the Devotion issue. Right now it means absolutely nothing. Sigh.

Condorloco_26

@Tsulan said:
Now that the matchmaking went back to normal, I'm totally against depiping. 

Maybe once we get dedicated servers we get different modes.

We need 3 types of game modes:

• Casual: less punishing for both sides. More hook stages, gens, camp save zones around the hook, more rewarding to hit&down survivors than to kill them, etc.
• Ranked: harder to pip than now. More ranks like R6, longer seasons, end of season rewards. 
• Hardcore: no UI, no scratch marks, no terror radius, no aura reading, no survivor status information for both sides, etc.

Hardcore is a great idea and one I would really like to see added to the game eventually.

Poweas

I don't hate people for doing it but I won't do it myself because I want to improve my skills.