(No discussion, just need to vent) Wow. Tried solo queue again. It's only getting worse.

Was not playing for months because solo queue was insufferable. After seeing the latest stats which are now often cited to state that solo queue is in a good place and not bad anymore and no attention to solo players is needed, I was somewhat hopeful that a decent 40% escape rate was finally possible in solo queue.

The result after six matches played ...

First match: Killer was incredibly bad in chase, but my teammates still managed to go down in seconds. 5 hooks before first gen popped - by me, it was a gen I was working on from 0 to 100% all by myself, and I did so in between getting chased by the killer twice, saving a teammate from hook and cleansing a hex. Inevitable result, all dead.

Second match: First survivor is chased almost instantly (probably Lethal Pursuer), another survivor runs along and tries to protect the other. Third survivor runs past my gen, stares at me what I'm doing there and why I'm repairing, runs off to the chase as well. Three in chase, only me doing a gen. First survivor is downed, second survivor takes two hits on way to hook and thus goes down as well. Two hooks at once, completely unnecessary pressure right at the beginning of the game, after the bad first game I'm already mentally out of the match because this was obviously going nowhere with people playing like that. Indeed, two dead before I can pop the first gen. Ends obviously in 4k.

Third match: killer hard camps instantly his first hook with not a single gen done. No way to help, folks crawling around so that anti-camp does not kick in but they're not able to handle this situation either. Three survivors at 5 gens and a killer who feels the need to camp with zero gens done, too much for me after the horrible first two games, I have returned to play to have fun, bye I'm out.

Fourth match: Again same pattern, killer is terribly bad, survivors are worse. Again, nobody doing gens, everyone going down fast. I see them with Kindred standing around, not even looking for gens, nor going for unhooks. Meanwhile, I run the killer all around the map, run around killer shack for a considerable amount of time a total of three times each time getting away, happily chasing elsewhere and coming back and the shack pallet was still standing after all of that, I didn't even need it and he can totally overcommit to me because nobody is doing a gen. With the right teammates, all five gens would have been done and the doors open for me to run out. By the time he finally has me down ... well one gen is only about to pop and despite having Kindred I'm just left hanging and nobody bothers coming to unhook me.

Fifth match: another match where I felt I was running the whole show because I kept the killer busy without getting even a single hit all match (well, until endgame) in the 4-5 chases I had with him while my teammates went down to a clearly bad and inexperienced killer. I was the first one found and chased, then after his first hook I became "Friends till the end" target so he came straight for me for the next few hooks until he realized he couldn't get me and started ignoring me. First match where we got the gens done. Can't leave a teammate behind though, so I was going back for save after opening the door, got hit by NOED, death on first hook for the second time in a row. One escapes, the first time in five matches where one survivor gets out.

Sixth match: first escape, actually a four man escape against an infinite T3 Myers. Good match, no complaints about my teammates for once. It was most likely the matchmaking screwing up though, I am fairly sure I was a backfill for someone leaving the lobby because when I loaded into the lobby my three teammates were all readied up already (we know backfill basically ignores MMR and just grabs a random available player).

I think I should leave it at that and consider returning to actually play DbD a failed experiment. One escape in six games that's ... less than 17% survival rate? Less than half what the stats suggest, against really, really, really bad killers? Not satisfying.

To get to 40% I'd have to escape three matches of the next four. That's literally impossible in solo queue.

I feel it's only getting worse, not better. The last time I played, I had about the same escape rate (even after playing many more matches than six) but at least killers were still better in chases than this and there were at least some meta perks like Pain Res in play, in the current matches I don't recall any of the killers having (or needing) any form of gen regression/stalling. I wonder if this has to do with the devs having raised the soft cap so that everyone shifted up a bit and the slightly better low MMR killers bubbled up out of my MMR range during the last weeks so that only the lowest of the low killers - and also the lowest of the low survivors - are now left in the range the matchmaker is looking for matches for me.

MMR makes me feel even worse about it, because its zero-sum nature is highly competitive and therefore the MMR adjustments unfairly suggest that all of these killers are better at the game than I am. With emblems, it was some kind of "I am ranking on my own by what I'm doing in the match, no matter what you do" and wasn't judged against another player without having sufficient control over the outcome to make it feel fair.

Ok, that's it. Feeling slightly better now I wrote this down (trust me I love this game, would prefer not having to rant and just shut up and play and enjoy it if it was possible). For some it may be nothing new, others will say that's how the game is supposed to be for survivors, it's supposed to be horror where the killer crushes everyone. Others will say if I'm not able to repair five gens while running the killer around the map at the same time I need to get better and don't deserve a good time yet. Whatever.