Lobby Dodging, How Often Does It Happen?
I've been rather curious as to how often people are getting backfilled into my lobbies as Survivor, so I decided to record how many times (on average) the Killer dodges a lobby I'm in before the game actually starts.
Keep in mind that I've only been recording this for about a week, ever since I hit P70.
On average, Killers will dodge and force a backfill 3.6 times before the game actually starts. It's been getting longer recently as well.
I wonder how this affects the match quality and I wonder how much having a high Prestige has to do with it.
What's your experience? Personally, I think that if you dodge (assuming you don't see a potential cheater) you are knowingly and purposefully screwing up the system.
Comments
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There’s 3 p100’s in our SWF and we get dodged quite a few times. Upwards of 6-7 dodges sometimes before we get a killer that sticks.
The skill of the killer when this happens is usually not on the same level as our team and it can be a bit unfun.
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Until I see people that have vac bans, game bans registered or private profiles, I'll dodge. Not gonna play against potential cheaters
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I usually never dodge, unless there's a VAC ban, as killer i either dodge 4 medkits /toolboxes just to havea more chill game without needing to go Franklins to counter the medkits since it's the only true counter to them but also a super cringe perk
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It's unfortunate.
I've noticed my Survivor games are a complete crapshoot after the first dodge or two. We got someone with less than a day played on Killer the other day, which was very unfortunate.
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If I see one or two survivors with a high prestige level I simply dodge the lobby. If even one of them brings a toolbox or flashlight I dodge immediately.
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I'm usually alt tabbed but when i'm not i notice it happens really often.
Not just killers, survivors too. I'm in the process of prestige 3ing all my survivors so i was spending bloodpoints to my base skin prestige 1 dwight and when i found a match the other survivors ranging from 10-22 prestige instantly left.
I honestly feel like it's a very silent but huge problem. It wouldn't surprise me if all mmr mishaps are because of lobby dodgers.
Sometimes i feel like there should be a penalty to it. Nothing mayor, like maybe a 5 minute time out before you can join another lobby max but something to just slightly deter it
Or even better just remove the lobby, go straight from looking for a match to being in a match. I'll happilly give up the ability to see survivors items for having better matchmaking.
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I haven’t kept an exact count or anything but it definitely feels like it happens a lot. I don’t even have any super high prestiges (I’ve spent my points more evenly across several characters, my highest prestige is 15 I think) and I wonder how much worse it’d be if I did.
Imo prestige shouldn’t even be shown in the lobby and should only be visible after the game.
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Do you actually ever get a lobby that suits your needs?
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Yeah, that's not even dodging, that's lobby shopping.
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I never dodge lobbies, then again my MMR tends to be on the average side. I might sometimes get lone P100s but never a full squad. And I'm not curious enough to check lobbies pre-game, that feels like a waste of time to me.
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As Killer I have not lobby dodged in years, but I see it often Survivors fill in and then some leave. Happens every day I play.
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We all have anonymous mode on in our 4 man SWF. Our record for killer lobby dodges is 11 in a single lobby. We usually go through 3 or 4 before one actually takes the match.
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For me it depends on a few factors,
1. If they use anonymous mode I dodge.
I'm a console guy, we not only dont have anon mode but also cant just change names on a whim, so identity integrity means something to me and if you hide yours I am gonna assume you are doing it for shady reasons
2. If they do the last second swap I'm out.
This is just straight scummy and you deserve it.
3. IF the incentive is at 100% on either side that can make MMR a crapshoot any ways, then I MAY consider dodging based on prestige or TTV depending on how my last several matches have gone, and what killer I am playing.
Half of my killers still dont have general perks or any add ons from prestiging pre patch to get P3 for tier 3 perks across the board, and since build strength and add ons arent factored in to MMR, I reserve the right to dodge with my add-onless Pig/Doctor/ Sadako/ etc.
Edit to clarify.
My highest killer is Demo at like P10, Surv is Kate at like P12.
When I say high prestige, I refer to 35+ which is in comparison to my own levels
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Backfills are essentially everything goes. Queue time becomes the leading factor in matchmaking and the mmr range widens so much to be essentially meaningless.
The little time I play survivor, I play soloq and my prestige is never above 10-11. I rarely do more than a handful of trials, but I'm confident I see at least one dodge almost every session. I can't quantify further though, because I don't keep track.
Anecdotally, it gets worse in high prestige lobbies.
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At this point, I HAVE to last second swap because I'll get dodged to infinity.
I'm also on Console, Anon Mode is largely used by people who don't want to get flamed. If I could use it, I would.
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I only dodge if I'm going for an adept.
I have all achievements now, so i just queue for a game and pay attention again when i hear the offerings being burned.
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I've said this on a few other threads too. We know lobby dodging borks up the matchmaking yet we do it anyway, and then blame the system for any monstrous overmatched that it brings. I'm on console and can't even check Steam profiles if I actually wished to.
Imo unless you're dodging a known cheater/hacker it is a selfish method of trying to get our own version of a "fair match". Some will squeal about protesting a possible SWF, or squawk about too many medkits or whatever, but I can only see it as seeking easier matches. Period.
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This isn’t even regular shopping it’s going between 4 supermarket chains to find which one sells bread 12 cent cheaper
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in my games anywhere between 3-6 dodges usually. sometimes less if there aren't other high prestige survivors on my team. people can say what they want about whether or not prestige level correlates with skill but killers definitely seem to think it does judging by how much they dodge any lobby with high prestige players.
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I only back out of a lobby if it's clearly bugged (Never getting a full lobby). Which hasn't happened in a long time.
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I rarely play my high prestiges (cause most people I play with stick to low prestige characters / spread ther prestiges across all survs so they're somwhere in the 20s or 30s - and I don't want to be the odd one out). - But occasionally I play with people who like to play their high prestiges (70-100).
With the sub P40 characters there's rarely any dodging happening (regardless of soloQ or swf; we're all steam and any killer who checks profiles can see we're swf - and we often have funny matching names as well). Maybe once every 2-3 lobbies. If at all.
As soon as it's a full P70+ lobby the dodging gets rather ridiculous. - At least two times per lobby, sometimes even five or six times.
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I rarely see any lobby dodging and I never dodge myself. However I don't see a problem with dodging lobbies, especially if someone has been having a crap time of it and the flashlights cause them some anxiety. It's if someone disconnects during a trial which vexes me (although sometimes that cannot be helped).
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Dodging lobbies seems to massively negatively impact match quality.
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Problem is that when they dodge lobies the matchmaking scrambles to find a replacement fast and favors speed vs fairness at that point.
If you ever hear from 1k and up hours getting matched against new players it most likely is cause their first opponent who matched their skill has dodged the lobby
People always complain about mmr but they completely screw with it at the same time
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Now that i read this again. It could explain the few but extremely inconsistent matches i had today. One match i got survivors way under my skill level, with 8 hooks at gen 3gens up. The next match i got the fifth hook right at the time the last gen was completed.
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I'll dodge a lobby if they have of the same item. I want a variety of things. If I see 4 medkits and I am not playing plague I will roll my eyes and leave. If I see 4 toolboxes I will assume boil over and sabo squad and I will leave. If there are 2 medkits and 2 toolboxes I will think "Meh, probably okay."
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At this point they should just get rid of the pre-game lobby and load players straight into the match. You can't see other players loadouts anyway so why bother wasting time.
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Actually, yes please. I would really like that. Maybe give a ten second buffer so that everyone can switch to the loadout they actually want to bring and then straight into the match.
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Having a p100 or multiple high prestige survivors makes MANY more killers dodge. Also if there's 3/4 medkits or multiple flashlights then many killers will dodge too.
I myself rarely dodge but if there's a couple of high prestige I'm usually gonna dodge because in my experience those sorta games are miserable as killer.
And if backfilling does indeed just throw matchmaking out the window, then it would definitely explain a lot of uneven games, just because dodging is so common.
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I think it has more to do with items or looking like a swf than it does prestige.
"Personally, I think that if you dodge (assuming you don't see a potential cheater) you are knowingly and purposefully screwing up the system."
I disagree with this. The entity at fault is the game being poorly balanced and people having to dodge matches the game isn't balanced for. They're doing the work the balance team should be doing.
This would be like saying if I'm in a 4 man swf with 4 medkits the killer is the bad person for dodging, of which I whole heartedly disagree with. He is absolutely justified in dodging that. The game isn't balanced for that.
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He's damning a (likely) less experienced player.
You don't have to dodge. You don't know it's a SWF. You're just refusing to even TRY to improve and have decided to be utterly selfish and search for an easy game while simultaneously screwing over FIVE other people.
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I actually think it's quite selfish to expect that killer to suffer through an extremely unbalanced match. Stop blaming the victim and focus on the source, which is whoever is in charge of balancing.
You can usually tell more often than not if it's a swf. You also didn't address the item problem at all.
"Refusing to try" Just lol.
No, it's actually having a good understanding of the games balance and wanting a fair and balanced match where both sides get an equal chance of winning. You just want the killer to suffer so someone else doesn't have to suffer. That's twisted. That's like telling you to play a match against me blindfolded and with a hand tied behind your back. Oh that's not fair? "Just try man" That would be silly.
The rational response here would be to push for balance changes that would make killers not feel like they need to dodge in order to get balanced matches.
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A little sad, but very informative.
Post edited by EQWashu on1 -
I'm well aware of the balance of the game. It's currently slightly Killer-sided at the average level, fairly Survivor-sided at the top level and very Killer-sided at the lower levels.
Unfortunately, it really does come down to most people wanting easy games. Again, I get it. Losing isn't usually fun. A learning experience? Sure, but not fun. A lot of people don't have time for that and just want to hop on, play a couple rounds and win.
They'd rather damn someone else who is less experienced than try.
Post edited by EQWashu on3 -
I dodge high prestige squads (3 or more) the match is most likely just going to be miserable for me. Many killers also dodge me when I use my P95 feng ming.
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Pray do tell, why are we pretending in the year of our Lord 2023 that eScape Based MatchMaking is anywhere even close to functional?
I really hate how every month there's a different aspect that people latch onto as to why the games are so ridiculously lopsided. If a system works 0% of the time then it's not [temporary problem] that's causing the issue, but the design of the entire system. Even if you had a magic wand that ensured every single trial was between people with the same exact magical random numerical "skill" value, the end result would be laughably borked.
SBMM doesn't account for: killer, swf/soloq, playstyle (on both ends), perks, items, addons, maps, resource spawn RNG. Literally the most important aspects! Tournaments are basically played on the same 3 maps with incredibly severe restrictions because otherwise even the best Legion player in the world would maybe get 2 hooks if he is lucky.
The numbers don't mean anything and even if they did, which again, they don't, the system just ignores it altogether because the dwindling playerbase can't support 10 second matchmaking.
SBMM doesn't work, it has never worked and will never work, no matter how much people want to blame Killers for not playing Nurse with 10k hours and tunneling the first survivor at five gens with four slowdown perks.
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"Unfortunately, it really does come down to most people wanting easy games."
This is heavy strawmaning. It is not people wanting "easy games", that would be an easy thing to argue against wouldn't it. It's people wanting balanced and fair matches. Unless you think 4 man swf with 4 medkits is balanced? If you do then we have a slew of other things to disagree on.
"it really does come down to most people wanting easy games. Again, I get it. Losing isn't usually fun."
So by your rational could I just copy paste this any time you ever have anything bad you want changed about survivor? It's not actually a legitimate issue, you're just wanting easy games and don't find losing fun. No, that would be silly. That's why saying this isn't a real argument.
"They'd rather damn someone else who is less experienced than try."
If someone didn't play killer regularly at high mmr that would be an easy statement to say. Of course you don't believe in any of that.
Post edited by EQWashu on5 -
As survivor I almost never dodge unless I see a big streamer, even though I'm in anonymous mode. As killer, I dodge constantly. Or "lobby shop" as someone else put it.
But now with bots that are vaguely good, I just play against bots. Then I don't have to worry about the "survivor rulebook" I'm supposed to follow.
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I just want to ask a quick question: Do I understand correctly that you have the opinion that because the balance system is at fault, people who opt to not play a match they have determined will be unbalanced are justified to do that [not playing the match]?
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The matchmaking is definitely a joke. My killer matches ping-pong between 4ks against newbie survivors who barely know how to throw a pallet; and 0ks against high-prestige SWFs and bully squads packing medkits, boons, flashlights, sabo-toolboxes and every perk that makes interacting with the game pure pain.
I prefer survivor nowadays. At least when I lose as survivor, there's less torture involved, barring a few fringe cases.
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Yes.
Do you disagree? If so, why is that?
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I don't disagree that MMR is basically meaningless.
However, I HAVE noticed that my matches feel MUCH more fair when there are no lobby dodges.
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No, I do not disagree. - Quite the contrary; I do think ultimately it's the balance system that falls short of what it is supposed to achieve. Imo, the biggest part is that loadouts aren't taken into account.
Though, that being said, I am now just even more curious about what your opinion is on survivors getting out of the match asap one way or the other once they realise the match they're in is equally unbalanced.
[This is not supposed to be some kind of gotcha thing. - I just think for consistency's sake you have to either be ok with both - or with neither. For the reasons Pulsar stated in the OP, dodging (as well as quitting) screws the system and the players even more than is already the case and thus it should not be done; don't exacerbate the problem. So I fall on the neither side. - Though I can understand people who fall on the other side; it's already bad and if it's bad in the one or the other way doesn't matter.]
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"Though, that being said, I am now just even more curious about what your opinion is on survivors getting out of the match asap one way or the other once they realise the match they're in is equally unbalanced."
Consistency wise yes, I would agree with the inverse as well. I would feel the same exact way for survivor in lobby if they knew they were going to play a match that was extremely unfair and not balanced for.
Since the statement was more vague I'm not sure exactly which scenarios you're referring to as it does change things a little. Such as do you mean after the match has already started or in lobby? I would take much more issue with killer or survivor doing that once the match is started. My statements earlier are referencing more just in lobby for either side.
Or were you actually referencing like once it's down to a 3v1?
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Sadly, I've had to dodge lobbies due to server connection issues. I am unsure why, but it seems like the game places me into servers and matches out of my region because I constantly get the bad server connection icon on my display and lag around in-game in many matches. Others in my matches seem to experience the same thing. This does not occur in other server-based games I play, so I know it isn't an issue with my own internet connection (although, I did spend some time troubleshooting that). Is there a known server issue right now? I came back to the game recently, so I am not caught up to speed if there is, but I have seen some reddit posts discussing the same thing.
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Only reason I've dodged a few times is because I don't like facing the same people I just fought, especially if I'm playing the same Killer with the same build
It feels like I'd be giving them an advantage for no reason, plus it's boring facing the same people and I imagine facing the same Killer as the game prior would be boring too
Does this sound unfair to anyone? Genuinely curious.
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A 4-man SWF with med-kits can be balanced, yes. How good are the players? What perks are they bringing? What map are they going to? What Killer are they playing against? What perks is the Killer running? What type of player is the Killer? Things are not so black and white. Unfortunately, you LITERALLY won't know unless you play that match. By dodging, you force someone else who (even by BHVR's standards) WAS NOT supposed to be there.
Could you try to state the last part differently? I do not understand it.
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Back when MMR was first added (it worked and gave long queues and sweaty games) prior to Crossplay, there were maybe 15-20 of us on Xbox who would just constantly and exclusively play against each other.
I think one of my favorite messages was, "We all really hate you but when you aren't playing, we can't find games, so thanks."
It's a little unfair, but in my example we kinda knew who we were gonna play against.
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Yeah like if it's only one or maybe two of the same people as the last match then I don't mind it
But I've faced 3/4 man SWFs and while the match wasn't a stomp or anything - I'd rather not just have essentially a repeat of the prior match.
These days I try not to dodge as much though because having learned that the backfill will likely throw a less experienced killer in my place does make me kinda feel awful for doing it.
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I'm talking about the earliest judgement call on the presumed (un)balance of the match. Since survivors can only make that call once the match has started I'm talking about once the match has started. --- And personally I don't see a difference in a killer dodging a lobby and screwing up to five people due to how backfills work - or a survivor DCing/taking chances on hook early match and screwing up to four people due to the situation they leave the remaining players in.
And once it's down to 3v1 we're past the point of that earliest judgement call though, so that is indeed a different story.
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