New Stats! (Feb 15th 2024)

You can keep re-stating it, it's still wrong.

I know what to tell you though.

2 matches. 50% win-rate.

Match 1: 2K -- Match 2: 4K -- Killrate: 75%

Match 1: 0K -- Match 2: 4K -- Killrate: 50%

Match 1: 0K -- Match 2: 3K -- Killrate: 37.5%

All of those datasets set up for 50% winrate, with a killrate as low as 37.5%, up to 75%.

This is why you can't infer winrates from killrates. Sure, higher killrates make it harder and harder to have a low winrate, but you can't take a certain killrate and say 'This should result in X% winrate'. It doesn't work like that.

The mental olympics of pretending stats don't mean anything have begun again.

The game is (and has most of always been) statistically killer-sided in its main gamemode. That is simply a fact, that is what these stats mean. Even an average player is expected to kill more survivors than escape against them over the course of their matches, even at "high MMR", and regardless of the killer character they choose to play. Even regardless of the map the match is being played on, at least according to past stats (the least deadly killer on the least deadly map still boasting a killrate above 50%). If you're better than average, you are likely killing the majority of survivors you get. And if you're good, you're likely barely ever having anyone escape. This is also a demonstrable fact as winrates of 90+% and winstreaks (at times of hundreds and thousands of matches) are completely commonplace among good killer players, evidenced by streams and videos.

The fact that even high MMR 4-player SWFs (which constitute a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase, and the strongest configuration survivors can present) on average aren't getting 2 survivors out of the gates is staggering. Consider on top of this that matches with disconnects (which typically happen when survivors get demolished, or regularly mean that they will get demolished thereafter) are excluded entirely, deflating the killrate, and that hatch escapes (which typically happen when survivors got demolished) are included, inflating the survival rate. And yet still, even high MMR SWF groups consisting of 4 players are not averaging 2 escapes. That suggests a grim reality for the average survivor experience.

To address a few things that can regularly be seen in response to stats:

Nurse not having the highest killrate across all MMR ranges does not mean the stats are nonsense. It is nonsense to expect that. Why would we expect the average player to play killers to their full potential? It is obvious to understand that the most deadly killers on a global average will precisely be those that do not have to be played at a high level to be strong. The ratio of the ease of playing a killer as compared to their lethality (particularly in the sense of the difficulty of playing against them) is the majorly determining factor for average killrates. It makes perfect sense that killers like Merchant and Plague are high up in the stats because their abilities are very easy to use and very problematic for survivors. Nurse particularly is the only killer in the game that can never fall back on normal chase mechanics, it could not be more self-evident why she tends to have some of the lowest average killrates. There's just countless new, average and intermediate players not doing well with her because she requires a wholly unique skillset. What has to additionally be considered is that console stats are of course included here, and Nurse is among various killers that are significantly limited by the input potential controllers provide. Even just looking at PC-only stats would in all likeliness already bump her rates up quite a bit even on a global average scale. And last time we got stats on killers in high MMR, Nurse obviously was among the top 4 most deadly killers. The further up in MMR you look, the more the killrates would line up with common sense on who the strongest killers are. There are Nurse and Blight 4k streaks spanning thousands of matches, those players will have the highest MMR, meaning Nurse and Blight at that point would show up as the top 2 killers with 99.X% killrates.

"A 60% killrate isn't a 60% winrate" is not the argument some may think it is. The higher the killrate, the higher the winrate, that follows imperatively. What also follows logically is that the higher the killrate, the lower the survival rate - and the lower in turn the winrate for survivors. So if you want to make an argument about the winrate, you have to keep in mind that the 60% killrate means killers also have a higher winrate than survivors. So it's ultimately a moot point. Just because the killer winrate may not be above 50% (we do not know this, and there is no way to infer this from the stats without seeing actual kill distributions) does not mean they are underperforming, because the survivor winrate certainly would also not be above 50% (again because the killrate statistically dictates that the killer winrate is higher than the survivor winrate). It would just mean draws are fairly common, with killer wins being more common than survivor wins.

The people that argue "well, a 60% killrate is what BHVR aims for so things are in a pretty good spot" I can appreciate for at least not letting their bias run wild and claim the stats to be meaningless, instead saying the game is supposed to be killer-sided on average so it being so is not an issue. But for one thing you have to actually embrace what that means and in the future try and refrain from assuming the position that the game is survivor-sided and BHVR caters to survivors, since it is factually killer-sided (in its main game mode, meaning public matchmaking) and BHVR intentionally caters to killers on live balance. And for another, you will surely understand that "BHVR aims for it" is not a be-all-end-all argument. There can be arguments that their target is misguided. Personally I think 60% average killrates would be a fine target if disconnects were to be included and hatch escapes excluded. These things significantly affect the survivor playing experience in any match in which they happen, so to design the game in a way where stats completely ignore these realities to me renders the game too one-sided. Think of all the matches in which survivors get demolished with multiple gens left standing and the last survivor happens to get the hatch - all of those have a 25% survival rate, meaning even matches which survivors lose horribly can still contribute significantly to their overall survival rate. And one more reason to exclude these escapes is the fact that the killer can go out of their way to make hatch escapes nearly impossible, if they simply so desire. Many players don't, but since they can refrain from killing one of the two last remaining survivors virtually indefinitely and circumvent the hatch mechanic fairly reliably, the hatch balance-wise should not inform decisions being made to benefit killers based on their killrate that is deflated by the hatch. To note: I won't argue they should aim for a perfect 60% killrate with disconnects included and hatch escapes excluded (if anything they should improve the 2v1 game scenario that is often a stalemate tilted in the killer's favour, such as by enabling the survivors to kill themselves in the dying state), but at the very least they should look at those stats too and make sure the deviation from the 60% ideal is not more than 2-3%. Hell, maybe count hatch escapes as half an escape. If the killrate without disconnects and with hatch escapes then turns out to coalesce around 50-55% for most killers, so be it. I also think 4-player SWFs should have a 50% average survival rate, although disconnects can be excluded and hatch escapes included in this instance (because full premade groups are only screwing over each other by disconnecting rather than strangers, and because full premade groups can actually coordinate hatch escapes fairly reliably). The game at its core is balanced for the idea of 4 random survivors that have no means of coordinating their builds, plays and strategies, nor to have external communications. If the balance target for that is a 60% killrate, that is fine. But once you have full premade groups of survivors, the game changes completely, and to try and maintain a 60% killrate in that environment would lead the base game balance far astray.

"Solo queue is fine and the gap to SWF has been bridged" is not quite accurate, in multiple respects. First things first, even a difference of 3% is quite significant when looking at sample sizes of millions upon millions of matches. Just think of the fact that 3% can literally be the difference between a killer being top 5 or top 20 in terms of killrate. And in the high MMR bracket, the difference between solo and 4-SWF is 9%. Secondly, like I noted in the previous point, disconnects and hatch escapes affect these rates, and they should be treated differently for solos and SWFs, widening the gap. Then the experience is also different: If in solo queue you die, you will not all too regularly care or even know whether your fellow survivors escaped; in SWF, people are more so actually playing for the team result. A 40% survival rate in solo feels much worse than one in SWF because in solo that means on average you die more than half the time and consider the match a loss, whereas in SWF even if you do die you can still be happy that 1-2 (1.6) of your friends made it out alive. And finally, the gameplay gap between SWF and solo cannot be bridged and it would therefore be asinine to try and bridge it statistically. The differing experiences and potentials simply yield a completely different game (which is a good thing, solo being much closer to the survival horror theme, SWF making it more of a competitive strategic multiplayer) - if a 40% survival rate is the target for solo, it should always be expected that 4-player SWFs will be notably above that, and that is fine. That said, I do want there to be loadout restrictions implemented for SWF, such that any offering, perk, item or add-on can only be present at most 1 time between the party members. At the very least for 4-player SWFs. I don't actually suspect this will decrease their survival rate all too significantly. But it would limit their ridiculous potential ceiling, and at the same time free up design space to make perks (and items/add-ons/offerings) more powerful since they then don't have to be designed with the possibility in mind of coordinated premades abusing multiple instances of them. And more powerful perks existing of course help solos, especially since they can still happen to have multiple instances of them.

"The game is survivor-sided at the highest levels of play so this doesn't matter" - Quite a few issues with statements of this sort. Above all, it's ludicrous to say millions of players' playing experience should not matter for the balance design. Even if the game were to be survivor-sided at a base balance level if you have the best players competing, BHVR designs the game for the live balance environment that actually matters when it comes to the actual playing experience actual players in your game are actually having, which is what these stats capture. It is absurd to even entertain this idea because the "highest levels of play" simply do not exist in this game's matchmaking. Actual top teams of survivors basically never play pubs, and in the exceedingly rare cases where they do, they basically never actually play like they would in a tournament (much the opposite). You can go for 8 years and 10000 hours of playing this game without ever encountering even just 1 top tournament team in your pub matches. Ask any player that has played since 2016 how often they have faced an actual top tournament team in pubs. It never happens. And even if it were to happen 1 time in 8 years or whatever, it still in all likeliness wouldn't be a match where they bring 4 BNPs, do gens and get out - it would more likely be a match where they bring 4 flashbangs and 4 Head Ons and all die after having fun in main for 15 minutes. Moreover, that is only half of the equation of course: for it to constitute an actual "highest levels of play" match where the balance for this would be relevant, not only would you need to have such a top tournament team with top loadouts, but they would also have to meet a top tournament killer with a top loadout. I would not be surprised if this has not happened even just once in the history of this game. The next issue is that not only does balancing for the highest level not matter even in tournaments (balance is established by the fact that both teams play both sides, plus tournaments can implement custom rulesets), but tournaments go to show that the game is not even all that survivor-sided at the highest levels. In tournaments and showmatches without loadout restrictions, Nurse, Blight and Spirit have outperformed survivors. And in tournaments with restrictions (applying to both survivors and killers), most killers perform perfectly well, with 3-4ks being commonplace, average killrates being above 50% and skill still making a huge difference in the results. These killer players can compete with top survivor teams that practice together all the time, have high levels of coordination and communication, and we want the entire game balanced around that when even just 4-player SWFs using voice comms are unlikely to constitute even 1% of the overall playerbase, let alone then also being highly skilled, coordinated and playing like they are in a tournament?

"Killers are better at the game than survivors so it's a skill issue not a balance issue" - First of all, nobody is a "killer" or "survivor". There are simply players and they may (and countless of them do) at any point choose to play either role. Furthermore, every player is simply human. There is no reason whatsoever to assume players playing killer are better at the game on average than players playing survivor. Statistically, both have to be assumed to be precisely that, average skilled. The only way skill could then relate to the rates would be that playing survivor is simply more difficult for humans than playing killer. Which I don't really think is true (killer is easier at the beginning because survivors have to proactively lead the most mechanically skill-based aspect of the game, namely chases; then survivor is easier at intermediate levels of experience because killers have to battle against mounting gen pressure; and at the advanced and expert levels killer and survivor can be said to be about equally difficult, much in dependence on killer, map and loadouts at play). But even if it were true that survivor is more difficult for humans to play and that's why the rates favour killers, and hell, even if it were true that for some reason players playing survivor on average are just worse at the game despite survivor not being more difficult to play, the reality would still be that with the current game balance state, the result favours killers to the detriment of the average survivor experience, so if the rates were to be deemed undesirable, the reasons wouldn't matter, they would still be looking to improve survival rates.

To touch on some of my opinions surrounding these stats:

The "high MMR" range is simply still much too broad a spectrum to actually show problems that experienced players are aware of. Even if it is only 5% of the playerbase, it has to be kept in mind that huge swathes of the playerbase are sub-100-hour newbies. Look at the 1% and 0.1% of playerbase and you will see that there are a lot of killers out there that are basically never losing or even having anyone escape, especially on characters such as Nurse and Blight, as well as a whole bunch of SWF survivors that are almost always escaping. The issue precisely is that "high MMR" is capped and matches the 0.1% among the 5%, meaning a Knightlight even 500 matches into his "no loadout Nurse 4k streak" can regularly face a Meg that thinks hunting for dull totems is a great idea to counter NOED (all the more so against Nurse, of course). There is a plethora of players in your game that can and do demolish 99-100% of the opponents they get, that is a huge problem. It has to do with the matchmaking (remove the "soft" cap, make the matchmaker less lenient), and with the overpoweredness of specific killers (nerf them - most of all Nurse, Blight and Spirit), specific strategies that still need rebalancing (mostly tunnelling and camping, 3-genning to a lesser extent), specific maps (a few being too killer-sided, a bunch too survivor-sided) and SWF (implement loadout restrictions for SWF, at the very least for 4-SWF).

On the flipside, there are also quite a few killers that will need to be buffed to be able to compete in such an environment where the matchmaking is less lenient and tunnelling/camping rebalanced. Same for solo survivors. Billy is a great example for a killer that was lifted to a state where he is now viable in a competitive matchup. The same thing would have to happen for about one third of the cast (for most other killers slight basekit adjustments and add-on changes would suffice). Solo survivors would already benefit a lot from tunnel/camp/3-gen rebalancing, and more HUD improvements (such as seeing each other's loadouts) can be a great help (the latter can even be part of the solution for the former).

The major reasons why killrates are and have most of always been as high as they are I think are the following: Skill and sweat is much more impactful on the killer side. This is simply because on the survivor side you have 4 players, which have varying levels of skill and of trying to win, with weak links of subpar players that can doom an entire match even if the other 3 players are better than the killer player, and with people not playing in earnest (i. e. not trying to win, but to do funny or stupid things, or tome challenges, or at least not trying hard to win, or just playing for hatch). On the killer side, there is 1 player, their skill level therefore obviously determines 100% of their skill-based performance potential, their degree of "trying to win" 100% of how sweaty their side will be. Any survivor on the other hand can only determine 25% of their side's skill and sweat levels. There is the disparity in strategical game approach as well - again, with 4 players things can be very disconcerted and downright chaotic, whereas on the killer side, even if their approach to the game may not necessarily be good, at least their approach is as concerted as can be, the decisions they make translate into the game as well as the gameplay design allows for them to. The asymmetric nature of this game favours the killer player's skill, tryhardiness and decision-making to have a more notable impact on the outcome of matches. And this of course starts before the match has even begun, at the loadout screen (it is infinitely more common to have a killer that has the best thing equipped in every slot than an entire group of survivors doing the same, again simply because they are 4 players - when have you last seen even just 4 BNPs in a match?). From this viewpoint a 60/40 ratio may also seem sensible, although it further supports the idea that remedying the tunnelling issue is paramount to alleviate the negative impact a weak link can have on the survivor side (and this wouldn't necessarily have to happen by nerfing tunnelling itself (although that seems like the preferable route), it could also be something like increasing generator repair speeds for the remaining survivors if someone dies). The next major reason for the high killrates I think is simply that the game is actually a bit killer-sided in its basic competitive premise, which is the idea that all 5 players are roughly equally skilled and experienced and trying to win, and that the 4 survivors are randoms that have no coordination or communication. Of course it depends on the killer, map and loadouts too, but as long as the killer is using good add-ons and a sensible build, I think about half the killer cast is actually favoured to kill more often than not in that base balance premise.

There is much more that could be said but I've clearly already said too much as is. I don't really care about balance bickering much anymore anyway, these days I mostly play 4-SWF with voice comms with other good players so I have no issues winning 80-90% of our matches, and on killer I haven't in years had issues winning to begin with. If this post has a purpose it's saying BHVR has to do something about the atrocious matchmaking that allows good players to basically never lose (as killer or in 4-SWFs). They don't even have to have it affect 99% of the playerbase, just make the matchmaker much more strict at the highest MMR levels. And bring down the performance potentials of some of the most egregious killers, maps and 4-SWF. I guarantee BHVR knows this perfectly well, they have the stats, they can see the kill and survival rates of the 0.1%, and the fact that they are almost never facing each other.