Balancing for high MMR
The devs are smart people and have designed a game that is great for newcomers and intermediate players. However, as the people who focus only on escapes and kills instead of the emblem rewards climb to higher levels, the game's fun breaks down.
- Match times become longer
- Games don't feel as "fun" because everyone brings the same perks and items
- Players can't "see" their MMR, so don't have a goal or something to brag about.
Yet if you touch balance for the sake of high MMR, you naturally risk ruining the great setup you have for low and mid tier players. I feel BHR made the emblem system to cleverly encourage people to do more than just survive and escape, while those who do not care about the emblem system get shunted together. Not bad honestly. But what if there was a way to solve all of the issues while keeping the entire pool of players together?
Solution: When your MMR reaches certain levels, the game starts to reduce perk and item effectiveness.
What do I mean?
For example, lets say you hit some arbitrary MMR level of 1500. As a survivor, self healing with a med-kit or self heal now takes 1 second longer. Once you hit 1600 MMR, it takes 2 second's longer. As a killer, ruin's effective gen regression decreases by 2% every 100 MMR you gain.
Ok, but why though?
- This does not affect low to mid level tier players fun and enjoyment.
- As you get better, the game forces you to focus more on your own skill rather than "stat stick" perks.
- This allows the devs to balance tweak at higher levels in small ways. Perhaps if gen regression perks are still too powerful, they decrease the benefit faster than say hex the third seal. Perhaps some perks don't get any reduction in effectiveness at all.
- Perk variety will likely change as you climb MMR. This keeps the game exciting, and has people talking about new strategies as you climb.
- Penalties become both a way that you know about your MMR, and a "brag". "I'm so good that my Pop Goes the Weasel only does 10% gen regression!" Youtube video title: "I self care for an entire minute and still win." For those who love to challenge themselves and feel like their skill matters, this is great.
- People more naturally fall into their skill level. Those who can only win with items and strong perks will quickly hit their limit of MMR as those items and perks decrease in effectiveness. Those that are extremely skilled will rise, and likely enjoy the challenge.
- After some initial balancing, you can likely -> start mixing high and low MMR players again. <- This will help with queue times, and allow higher MMR's to still be part of the lower MMR community.
With this, I think you solve all three major problems with high MMR play, without harming the rest of the game's community. What do you think?
Comments
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Na, let the sweats play with the sweats and the chills play with the chills.
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So this is still an option. In fact, I'm sure the devs would first test this among the high skill MMR teams. They might forbid a match under a certain MMR threashold for example, then anyone above that threshold had the scaled decreasing addons and perks based on their individual MMR.
Once the system is tested, it could bleed out into the other MMR's when queue times get too long. Perhaps having a killer with reduced ruin, or using off meta perks because the meta perks are too reduced, would make it more fair for survivor's who have no reduction in abilities.
What do you think of the larger idea though? Pros, cons?
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I guess I am most doubtful of BE's ability to code it. But I do think eventually they will adjust something in higher MMR, probably gen speed.
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Its just a suggestion for them to consider. I'm sure they'll evaluate whether this is something feasible to code. The ROI for coding higher MMR to be more engaging and fun would need to pay off in long time user retention and streamer advertisement. A good end game MMR where skill is prevalent and there is evidence of your triumph can be very appealing to several gamers. What that ROI looks like to them, I can't say either. Perhaps the high MMR community doesn't spend much money, or they don't find they get new players joining because of streamers.
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One more attempt because I feel this got buried quickly. If there are no further responses, I'll just leave it.
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