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What was wrong with Grades as MMR?
Previously, grades were used to determine matchmaking.
Grades were based of the following:
Survivors
- Altruism - heals, unhooks, pick ups, etc...
- Objectives - gens, exit gates
- Boldness - chase duration, totems, interaction with killers power
- Survival - yep, surviving
Killers
- Deviousness - based on how long the killer prevented gens/gates from being done
- Sacrifice - dead survs on hooks, downs
- Brutality - hits, new hook states, losses for heals and escape from being carried
- Hunting - finding survivors, short chases, hits during chase, losses for camping.
Now the devs have abandoned all this in favor of a simple escape/kills metric.
Devs/others constantly scream grades dont equal MMR!!! Well yeah that's true, but I think the former metric goes much further in describing in game skill than just kills.
Devs have changed what skill is defined as, with Patrick going as far to say that looping a killer for 5 gens isn't really skilled.
We can no longer degrade but we can still depip. So while this notion that GRADES != MMR is absolutely true, it seems only partially true it comes to skill.
Of course, if we use the dev definition - which based on community response to mmr seems lackluster - then it's absolutely true.
So now the question is why did we abandon grades? Why aren't grades a metric of skill besides of a simple redefinition (with seemingly no justification other than "we said so!").
Comments
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With Grade-matchmaking, as a killer I got with back then ca. 200h and Iri 3 or 4, 8 out of 10 Games multiple Players per game with way over 1000h-3000h of playtime and you saw that obviously in game, with the new mmr, it became like 2 out of 10 games, with 1 person over 1000h, who wasnt so far ahead of me. ( And here and there some backfill-lobbies :( )
So For me as casual gamer (I think mid-mmr), yes the new balance isnt optimal, but it feels way better then before.
But of course this is just my personal experience.
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This is interesting. Do you think the difference can be attributed to the differentiation between Killers MMR?
That is, killers you have less experience with will have lower MMR and thusly you'll be placed with lower hour survivors (generally speaking ofc).
Previously, you had one grade and it didn't matter if it was your first time playing clown, if you were rank 1 you were probally playing against survivors with alot of hours. Now, because the clowns mmr is fresh for you, it is unlikely you will.
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Im missing the rank based MMR. It wasnt perfect, but way more better than hockey. Just my opinion.
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This^
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No, I mainly played the same killers back then, as I play now. But i think it would helped a little. The problem I think was the "low cap", where someone like me (mid-mmr today) can be in the Iri and play against other Iri 1, who are way better, but where "stopped" at Iri 1, saying most players from 200-10000h hours where in the same pool.
But i noticed the difference in killer mmr when i played billy for the first time and played against complete babys. It seemed okay at first, because i really failed with the chainsaw So I had a chance to practise, but the moment i started to use M1 the game was over in no time.
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Grades lead to terrible matches, since everyone with a little effort made it to red ranks. The grade matchmaking would match you with people within one color grade, so purple and reds together.
So groups had looping all stars with urban evading immersion players scared to touch generators. It was awful for actual good matches.
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Which is actually the same as now. The matches didnt change at all, besides it just got even worse to go up in mmr if you dont play 4 man, cause the game just throws bad mates on you.
The emblem system is still by far superior to the actual escape/kill mmr. It reflects skill in details, not just an outcome of games no matter whats happened in the game.
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Ranks were awesome.
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Nothing. Sure it wasnt perfect and needed tweaks but it was a better system overall and it only started to massively fail when they reduced to reset as all plays slowly increased to higher grades.
The old grades would of been perfect, all they had to do was remove resets, remove the safety pip and it would of been in a great spot (if need be they could adjust how hard it was to get certain emblems)
A player like me who pips every game would be at the top, while a player who would normally safety pip a few times before a pip would be much lower down as the safety pip is removed. This creates the win/loss system which would make players remain in a set bracket and not slowly increase because they can easily safety pip multiple times in a row before getting a pip
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Everyone was in red ranks, as a newbie I made into red after 2 weeks.
Thats why was so good for killer mains and miserable for solo survivor
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Because grades amount to accomplishing tasks without context. It shows you did a bunch of things, but it doesn't show that you did the things you *should have done* in order to escape/4k. You can get a lot of altruism points, but it doesn't mean you should have been doing that in the trial. And if the match ends in a 4k at 3 gens, I'd go as far as saying there were severe positioning issues with a few players.
The data has shown this for them every time they've switched back and forth. There's a correlation between MMR and escape/kill rate, but there's little to no correlation between grades and escape/kill rate
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wish they fix the grade as yo get high hard to pip or stop saying grade are time play.
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Anyone could get to purple and red, making it meaningless. So a 100 hour player vs 2000 hour player would both be red ranks but clearly different skill. Rank 5 was the most random level; rank 1s death squads that were reset or barely skilled players that won't progress. Not playing for a few months (or rank reset bugs) would drop people back to beginner matches and throw off the balance. You could just heal and unhook and get to Rank 5, when the emblem system stopped rewarding that.
People whined and cried about it so BHVR made MMR and now everyone is happy.
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No player pips every single game. Sheesh.
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A few reasons in combination with each other. OhTofu actually did a video before MMR was released that did a pretty good job summarizing the problem with ranks that I'll link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YJPOW7bwgs.
Some specific technical reasons that caused the above problem.
- It was possible for both sides to "win" and increase their rank. This meant that everyone eventually reached red ranks.
- Matchmaking matched you with at most one color away. This meant that a rank 1 killer would get matched with anyone from rank 1 to rank 8. This was a huge range and accounted for about 40% of the possible ranks.
- Literally impossible to pip down until you got to rank 16. This meant rank 17 was effectively the bottom. If you played the game for maybe 10-20 hours you would be rank 17.
- Hatch usually gave you a pip or at least forced a safety pip at pretty much all ranks. If you played stealthy with Urban Evasion and Left Behind you could reach red ranks after playing enough time while basically killing your entire team because you forced the rest of your team into a 3v1.
- Safety pips were incredibly easy to get. The only time when safety pips required some skill whatsoever was in red ranks, but you would still get matched with red ranks if you were purple.
- Farm matches, which are usually initiated by the killer with the survivor having little to no choice, would give +2 pips without any way to pip back down.
- Farm matches were common at higher ranks too because farmers got +2 pips too as you could pip up without getting a single kill. Now, farm matches are pretty much relegated to low MMR where new players can get some more bloodpoints and have a bit of relaxing fun. Those of us who want to just play the game can play the game. Unfortunately, my survivor MMR is very low since I don't play it often and I'm bad so I still have to waste time dealing with farmers.
These all in combination with each other meant that most people who played the game more than a few times a month would end up in at least purple ranks. Purple ranks get matched with red ranks. This likely meant that a majority of the population was just thrown into the same matchmaking pool which meant that matchmaking was essentially random. This heavily favored killers because a good survivor with bad teammates would still lose because this game is basically impossible for survivors as a 3v1.
Now, with MMR, it's basically mathematically guaranteed that the majority of the population will be in the middle and the ends will be occupied by fewer people. If they translated our hidden MMR numbers to ranks, you'd probably find most people and matches in green ranks and there would be very few red rank players. Everyone on the forum talks about "at high MMR" but there's a very good chance none of those people are anywhere close to high MMR but, because matchmaking is more balanced, it feels like what high MMR would feel like. We know from what the developers have said that very few people are at the top and bottom.
People in this game are very limited by how rank-based matchmaking worked. It was so common for people to get to red ranks within 100 hours of playing the game that it felt normal. A proper matchmaking system will have very few people at the top. Not a majority of the player base!
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Very little funnily enough. Every single criticism that people levy against it is just as true about eScape Based MatchMaking. The only two issues were that each Killer couldn't have their own grade and that it was easy to get up to a point where you were at the top for no reason whatsoever. The former would have been solvable with no rank reset for killers and the latter with new prestige levels that are tremendously hard to pip up, weeding out the sweatlords from the casual. Instead we got this utterly useless crap.
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Ranks were okay for judging killer skill because the killer emblems didn't have to worry about another player fighting or screwing you over.
Survivor emblems require competing with other survivors and you have to hope the killer also provides opportunities to build up emblem score. You get a hefty penalty to altruism if survivors kill themselves on hook. Sometimes you don't get the opportunity to do any unhooks if your teammates instantly unhook. Some killers don't engage in chases and make it harder to build up evader. Like victor and a cloak wraith don't contribute towards evade.
Not to mention farming was a big problem with the rank system where you could often get back to back games of people forcing farming matches.
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You should make detailed list of his points in this new video.
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What was wrong is that the system was clearly flawed. You can say "the system rewards good plays though!" all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that when using a grade based system, bad players see their kill rates plummet and good players see their kill rates sky rocket. This means they are clearly not being matched with survivors of similar skill level.
During the MM tests when we had the grade based matchmaking for 2 days, I liked having easy games for the first couple matches I palyed, but after a few matches I got really tired of playing against players that weren't providing me any challenge at all. Like game after game was just a stomp. Clearly it doesn't work.
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Ranks were terrible. Everyone agreed they were terrible. This same misplaced nostalgia happened with dedicated servers. They were demanded, they arrived, they didn't fix every issue as hoped and even brought a few of their own, soon after it was questioned if the old ways were really so bad in the first place (they were).
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Ranks werent good, over time the Rank 1's were overinflated and you'd have the same people who suck in current MMR as you would in Ranks.
Survivors are the true killers and old red ranks was exactly that.
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I'm not sure how this is related to the current discussion? I only watched about half of the video because it's mostly talking about certain game mechanics make certain meta perks necessary and the meta perks, mostly dead hard, have very frustrating design.
I'd agree that dead hard and CoH are very frustrating. I probably wouldn't agree about BT, DS, and unbreakable but it also feels like those perks are way too strong that running anything else on survivor is basically throwing.
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The old ranking system was awful. You'd get punished for killing people too fast or using your power too much
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Being completely realistic here, we had daily complaints over the old matchmaking system as well.
Most players would end up at Red Ranks - same as they end up at Iri Grade now (although right now, a bit more time is involved due to everyone being reset to the beginning), especially as you only dropped a colour ranking section on the 13th of each month so more and more players ended up in red ranks and there was a massive mix of skills at that level. Players were matched with other ranks around the same rank system (depending on queue times etc) and still the matches were unbalanced, we'd have players complain they got stomped or they did stomp.
I think we naturally (as humans I mean) look back on things more favourably with nostalgia rather than the reality of the situation in general.
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Rank (emblem system)was better imo. Less dcs,less camping tunneling, less camping, less slugging, less selfish survivors, less sandbagging,& less hiding all freaking match. Matches were more interesting and fun.
If you got up to the high ranks you had good teammates that actually cared about playing well. Now no one cares and the equals trash matches with garbage players.
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Why was there no reset for the ranks back than it? There was mix of skill than just like there is now a brand new player could still end up against a play with 2000 hrs in the game.
The old ranking system while not being perfect could at least make the game more relaxing and chill to play for either side where as SBMM there's many games where gens are done in like 4 or 5 mins for most killers and now there's an increase of camping and tunneling and while I don't mind that stuff I get why players don't enjoy it and not often much variety for either side high MMR it's mostly gonna be the stronger killers like Nurse or Blight where as in low MMR you're more than likely to see killers that can't do so well in higher mmr like Trapper or Hag.
DBD is a horror game and horror games are meant for you to either feel intimidated and afraid as the victim and the Killer side you should feel somewhat like the power house and be able to relax. Killer obviously does take a bit of skill yes and you can't pick it up right away and just start dominating unless you study some Youtube videos or your just a quick learner but, once you figured it out it's not that bad same with Survivor you'll feel afraid at first but, learn the basics an understand it.
SBMM fits more into like fps games not exactly for horror games Friday The 13th for an example never had SBMM the player level was random and sure there was a good counselor or a really good Jason from time to time but, for the most part it was pretty casual and relaxing to play.
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That sounds to me there should only be more Ranks or the higher Ranks should be more difficult to reach.
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The reality is that the actual escape/kill rating is by far inferior to the emblem system in mirroring skill. the matchmaking didnt become any way better, cause this mmr doesnt mirror skill, it just mirrors the outcome of games, ignoring flaws that make this mmr invalid. also due to the nature of this mmr its basically impossible to get out of low mmr hell as survivor, who does not play in a 4 man swf. there is actually no argument to favor the actual mmr over emblem system with an correlated rating. your mmr system is at the moment the biggest issue the game ever had.
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To be fair, ranks never really meant much anyway as anyone who played red rank survivor knew all too well
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I agree that most players ended up at red ranks.
However, I think that has more to do with implementation of the grading system than how skill is calculated.
In a single trial a player had the following options
Depip - colloquially considered a very bad game, someone got tunneled or the killer just couldn't compete. this was fairly hard to do but did happen.
Safety Pip - no change. killer/surv did okayish, maybe got some hooks or gens and rescues/
Pip - +1 to progress. killer maybe got a kill or two, survivor did gens and got rescues and got chased
Double Pip - +2 to progress. killer probably got a 4k with short chases, only a few gens done, multiple hooks. survivor went ham and got multiple gens, multiple chases, totems, multiple saves/heals.
So the natural progression of things was a slow march forward. If the scoring for pips were reworked, making the safety pip range smaller, adding a -2 pip, I think the old grades would have been fine. They at least seemed to measure the correct things when it came to skill.
The reset further complicated things, but this seems to be a result of the intended monthly rewards as opposed to a reset for ranking purposes.
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Truth is ranks never measured skill, it was easy to reach red ranks so the "skill" gap between players varied wildly. Emblems encouraged both sides to farm each other (bandaid fix btw), so there was a motive to play less "sweaty". Both things contributed to the matches feeling more relaxed, but also more random.
MMR's simplicity means if you get a lot of escapes/kills you will get tougher, faster matches. You have to play more optimal or you'll lose. If you don't want to sweat for escapes or kills, you have to accept that you're going to "lose" a lot more often.
Both systems have flaws, but the core issues are gameplay related: tunelling/camping/gen speeds/map design/killer balance blah blah blah
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It was way better than what we have now. Yeah they may have had daily complaints about it, but did they lose a massive chunk of their player base from it? The answer is no, MMR did that.
The matchmaking with grades was more "unbalanced" if you will, but that is required in a game that doesn't balance properly for high ranks. The unbalanced matchmaking of grades covered up the games problems. Now people are forced to endure all those balance problems with MMR with no real balance fixes coming to alleviate those issues, hence so many people leaving. To be honest though the games been burying its balance problems for so many years at this point that even if they hypothetically wanted to balance the game properly now at the rate they make changes ( ridiculously slow ) it would take years on years to get it into a semi balanced state.
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This is my exact experience as someone who started under ranks.
SBMM isn't perfect, but perfect is always the enemy of 'better'.
It was pretty horrible as a new killer. Nothing but deranking SWFs and people with crazy amounts of hours. I ended up quitting for a long time.
I think some of my earliest posts were about the matchups I was getting as a newbie.
We're talking 3man SWFs with 8000 hours between them, who'd either absolutely destroy me or sit AFK from the start.
MMR hell isn't a thing. I've just started learning survivor and I can definitely tell the difference between the MMR when I started and where I am now - you may not escape every game, but as you get better, you will escape more on average, which will raise your MMR.
Ranks were silly. I was an absolutely new killer and it took me maybe 50 hours to hit purple ranks, where I was regularly paired against Iris with thousands of hours played.
This happens occasionally with SBMM, but that can mostly be attributed to backfill - which is a known issue and should be fixed eventually.
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Then why didn't you remove the safety pip and keep red rank pip difficulty for all ranks instead of making it easier the lower you were? This alone would have improved the system.
Fiddle with what we had instead of... this.
The game isn't balanced or fair enough for kill based mmr.
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