An explanation on how MMR works

Reading the forums has shown me that a much larger fraction of the playerbase than I thought doesn't understand how match making ratings work. A lot of people already know how mmr works so you don't need to read this if you do. But since so many people don't, I want to explain it to help avoid a lot of inaccurate posts being made.

When an mmr system is introduced, it most often starts off at some baseline for all players (usually a 4 digit number). While it's possible to give a different starting mmr for different ranks instead of a baseline for all players, I highly doubt this is what BHVR did. When players compete in a match their mmr will go up or down depending on win or loss. The amount it changes is determined by the difference in mmr between the players. Losses against opponents of higher mmr will result in less mmr lost than losses against opponents of lower mmr. Likewise, victories against opponents of higher mmr will result in less mmr earned than victories against lower mmr. For example, if survivors with an average mmr of 1223 went against a killer with an mmr of 1181, the killer would earn more mmr from a victory than the average survivor would. The mmr gained or lost in this case would likely be some variable fraction of 42 (the difference in mmr between survivors and killer). I'm guessing this game will increase or decrease mmr based on pips and depips, but that isn't for sure unless verified.

Rank is different from mmr. Rank is going to be the 20 through 1 system we currently have in place. The mmr will be used purely for matching which players go against each other in a match, while the rank is an measurement of how regularly you pip or depip. It's likely that ranks will continue to reset on the 13th, but most game developers never reset mmr so I doubt BHVR will.

I see a lot of posts complaining about how the rank differences are worse now that mmr has been introduced, but that's to be expected because everybody getting a new baseline mmr means that everybody is going to be rated the same at the introduction of the system. Somebody who just bought the game will have the same mmr to start with as somebody who's been playing for years. It's not till you play enough games to win/lose enough times to significantly change your mmr that you'll start regularly playing against more or less skilled players. Considering how new the system is and the fact that every killer has a different mmr, that's going to take quite a while. It can take weeks or a month to get an accurate mmr for one thing. With every player having a different mmr for survivor and each killer, it will take even longer than that for players that play everything evenly instead of maining something. And even for those who main something, should they ever play something else, they'll be back near or at baseline mmr while playing that.

Admittedly, there can definitely be improvements to the system such as starting mmr being affected by your rank at release or the starting mmr for playing a new killer for the first time to be based on your average mmr for all played killers. BHVR might have done that, but I doubt they did considering their track record.