Are Killer mains Actually dropping out?
Comments
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I haven't quit but I play an absolutely tiny fraction of the amount I used to. I used to love killer but it's such a drag these days. Every match feels like the exact same match over and over, every survivor runs the exact same perks and thinks they're a god at the game for standing behind a pallet.
I boot up the game and it's like 50/50 if I even launch a match, and if I do it'll probably be the only one of the night.
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Makes sense, Again I can sympathize with that sentiment, and the last 6 months of 2021 were rough. A bugged out RE chapter Release, DDOS attacks, Hackers gaining in number, NFT drama, SBMM going online, the introduction of Boons, buffs and nerfs all around etc, honestly the game has lost a lot of it's fun over the course of last year, and Not even the release of Pinhead could save it from hemorrhaging players. All I want to know is
- Are killers really dropping out/swtiching sides more than the survivors.
- Is it SBMM, a recent update, introduction of new mechanics, hackers, or something else to blame for the drop off.
- What are the devs planning or doing about it.
I would think at this point we could all use some reassurances paired with some transparency from the devs.
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I doubt the devs want to confirm that. They haven't flat-out denied it, which alone says something. They also made a comment in one of their streams that they can't "fix" queue times because they have no control over the fact that fewer people play killer during peak hours. Finally, in at least one of their surveys they asked if players would like it if the game offered rewards for switching to the side that needs more players in order to balance the queue. Those clues are probably the best we'll get.
Think about it: in such a divided community, would you want to give people that kind of ammunition that one side has far fewer players than the other?
While some people do say "killer is weak and powerless," a lot of people don't. Many people just say it isn't fun. Which is true, killer often isn't fun. It has nothing to do with strength. For one thing, a lot of the killer powers feel clunky. Even if they're neat in theory, they're just not fun to actually use. For another thing, if I tunnel and slug and do all that other stuff that makes me feel like an ass, then I can win against survivors who, if I play nice and juggle hooks I would absolutely lose against. But I don't like playing that way, I don't find that fun, so I just let every group get a 4e, because I have more fun playing nice and losing than I do playing to win. In terms of game design, that's awful.
I want to play killer because I like the idea of it and I like some of the killer powers, but DbD doesn't live up to what it could be.
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I dunno. All I know is that I get instant surv q's during the day and instant killer q's during the night still.
When reversed, both take long.
I understand killer being more stressful to play tho, so I wouldn't be surprised.
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Currently survivors already do outnumber killers, but that's typical for an asymmetrical game, the questions are "By how much", and "what is being done to fix it, if the disparity is to high currently." I feel a little transparency from the devs would be much appreciated by everyone, as it would point out where they are focusing their attention in order to keep the game alive. Honestly, your evidence there does have me concerned that what the forum posters and redditors are saying about the killer drop rate is actually true, but I don't really believe it. I'm betting that if they do give us the statistics I'm requesting, we'll see little or no difference between the killer and survivor drop rates, but again, we won't know if they aren't willing to confirm what's going on.
Also please don't feed @Sluzzy , I've already called them out for trying to derail this conversation to one debating who the power role is, and unfortunately you're falling for it. @Sluzzy loves Playing the "victim" card from the survivor side (just read any of their posts), and while their zealotry's often regarded as comical by the community, it has no place in this discussion, which has nothing to do with which role is the "weak" or "unfun" one to play, and everything to do with whether killers are actually dropping the game more than survivors, and why.
If it turns out that killers ARE dropping BECAUSE they feel too weak against survivors, then this conversation can change, but unless the goal of this post is reached and acknowledged by the devs showing us the requested statistics, we'll never really know.
Post edited by TWiXT on3 -
There's actually a lot going into the longer que times, and players leaving the game is apart of it (a big part of it).
It's one killer for every 4 survivors, so there could be a smaller amount of killers, and survivors would still find games quickly, because one player takes 4 players out of waiting in que. However the amount of killer players is dropping, leaving there not even enough killers queuing the same time as survivors, resulting in longer wait times till a killer gets out of game to then take the next 4 waiting in line.
This gets worse with solo survivors leaving, so parties for 3 take even longer to find a game.
Parties of 2 rely on finding other parties of 2 for their game. Not much changes there other than the fact that less players means less pool, and big differences in MMR.
4 man SWF is the same, they can find ques faster, but they don't because of just how broken the MMR system is on a Kill/Escape win condition.
That adds into longer que times, is the fact it is a lot easier to gain MMR as Killer, even if you do poorly or don't have fun. You are going to get 1-3 kills more often - resulting your MMR to barely go down, stay the same, or go up considerably. So we have a majority of killers with high MMR and a majority of survivors getting low MMR, making a large margin of players unable to find killers to face, a small margin of survivors having trouble finding other players to join their lobbies and killers who have to face the best, and SWF before they finally dip and take a break from the game.
The current work around is to add a decaying MMR to Killers, so that when you reach a point that you are no longer having fun with one Killer, you can switch to another Killer with a slightly less MMR (because all your Killers MMR is based off your highest MMR, but not as high) - allowing the MMR to decay on your previous Killer. Also your Killers MMR will decay when you take a break from Killer to play Survivor. Also your MMR will decay when you take a break from the game. This will result in returning players having more fun, and playing longer - instead of just coming back, play a few games - see nothings changed and then going immediately onto another break. It is a band aid fix, but it's a pretty good one until they fix the MMR system and fun for the Killer role.
TL;DR there is a lot more to the higher que times for survivor, but players leaving the game doesn't help.
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I'm not a killer main and I'm not a survivor main but I gave up playing killer after playing a few weeks of high MMR games. I havent touched the game since...
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I quit killer and only play survivor if I get on (which I haven't in a few weeks now). Not because of MMR, I just got tired of the survivors being in a winning position by default and having to mess up out of it for the overwhelming majority of the killer roster due to perks and map design. Like if whether I win or lose is mostly out of my control then its frustrating when I lose and feels hollow when I win.
So it was either play Nurse and Blight every game, only play when I have OP add-ons on a killer (which not all killers have), or switch to survivor and always have access to what makes me strong. I just switched to survivor. Then boons came out, and I'm definitely not going back with those things running around.
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Oh that's apart of it too. In addition to the other things I've mentioned in my comment. Players that are quitting Killer to only play survivor adds even more survivors to the survivors pool, creating as if an even longer line.
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From anecdotal evidence (which means nothing, I know), there are fewer killers in my region (North America something-or-other, I don't know which one exactly). During the daytime, it used to be that my survivor queues were instant and killer queues were long, but at night killer queues were instant and survivor queues were long. For the past couple months, that hasn't been the case, anymore. Killer queues are pretty fast during the day, too, now. Not instant instant, but less than 60 seconds. That's a huge, huge change from what it used to be.
I've been on the forum almost as long as you have, I know who Sluzzy is. I think I've responded to them fewer than 5 times in these 3+ years, and of those they haven't responded once, so 🤷♀️ Mostly I didn't want to see other people taking up that cry of "killers are too strong" in this thread, because you're right, it has no place in this discussion. But I apologize if I was taking things off track.
Again, I don't see devs giving us these statistics. They've only given us statistics a few times, and despite the devs saying, "Don't read too much into these, they're just numbers," everyone did exactly that and put their own biases on those numbers. The numbers might show something, but even if things line up to a certain timeline it doesn't tell us why. Correlation doesn't equal causation.
I mean, the devs might show us. You can certainly ask, I'm not saying you can't. If I'm being overly negative I apologize. I have been given little to no reason to be positive in my attitude towards this game during my time playing.
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Nah In the morning survivor is faster than killer, at night killer is faster than survivor at least for me
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I think this is a pretty good post, all on all.
Yeah, probably a lot of the killer complaints, taken in general, are somewhat valid, as I made similar experiences, even though I am quite new to the game and thus don't know it differently. And yes, most killer mains probably won't leave, but getting angrier and angrier. It's ao odd that you as a killer main get somewhat punished for playing well.
I know, I know, you could say "huh, you then only love stomping baby survivor groups?" and that's not what you should strive for, BUT a good killer is rewarded with much sweatier games, a lot! A really tough, grit your teeth game every once in a while? That's cool and even fun. But if every game feels like you are fighting for the dbd world championship, every game, every day, then it will eat at your mental fortitude.
Add to this the constant stress of playing killer, getting your hard worked for second hit in a though loop validated and eaten by a dead hard and your only reward a pallet to the face, while the survivor zooms of to his CoH heal zone, and you get a cocktail that's pretty tailor-made to burn killer mains out, pretty fast.
Btw, someone gave a pretty good explanation for the cue times: during the day the peeps who split up their time between survivor and killer will often play a bit of killer, leading to a bit longer killer cues and faster solo q survivors. In the evening a lot of players will wanna play with their friends, so they do a SWF and this leads to the super long survivor cues, while killers in the evening are nearly instant (around 15-25s most often) .
EDIT: I also forgot to add this: I was for the most part a pretty cool killer, always left the hook alone, roamed the map, no tunneling etc unless the survivors were bringing 2BNP and gen rushing like mad, but ever since I hit the higher-ish (supposedly) MMR, this won't cut it and in the vast majority of my games I will get clickety clicked and laughed out of the game if I don't tunnel one player out asap. I hate it, but 3v1 is manageable, while 4v1 until the 9th hook nearly always spells desaster. So here we have a big conundrum: tunneling is frowned upon, its eating away a lot of the fun that survivors have, and apparently BHVR wanna do something about it, BUT at the same time its the best general tactic for the killer to not lose control of the game and get a somewhat stable footing. I don't know how I, personally, would feel if tunneling was forcefully taken away from me. Another case might be something like a basekit Devour Hope effect, where you get some kind if buff when you roam away from the hook. But just invalidating this tactic alone won't cut it and will just spill more bad blood.
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I don't care. They need to fix survivor queues. While they wait on that, I will enjoy my instant queues. I can dodge a lobby just because I don't like the Claudette's shirt and probably be done with that match before the Claudette finds a killer. Rofl.
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I understand, appreciate, and even agree with you on many things regarding this post. Your discussion with me and the community does raise more questions and even pays heed to the idea that Killers are dropping the game, and you're right in saying that even if we get the statistics, correlation doesn't equal causation. Still, I believe many of us in the community would appreciate some transparency from the devs about it, and hopefully a plan of attack in what they are going to do.
What worries me most is their silence on the matter. When the devs of a game are ghosts while the game is dropping players in large numbers, that's a real cause for concern, and only shows that they have no plan or faith in themselves that they can do anything to turn that drop rate around. If they're banking on the Ringu chapter to save it, that's only a poor distraction from the problem, unless they are also planning to apply some major fixes in the areas that are causing the players to drop out.
In this post, we've had comments claiming its SBMM's fault, The introduction of Boons, The hackers, time of day, and Nerfs or Buffs as some of the many reasons for why people are dropping out, and why the queue times are going up. While all of these things are likely factors in the "Why" they don't answer the question of the post: "Are killer Mains actually dropping out?"
Sadly I believe you are correct in that the devs won't give us the statistics we're asking for, even if it proves me right in my assumption that killers aren't dropping the game or switching sides anymore than the survivors, simply because they don't want players to lose faith in them or the game. That's not gonna stop me from asking though, I mean, the best thing they could do right now is to simply end their silence with a brief "State of the game" Developer update, or even better, include the statistics I requested. The worst thing they could do, is keep quiet and let our anxieties about this games health rise as the player base continues to drop.
and no, you didn't come off as harsh to me at all, it's been good conversing with you. 😊
Post edited by TWiXT on1 -
######### yes people are definitely quitting. I hope they have a better time with whatever they are doing.
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I think they'll just start forcing people to play killer, F13 style.
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I think the real issue is the amount of veteran killers that have left the game. Your seeing a lot more average killers having to take up the slack against good survivor's. This has led to the frustration and bitterness you see on the forums. A lot of killers don't like being donkey stomped or having to tunnel and camp to be viable.
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Killers, I presume, started quitting ever since SBMM was introduced to the game
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killer main here I don't play as much as I use to, I would play 5-10 games now i play 1-3 games because the matches are so cancers that i get more tired\sick them
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I still play, but I do play more solo survivor. Getting ratted out by useless teammates and face camped is preferable to playing killer some times, even if you get 4ks
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Haha, this is the best part of killer right now. It's pretty easy to tell if the lobby is a sweaty SWF or some solo Q players and im dodging those SWFs 99% of the time if i'm not playing a top tier killer. Someone else can deal with that, even when I win those games it's usually a hideous unfun slog outside of like ~5 killers/builds.
That's probably the dumbest part of SBMM. Join a lobby as Trapper and it's a sweaty 4 man? Go F yourself; you can't change to Nurse.
And it's even worse because we now know that per-killer MMR is barely different from your general MMR so you are locked into characters for nothing!
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Yes, killers are definitely dropping out. I’m getting instant killer queues even during the day now (never happened until recently) and my survivor queues keeping getting longer and longer. Fewer and fewer people want to play killer with the awful state of the game on the killer side
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Same for me. During the day, survivor queues used to be instant and killer would take up to 5 minutes. Now it’s opposite. HUGE shift in the past couple of months. Killers are definitely dropping out or at least playing a lot less.
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Hard to say for certain without the developers confirming anything. I think the hiding of MMR has caused more frustration and problems for the game than MMR has in and of itself.
People have zero feedback now as to where they stand skill-wise, so when they lose a bunch of games they just assume it's because they've hit "high MMR". There's no indication of that, and a player losing a bunch of games doesn't mean their MMR is high. It means they're losing a bunch of games at their MMR bracket, whatever that bracket may be.
In the past with ranked matchmaking, a player could maybe see that they were rank 6 for example and say "Well I have a lot to work on, it might not just be the game". Now that there's no feedback on personal skill, players are probably frustrated and leaving because they think they've hit the skill cap and the game is stacked against them, when in reality they have a ton to improve on.
MMR isn't really making anyone happy right now. A huge contingent of the killers on the forum seem very frustrated, and on the other hand players like myself are still not being challenged at all 90% of the time. I'm downright bored most games. It seems like it's overtuned for average players (generally around the 500-1000 hr mark) and doesn't know what to do with outliers (3000+ hrs) during peak hours.
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I'm a relative newbie (just over 100 hours) and to be honest I think I've played 2 killer games since mid-Dec. It's just not fun, MMR still puts me up against people with obviously far more skill and experience than myself and getting bullied isn't what I'd call an enjoyable use of my time.
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That's probably just because there are so many survivors in the Q that the matchmaking is just giving them a killer to move the lobbies along. I can confidently say I am "high MMR" because I get into lobbies with the major streamers of this game (who are generally recognized as "good" players) and I have played DBD for the past 4 years straight and still probably win over 75% of my games even with MMR.
I will get the ultra sweat lobbies where every player has 1k+ hours minimum, and then immediately go and play a match where I would almost assume it's the survivors first game!
I legit only play killer now because the survivor Q times are too damn long. Otherwise I would mostly dump the role because it's legit not fun anymore. I have played plenty to know that against a group of 4 good meta survivors, you literally cannot win on a ton of maps with a ton of killers. It's not a possibility unless the survivors are throwing.
And the saving grace of DBD to me was that you ~didn't~ get 4 meta survivors every damn game so you could play something that's not top tier. I can't just spam stuff like meta Nurse and meta Blight because I get so bored. But the alterative is playing characters who are almost guaranteed to lose.
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Sounds a lot like my experience. I'll get OhTofu as the killer one game and then get a killer with 100 hrs next game.
Killer right now pretty much comes down to game sense, which is why I think the less experienced players are struggling. Like you said, some maps aren't going to be winnable with some killers unless you resort to some omega sweat or they throw. But MMR is mich more likely to give me babies than death squads as of late.
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I play both sides though these days I lean more toward killer (Legion generally) since I find it a lot less annoying but usually during the day I get instant survivor queues while killer may take 2-5mins depending on the day while after about 2pm or so killer gets instant while survivor queue times may take up to 5-10mins around 8-9pm.
Things I can safely say is the killer changes lately have been fine for the most part (still waiting on that Legion rework T-T) and the killers I get lately have played constantly slugging, tunneling, camping, and while yes I agree its a strategy it simply isnt fun to play against. Waiting sometimes as much as 10mins for a match to get tunneled and camped out in 30s no thanks i will just play killer where I can at least play the game rather than doing nothing even if I only get 1-2 kills.
Regardless people blaming things like boons I think the fact that the single largest player base drop was in August which was more than double any month since boons came out in October, I think it really outlines that boons arent the big issue. The game is just growing stale, people are finally moving on whether it be to frustration or boredom or life in general and I dont think its specific to either side. I have not seen any drastic change in my queue times on either side since crossplay was added and even then it wasnt much difference since I moved from PS4 to PC almost 3 years ago. Are killers quitting? Yes. But survivors are quitting just as fast.
TLDR; Queue times are the same as they have been for years and both sides are quitting probably at the same rate and the player base is bleeding people in massive quantities regardless of role
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I've been playing less DbD in general, but I've stopped playing killer completely until it actually gets balanced. I've been playing mostly survivor.
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I just quit because it wasn't fun and I couldn't keep deluding myself thinking that it'd get better.
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Quite the good post and while I don't agree with everything, I would back the majority.
Regarding the tunneling problem: until a month ago (I only started playing in November) I mostly played very nice and by the survivors play book, ie leaving the hooks, roaming around, deliberately going after the unhooker instead of the unhooked survivor etc and had fun, while still winning a considerable portion of my games.
But of late things have changed and I get way, way, way more sweaty games then ever before. I compare it like playing the dbd championship, but its not the finals, but every game after game after game.
I noticed that if I play like before that I would lose miserable and be laughed out of the gate and send away with a flashlight storm. The only way how I could wrest back the control of the game was by tunneling one player out asap, turning a crushing 4v1 into a manageable 3v1.
I hate this myself, but its the state of my game right now. Every now and then I get a game, though, were things are pretty much like they were back then. If things go well I notice this right away, if not I'll stomo this group... and you might have guessed it, in the after game chat it shows that half of them got only 1-3 perk slots unlocked with all kind of yellow and green ones jumbled together: I valiantly crushed a baby group :V
I know that lot of people worked very hard for this SBMM system, but its so very draining to me, sweating each and every game and in my feeding frenzy stomping poor little baby survivors, who should actually be protected by this system.
So probably no one of the higher ups would want to swallow the bitter pill and scrap SBMM and MMR, but it would appease so many peeps who are really losing interest of faith in the game.
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Still I think that's more to do with the Q times than the matchmaking being broken. There was some reddit post I read a while back where a dataminer showed that during an primetime right now there could be like 8,000+ survivors waiting for a game and it just throws whoever Qs as killer into a lobby as they push ready.
In theory it should be nonstop sweats every game instead of the random babies you get now. And in that theoretical world the weaker killers who are reliant on survivor mistakes for downs are just useless. Your only strategy is to spend your 5 gens (aka 3.5 minutes) tunneling out 1 person and eating every second chance perk in the game. Then you collect the second kill with endgame perks like rancor / no way out.
I just hate how the game has come full circle. When I first started playing in 2017 (I guess its actually been more like 5 years!) Nurse and Billy were basically your only options. Play those two, play ebony mori's, or get F'd.
The game slowly and slowly got better and eventually it was to the point where almost every killer was a viable option. Pre MMR my average killer session I would almost never play the same killer twice because I like to switch it up alot. Now? You can't do that without getting screwed. So I feel like I have wasted so much time grinding out these characters that became obsolete en-masse with a single patch. And it's been replaced with a few cookie cutter meta builds that barely hold my attention anymore.
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I'm a killer main who has effectively left recently. I used to play killer games for a few hours every day since early 2017. Now, I play 1-3 games a week if that. Playing as a killer has become such a miserable stressful experience against survivors who were remotely competent and work together. But for me, 'Circle of Healing' was the straw that broke the camels back. If effective stole pressure from half of the killer cast by giving survivors access to easy healing in potentially several places in the map at once. Playing killer just isn't worth the stress anymore
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Yea, good point here. SBMM is only going to work well if you have a large pool of killers across a range of MMR scores. With the dwindling number of killer players, SBMM is throwing lower-skilled killers into matches with higher skilled survivors to keep high MMR survivors from having hour-long wait times. I think this is probably one of the biggest reasons why killers have been so frustrated with the game since SBMM was launched
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Its not a fun game as killer anymore, I play survivor / dont play at all. Once this bp event is over im back on break. Its literally due to trash matchmaking and circle of healing / literally everyone running dh
cant WAIT for elden ring / vhs beta
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I still play killer but I just play ones that are less fun for survivors now.
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I can attest to this to.
In November, my survivor queues ranged from 4 minutes to 15.
December, it was more like 3-8 minutes. Likely due to the snowman shenanigans.
Now it's back up, possibly longer than even November - 5-10 minutes minimum.
Killer has been 2-3 minutes at the outside, but since the New Year, it's been basically instant at all times of day.
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I’ve quit the game ever since MMR was released. Haven’t touched killer ever since pinhead came out haven’t touched mikaela, nothing. I never wanted SBMM to be in this game since this is basically a casual game and SBMM doesn’t belong in casual games so yeah.
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We can only hope
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I'm a killer main of 4+ years and I quit last month. And yes, it's because of SBMM. Also, out of the 12 friends I play this game with online (10 of us are killer mains when playing solo but obviously play survivor together) only 1 of us is still playing. We've all collectively quit because of SBMM and have moved on. We'd all love to return but until BHVR acknowledges and fixes the insane imbalance due to SWFs and the damage they've done to playing killer because of SBMM, we won't be coming back any time soon.
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P.S. F-ck boons. They're too OP and needs to have some sort of limitations. If someone can break Ruin in the first 30 seconds of a match, a survivors precious boon totems shouldn't be able to be relit an infinite amount of times.
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I'm playing less and less killer nowdays. 2 days ago i put my killer pants back on and went to play some ghosty and after 4 deathsquad matches where i got 2 hooks and survivors insulting me in the end game while abusing CoH headon and flashbangs, i took those killer pants back off.
I feel like eather i get total potatoes against me that dont even know im the killer and stand infront of me or i get the deathsquads 3-4 man swfs which abuse everything they can in the map while making me feel really crappy.
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Sad part is that we will likely never see the data if bhvr does have since what incentive do they have to show people why their game is losing players.
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We will almost certainly never get those statistics so we can only go on anecdotal evidence and what I can tell you is all my friends dropped the game and even myself who was the most dedicated to the game after a month of mmr being even more inconsistent then the previous system which the devs even said was basically no matchmaking at all.
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Correct me if i´m wrong. But didn´t the devs say, that the mmr would try to match you with harder/easier opponents in order to maintain the aimed 2 escapes, 2 killed stat? Like after having a streak of loses, it was supposed to give you easier opponents, so you could get a win. And the other way around, if you get a win streak you would go against much harder ones, to even things out.
So if that were true, then the survivors accumulating a higher mmr due to escaping on a regular basis means that the mmr doesn´t work as intended. Or that the balancing goal of 2 kills 2 escapes is unachievable/a fail. Since someone could get 4 kills by getting a total of 4 hooks, meanwhile another killer would get 0 kills with 8 hooks. Yet the system would consider the later as a worse player.
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While I was against one of those squads, they hopped into a locker and I was like, "you think I give a [redacted]?" and got hit with DS, as always, until... They jumped back in. I desperately tried to back away and to the side of the locker, but to no avail. They got the head on and after I tunneled them out completely, they said I sucked. RIP.
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Last month I played a bit of killer but this month was meh. Tried to hop on for the bloodpoints and qued for suv and it took 5 minutes so I just quit. Can't even think about playing a match as one at the moment. Picked up ready or not and skyrim and am having a blast. Mainly just roam around here to see if they are making any meaningful changes.
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Killer Main here with another anecdote - lack of killers is a legitimate issue, but I think most of us are just shifting our play times to avoid the swf queues. Some other events that take place make things harder for killers at all times of day but only a few days in a month.
Rank reset is one of these. Since the BP bonus was added in, with more BP for better ranks, you get a slew of try-hards on both sides near the reset date.
Once the reset happens you the up with people you really have no business going up against.. usually that doesn't last long, but I actually noticed this past week the same people weren't gaining rank like you'd expect.
Personally as killer I don't like dropping into Gold very far if I can help it. With the 1.5xBP going on I suspect people are keeping their ranks artificially high to get better scores. There don't seem to be a lot of streamers or cakes out there, so you leverage what you can.
It's really hit or miss.. like I hit and kill everyone or miss repeatedly. I've been trying to find out if there are any new speed exploits for survivors the last few days... Can't seem to catch up to half of them. I check the perks later and confirm nothing should have been pushing their average, so can only assume silver and bronze have been full of actual reds lately.
Or I need a new controller.
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Apologies for the long reply in advance:
SBMM tries to match you with players of similar skill level, so naturally, If you are winning most of your games you'll end up getting matched with players that are doing the same. Then it pushes you to go against players slightly higher in skill, until you start losing more than you are winning, at which point you've lost enough ranking points to match up with people of lower skill for a few trials, and level out after winning a few. Basically the system is intended to keep you playing with players at your level by holding your position between people above it and below it, but in order for it to maintain that, it has to keep testing where you're at, after all: the more you play, the more you improve.
The problem with this is that, with how it ranks you, if you are a killer and get 2 kills and 2 escapes, which is the "ideal outcome" according to the devs, then you gain nothing towards your ranking as the 2 escapes cancel out the 2 kills you earned point wise. While that keeps you at your skill level, half the survivors you faced rank up theirs, and keep ranking up, until they start dying more than escaping. Add in the admittedly 1 sided advantage of SWF with VOIP programs, and the fact that the more a Solo survivor ranks up, the better their teammates get who can carry them through matches, survivors overall rank up their SBMM faster than killers can.
BTW, the AVG streak of Wins vs. Losses before SBMM adjusts who it matches you with is 10, so if you are losing 6+ of 10 matches, it pits you up against players at what it deems is your current skill level, which in the case of killer is about -160 points lower, at a minimum from where you were at before you played the last 10 matches. Whereas If you won 6+ games, it puts you at a minimum of 200 points higher than where you were. After which, your next match will either be jarringly more difficult, or easier than you expected, but not actually AT your level. Believe it or not, You are right... 8 hooks with no kills = a loss for a killer, and 4 wins for the survivors, so the killer is judged to be the worse player, and after 10 games of putting up with that level of players they can accrue a maximum of -800 points before it readjusts who to put them up against, which will be much lower in actual skill than them.
Since the system only judges based on kills vs escapes, and readjusts your level after 10 matches at a time, you end up with some days where you completely steamroll the competition, and others where you get steamrolled, but hardly any days where it feels like your opponents are actually at your level. Add in the problem of how SBMM picks players to match you against based on how long you've waited in queue, and now we have a recipe for disaster.
SBMM Starts searching for matches based upon the availability of players in your server that are at the same skill level as you, and if it can't find any, it looks for the next level above, and keeps doing that, but After an undisclosed amount of mins, if it hasn't found anyone at or above your level, it starts looking for anyone lower, and lower, until it finds a match. This is why During the mid-day, Survivors often find themselves paired with a really good killer if their queue was reasonably short, but a really weak one if they had to hang around for a long time. Its also why survivors with high SBMM ranking tend to wait longer to get matches, since the amount of killers at their level available during that time of day are scarce, but killers way below their level are more plentiful.
This explains why a killer who's just started playing with about only 20 matches under their belt, suddenly gets hammered hard by SWF or full meta bully squads for a few games, doesn't it?
Overall, the system just doesn't do its job anywhere near it's intended purpose, and the players know it, hate it, and despite all the complaints we had about the old ranking system, are actually pining for the previous system to come back. My only question is whether or not SBMM is actually causing killers SPECIFICALLY to drop out of the game, if it's causing players from both sides to drop, or if it really isn't to blame for the recent decline in player activity overall? Unfortunately, unless the devs put an end to their silence on this matter, and give us some statistics showing whether or not Killers are dropping the game more than survivors, we can't be certain as to the overall cause of the 18,000+ player drop out rate between August and now, but I'm betting SBMM has something to do with it.
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No problem, i like to read.
Yeah, the system widening its search radius has been around forever. During the old system it basically resulted in rainbow matches, when it failed to find players in the same rank range.
Yesterdays stream talked about both the sbmmr, queues and kills vs hooks. Apparently there isn´t an issue. Which just made me realize that the current sbmmr works like our beloved Victory Cube used to work. When the Victory Cube was launched, ranks worked in a way in which it ignored everything except hooks and kills. Kills weighting more than hooks. So a killer with 2 kills + 1 hook would get a guaranteed pip, while a killer who got 8 hooks but no kill wouldn´t pip. Which in return was the beginning of Insidious Basement Bubba. Because killers were rewarded by the system for camping. Obviously this created a very toxic ambient and the Victory Cube was scrapped for them Emblems, which try to keep a balance in chases, hooks, hit, heals, etc. While this isn´t perfect, as it doesn´t keep the different killers in mind (Insta down killers, Plague or Trapper would have a harder time piping, because the system expects 2 hits per down.), it still is better than the VC.
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