Regarding Dead By Daylight

Dear, Behavior Interactive

Regarding Dead by Daylight

Before we begin, I would like to introduce myself. I am Nathan Ball, a student attending University of Arizona. Writing this post was an assignment for one of my classes however I do feel as if I need to voice this concern assignment or not. I have been playing Dead by Daylight for around two years now. I got into Dead by Daylight because they added Demogorgon from Stranger Things into the game. I was interested in Dead by Daylight before I purchased but I knew I would probably enjoy the killer more than the survivor. The reasoning I never bought was because there were no killers I was really interested in up to that point. I entered the game casually. I played the game from time to time but never really spent hours on end learning how to get better at the game. I just tended to play killer from time to time or “survive with friends” when more than two of us were in the mood. On rare occasions my friends and I would hop into a custom game and take turns playing killer. However, no real commitment was there. I only really got into the game when the silent hill chapter was released, not because I played Silent Hill or was interested in buying the DLC. I got into the game because my friends played Silent Hill and were interested in the chapter, so they played more and more Dead by Daylight which in turn got me to play Dead by Daylight. 

After getting deeper into the game, participating in the community watching streamers and youtubers, playing more killer on my own, even some survivors. I fell in love with the game, I started to understand the vision your design team and developer have for the game, the perspective and thrill of the hunt when playing killer. Becoming a predator that preys on survivors for the mysterious entity. Or jumping into the trial as a survivor and trying to outwit the killer by keeping a calm spirit. While all this is true, I still would play Dead by Daylight on and off. However, I switched gears from casually playing, to getting into the game whenever it piques my interest. Maybe a new chapter came out or something got my friends to start playing or talking about it again. Every now and then I might pick up a new killer using Iridescent shards or maybe some spare money I could use to spend on the game.

Then the Resident Evil Chapter gets released, I bought the chapter as soon as it came out. I would like to mention that I had never played a Resident Evil game, The mechanics of Nemesis and the perks that the survivors Jill and Leon brought in, flashbang and blast mine alone got me to buy the entire chapter. I picked up Nemesis and had a blast, the zombies were an extremely interesting mechanic as well as the almost “snowball effect” that Nemesis’s tier three had on the game. This chapter alone got me interested in the Resident Evil games which I am currently playing through now. This chapter upped the ante when it came to my interest in Dead by Daylight. I started picking up killers like Blight, Executioner, and Ghost Face. Learning loops on survivor to not only be a better survivor, but to teach myself tricks and moves I might face as a killer. I memorized some of the generated loops that can appear on certain maps. I read and theorized about lore in twitch chats and with my friends online. My friends and myself were playing a lot more Dead by Daylight. At one point early this year one of my friends and I would wake up early to play a game of Survivor before the day started. Then at the end of October this year with the Hellraiser Chapter. You, Behavior Interactive released the MMR system. 

For those who may be reading this and don’t know what the MMR system is or even what the old system was I will explain both to the best of my ability. When referring to the MMR system or the old system. The old system which we will refer to as the “Pip” based ranking system or PBR system works like this. So, during the match the killer and survivors would be rewarded for making good actions or choices and punished for making bad actions or choices. Players are rated in four categories depending on whether they are playing killer or survivor. For Killers there is brutality, sacrificing, hunting, and deviousness. Brutality is for overall keeping survivors in the trail by injuring them, breaking pallets or walls, and damaging gens. Sacrificing is for doing things that prove your dark devotion to the entity such as putting survivors on hook or for certain killers using your power. Then there is hunting, to get points here you need to find, chase and catch survivors, it is very straight forward. Lastly for killers there is deviousness which generally means using your killer’s special power in tricky ways. While on the survivor side of things it would reward you for working on generators and opening exit gates which is in the objective category. healing yourself, recovering while in the dying state, struggling on hook, and escaping the trial would reward you in the survival category. Healing, rescuing, and taking protection hits for other survivors would reward you in the altruism category. Being in chase with the killer, cleaning hex and dull totem, and entering the basement would reward you in the boldness category.

With the PBR system at the end of a match you are given a ranking for each category based on how many blood points you obtained in that category. Depending on your ranking you would either “de-pip” which lowers your rank, “Safety-pip” which makes no changes to your rank, “pip-up” which increases your rank by one pip, or you can even “double-pip” which increases your rank by two pips. If you get enough pips, you will rank up and increase your rank by one level. The lowest rank being 20 and the high being rank 1. This system relied primarily on how you played during the match. This rank was displayed in the post-game to the people you were in the match with. So, if you were having a troubling time catching a survivor or escaping a killer. You could say oh, “I was facing a rank 2 killer while I am a rank 7 survivor that's why I found it challenging.” It was not a perfect system, but it was an overall fun system that allowed you to see your progression. The flaws of this system from a killer perspective are the rank is shared across killers.  For example, if I was a rank one Demogorgon or Executioner but around a rank eight Ghost Face and I played only these killers and no other killers and I played them each the same number of games. It be safe to assume I could place around rank four or five. However, if I played only Demogorgon for a bunch of games and got to rank 1 with only Demogorgon then I switch to Ghost Face for a game I would play against rank one survivors while playing at the skill level of a rank eight Ghost Face. For survivors this system is flawed because when not playing with friends you might get put in a match with rank sixteen survivors while you are a rank eight survivor, and you could lose hard enough to de-pip and lose rank because you yourself can’t loop the killer and complete all five gens. 

The MMR system is based on kills and escapes. The MMR system is displayed as invisible numbers within the game meaning neither you nor other people can see your own MMR; they can only make an estimation based on viewing your gameplay from their perspective. So, you can no longer see at the end of the match and see a distinguished skill level of the player you were facing. Personally, I found it reassuring that the person I was facing was better or worse than me. It settled some confusion after getting crushed or stomped. The core mechanics of this MMR system for survivors is if you escape the trial you “win” that match and your MMR goes up by some number, we will refer to this number as a variable “w.” So if you win three matches your MMR increases by three w. If you are sacrificed or killed in the trial your MMR goes down by one w. For Killers it is a little different, in the MMR system one killer match carries the same weight as four matches. So, if you kill or sacrifice two survivors and two survivors escape you break even. Your MMR goes up by two w and goes down by two w resulting in a net result of zero w. If you kill or sacrifice all four survivors your MMR increases four w and if all survivors escape it decreases by four w.  

The major flaws in this system can be narrowed down to three things. The first one being you can’t see your own rank or others. I know that they still sort of have the PBR system in place but that doesn’t express your skill as a player anymore. It just shows how much you play the game, which doesn’t always equate to skill in the MMR system. You see in the True PBR system you would be facing rank eight to one survivors as a rank four killer, so hypothetically you could face four rank 1 survivors as a rank four killer pushing you to a challenge, if you de-piped that match you would say to yourself, “Guess I am ranked where I should be if I lose to these guys.” In this new system you are hypothetically allowed to face survivors of your same skill level. Yet you still see these rank fluctuation scenarios. Sometimes in a match you go against survivors or killers who are much better than you and get crushed but the MMR however you no longer get that “oh this guy was much better than me” reassurance. You just don’t know if the guy was at your skill level and was using exploits of some kind or if he was just a good survivor or killer. It allows you to make excuses and blame other things. Rather than critiquing and encouraging yourself to do better. 

This brings us to our second point: MMR inflation on killers and sometimes survivors. As I stated earlier the MMR system for killers has one match count as four survivor matches resulting in a potential gain of four w. If you happen into a game where this “rank fluctuation” takes place and you face lower skill survivors and you gain four w. Then you play another game where “rank fluctuation” occurs again and you face survivors with much higher skill than you because of the four w you gained in the previous match. This might result in you getting stomped and losing four w. In those two games all you did was stomp four survivors then get stomped by four survivors resulting in a net change of zero w. You played two games and had little to no challenge in one which was probably boring. Then in another game you got destroyed by too hard a challenge and probably got frustrated. Overall negative experience in the two games and on top of that you made zero progress in the MMR system so it is possible the same thing can happen again and again. 

The third and final major flaw of the MMR system is that it encourages the use of only meta perks from killers and survivors. Constantly I am seeing posts, videos, and memes of how survivors only run the same four perks with little to no variation. Dead Hard, Adrenaline, Borrowed Time, and Iron Will. There are other perks such as Unbreakable that are good and used commonly however in the PBR system many people would put on perks they generally enjoyed using and thought were fun. Some would even make some interesting builds that counters a certain strategy, such as an anti-slugging build. Some survivors still do this, but it is rarer than it was before. The MMR system really shows how unbalanced Dead by Daylight can be in terms of perk differences. Some perks are centralized around getting kills for killers such as Hex: No One Escapes Death. This perk forces survivors to either find the totem to make the killer weaker or get out as fast and possible while leaving one, two, even three survivors to die at the hands of the killer. Inflating that particular killer's MMR far more than it should be. 

The MMR system also brings a lot of good to the table as well. For survivors who solo queue, it pairs them with competent survivors that will make the plays expected in your skill level. It also clearly shows which perks are better than others and can provide easy information of which need to change. However, they mostly don’t make up for the flaws. Many of my friends quit Dead by Daylight or at least took a long break from it when the MMR system got added. The friend that used to get up early and play a match with me every day now refuses to play the game entirely.  To make the best ranking system for Dead by daylight I would propose a system that combines the best of both systems. Combine the diverse and boasting qualities of the Pib-based ranking system with the skill-based matchmaking system that is MMR. Maybe the amount of blood points earned affects how much MMR you gain while keeping the kill system. For example, if you are playing killer and you get a Ruthless killer, which means you would pip-up once in the old system. Count as one w or one kills. Then you would still have a net gain of 3 w. You could also have it to be based on the rarity of the token you receive at the end of the match in the four categories. A ash token in a category would count as minus two w while an iridescent would be plus two w. This would make it less kill dependent but still have kills have more of a factor due to the sacrifice token. For survivors this would also encourage helping other survivors as altruism would affect your MMR once more. The last change I would make would be to display the number of your MMR so you can see where you place in a leader board of sorts. Then you can track if you are improving and what your enemies' and friends' ranks are. 

In conclusion, The MMR and PBS are both flawed in particular ways but if combined they could improve the system and game of Dead by Daylight. One final note, I deeply care about this game. It entertains and challenges me. The reason I am voicing my concern is because I would love to see the game improve. I will still play the game whether steps are put into place to improve the MMR system or not. I have around four hundred hours in the game, and I plan on increasing that number. In fact, I am already having a blast playing the new chapter “Portrait of a Murderer.” The Killer is extremely fun and the new perks both survivor and killer are really interesting. Overall keep up the good work Behavior.

I can’t wait to see what you do next,

Nathan Ball