Otzdarva Clarifies Opinion On MMR
Over the past few days, I'm sure we've all seen the various 'Otz hates MMR see video' threads and - catching up on one of his streams recently, I just want to put this thing to bed once and for all.
For those who don't know. Otzdarva is one of the most prolific and influential DbD streamers around, with an amusing 666k on Twitch alone and YouTube videos that rack up views in the millions. He's also a legitimately nice bloke.
So - in a recent stream, he went on to clarify his stance on MMR. In short:
- MMR is not a big problem.
- He sees the benefits of it (implied).
- The problem is that MMR highlights the longstanding problems with the game, particularly from a balance standpoint and the gulf between 'meta' perks and killers and the rest of the roster.
I've essentially said all I've got to say on the matter, and this very much mirrors my own opinions. The issue isn't MMR. The issue is balance.
Comments
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Exactly. I call this effect the "balance complacency" effect, people become complacent with how balance is, as nothing changes, and once something else changes, people blame that over the balance because they are used to the balance. It happens in a lot of games I play which is why I needed a name for it.
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Maybe BHVR will eventually take care of those "longstanding problems".
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And why are you talking about that guy? I have no idea why you people likes him. He's very disagreeable.
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Here's the core of the problem, though.
Fun for who?
I find it fun. Excepting the occasional bizarro match (which I have to wonder if the MMR is trying to recalibrate me or something), the quality of my various matches has increased so, so much.
The people who seem to be struggling with MMR are:
- Veteran players, who now encounter far fewer lower skilled players as opponents, resulting in the aforementioned balance/meta issues. This is indeed a problem, but it's not really one with an easy fix. High MMR in basically every game tends to be a place with an ossified meta and less flexibility to meme around.
- Survivors. This I do understand, and I'm certain that BHVR will be working to make it more nuanced for them. A binary 'died/escaped' is not reflective of survivor skill. This also really highlights how badly solo survivors need better tools to communicate.
I don't think that 'it's an asymmetrical game' really holds water. Honestly, symmetrical balance hasn't really been a thing since Starcraft 1. I think it's more that as the game grows (it's going to be pushing 60k average players by mid next year I'd guess - that's huge) better, fairer matches for newer and intermediate players will have to be a priority.
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This, beyond anything else, is what I think people need to push for.
Ranks...won't come back. I don't think it's even a vague possibility.
Rather than Us versus Themming about MMR, we should be hammering BHVR on balance, cheating, SBMM nuance for survivors and QOL issues - because if that's made better, MMR should be pretty decent for everyone.
If anything is going to change this, the MMR issues will.
BHVR do seem to be moving in that direction (frigging CoH excepted) but they do tend to move at a glacial pace. Trapper finally got some love, Pig got a...bit of help (just make her terror radius the same as Hag and be done with it imho), Plague is legitimately fun to play now, Artist looks solid and Ghostface and Legion are both earmarked for reworks.
The next 6 months are going to be very interesting.
Otz?
That's...odd.
I consider him to be one of the most likeable streamers out there. He can occasionally lose his fluff, but generally not for silly reasons.
Anyway, I don't really want this thread to be about streamer hate, so I'll cut that off here.
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We can say the main issue is balance and not MMR itself all we want, but the reality of it is are the devs going to actually balance the game to make MMR function at the top end? The answer is obviously no. Even if they wanted to, at their change pace it would take them literally years to get to that point with how many balance changes are needed. If the game isn't getting balanced properly anytime soon, that leaves MMR as what's left to change.
This also ignores the fact that the issue isn't just balance, it's the actual enjoyment and sweat required at that MMR degrading the fun as well.
I also do think MMR itself is an issue anyway. Anyone with even a decent amount of time in the game can tell you that using just kills/surviving + match time is a terrible metric to rank "skill" by. Just as in the same way balancing around kills is a terrible metric.
MMR as a system is for competitive games. DBD is currently too unbalanced to be competitive. The game is in an identity crisis. It's half trying to be competitive and half trying to be a party game. It needs direction.
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Yep, I would say those bullet points are totally reasonable.
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I don't think MMR is suited to DBD. It seems to work very well in other games, for example in Hunt: Showdown. Balance is the problem, but it isn't just meta perks, it is the randomness of the maps and that some have heavily killer or survivor sided.
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🤨 Who doesn’t like Otz as a person? I don’t watch him that often but he seems like an extremely nice guy.
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I'm sorry to say this but when 80% agree with a opinion that isn't the one you hold maybe you should do some self reflecting and think harder
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Eh, people are free to like or dislike who they want (at least for the time being) - I know that some streamers are definitely a porcupine in my pant-leg, I was just surprised because he's so widely regarded as a great human being.
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Okay, so I did some self reflecting and realized that opinions are subjective and I do not need to agree with the masses.
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Since BHVRs business model is to acquire new players faster than players quit, hoping for serious balance changes is out of the question.
There will never be an operation health chapter, that should tell a lot about their mentality.
Think about it, Nurse is the most busted killer that you cant do anything about while having so many bugs. Why has this not changed?
Because killers good enough to use Nurse properly are few, because veteran killer players get burnt out from poor balance.
Fixing Nurses bugs would require actual balance nerfs to her, and then BHVR would need to do a massive overhaul to the killer role so that's never going to happen.
New players cant use or beat Nurse, so she can stay busted for eternity since the people who complain about her dont really matter, they've already bought a ton of chapters and cosmetics.
So since this games balance will never fundamentally change, it's fair to ask why we need a matchmaking system like this when there is no intent to follow up with meaningful balance updates.
I'm all for the concept of MMR btw, I was one of the forums biggest advocates for it back in testing.
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MMR is fine in this game, really... the point of the subject is that MMR exposes the undeniably worst part of this game, which is a mixture of SWF comms and gen rushing. Even 4 solo players can gen rush, but SWF comms can take that to another level entirely. These things can be fixed with some balance changes, and maybe even fundamental changes.
Removing MMR won't fix the glaring problems...
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I'm not required to agree with a guy who rates Freddy bottom 5 and worse than Legion after playing him with random perks and such for under an hour. Otz is a nice guy from everything I have seen. He isn't automatically right though just because he is very popular in the community.
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so he's saying some killers are viable at high MMR while most killers are not. he sits on the fence, and is only talking about after vast majority of streamers have an issue with MMR
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I think he's factoring in addons as well.
I do disagree with some of his picks - I think he underrates Doctor too, but he is definitely right on the money most of the time.
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MMR needs to get binned. Don't care what Otzy whatsisname says.
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I can't trust the add on opinions of a guy who is famous for playing most of his matches with no add ons or weak ones. I honestly think the average 2k+ hour player likely has more experience with killer add ons than otz because they haven't done 10+ 50 game streaks using 0 add ons. Otz has good advice on some stuff, especially general knowledge of the game, but add ons is one aspect I don't trust him on because he just didn't use any for a long time and often gives opinions on them without ever using them.
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He says Freddy is bottom 5? Lmao
Was going to search him but nvm.
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His latest tier list has Freddy in D Tier bottom 5 below such killers as Legion.
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i don't know...
if i watch streamers always killers not looks optimized their pass and survivors not promising
i think they dropping their mmr before streaming
mmr is good, each killers having different rating
premise is out of course i think
all cons people saying caused from prioritizing swf in queue and expended matching
not mmr itself,
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Well, I disagree with Otz.
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Yikes.
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From my understanding he does that because he's played with the good ones endlessly and is mostly just playing in a way that holds his interest.
I do agree somewhat on addons, especially Plague (he vastly overrates the iris) and Demo (he doesn't seem to enjoy Demo much so doesn't really seem to play him) but I totally agree on his maps and builds videos.
Perks...I'm still not sure if people overrate CI or if it's just my own inexperience.
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If the community stops crying about MMR, and starts demanding better balance changes in a constructive way, then maybe we'll see better results.
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I wouldn't characterize it as 'crying'. I definitely understand how it would be frustrating to go from being a high MMR player under ranks to MMR. But I do think that it's going to be better for the health of the game as a whole.
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Hahhaha yaaaaa
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What did he say about demo? If he said Red Moss was absolute FFF dumpster tier and that Lichen was good, hes be absolutely correct.
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Red Moss has won me so, so many games. The undetectable+silent emergence lets you get so many easy grabs/chases, especially if you combine it with soda can or lichen. 15 seconds of undetectable on demand with almost no cooldown is pretty solid.
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The issue isn't MMR. The issue is balance.
okay, i generally agree with that statement.
however, there is one very important thing we need to remember here:
this game will never be balanced.
the Devs outright admitted that they have no intention of balancing DbD around high level gameplay on multiple occasions and recent balance changes reflect that stance even more (nerfing Deathslinger and Spirit instead of buffing everyone else to be on Spirits level to be competetively viable, all in the name of "fun")
so with that in mind, i ask you one thing: what is the point of an MMR system, if the most basic requirement for such a system to work, that being a balanced game, is not given - and never will be?
its not that MMR systems were a fundamentally bad thing, its just that they are absolutely not compatible with the casual party game that DbD is.
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Said this every time too. Heck I don't think SWF are the problem with the game but the game is inherently unbalanced. SWF is just an convenient excuse to use though.
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I don’t think we should be letting popular streamers be the big voice of the DBD community. Their opinions are important but everyone needs to be heard too.
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Even if you don't like him he still makes strong arguments that are hard to contest. He's a smart guy, and he understand the game on a very very deep level. You can dislike someone and still understand that they have valid thoughts, opinions, and suggestions
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