How the MMR works, and why what Patrick said makes absolute sense (from a dev POV)

The game also has numerous references to working together and helping your team, as another person already cited for you in this thread, but there is no point in cherry picking. That's also the easiest way to explain the game to a new player because it's the simplest thing to understand. "You want to escape" is much simpler than "You want to escape, but like, sometimes you'll be able to make so much more BP by not escaping, and sometimes your rift challenge is worth hanging around for, and sometimes you're playing with a friend and you really want to save them, and..."

My point Re: the opponent is simple. If you are helping your opponent do their objective, that should be negatively reflected in your MMR, because MMR is based on the principle of a zero sum game where a loss for one side equates to a win for the other side. The fact that it doesn't in the current system means the system is flawed. You don't need to care either way. It is what it is.

MMR does reward selfish plays that lead to players' own escape, yes. 100% agreed. That is a problem. There is nothing skilled about waiting in a locker for your teammate to die in a winnable match. There is nothing skilled about leaving through the exit gate instead of taking an easy save because 10% of the time you'll end up dying for your teammate. MMR thinks so, though, and will tend to boost the rating of players who do these things. This is a problem.

Selfish players are not "stuck with" more skilled players. They are being carried by them, and necessarily so, because they're also facing killers that are too good for them. This just incentivizes more selfish behavior, since these players get disproportionately stomped whenever they interact with the killer. It also hurts the experience for their teammates. This is a problem.

You have every right to be an unapologetic, "screw you I got mine", political compass meme of a DBD player. Nothing wrong with that. The fact that the system rewards that style of play results in worse experiences for everyone, though, including you. When I say that selfish play is "rewarded", I'm talking strictly in terms of MMR. MMR itself is worthless outside of matchmaking and you get nothing of value from having a higher rating. If you're laser focused on surviving all the time, you should actually consider the opposite (getting matched with weaker killers) to be a reward. A higher MMR is more like a punishment. I'm surprised you wouldn't prefer to play the game in a system that lets you face weaker killers and escape more frequently, even well over 50%? That's the only way for you to complete that selfish objective more often. In the current system, you'll always get dragged down to roughly 50% because that's what matchmaking is based around.

1. Not disagreeing that this happened before. I just finished a roughly 6 month break from the game, though, and what I've come back to has been worse than anything I've experienced in 1300 hours. It's been match after match after match of getting camped to death on the first hook. I had a streak of actually 8 matches in a row a few days ago where it happened. Why? As far as I can figure, killers at my MMR are likely going to fit into a few moulds: 1) Terrible killers who camp for the 2k. 2) Actual killers of my skill. 3) Killers way better than me who like to meme around instead of completing their objective (i.e. BK Myers, the classic Wraith EGC Rancor/Nemesis murder spree). Bucket 3 has always been pretty rare, and now bucket 1 is incentivized since 1) some players value being more "skilled" and will play so as to fit that definition, and 2) players who find success with that playstyle will find it harder and harder to stop, because they're boosted to the point where they're playing against players they can't kill when they don't camp. I could be wrong, but I can't think of any other change during my hiatus that could have caused this change in someone's behavior.
2. Very much disagree. Anyone with two thumbs can 2k with Bubba unless they're facing a team that is so much better than them they can't even get a down. Are these the kinds of matches we want to incentivize? Killers who are so boosted they can only camp to win, so they have no choice but to keep camping, and this vicious cycles it's way until the gap is so large they finally start losing again? This is just bad for everyone involved since it encourages unfun play. Rather than this stick of collateral damage, I prefer the carrot of deranking these players. If you're facing baby survivors and don't need to worry about playing perfectly all of the time, players don't need to resort to camping in order to win. They can just go off and chase and take it easy and still do well and not get bullied. This will gradually raise their ranks until they're in a good place.

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The current issues with MMR are independent of whether their algorithm is working as intended. The concept is fundamentally flawed. My guess is they figured it would be a decent proxy for skill without anticipating the side effects in terms of match quality for incentivizing selfish and unfun play.

If you haven't noticed worse quality matches under MMR, that's good for you. I'm sure YMMV. I'm a very altruistic player, though, and will frequently sacrifice myself for teammates during the EGC because it's more fun and usually more lucrative (in terms of BP) to try to save them than to let them die. It also builds camaraderie and is fun to smile about in the postgame chat. For these sins, I am apparently doomed to play with more than my fair share of selfish potatoes against killers that if I'm lucky are just a bit worse than me, or if I'm unlucky are a lot worse than me and just camp the first hook. It's been pretty awful, honestly.

I've been trying to explain why I feel it does, though. It's incetivization out of necessity. Killers who camp are rewarded by this system, meaning they face better survivors. Invariably, this means that they have two options: 1) Continue to camp. 2) Stop camping, and get absolutely pummeled until their MMR bottoms out. So, naturally, the players continue to camp. The same goes for immersed, selfish survivors. They start escaping that way at the expense of your teammates, which causes them to face better killers. Their options become 1) Continue to play immersed. 2) Try to be a productive team member and get absolutely pummeled until their MMR bottoms out.

I'm arguing that a team-escape-based MMR would help address most of these issues. Let's take the same example of our immersed survivor. This time they derank and start facing weaker killers. As a result, they don't feel as much danger in the game, meaning they start acting bolder, such as doing risky objectives or even stepping in to take chase for a teammate on death hook. This sort of play is gradually rewarded by MMR until they arrive back at a good balance.

I'd also be open to changes like the one you described, but given that the current MMR system seems to be making these issues worse and really should be doing the opposite it seems like a logical place to start.

Go ahead, show me an official reference in which working together and helping your team is identified as being the winning condition to the game.

The problem is the you continually assert that there is only two sides without providing any evidence to show for it. In fact, there is five sides, one for each of the survivors and one for the killer. Never will it ALL go up, and never will it ALL go down. It's functioning exactly how it's supposed to.

Disgree. The purpose of any game is to figuring out the path to victory. Thus, skill, in the context of games, is defined by whether the player have the knowledge, and the actual ability to carve out the path to winning. It's important to understand that it has nothing to do with "effort" that one may put in, nor how "difficult" the ability is obtain. For example, even if a player is able to somehow memorize every random map formation and figured out a way to predict every pallet spawn location so that he/she is able to throw every pallet down within the first 20 seconds of the game by taking the shortest route before even the killer can find him, would that be considered "skill" in this game? Unless that player's ability is shown to provide consistent victory, it's absolutely meaningless. Sure, it might have taken lot of effort to learn it, and it may be difficult to pull off, but unless it somehow correleates to his/her escape rate, it's irrelevant to his/her skill. So ultimately, it's always a question of "Am I doing what it takes to earn my victory?"

So yes, if you are consistently able to pull of a win majority of the time simply by hiding all game, guess what, it's a marvelous skill to have. But honestly, how often does that happen? Every time I've seen players like that, the player ends up either dying, or simply getting the hatch (which doesn't affect the MMR). Leaving another survivor to die while escaping? Why wouldn't it be a skill? On the other hand, I've seen overly altruistic survivors running headlong into a one-hit camper and dying off - displays of horrible decision-making ability that would counteract any good skills they may have demonstrated during the game - so they go down in MMR as they should.

Why would it be a problem? Eventually (and probably really quickly), they'll start running into killers that are too strong, and survivors who won't be able to carry him/her. After all, the game is balanced in a way that on average, four players must play well (at least in the beginning) for any of them to have a chance of surviving.

The reason why a player is focused on escaping is, wait for it, it's literally the point of the game. That is the win condition. And trying to achieve the wincon is the fun aspect of ANY game. Figuring HOW to get there. It's not about being a "selfish" player or "altruistic" player - it's about figuring out what needs to be done so that wincon can be fulfilled. MMR is neither reward or a punishment - it's just a matchmaking tool that allows you to find opponents that are around the similar level as you in your thirst for victory. 

Totally on board with this. Hope you feel more well soon! :)

I don't have time or energy to reply to all of this. A few points:

I have said at length why I feel it hurts the game for selfish but less skilled survivors to have a higher MMR. They will eventually face stronger killers, but they will also be matched with stronger teammates... Who will be forced to carry in order for the selfish player to leave them to die at the first sign of trouble. If you're a team player, as many players are, you are therefore punished by this system. Instead of competent teammates who contribute as much as you did to any of the escapes that occur in the trial, you get useless potatoes who only care about themselves. That would not be the case in a team-escape-based system. Selfish players would fall in rank until their contribution to the team matched that of their teammates. That means that everyone is contributing evenly. This should also have the advantage of incentivizing more altruistic play, since they'll have weaker killer opponents, and therefore will not need to sweat to escape.

There is no single win condition in DBD. The tutorial tells you as simply as possible what you should try to do as a new player. "Not die". There is no nuance in that, because there can't be. New players don't know enough to understand anything else.

As I mentioned, there was another comment on here citing perk text and later excerpts from the same Cote interview you referenced that contradict the game being just about one person escaping. The game has historically been based around a pip system which punished the team collectively if survivors were left to die on the hook. It was also much harder to rank up without individual hook saves. That wouldn't make sense if the point of the game were just to get out, though. Why should you care if someone else dies on the hook if the tutorial said just to escape (4head). Well, because that's a big part of how you rank up, for one thing. That is the game that this MMR system was added to. It is not based on the win condition. Rather it ignores teamplay and all other valid win conditions.

I could point to the fact that the leaderboard is organized by BP, not escape status, as another message to survivors that "escape at all costs" is not what helps you win. In order to finish first on your team, you also need to complete a variety of objectives. I could also point to the existence of SWF, which clearly implies cooperation is at the heart of the game.

Winning by hiding all game is defined as winning by almost no one. The killer who 3k'd thinks the survivors lost. The MMR system that increases the killer's rank thinks the survivors lost. The three survivors who died thinks the survivors lost. Hell, even the person who escaped after doing nothing all game probably thinks they lost. The survivor not pipping indicates they lost. Their low BP total indicates they lost. The only element not in alignment is MMR, which rewards that one survivor along with the killer. It makes no sense with the rest of the game's incentive system and with how many, probably most, players choose to play. I can't imagine hiding in a bush as your team gets 3k'd in what should have been a 1k and thinking, "Yes, I won!" And, regardless, incentivizing behavior like that is not good for the experience of most players.

First of all, this black and white thinking of "selfish players = bad, useless, etc. players" and "altruistic players = good, useful, etc. players" need to be reexamined. Higher in the ratings you go, there are certainly great 'selfish' players that would help out as much as possible, especially in the beginning if they believe that it helps them escape, and there are also horrible altruistic players that make awful judgment calls like coming to rescue from other side of the map, wasting gen progress from Ruin in low rankings.

Second, as I said before, it's not a punishment to have your MMR lowered. If you are a decent player who can't handle covering for weaker players, you will have your ratings lowered eventually to the point where your opponent is also weak to the point where you should be able to cover the other weaker survivors.

...what exactly do you think "How To Win" means, if you don't think it's the wincon of the game? For example, in Connect Four, do you actually think that wincon is to get 4 in a row, BUT also the wincon is to get 3 in a row before that, and ALSO the wincon is to get 2 in a row before even that? And if you believe that there are multiple win conditions in the game, then SHOW me - exactly where is that documented? I don't want your opinion - show me the actual source, just as I have done for you.

Yeah, I already explained in detail what that was all about - you should probably review it.

Is that as concrete as you're able to get? How the end results screen is organized by bloodpoints? That makes you think, "hey the win condition of the game is not escaping, but earning bloodpoints!"? Really? And exactly how many bloodpoints is a win? Or do you win simply by having more than everyone else? ...yeah, perhaps you can show me EXACTLY where it is stated that the amount of bloodpoints is relevant to actually winning. - Note that I am not talking about player's personal goals in a match, but the wincon of the actual game.  And I've already explained about SWF several times already - perhaps you need to reread.

It's considered winning by the actual game, ...so the opinions of players who don't seem to understand basic aspects of this game don't really matter. ...we did review the actual winning conditions already right? We did review the in-game tutorial and the official webpage?

And we did review that there's more than two sides, and therefore the killer winning doesn't indicate all survivors suddenly losing? And I just went over why pipping or BP have nothing to do with the wincon. Of course, you are more than welcome to show me evidence that points to contrary. Not guesses, not opinions, not inferences. Evidence. I'm waiting.

Great, hopefully I don't have to keep repeating myself.

Recently after I ran the killer for awhile and got hooked, there were 2 players on the other side of the map doing a gen, while the third player was obviously being chased due to the obsession mark. Because they chose to do the gen first, I ended up going into second phase before one of them rescued me. At the time I was frustrated due to the fact that it lessened my own chance to survive, but ultimately everyone survived - then I realized that the killer had pretty much all gen regression perks, which made me realize that it was probably the right call by the two players. If one had come to get me, the other player may not have been able to finish that particular gen, and lost progress, putting all of us in danger. So even if I had died because of it, I believe those two players made the right call if they had survived. Selfish of them? Sure, but each player should be doing what it takes to survive (the entire point of the game) - I certainly don't blame them putting their own lives before mine.

Then you raise or lower MMR, not reward or punish - there's a negative connotation attached to those words and makes it confusing to the readers.

...I literally showed them to you. Do you really not understand what "How To Win" means?

...no, you seem to have made assertions that actual game objective is too difficult for beginners to understand, but without proving that is the case. What makes you think that there is anything more than what is actually written here - please provide proof:

• In-game tutorial: "Survivors: How To Win - The primary objective of a Survivor in a trial is to escape."
• On DBD's official webpage (under game objectives - how to win): "As a Survivor, your main objective is to escape the map and live another day."

Whether it's the emblem system (which I have already described in detail why it has nothing to do with the wincon), Bloodpoints (also already explained), or your personal feelings on doing certain things within the game, these are all things you seem to claim are the game's win conditions, but have absolutely nothing to prove is the case, except that you want it to be true. Nothing to indicate from an official source. And the actual official evidence that I have provided for you repeatedly - you choose not to accept them and claim that there is something more to it - again, without proof. Ultimately it seems like you are willing to reject every fact that is presented to you, and are content with just keep believing what you want despite the lack of evidence to the contrary.

The thing is that a useless survivor will not be consistently surviving, and as such not be getting a higher rating. Singular rounds where they do survive against killers they should perhaps not have survived against due to being carried by other players are negligible, because they are statistical outliers and have next to no effect on their rating.

Such players do not consistently survive even at low ratings. I don't see why they would have a "boosted" MMR, let alone forever. They will totally die sometimes (most of the time, really) and lose rating, eventually arriving at around an MMR where they can survive around half the time playing as they are (the goal of the system/the MMR target value around which it systematically stabilizes), and that MMR certainly won't be high.

Those survivors would only end up at the same ratings and therefore in the same matches if they have comparable survival rates against killers of comparable ratings. You really think average-skill, selfish survivors survive as often and against as good (at consistently killing) killers as "actual-skill", altruistic survivors?

And if they did, they would have to see 50% average survival rates in those matches where they are paired together, meaning all of them would stand equal chances to survive, matches on average still attaining the 50%/2-escape balanced results, and the altruistic players could still be happy either way, because their "team" is doing well. If you on the other hand assume the "actual-skill", altruistic survivors would die disproportionally more often in such matches consistently... they would decline in rating, settle elsewhere, and not be in matches with selfish players as often to begin with. And gradually this would lead to higher ratings being full of average-skill, selfish survivors who increasingly alongside each other face killers that are better and better at killing consistently, and yet they would still have to survive around half of the time (2 per match), or they wouldn't be there in the first place. Which means either selfish play of all survivors is actually the right play (and "teamplay") because it consistently leads to better overall survival results against better killers... or it's an absurd thought to even assume selfish players consistently survive and climb to high ratings.

This is one of the major points OP tackled. Useless, counterproductive survivors are not being "boosted" in rating. Their rating scales with how consistently they actually survive. And I'm sorry, but the idea that useless, counterproductive, low-skill, selfish players consistently survive and do so against killier and killier killers and alongside other useless, counterproductive, low-skill, selfish players that would likewise be at those ratings is just absurd. That would be the logical end result of the system with your line of thinking.

In fact, nobody is being "boosted" in rating (unless they play in an SWF with other players way better at surviving than they are that carry them to escapes all the time), people gain and lose rating exclusively in proportion to how often they actually survive. If counterproductively selfish play (i. e. such which decreases group survival) actually leads to survivors surviving more consistently (it doesn't, again, it would lead to absurd scenarios to assume so), then it simply means it is the right play for survivors, and the system doesn't care how someone plays, only whether they survive consistently, and whatever they are doing is objectively the best (most "skilled") thing in terms of achieving the win condition of surviving the most consistently.

I want to give a few general pointers here as to mistakes I think you are making that have been addressed by OP and other people already:

The system is not actually meant to rate players based on skill. It is meant to rate players based on their performances in terms of success (killing/surviving). It is not meant to match players that are similarly skilled, but players that are succeeding similarly as often and against similarly-as-often-succeeding players. Kills/survivals are not used as a win condition to say the players that win are also the best (most skilled) players in general, just that they are the best (most skilled) players specifically at killing/surviving consistently. The end goal of the system is not to make matches happen where everyone is equally skilled, but matches where everyone has equal chances to succeed (kill/survive). The thing that is deemed desirable is for players to have more even win/loss experiences such that ideally nobody is winning too much at the cost of someone else losing too much. Whether the matches in which players have equal chances to succeed are also matches in which all players are similarly skilled in general is not important, it is only important that they do have equal chances and average out to equal success rates (50% kills/survivals). That matches that average out to equal success rates contain players of similar prowess at succeeding (so not skill in general, but specifically the skill of consistently killing/surviving) is only a natural assumption and correlation, since if players are paired based on ratings that are in turn based on success rates (killing/surviving performances), and if the matches such pairings yield consistently result in equal average success rates (50%), there has to be something that correlates, otherwise it would be magic. That correlative is the "skill" of those players - skill meaning the level of prowess at everything one can do to consistently succeed (kill/survive).

All "skills" are relevant for the system insofar they correlate with one's ability to consistently kill or survive. If being a good runner or teamplayer correlates with (contributes to) increasing one's survival rate consistently, they will over time (many matches) increase one's rating; if they correlate with decreasing one's survival rate consistently, they will over time decrease one's rating. Since the rating is only used to pair players with and against other players such that all players in those matches have more equal chances of success, gaining or losing rating is not a "reward" or "punishment", but something that leads to desirable outcomes in both directions for all players involved.

As opposed to what people have been arguing based on singular match scenarios that are rare in the grand scheme of things, things like being a good runner or teamplayer do in fact correlate with increasing one's personal survival rate. Leading killers on long chases creates time for gens to get finished, which allows gates to be opened, which in turn allows survivors to escape, including those that are able to lead killers on long chases. Keep in mind that they don't actually have to lead killers on 5-gen chases for this to be true, or that they will always be chased for 5 gens, or in fact chased at all, it is only about the fact that long chases help bring about the conditions necessary for survivors to be able to survive, and that survivors good at leading killers on long chases therefore will on average (over many matches) survive more often than survivors not good at this (all else being equal).

Helping other survivors helps oneself too, because if you can help other survivors, other survivors can help you. In general, it is important to realize that since all survivors have the same conditions that have to be met in order for them to be able to personally survive (escape through gates), survivors playing for their own survival (e. g. running from the killer, repairing generators) are also playing for that of every other survivor automatically. And that since every survivor is 25% of the overall group, survivors playing for their own survival are also playing for group survival automatically. Beyond that, I think it is easy to see that leaving survivors on hooks or the ground for no reason, not healing them, etc., will not lead to success in DbD. If you refuse to help others (be altruistic, employ teamplay) in principle, it is very unlikely you will be able to consistently escape through exit gates yourself. That is because the overall escape chances for everyone in matches decrease dramatically if even just 1 survivors dies, for various obvious reasons. It is also because if survivors do not help each other, they are themselves also being left to die on hook and such. And this is even easier to understand if you again remember that even survivors playing for their own survival are still also automatically playing for that of other survivors - that means helping other survivors stay alive allows them to keep playing for everyone's survival, including yours.

Having said all that about runners and teamplayers actually being players that more consistently survive over many matches and gain rating as a result, it is again important to keep in mind that even if they wouldn't be, that would not be a problem. If being a good runner or teamplayer actually consistently led to players dying, they would not be "punished" by the system for this, but gradually trend toward a rating level where they can actually start surviving more often in their matches. Nothing else. This is not a punishment, but something that should be desirable for everyone. Such players want to survive too after all.

And of course, good running or team-playing skills alone might not be enough to survive consistently. There are many more things that contribute to (correlate with) success chances, ranging from macrogame decisions pertaining loadouts and in-game strategy and tactics (which can sometimes also mean not taking a chase or not healing or attempting to unhook someone (not being altruistic) because it can lead to more survivors dying (i. e. cases where altruism is in fact not the right "teamplay")) to microgame stuff like the mechanics of playing around a killer power or even something benign like hitting great skill checks. The point is that the players that win the most consistently are the best at the things that correlate with winning consistently, and of course, the very best would be the best at as many of these things as possible.

The high MMR realm is not supposed to be a place of the most desirable, best, most impressive, or whatever gameplay. Since ratings are only meant to match players such that they have more even chances to succeed, based on their overall performances in terms of success rates, it is clear that the high MMR realm is by design filled with players that care the most about succeeding and do everything to do so the most consistently, and are the best at that. This begins with the loadout choices of characters, perks, add-ons, etc., and extends to every single thing that can possibly be done in the game itself in order to increase kill/survival chances. It is by definition systemically supposed to be a place of tryharding and sweating. Nobody is supposed to want to get into the high MMR realm for any reason, there is no reward, people are not even being told they are there. Players can and should play however they want, only, the players that care about winning consistently will have to try and sweat ever-harder if they want to keep doing so, and they will be the players automatically ending up in higher MMR brackets if they actually consistently succeed. Everyone else will be at lower ratings, where things are gradually less tryhard/sweaty. And matches at all skill levels ideally trend toward 50% success rates for everyone on average (in higher MMR brackets this becomes increasingly less likely because less players that are that good at consistently succeeding exist, so the best players at consistently succeeding are the most likely to still have lopsided success rates due to the matchmaker giving them more lopsided matchups lest queue times grow too long).

Either the scenario of a useless survivor escaping a trial through the gates by themselves where 3 other survivors died for them to be able to do so is statistically irrelevant enough to where it won't actually affect that player's rating non-negligibly, and as such not a problem of the system... or that player is actually good at something that consistently leads to this. Which is an absurd thought because that would have to be something like hypnotizing other players to somehow sacrifice themselves for their survival (which itself is already something that seems impossible to consistently be able to happen, in as much as even if 3 survivors would try to do everything and even throw their lives at the goal of making a fourth survivor survive by themselves, it would not consistently happen), but either way, if that is the case that a player is surviving consistently like this, they should be gaining rating, because otherwise they will be even more consistently surviving doing this because they get worse and worse opponents. The system is meant to give individual players 50% survival rates, this player would be exceeding this, that would be a system failure, they should be corrected toward 50%. And since 50% individual survival rates translate to 50% group survival rates, such a player would never end up in a scenario where they can consistently be the only survivor escaping from the groups to begin with, since other survivors would also have those chances and rates on average in them.

It's an absurd thought to assume useless players would consistently be paired by the system with non-useless players that carry them. How would they end up at the same ratings to even be matched with each other? The useless players would die much too often before ever even getting to these rating brackets where they could in theory be carried to sole escapes against stronger killers. Over many matches, the likeliness of that happening is very low and ever approaching 0, because they would not be together in the first place for the useless players to be carried to escapes which puts them at these higher ratings. Not only that, as explained earlier, if such useless players would be at those same ratings, they would naturally also be paired with other such useless players at those ratings, and the non-useless players if they actually consistently died here to even allow for this scenario to be relevant, would decrease in rating and not be there anymore to carry useless players. And even if it were still absurdly the case that somehow 1 useless player gets matched with 3 non-useless players consistently, the next absurdity of this assumption is that the useless player somehow consistently manages to survive through gates here, while the others die.

In reality, these players will be in completely different rating brackets and not frequently be matched with each other (if the matchmaker half of the system works).

But this would not be nice for those other three survivors? If a player consistently somehow is able to play in a way that consistently somehow leads to the other survivors dying in their matches but to their own gate escape, having that player decrease in rating for those matches would mean they can only do this more and more easily to other players, and more and more survivors in their matches suffer. Instead, if it would actually be possible to consistently play in a way that somehow consistently leads to such a scenario, the player should be gaining rating such that they meet tougher opponents that can at some point hopefully prevent them from being able to do this, ultimately arriving at a rating level where they die around half the time rather than keep surviving and ruining matches.

The reason to have an MMR system for matchmaking is to match players such that they on average have more equal chances of success (killing/surviving) in their matches, because that is deemed desirable. And that makes sense because most people like succeeding (killing/surviving) and don't like failing (failing to kill/dying). It is the most sensible, greatest-good goal. This automatically also leads to more even, balanced matches, and it does lead to players being matched based on skill too, but specifically their skill to consistently succeed (kill/survive). "Skill" (general or specific) is not the reason why MMR is used, it's not the goal, it merely correlates.

The game is not a team game strictly, players are free to play for their own survival. As I have pointed out, playing for one's own survival not only implicitly means playing for that of others, but helping others explicitly is also part of playing for one's own survival, since teamplay is necessary to consistently be able to oneself survive. Either way, the game is not strictly a team game, players do not win strictly as a team (they are not being told "you lost" if they survived and other survivors died, they are not being told "you won" if they died and other survivors survived), team-oriented plays and decisions are optional actions and skills, and people are matched in accordance to how much they employ them and how good they are at employing them based on their success rates, which correlate (positively and negatively) with such choices and skills. I for one find it very obvious that teamplay skills and teamplay-oriented plays that actually lead to increased group survival rates (i. e. are actually good plays from a team perspective) in the matches of the players that have and employ them also lead to those players themselves having increased personal survival rates on average, but even if this weren't so, it would merely mean they end up in matches at arbitrarily lower rating levels where they can actually survive more often themselves playing this way. It is not necessary to select for teamplay and teamplay skills specifically, because the game is not strictly a team game, and because those plays are optional and are selected for if they do contribute to increasing success rates. And if they don't increase success rates, the players that die due to them suffer no ill consequences from their decisions to play in those ways by the system, they will benefit from the system putting them into matches where they can actually survive despite their playstyle preference/decision. It will also not hurt match balance from a "group" perspective, because no matter how any single player plays, once they stabilize around a rating, they approach 50% personal survival rates; if 4 survivors in a given group have 50% survival chances each, 2 survivors of that group will on average survive in their matches, and therefore it doesn't matter how individual players arrive at their personal 50% survival chances, even if they do so by playing very "selfishly", if they all have them (which at similar ratings they by definition of the system's functioning do) and you put them together into matches, the matches will have the desired (50%) survival rate outcome on average from the group (or "team") perspective too.

If you meet a lot of subpar survivor players in your matches, that may be because you are a very good player with a high MMR, and the system has issues finding players similarly as good as you are (and in your region and at the times you play). The matchmaker also has confirmed issues, such as backfills all but ignoring ratings, a soft MMR cap, a +/-400MMR range for players from the get-go.

The rating system based on killing and surviving (and even personal survival) as win conditions works very well to achieve its intended purpose of making matches on average approach balanced outcomes, and numbers show this very clearly. High MMR results are still likely to be the most out-of-whack, but they too are much more even than they had been in the rank-based MM past. I personally also find the frequency of meeting more equal players on both sides has increased notably even in terms of general skill, and I see the same being true for all the top players that I watch, who are also having tougher matches notably more frequently than in the past. I'm seeing more tournament players in my matches than I ever have prior to MMR, it's a very blatant thing for me. We don't need a different rating system that tries to evaluate player skill in highly complicated ways, we need them to iron out matchmaker issues, and maybe make the matchmaker more strict in general as well, favouring queue times over rating similarities less. That said, with the limited amount of players at high levels, queue times there will always be fairly long if they were to remove the "soft" MMR cap and make the matchmaker more strict (although I do personally believe there is still room to make it more strict at least at high MMR without it leading to prohibitively long queue times, but then again, this means different things to different people - I for one would not mind 5-minute queues much if it actually resulted in much more consistent high-MMR matches, but the same is not true for everyone).

We both know that I'm specifically referring to their replies in the forums, weekly livestreams, interviews, etc. If you've also been in the community since the beginning, you'd know that both the actual game and the in-game tutorial existed long before players started whining over the wincon. When the players' handwringing started, that's the point when the developers started obscuring the issue instead of directly calling their attention back to the tutorial/website like they should have. It was a spineless move that have had a horrible repercussion to the game throughout the years, but I guess that was what they chose to do to not lose some of their playerbase.

What are you talking about? The emblem system failed to matchmake properly due to the fact that wincon wasn't based off of it - of course I'd worry about the same thing occurring if they are deciding to do the similar thing with the new MMR system by adding a new metric that is irrelevant to the wincon.

...are you serious right now? Please show me exactly where they've stated that they've already changed the win condition of the game. Stop putting the cart before the horse. Yes, like you say, they are looking at manipulating the MMR formula by adding in team-based elements - that means one of two things: either 1. they are going to add this new variable into the MMR algorithm without changing the current win condition of simply Escaping (which brings up new problems of competing variables like I mentioned before) or 2. they are going to change the actual win condition of the game, which will be a bigger deal than anything they've added to the game before - given that it would change the whole concept of the game from the ground up.

General note: The devs are planning on a hybridized metric for the MMR system, still looking at individual survival but also incorporating group survival to an extent. This of course has little to do with the basic game premise and its "win condition" (which is just killing and surviving in general, attached to no further specifications), but it does go to show that even if one were to take the MMR metric to be indicative of how the devs see the game, they are still saying individual survival concerns are at least equally as integral as group survival concerns. (Still not like that matters for the desirable functioning of the system though.)

A useless survivor doesn't need to be consistently surviving for this to be a problem. They just need to be surviving more often than they should given their contributions to team survival. Simple logic says that this is necessarily the case now. Imagine two identical players, except one will go for a save in the EGC once in a while and the other won't. The one that never goes for the save will have a higher MMR. This is because the one who goes for the save will occasionally die as a result, and it doesn't make any difference to their ranking if they saved their teammates. This effect must be present given how the system is set up. The only question is the extent of the impact it makes.

I am arguing that this impact is big enough to be felt, and big enough that it should be addressed. If you disagree with that, I can't dispute that. I'm only basing this off my experience, and my experience is probably more extreme than average because care more about team results than individual results and I am whipped for BPs. I can say that the game has been pretty terrible to play lately, though, and worse than I remember it over my ~1300 hours.

I disagree with your point about it not being an issue for players like me to be routinely paired with useless, selfish teammates. It's not as simple as 2k = 2k. The reality is frequently playing matches against weak killers in which everyone should have survived, but watching your moronic teammates essentially throw the match by refusing to unhook, refusing to pick up slugs, refusing to take chase for someone on death hook, refusing to take a hit for someone, etc. It's a terrible, frustrating experience, and worse than what it was with the pip system.

You seem to be misunderstanding my gripe with the current system. I'm not saying survivors are boosted in the confines of the existing MMR system. In theory they're ranked right where they should be. I'm saying they are boosted with regard to their actual skill at playing the game. It might be easier to understand this point if I reiterate what I feel an MMR system should do.

In most cases MMR systems do show actual skill. Imagine classic Elo systems in 1v1 games, like chess, or AoE. Your rating will be directly determined based on your ability to win. In Dead by Daylight, though, MMR models outcomes as four independent 1v1s against the killer. This is fundamentally incorrect, because these 1v1s are heavily influenced by each other. This is because it's actually a 4v1 game. My view is that players whose actions increase the odds of success over all four of these 1v1s are actually more skilled, and that they should have a higher MMR. Players who are very skilled at winning their personal 1v1 but whose actions make it less likely for their teammates to win theirs are who I'm referring to as "boosted". My view is that their MMR should be lower because they are succeeding because they are being carried by less selfish players, not because they are actually a better player.

I like SBMM as a concept. I just fundamentally disagree with individual kills/escapes as a proxy for skill (I do think this is the goal btw - I recall hearing the devs say as much). I would like to be matched with other survivors who will, on average, contribute as much to the team as I do. I also want to be matched against killers that are as good as me. That should be what is reflected in MMR. This could be accomplished by an MMR system based on team kills/escapes instead of individual kills/escapes. In the current system, my altruistic tendencies result in my playing with and against players who are disproportionately weaker than I am. This leads to a disproportionate amount of bad matches. I don't care what my MMR is. I just don't want to have to try to carry teams full of potatoes against legions of baby killers for the sins of valuing the collective over the individual.

I understand perfectly how the system works. I just fundamentally disagree with how it works.

I mean reward/punish in the sense of "give a higher/lower rating". When you are given a lower MMR rating because you play unselfishly, this means you will be paired with players who are just as skilled at surviving, but who will be disproportionately more selfish than you. The more teamplay you show at the same MMR, the stronger the player you are by basically every metric outside of MMR. This results in a disproportionate amount of terrible matches. See my response to zarr for more details.

You know what the most basic (and most important) idea is in any game design? The win condition. You teach people the ultimate goal of why you are playing the game first, and then you slowly proceed to fill in the gaps with game mechanics. Amazing!

If no one is reading them, and they fail to understand the entire game objective, then it seems like no one got but themselves to blame. It all sounds like these players' personal problem, not the game.

And yet, you keep proving my point instead; how ironic!

You keep saying this, but I've shown it to you. Repeatedly. Like, over and over.  You just don't seem to want to accept it. You cover your ears and close your eyes.  You can downplay the tutorial and the official website all you want, it doesn't change the fact that it's fully endorsed by the game developers. It also doesn't change the fact that you don't have anything to back your own assertions up. So you create stories to try to rationalize your fantasies about the game.

It probably usually has more to do with balancing problems of the game and randomization that benefits specific players. I don't know, but it also certainly doesn't sound like you know either. Just making random guesses and seeing if something sticks, eh? Ultimately, just because you personally feel that win conditions being based on escape "leads to unfun gameplay," doesn't magically change the game's actual winning condition.

I've already explained why your examples are insufficient. Instead of crying about it, if you have a problem with that, go find something else. ...you actually think Cote would admit that what he is saying was just a lip service? Wow. I'm saying it's a lip service because, as you yourself stated, devs started avoiding discussing the wincon of the game after the playerbase started make a stink about it. In addition, what he claimed, "fun" being win con, is not only moronic, but impossible.

I explained exactly why their emblem system was flawed. Are you even reading, or having comprehension problems?

Again, the tutorial refers to collaborations between survivors in order for them to escape, but no where does it negate the wincon of the game. Sure, you have to help each other out - until you don't. Ultimately it's about escaping since that's the win condition. What's the problem?

...And what does Patrick's considerations or plans for the future have anything to do with the current state of the game's win condition? We are talking about the game as it is right now.

I've explained the reasons why the quotes I've used is relevant and true, as well as explained why yours are not. It's now up to you to comprehend it.

Show me in the tutorial where it specifically says that you have to win as a team.

I don't disagree that the impact of that specific scenario is low playerbase-wide, and I'm not trying to argue that the "selfish" play is always the wrong one. That example was just meant to make the logical point. It can be extrapolated to many more in-game situations, though, like refusing to take chase for a teammate on death hook when the survivor side is ahead.

I think you're 100% right that I'm stuck in low-mid MMR. I don't have stats on hand, but I think I'm actually dying in way more than 50% of my matches. If I had to guess I'd say it's been more like 80%. It's pretty much the exact situation that Scott Jund calls out in this [video], except I think I get more tilted by having useless teammates than he does and I also don't get better streaming content out of it, so I'm having a worse time. It feels like the only way to get out of this situation is to fundamentally change my play style, but that would also hurt my enjoyment of the game. I very much do get satisfaction out of helping my team escape, even if they're potatoes who wouldn't do the same for me! So, it's sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Your suggestions about trying hard to escape for a bit to boost MMR and then playing normally could buy me some time, and I think it's worth a try, but I don't think it would be a permanent solution. So long as I'm more unselfish than the average player, my MMR will be lower than similarly skilled but more selfish players. As far as I can tell, that means that anyone with a similar playstyle to mine will necessarily have less skilled teammates and opponents on average. And, once that imbalance is present, my experience has been that it's a bit of a positive feedback loop that just makes things worse and worse.

It's good that you're actually getting competent teammates, but in theory that would also be the case in a team-escape-based MMR system. I can't think of any major downsides to a team-escape-based system. From my perspective it's just a flat upgrade over the current system, since it will more reliably match players together who will make the same contribution to the entire team's survival. In a 4v1 game that requires a cooperation, that seems very desirable.

As for your point about the existing MMR actually reflecting who helps the team most, I'd expect it to correlate, but not nearly as tightly as a team-escape-based system. A team-escape-based MMR system is pretty much directly measuring this, albeit in a simplified way. Let's take the hypothetical of a player who is usually willing to trade with teammates in the EGC. That player will have a much lower MMR than their skill would suggest. Conversely, let's imagine the hypothetical player who is sometimes saved by these trades, but who never reciprocates. That player will have a higher MMR than their skill would suggest. This hypothetical is useful because it's easy to understand and specifically isolates the impact of unselfish play, but again, it's far from the only situation where this comes into play. There are tons of similar situations that arise over the course of a game. That exact hook trade scenario is a possibility in many games, though. If a player like me is willing to go for it just about every time for those sweet WGLF stacks and for a fun, friendly exchange in the postgame chat, but most of my teammates are not, it doesn't matter how much I carried the team for the rest of the match. My outcome per MMR will usually be worse than my teammates' outcomes.

So, in other words, my exact experience, of being a solid player with ~1300 hours on record who is mired in low MMR with no end in sight, is evidence that the existing MMR system does not do a good job of evaluating a player's contribution to the team. For players with average levels of selfishness, I'm sure it does just fine. Anyone towards either extreme will not be placed well, though.

1. The old emblem system did not utilize the MMR system. The whole purpose of changing the game's matchmaking was to transition from the Ranking system to a MMR. Everybody knows this. Are you new to this game? Show me exactly where the developers stated that the emblem system was based off MMR.

2. The old emblem system failed because only a very minor part accounted for the win condition (Escaping) and added too many random variables like gen progression, altruism, and chases/encounters. And because of these junk in the ranking algorithm that had nothing to do with the wincon, the Ranking system ending up focusing more on "how often you play" and not "how skilled you are."

3. The win condition was 'Escaping for Survivor' from the very beginning. We went through several different iterations of matchmaking systems, but the win condition has never changed.

Show me exactly where the tutorial or the developers state that the win condition is team-based. Forming a temporary alliance to actually fulfill the win condition (Escaping) does not make them a "team" (unless you count Survivors that backstab each other or leave each other behind in the end as a "team") nor does it have anything to do with the win condition - it's just one of the many game mechanics.

Lots of assumptions here. Also lots of random, incoherent ramblings. Do you have anything to prove any of it? Sounds like a bunch of conspiracy theories. Also, like I said earlier, emblem system did not utilize MMR. And there is nothing ambiguous about Tutorial's "Survivors: How To Win - The primary objective of a Survivor in a trial is to escape."

Team work is important, I agree. But again, there is nothing that suggests that it is a win condition in this game. The point of the game isn't to do team work, but to escape. In order to escape, players will most likely have to do some level of team work. Part of the skill is knowing when team work is advantageous for escaping, and when it isn't.

Tutorials and game manuals also lays out the game objective. Which it did. Which I have repeatedly copied and pasted.

Also I've already stated in previous post: "Key word: "can". Like I said previously, the game doesn't prevent you from making a lot of bad decisions. Sure, you "can" stay around and save others. Is it wise to do so? It depends on the situation. But the game certainly doesn't consider saving others as being a win condition currently, does it? Otherwise the game would indicate that you have lost due to not saving someone. And yes, how many times do I have to repeat myself - survivors have to cooperate with each other up to a certain point so that they can escape; I have never denied that - but that's certainly not the goal of the game, which is what makes it a "win condition."

My God some people have way too much time on their hands...

It's only a game, why you have be mad?

You must be unable to separate your view of what a win is with what the developers stated and how it was implemented in the game. My views on a win and loss were also different a 3 or 4k is a killer win, 2k/2e a draw, 3e or 4e a survivor win.

The win isn't what you claim to be at that time, as it was what the developers said it was and how they used it within the game. You say where is this shown, well it is what the match making looked at. Now they changed it and it fits your definition, but not that of many people.

You could literally, lose a pip yet that isn't a definition of a loss? The emblem system in all intense and purposes functioned as the MMR.

Your argument, but it might cause people to play altruistic, is already the case. People that follow the tutorial are instructed to do so. If they succeed however they don't get the additional rating, while they took the risk. The whole idea of taking a risk is that it can pay out or backfire.

What does it have to do with defining a win condition? It is telling you to go save others. Maybe you don't understand the correlation between the game instructions and the win condition. You look at one statement in the full manual, but the tutorial did not end there. It isn't about adding variables that do not fall in line with a win condition, literally team results in pretty much any game that has a team is the true win condition. We already established that survivors are on a team, by them literally saying so in the tutorial and the developers words.

I don't care about your personal views - the only thing that matters are facts. You don't seem to be able to provide any.

Just a string of random assertions again, eh? Again, the Emblem system did not determine player's ability to win or lose. The best it did was to assess how much stuff the players did within the match, regardless of whether they won or lost. Basically, the matchmaking based on the Emblem system ranked players on their "performance" within the match, not whether they won or lost. That's why it failed as a matchmaker, and why MMR seems to do better (because it IS based on whether players won or lost).

Look at chess, for example. You may make lot of smart plays. You may take their Queen. You may even take more pieces than your opponent. But despite all that, in the end, if your King get checkmated by your opponent, you still lost. Your "performance" doesn't matter - what ultimately matter is whether the win condition was fulfilled or not.

Losing a pip isn't a loss, nor is earning a pip a win. Because that isn't the win condition as defined by the game. The only thing Emblem system measured was to check off how much things you did within the match, and tried to rank you with other players who also could do the same - completely unrelated to the wincon of the game. Of course, as always, you are more than welcome to cite any official sources that states that the Emblem system is in any way related to the win condition of the game - but I doubt you can find any. You have consistently failed to find any so far.

It seems you didn't understand my explanation about adding new non-wincon related variables at all - you should reread it until you do. (Hint: It has to do with matchmaking accuracy - the entire point of the new matchmaking system.)

...did I ever indicate that the tutorial ends with just outlining the win condition? Did I not just emphasize the importance of all other game mechanics? Game mechanics are important - they are just not the win condition, which you don't seem to understand.

No, we did not establish that survivors are a "team" - but rather a group of players forming a temporary alliance so that they can fulfill the wincon of escaping.  Literally? Sure - let's take a look at it literally.

Tutorial? "Survivors: How To Win - The primary objective of a Survivor in a trial is to escape."

Developer's words? "It’s anti-social multiplayer where survivors have to collaborate and cooperate up to a certain point. The old saying is that you don’t need to be fast than the killer, you just need to be faster than your friends."

What part of those make you think, "team?"

Again, you seem to make a lot of assertions based on nothing.  Start providing some worthy evidence to back up your random claims.

Then your comment simply indicates you have no understanding of what MMR is, and I request you do some research on it first before continually embarrassing yourself. No one with some basic understanding of MMR and the Emblem system would agree with you.

The miniscule number of references you provided, I've addressed all of them, and explained in detail why they are wrong. Your lack of comprehension on the matter is not my problem. I urge you to find better references that I can't refute.

MMR assigns a number to find similar people of similar skill level... based on what? Good job, you're almost there.

Yet the game tutorial never indicates that you must escape as a team. Why do you think that is?

Patrick referencing team results for it to integrate into the MMR system is 1. about possible future development and may never be implemented, and therefore has no relevance to how the game currently functions, and 2. we don't know whether he meant to add it as a non-wincon variable, or to replace the actual wincon of the game.

I've already pointed these out multiple times, and yet you keep failing to understand it. Any other references?

I just don't agree with your conclusion that MMR doesn't significantly diverge from skill for exceptionally selfish/unselfish players under this system. I also disagree that what differences do exist will just settle out over large sample sizes, when my lived experience is that this isn't the case. The more matches I play, the more pronounced the problem becomes. There feedbacks here are positive, not negative.

Every time I trade with someone on the hook in the EGC, or take aggro for them when they're on death hook and completing the last gen is not in any doubt, or suck it up and go for the basement save at basically any moment in the game instead of letting my teammate do it, I am putting myself at increased risk of dying in exchange for increasing the likelihood of my teammates surviving. The more skilled I am compared to my teammates and my opponent, the more likely I am to be the one sacrificing myself for my teammates. Even setting aside the impact of selfishness, less skilled players are often still afraid of the killer and are less confident to make risky plays, so they'll do less of that regardless of whether or not that play will help the team. As a result, that plays falls to me more and more. There are plenty of additional factors that drive the outcome this way too. Like, if you run a killer for four gens and they finally down you, the odds of you getting camped to death skyrocket. The frequency of this scenario also goes up the lower my MMR gets.

Tournaments are not representative of typical DBD matches, so I don't think they're useful to consider. The skill of the players involved is not typical and tournaments' win conditions are almost always different than kills/escapes, which impacts player behavior.

I absolutely agree that selfish players would naturally end up at diffferent ratings than altruistic players (all else being equal). That should be the case if MMR is working as intended. My viewpoint is that this is a problem, though, it results in worse matches.

Again, I don't think it's a bad thing if I save my teammates, even if they wouldn't do the same for me. I'm perfectly happy with that outcome and wouldn't have it any other way. My frustration is that this outcome destroys the quality of the matches I get going forward. I'll start taking some stats on my survival rate versus the team's and report back once I have a decent sample size, though. I'd be curious to see that too.

I agree that there theoretically should be other players going through the same thing at similar MMR. However, the number of players like that are small compared to the number of players who just aren't very good at DBD. So, for every kindred spirit I get paired up with, I get an order of magnitude more potatoes.

I am completely on board with lowering the MMR of a player who tries to go for some endgame heroics and fails, e.g. trying to save against NOED and dying along with the person who was already hooked. On the flip side, though, successful endgame heroics should raise their MMR. If the tactic itself is not beneficial to the team, by all means, punish it. I can see an argument from people who just want to mess around that they don't want to have bad teammates as a result, but at the end of the day, if you're not trying to win the game, it makes sense that MMR doesn't reward that. I am trying to win when I take on risk to save teammates, though. I just treat DBD as a 4v1 game with a win condition of collective survival, not a game of four concurrent 1v1s with a win condition of individual survival. I know that not everyone will agree, but regardless, I feel encouraging teamplay is very healthy for the game. I find that selfless plays are very rewarding for both sides and bring joy to the game for everyone involved. It's a great way to counter the salt and toxicity that shows up in lots of matches. Discouraging play like that by pushing players to only care about individual outcomes is not a good idea.

Re: endgame scenarios, I keep going back to this in part because it's an easy example to understand and draws a black line between selfish and unselfish players, but also because scenarios like this as easily frequent enough to throw MMR out of whack. If you had to guess, what percentage of your games have at least one hook during the EGC? Maybe 1 in 6? Leaving in every single one of those scenarios versus hook trading in every single one of those scenarios would make a big difference in terms of MMR; 1 extra escape per 6 matches would in theory be a big difference in "skill", especially when you consider the fact that the most unselfish player is the most likely to get left if they're the one on the hook. In practice it's not as simple as 1 in 6, because sometimes both survivors will get out and sometimes it's a situation in which you basically can't trade (e.g. Bubba, injured with no way of healing, NOED and can't find the totem). Even if the actual number is more like 1 in 20 matches, this is just one scenario.

There are many situations in game in which you don't need to show the slightest shread of altruism to teammates in order to escape, but in which doing so would help them survive. These crop up in just about any mid to late game scenario in which the survivors are clearly ahead. At this point, the risk from confronting the killer and being the one hooked and left to die when the last gen is powered, is high enough that there's little reason to even bother. Let your teammates go for the save if they feel like it and just pound gens. There are even fun little extra selfish edge cases, like bringing a key and hatch spawn offering as a backup plan, and hiding near the hatch until your teammates die if you think you have a good chance of losing the match. Hatch escapes don't contribute to MMR, but not using your key and getting sacrificed certainly does.

One last point - I very much disagree with this:

While you and I may prefer the game to be a team game where players can outright win even despite themselves dying, that is not the reality of the game

"Reality" by which definition? The current MMR system? For almost the entire lifespan of this game, the closest thing to a defined win condition in DBD has been whether or not you pip. Pipping of course determines your rank and rank was used for matchmaking for 5+ years, so the clear message was that pipping is what shows you played a good match. Pipping heavily rewards team outcomes and altruistic play. You will have a much harder time pipping if you never interact with the killer and leave it to your teammates, even in a winning match where you could easily get out. You will also have a much harder time pipping if you don't every save a survivor from the hook. The entire team is punished if someone is left to die on the hook too, meaning team escapes were important for individual success. It was also entirely possible to pip without surviving if you did a lot to help the team (ran the killer for a while, did lots of generators, healed and unhooked teammates, etc.). This system still exists in the game and is shown on every postgame screen as a measurement of performance, and unlike MMR it is intentionally visible. Are we meant to ignore the multi-year history of the game, and the conditions in which most people learned to play, and just accept that individual performance is all that matters now, just because we've had a matter of months with a flawed MMR system? I see this as evidence that the MMR system doesn't reflect the reality of the game, not that the reality of the game has changed.

I'm not sure many people would want to 4v1 game in which the survivors are essentially competitors forced into an uneasy truce to overcome the killer, but who will and should turn on each other the second their own escape is assured. Just my opinion, but that sounds toxic and unfun. WIth the popularity of SWF, people clearly like playing cooperatively with their friends, and this also entails helping them whenever possible, because that's what friends do. I'm not trying to argue that players should value their teammates just as highly as themself, because I agree that's not realistic for most players. I just think it should be a clear goal going into the match to get as many people out as possible. No need to trade just to save your buddy, but also don't leave them to die when you could easily save them.

Definitely looking forward to the MMR changes they've been murmuring about, if and when they come. I just hope it weights all escapes evenly rather than just making a small adjustment for team performance, or something.

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I remember your name from some past posts that I thought were really well done, and I appreciate the time you put into responding to me. I'll try to put together some stats on my match outcomes too.