Is fair matchmaking too much to ask for?
Seriously, why is it so hard to be put up against people that are similar in skill to me? When I played survivor, my matches, for the most part, were great in terms of the killers I faced and teammates I got. Now that I am taking a break, the majority of my matches are lopsided and I end up feeling hopeless when I play. It's like every survivor I chase knows exactly what to do, how to do it and how to counter me.
Before anyone says anything, yes, I am bad. I hit my skill ceiling a long time ago, there is no amount of "git gud" that I can do. I'm not asking to nerf survivors, I'm not asking to change the game, I'm just asking to be matched up fairly. Is that too much to ask for?
Is there a problem with killer population at higher mmr? Is that why I keep getting these sweat lords? I mean, every time I log on, killer always has a blood point bonus of 50% before 6PM and 100% after.
I'm at the point where I'm wanting to just play Bubba and watch the light die out of my victims eyes as they lose hope until I finally break my addiction to this game and move on.
Sorry if this can be considered as a rant, but it is extremely frustrating.
Comments
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Yep, it kinda is.
Now that we got the snark out of our system, most the players who would be taking those sweat lords (killer and survivor alike) are tired of seeing the same dang thing each and every match (survivors tend to see stacking regression while killers see some mix of gen rushing or bully builds and almost always at least 1 dh. Maybe an exaggeration but sure does feel like it). Unless you want to wait 10+ minutes for a perfect match, its gona throw you to the closest instead, which happens to be them.
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What region, what time?
I play at 12AM-4AM on NA so that I get better survivors to play against. I can't say they are much better but they stack busted items and map offerings to compensate. Went against a team that's watched too much skermz or something last night, all the parts of a "bully squad" without the skill. Except the Steve, he was semi-competent.
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In the current state of the game, unfortunately the answer is yes.
The core issue that makes this problem pretty much unsolvable is the amount of variables and their significance. Imagine Clown with no slow down perks on the Game versus the sweatiest Nurse player on Shelter Woods. Even if our MMR was just a vaguely accurate representation of our skill (it is not, it might as well be completely randomly generated), exactly how much would you adjust for both of those killers, provided it is the same person playing them?
Killer power, perks, addons, map, SWF. These all fundamentally change how likely it is that a given player can win. It would be an insane amount of work to find formulas for these things.
And the cherry on top? Even if BHVR could magically come up with the perfect matchmaking system, it wouldn't matter. They want fast que times, so even if the currently woefully inaccurate MMR was just fixed with the snap of a finger, it would still be ignored just so people don't have to wait more than 10 seconds for a match.
As a killer that regularly faces SWFs who should be going up against Nurses, Blights and Spirits and not my chase oriented M1 killers, I really can't give you any good news. BHVR has made it pretty clear to me that they are never going to fix the core issues plaguing the game, I'm stuck due to the sunk and cost fallacy with 2.7k hours, but if you can move on, please never look back.
Happy gaming!
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I'd genuinely love an option to turn off fast queues and have fairer matches.
I wouldn't mind tabbing out to youtube for a minute or two to get an actual good match.
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The issue is, that most people voted "faster queues" in a poll about matchmaking. Queues were around 5-15 minutes back then.
So the devs widened the span of players getting matched to shorten said queues.
A middle ground could be a slider for players that allows for fairer matches in exchange for longer queues/shorter queues for unfairer matches.
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I’m in the MidWest and I play anywhere from 3PM-8PM. It was fine until the last week. All I’ve been getting are fully decked out SWFs and TTVs who I can’t catch at all. And if I do, it doesn’t matter because they’ll have the gates ready, and come for an easy rescue.
I may just need to move on and only come back when I see there’s a new cosmetic for Claudette to earn.
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A few things.
- Lobby dodges cause the matchmaker to freak out and grab whoever is next in line. This can make for some weird games.
- Yes, people are starting to realize the power of some of those new perks (Fogwise is seriously going to need a look, this perk is sleeper busted) and killers are starting to struggle again - I'm seeing more and more 100% incentive on killer.
- A change was made recently to MMR, where - if you take a break - your MMR will be very volatile when you return. So a single loss or three can shift you down dramatically, but once you get your eye in again you're facing opponents too easy for you.
- Apparently there's a bug with Demogorgon that gives him an inflated MMR, but this is impossible to verify.
- However - as you struggle and lose, your MMR will fall and you'll face more suitable opponents.
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I forget the exactly when that poll came out, but they also did a week's worth of matchmaking experiments, on live servers, and asked for direct feedback on what 'felt best' without telling us what they were changing every day.
So I feel like they went pretty far with trying to find a balance on this. The devs aren't perfect, but I really respected them running that test, and kinda want them to do more of that in the future.
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Only problem being "an actual fair match" is likely a sweatfest.
When they trialled different matchmaking conditions last year, players didn't like the closer matches. It was too sweaty, AND it took too long to find a match.
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I mean, I'd take a sweaty fair match over being stomped on repeat. Surely that would be an improvement.
And if it was a toggle option that you could activate or deactivate, if it turned out to be lower quality matches, it could be turned back off.
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"Surely that would be an improvement."
Empirically, it wouldn't, because it was tested.
Also a toggle option for matchmaking setting, like any additional viables, would only make matchmaking worse for everyone. You're shrinking the potential pool of matches for everyone who is using different settings. Instead of waiting 10 minutes, you'll end up waiting 20, and those who want the stick with the current settings, instead of waiting 3, will be waiting 10.
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Yes, give me a sweaty fair match over getting stomped on over and over and over. I honestly wouldn’t mind waiting 10 minutes for a match as killer. I can rub the belly of one of my fluffy turds of fur as they draw blood from my hand while I wait.
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I feel like they can make it a little more granular than it is without queue times going crazy. I hate one-size-fits-all approaches because that typically doesn't fit anyone at the end of the day. Add skill emblems that reset every 3 months, a separate ranked queue, or something to incentivize sweat for those who want to do it and let others enjoy chill games. Both are totally valid ways to play, but chill killers shouldn't be getting death squads and chill survivors shouldn't have to play against 4 slowdown warlords on a consistent basis. Worst case scenario, it stays like it is. Best case scenario, it moves some of the sweat away from some of the chill.
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Yep, exactly this. Unless most players are ok with 10 minute+ queue times, the matchmaking system is going to be effectively useless. There just isn’t a big enough pool of players across all skill levels for quick and fair matchmaking.
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There are a lot of survivor streamers that purposely try to rig their MMR, because they want to bully killers, so they want to get weak killer players as much as possible. They will either lower their MMR off stream, or they'll bully a killer and then accidently on purpose lose at the end of the game. This allows them to complain about how unfair killer strategies are, and they get another loss added to their MMR.
We also have tons of posts on these forums where people tell other people to rig their MMR so they don't get sweaty games, and I don't remember any mods ever chiming in on whether or not this is allowed. We also don't know if it even works, or if the MMR system knows when people are trying to rig the system.
But if the MMR system can be rigged by people purposely losing games, then that can explain why some of the matches are lopsided, because people are purposely bypassing MMR to get weaker opponents.
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Yes, they definetly tested a lot to see how the community feels overall. Thats why a slider might help. But i could be also totally wrong and a slider could bring more problems.
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BHVR still desperate to make sure players get any match rather than wait longer for quality match. Heaven forbid such a thing could be done. Add lobby skipping, and you have a recipe to ensure at least some players are guaranteed miserable experience. But BHVR, you keep doing you. Any match at any cost.
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As long as MMR exists no matchmaking will work. We don't have enough players, and yes i'm accounting for CROSSPLAY, to warrant not only an MMR system but a functioning matchmaking using MMR.
MMR in DbD is all but uselesss since there's absolutly no way to do any sort of tracking on any sort of statistics to have any guess where you'd be placed. BHVR themselves already admitted the system fails at depicting skill so why it's used it's beyond me except for the fact they've spent an entire year and thus lots of money during that year to attempt the system so now wer'e stuck with it wether we like it or not. And we don't like it...
Plus the Cap for MMR is so low that i'll argue 90% of the active playerbase is High MMR without much effort. It doesn't matter if you're 2000 MMR or 2 million MMR, if you're above the soft Cap then you're High MMR.
Matchmaking should always prioritize connection quality imo. Whats the reason for prioritizing queue times if the connection is bad and the match doesn't play well? The only reason DbD is prioritizing queue times is because there's been a massive drop in the player count. The game went went from nearly 70k active players just in Steam to about 34k. Roughly 50% of the player base has left the game since July 2021.
I'm from Portugal and i spend more time playing with and against Russian players, be it day time or night time than i do against any other players from any other region.
My survivor matches are either 4 man escapes or 4 man fails, there's absolutly no consistancy to my matches. I can be on a winning streak and then i'm randomly put with something i'd describe as absolute BOTS. On killer it's even worse i don't even get easy matches whatsoever and i'm strictly unable to play certain killers or it's guaranteed that i won't even get a single Hook. I legit can't play Wraith or Ghostface if i'm against Russian players, i'll get the sweatiest survivors you can imagine, body blocking on first hook, insta sabos, insta saves, you name it i've faced it. If i play Sadako or Pyramid Head i can have "normal" matches but if i win 2 matches in a row then i'm immediatly sent to "death row".
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Ultimately I still prefer having the faster matches, even though I hate when I get paired up with people better than I am, or more dedicated to sweat. But the flipside is that I remember queue times being DREADFUL, medium to horrendously long and would still at times get paired with a Smurf account with their high ranked buddies in a party to abuse MM (they did fix that at some point). But having 5+ mins waiting for a match, just to have people leave, or be in a 3/4 lobby where people would drop out and immediately the 4th Survivor would queue in and all that JUST to potentially have people DC early in....######### dreadful. I'll take getting stomped/juiced over waiting & doing nothing for so long. I can get like 2.5 matches going by the time 1 normal match conlcuded with how it used to be.
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You know this game has 100x the population of games I play with players making the same "SBMM doesn't work because low population" argument. As I said before, you can have better quality matches or you can have quick matches, and BHVR chose the latter. Small studios can pull it off, by extending the matchmaking time a little along with region parameters. It's not rocket science.
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due to how the mmr system works from what data miners said it's much much easier to move your mmr as killer since you're able to get/lose up to 4x what a survivor can get per match. So you might be riding the skill bracket line and keep going over it with 4ks and then losing bleeding your mmr by getting 1-2ks
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Eh.
MMR works fine in games with smaller communities and works fine here. It's not perfect, but it's better than what we had before.
They never said 'fails', within recent memory.
The cap is absolutely not that low.
Yes, this game is snowbally.
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For the most part it is better, but when the incentive is at 100% on either side it an be just as bad as it used to be.
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Problem with dbd is matches tend to be landslides. Either survs run rings around killer, 0k maaayyybe 1k if killer facecamps near endgame to secure a kill. Or killer snowballs and gens don't get done 4k maaayyybe 3k if last surv gets hatch. I don't see many natural 2ks which is the theoretical happy even game. Hard fought but even. Love those games but they are so rare.
Since matches rarely feel even, it's impossible to really balance mmr in an asymmetric game.
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Not from my experience.
Early mornings can still be sweaty, but evenings - yeah, it's SWFs a lot but I can hold my own against most of them unless I'm on a new killer.
Killers...so much depends on my teammates as survivor that it's difficult to judge.
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Yeah, queues have been really long in the past. The matchmaking incentive seems to have solved that. Maybe the devs could test how a stricter mmr would work with the current incentives.
Like, we could have testing months. People that opt in to form part of the current test to see how it goes.
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It is Rocket science for BHVR, hence why after 1 year of tests, a year and half of live MMR and some more parameters testing, we are still with the same problem. And BHVR's MMR system does not account for skill at all, it's just a prediction system as explained by BHVR. It will sort out lobbies based on winning predictions. So ofc the game has a really bad matchmaking, it's predicting 1 match result without taking into account what ever happened in every other match for those players or can happen for every players in this match. It just looks at kill rates for the killer player vs escape rates of the survivors. The more kills you have the more escapes the survivor you face will have.
BHVR's MMR is designed to counter WIN STREAKS and that's it. It's made to prevent guys like Otz from winning every match with the same Build.
Even if DbD's population is 100x bigger it doesn't mean it has 100x the quality. More population means tthe quality is more diluted.
DbD is a very simple Hide & Seek game, i don't understand why most people think it isn't and why they keep fighting against it when the objectively best part of every DbD match is finding someone and chasing them, that's where Killers feel like Killers and get to use their abilities and that's where Survivors fight their hardest to Survive. Why we have to deal with Gens and Gates and so manny Timers is beyond me. Give every match a 10 minute timer and let the entire match revolve around chases, if Killers gets 12 hooks they win obviously and if any Survivor escapes then that survivor also wins even if the killer got 11 Hooks and 3 confirmed kills.
This way, you eliminate the need for Gen Rush or Kill Rush. Camping becomes irrelevant because your Objective is Hooks and not kills, and you can Solve tunneling very easily aswell because everyone can come to bodyblock for the rescued survivor cause they don't have to be somewhere else, unless they are on death hook and injured, only in that scenario should they be avoiding direct contact with the killer.
With more chases more frequently, killers could handle most of the maps as they are since they'd be going through pallets very quickly because they'll be in chase constantly. This puts pressure on Survivors to learn their looping which is a whole lot better than dealing with M1 holders and you get no time to play as killers because gens are already done while you're chasing someone somewhere else.
Gens existing is the worse aspect of DbD. Without them we'd have a proper game and we'd be able to Balance it in every aspect. And it would make Solos and SWF the exact same thing.
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It doesn't work fine here because it doesn't measure any sort of skill. it simply looks at your escape/kill rate and assigns you a value that it then uses to predict wether or not you can win the next match.
It can work on smaller communities depending on how the system works, in here the system works exactly as i said above and wether you escape or get a kill has so manny variables that do not involve skill at all, that's why it doesn't measure skill but rather it does a prediction on wether or not you'll survive or die but that's a fail predicition and hence the system doesn't work because wether or not you escape or get a kill has manny factors that does not involve you directly or skill whatsoever. What skill does a killer show when a survivor kills themselves on hook!? What skill does an escape show when the killer camped some guy and you escaped before he could chase you? One thing is being stealthy and avoiding the killer, another is not even seing the killer once.
And since you don't know your own MMR and what it represents then you can't say the system works. All we can say is that matchmaking is awful and MMR does not work.
The MMR Cap in DbD is extremely low, you have brand new players being mixed with players with hundreds and thousands of hours and it's not just because of low population, it's not because of timezones, it's not because of BP Bonus incentives for whatever role, it's because within a few matches you can reach the MMR Zone where you're eligible to be playing with everyone else. SO yes the MMR Cap is too damn low.
And DbD is full of smurf accounts aswell. IF i were to go back and play my Playstation account i'm pretty sure i'd have way easier matches than i have on my STEAM account considering i havent touched PS DbD in nearly 3 years...Now put all my experience and knowledge of the game gathered during those 3 years and i'm basicly cheating the system despite technically being a returning player.
That's why i prefer the Old Rank System. Even if Forever Red Rank was a thing you'd still be playing against a higher caliber of players because you'd still have to reach Red Rank for the First time and it wasn't as easy as hitting the MMR Cap is now.
Another reason the MMR Cap is low is QUEUE Times, that's exactly why the MMR cap is lower so there's more people for the system to consider putting into a match vs the higher MMR players, otherwise they'd have to wait an unreasonable amount of time just to find a match. Which only proves the Real High MMR of DbD is a very empty space and manny of these so entitled High MMR players, manny of which famous streamers, are not in fact Real High MMR, they're just sligthly above average. Which then debunks the whole idea of High MMR within DbD which then further supports my claim of a low MMR Cap and how virtually every player is already High MMR. Which explains how BAD THE MATCHMAKING IS.
MMR itself isn't a Myth but High MMR is basicly a MYTH because HIGH MMR as we see it is every normal match.
Even Comp DbD as riddiculous as it is isn't REAL HIGH MMR, it's just a bunch of sweats sweating for bragging rights, bragging rights for a game with basicly 0 marketing which makes those braggins rights just a pure e-penis measure contest. DbD is not E-Sports and it shouldn't be because it has no ground to hold itself.
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very true words! I can absolutely confirm what you say and I would like to see the changes you suggested.
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I think they might be hampered by their population size to do anything meaningful. I've suggested before that they collect more metrics than just kills/escapes. Instead they do these limited data collection by surveys instead when they could be sitting on a goldmine of play data.
With a smaller studio, smaller playerbase, MM has to be taken seriously because it can kill the game. I think BHVR know, they can get away with conservative changes to the system, i.e. let's not rock the money boat too much.
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