Why the MMR System is a Terrible Idea (Devs, You Need to Read This)

Hmm...we'll see

It can't get much worse than rank right now.

There are absurd amount of reasons why mmr will never work in dbd. ScottJund made good video about this subject.

TL:DW Too many variables to determinate skill.

It worked in the past for the most part due to P2P regions being wider along with swf being matched with swf taking the average member rank of players.

This was something the community asks to be changed as ping and being matched with high rank swf players were constantly complained about.

They implemented what the players wanted and unfortunately it made match making worse so they had to widen the search pre Christmas making it even worse just so people can play.

At least with an mmr they could say use bronze, silver, gold and iri making 4 large pools rather than 20 seperate ranks to try and match over with it widening every 30s to 1m or so out of your personal rank.

MMR Systems are different with every specific implementation.

You realise games are not developed by putting together pre defined lego bricks, right?

I played games with bad MMR implementation and also games with amazing MMR implementation.

Concerning your thoughts about disconnecting players, a match is always unfair when one leaves... It has nothing to do with the MMR System. It is not it's job to take care about that...

But some ways of implementing it also consider it in the evaluation of the match.

In my opinion the devs reputation is worse than they actually are. Most of the time when anything changes people go crazy in the forums and badmouth them.

I've heard so many times during the last years that "if you implement X the game will die".

Yet here we are in 2020 with a stable player base ( on steam ). And very positive reviews.

The game has actually steadily improved from what it has been.

And for every person complaining about the changes here hundreds still played and enjoyed the game.

That's why I still trust the devs.

Computer Science.

That is good. Then you should also know that saying "it is not possible" for your future career is something silly to say.

It is very well possible but a legit question is: "Is there enough manpower/time /money to do it properly, fix and maintain it?".

"Devs you need to read this"

Hahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha

You're comparing a casual, imbalanced party game to a very competitive, balanced game. (From what I know.) Everyone is boosted in dbd to some degree. Should spirits be placed automatically in higher ranks bc they're generally boosted af?

I'd almost say that rank could be done away with at this point. It really does feel like all it is in place for is bragging rights or an indication of how much someone plays the game. Doesn't seem to take into account the people that take a break from the game.

Yes. I personally always judge the product and features. I am more interested in their game dev skills rather than their PR/Social skills. But I agree that they should have watched their mouths, talking to their community directly.

Well I've seen people putting together algorithms to successfully predict disease outbreaks weeks before they actually happen. With a pretty small team even.

Also lots of other crazy things. So I think if that can work, an MMR System for this game should also be very well possible. I think it is more a question if they have enough time for it. Most things in the industry fail because they have not been given enough time.

we had a MMR system, it's called the emblem system and ranks. But the doves seem to have screwed that to the point where people aren't leaving rank 1 even though they're not very good, at least on the survivor side. There should be a way to determine skill and match people who are similar to one another. The real question is what is skillful play? What do the devs consider skilled play. Is it killing people? Well the emblem system punishes you if you kill them too fast so maybe it's chases or how many times you can people hit people without killing them. Simply put, the devs and the people playing the game have yet to determine what the game is, the survivors that are very good it's about the chase. Why am I being punished for lower score because I was able to loop the killer the entire game but couldn't do it gen as a result. or maybe you're a killer and you just want to kill as many survivors as possible, so you get that 4K and you don't pip. simply put we need to come together as a community and come to a decision on what is skillful play, then rework the emblem system that we already have to fit that real work. Maybe we add more weight to chases and less weight to total amount of hooks. Maybe we promote a faster pace game style by being more favorable with the gatekeeper emblem on the killer side while pressuring survivors to get it done even faster. I don't know I can't answer these questions but these are the questions that need to be raised before a MMR system aside from the one that we already have and they already broke can be implemented.

I would just like to start out by saying that there is no way that matchmaking could possibly get worse. There is no reason for them not to try their new system. Matchmaking is already matching people of different rank colors outside of a SWF, the emblem system doesn't work properly and while I am sure you have little confidence in their ability to design something proper there is no reason for them to not attempt it. For your example in rocket league, matchmaking did it's job. It matched 'presumably' people of similar skill levels, regardless of the disconnect, a loss occurred and it adjusted accordingly, I would agree this is not a FAIR determination of the match so you can argue it should be tossed in favor of a match without a disconnect however you can easily jump back into another game to reverse the effects of that bad match so although it is flawed in that regard it is excusable in my opinion. DBD however is much more difficult to determine someone's ability and how they build the MMR system is what matters less so the edge cases like someone disconnecting or if a survivor decides to play immersed or not.

In theory at least if you are playing with people that are immersed all the time in the new system then they are of equal skill than you even though it might be a different skill set altogether. Hopefully Behaviour does a good job and tells us the right information about it's design because if we know too little than it seems dishonest but if we know too much people will abuse it.

The survivor questions you pose don't matter for matchmaking other than "you are a bad survivor who can't win chases and keep the killer away from them?", "Did your teammates not come to save you?" and "Did you get tunneled?" all other questions are not needed to be accounted for.

Killer however is much more complicated as how long a survivor can last in a chase can possibly be lengthened by a bad generation and bad map design however for match making purposes that must be left out and instead behaviour must manually fix the mistakes of the previous maps. However the killer questions you pose like "could you not catch them because you were genuinely bad at outplaying loops?" and "did you just get gen rushed because you can't apply map pressure?" do matter a lot because this is something that can be calculated by a computer.

Ultimately I agree that there is a lot of variables But they can do it. If you would like me to elaborate on why those other questions you posed don't matter I would be happy to explain. I think that although it will be a challenge for behaviour they might as well do it. It can not possibly get any worse than it already is.