Matchmaking should be ranked & casual.

I have about 335 hours in this game at the time of writing this, and I'll probably sink another 5 hours into the game by the end of today. I'm in love with it. The notion of being in, essentially, your own 5-15 minute horror movie starring an equally horrifying killer was interesting enough to me, and I don't regret any of the time I've invested into this game, or the amount of BP I've grinded to give my boy Dwight the perfect set of perks to get everyone out alive, or my girl Huntress the perfect set of perks to make sure they don't.

That being said, I hit a huge wall as of recently.

I've had so many frustrations with matchmaking, doubly so on the killer side of things. And before this is associated with the MMR update, I was having these issues before the MMR update was even announced. We have to be reasonable - matchmaking in this game is a hit or miss. No offense aimed at the devs, it just has to be said. I tried to figure out what infuriated me so much about it to keep from regurgitating stuff that's probably already been said a thousand times before, but I think it just boils down to one thing.

I feel as if the largest missed opportunity of this game is splitting it into two modes. Ranked, and unranked.

I'm currently stuck at rank 5 of killer, having hardly played the killers I actually ranked to 40-50, just to gather some sort of meta perks. Every single time I fluctuate from 5 to 4, I go from a melting pot of varying ranks to instantaneous 4-stacked Rank 1 survivors, or even just Rank 1 survivors in general. I don't understand the nuances and niches of every killer in the game and have been trying to understand hands-on how to tackle every looping scenario. However, the sudden and almost neck-breaking whiplash from the difficulty spike has resulted in some extremely frustrating ping-ponging --between four well-oiled experienced survivors with 3k hours to Neas that seem to sprint right into trees and sandbag themselves onto a hook. The sudden and harsh difficulty spike makes it extremely difficult to practice new killers, forcing me into tucking safely into killers I already know for the sake of actually being able to land 1-2 hooks and break even with more than 12k bp every match. Just to progress killers reasonably.

On the other hand of things, I escalated to red ranks before I even knew how to loop on Survivor, and was suddenly matched against killers with extensively more game knowledge than me. Hiding spots that once worked for me previously became invalid, and it forced me into learning how to be adequate enough of a distraction to dissuade the killer from keeping on my tail. While a source of frustration, I felt far less anger on the survivor side of things. When it comes down to it, you do have 3 people to shoulder the weight of your poor performance, so I was able to complete gens, sometimes escape, and more effectively farm on Surv side.

Here are the suggestions I'm trying to make:

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I feel as if the game could benefit tremendously by separating Ranking into its own competitive mode.

A place where you get reset to R20 when it's shipped. You are given 5 placements and then ranked based on your performance, similar to games with competitive modes, like League of Legends, or Overwatch. Also similarly so: You are encouraged to climb to red ranks with incentive. Perhaps you would receive a flat BP amount based on your ranking, in addition to a skin exclusive to the top performers on both sides. Maybe this queue would be restricted to solo queue, to give you an extremely accurate display of where your personal skill level actually lands, similar to mentioned games. We could even venture a step further and toss a seperate queue with no restrictions on grouping. It could offer the same skin with a swapped color palette, or just flat out a different skin. That way, if you run into a killer wearing the Ranked (1v4) skin, you know how much of a masochist they really are.

Newer players attempting to queue for Ranked with little to no experience with the game? Gatekeep the ranked queue with the simple task associated with the side you're trying to rank up with. Survivors and killers both must level up 3-4 characters of their choice to 50 -- leaving people who are just starting off with the option to level up characters that offer solid beginner perks and encourage either distraction or cooperation.

It would not only benefit those who truly care about their rank, but the balance of the game itself. Not to say that you couldn't pull up the statistics I'm about to mention anyway, but you could analyze the game at all tier levels of the ranked ladder. What perks are performing the best on both sides? What perks aren't being taken at red ranks? What perks are so useless that yellow ranks don't even show them the light of day? What killers aren't being played in red? What killers are around too often, with a solid winrate? It can be easy to muddle the pool of percentages if a slew of newer players decide that the Oni or another killer seems cool, and end up unfortunately losing the games they play as them, or higher-ranked players that sometimes double as content creators take non-meta perks as part of their builds and play a few solid games with 100% winrate on all of them due to game knowledge.

On the other hand, unranked wouldn't favor ranking at all.

It's an ambitious idea, but let me explain.

The queue would be a melting pot of all skill levels, improving queue times and allowing both killers and survivors a safety net to avoid ranking too fast or perhaps losing that precious rank you love so much. It would grant players a safe haven of multiple purposes. About to dive into a day of grinding up rank? You could choose this mode to warm up. Newer to the game? Survivors and killers both could memorize the layouts of maps and map variations, experiment with perks that they feel perform well with their playstyle, or even farm bloodpoints for their next big purchase or a few extra perks.

Unranked would prevent you from ranking up too quickly before you even understand the game to feel something similar to: "Wow, I earned this spot."

The primary argument I've noticed each time I've spoken about this to friends, or post-lobby fellow players is that this kind of system would moderately screw newer players -- to which I agree and present a solution to that. When I first started playing Paladins, a safety system was set in place for me as a new player. I was queued immediately against bots for the first few games that I played. It allowed me to get my foot in the door; adjust keybinds, sensitivity, get a feel for the fights and the abilities. Perhaps something similar could be applied for beginner players.

Set a grace period of which beginners would only match with other beginners. Perhaps a set amount of games must be played -- or even won, before they're dripped into the main queue. Perhaps their performance is monitored, and if they're consistently performing up to par (golds, irid, some silvers), they're also dripped into the main queue. Maybe for the sake of not trapping someone in an unwinnable limbo, both options could be applied. This would solve the running issue of Rank 8 vs R8, R18, R20, R3, saving some headaches for confused newer players and experienced players watching the Meg drop every pallet before the killer's even near the loop.

This would also be a great place to experiment with potential builds, pave the way for hilarious clips of killer and survivor meme-inspired interaction and overall fooling around.

I feel as if it's time to diversify our queue and provide more options for practice, competition, and farming BP for my BK Myers build.

I also want to try my hand at tackling the frequently-mentioned consequences of the queues as a closing note, to try and provide solutions.

An unranked queue might supply full, toxic SWF groups a doorway to bullying newer killers.

This is, unfortunately, true. On the other hand, however, it also reduces the frequency that you encounter them. I noticed that the majority of queued toxic teams I've gone against lingered at red ranks. The only solid solutions I've seen to this have stemmed from just suggestions constantly frequenting forums now. Truthfully, it wouldn't matter as much in unranked as it would in current DBD, as most toxic groups will go out of their way to ensure a depip or a safety pip on your side once it feels as if you're gaining the advantage. Encountering this type of behavior in unranked would be frustrating, yes, but that's just a beautiful consequence of seeking more diversity in our queues. If we really wanted to be extreme about tackling that issue, perhaps offering a small or moderate BP increase when going against a fully-stacked team could be sufficient.

League of Legends has a similar ranked structure. Queues at the highest level can often span anywhere from 5-30 minutes.

A problem that I hope would be solved by our jump to cross platform. Rare as they are, I don't actually have any issues queueing for red-ranked games right now. My queues typically last anywhere from 3-5 minutes. This could only be properly tackled, truthfully, by crossing that bridge when/if we get to it.

It would give experienced killers the means to crush newer survivors.

And it could also be said that it would provide experienced solo survivors the option of farming a newer killer. Truthfully, grinding out BP, practicing a new killer, or sharpening your skill on a favorite killer shouldn't be exclusive to newer players. An experienced killer every few games would provde much needed practice without being unnecessarily overbearing.

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With these suggestions, I'm hoping to not only give/restate ideas to the community, but overall better the experience for newer and skilled players alike. A line of communication is what we need. I truly am passionate about this game, and would love to see these ideas taken into consideration for a new way to tackle skill diversity in one of my favorite pasttimes.

What do you think?

My original post on Reddit