About MMR
I apologise in advance, that this will be quite a wall of text even for my standards. 😥
MMR was introduced to DBD around 2 1/2 years ago iirc. Since then, the devs have made some adjustments and now it is rarely brought up in discussions anymore.
I remember at the time it was introduced, I absolutely hated it. My matches felt very constant in terms of how hard they were and that quickly became boring to me. It was also one of the reasons I adjusted my play style on both sides at the time. I didn't want my MMR to climb to a level where every game would become super sweaty and I would have to run the same perks to even have a chance.
By now, I'm mostly fine with it. My matches feel for the most part quite similar to the old rank system and I go against a large variety of players. Some are way better than me, some are worse and some I would say are pretty much on the same level. This keeps the game fresh and somewhat exciting even after thousands of hours.
This is not to say, that all of my matches are great. Not too long ago I had a string of very unenjoyable matches back to back to back. A few of those at a time are not an issue to me personally. But when it becomes consistent to the point where I play more than 20 games and cannot I enjoy a single one of them, that really sucks and it definitely took a toll on my attitude towards the game, which only made the issue worse.
While browsing YouTube, I came across this video:
and it brought up some issues with the MMR that are quite blatant. For one thing, the implementation of MMR in DBD is indeed quite deceiving. As Otzdarva explains, at no point is it ever explained to new players, that grades have no impact on matchmaking. It's also not broken down in any way how the matchmaking works.
That has led to some confusion especially for newer players. Sometimes, we'll see people try to back up their claims with the argument that they are: "Rank 1". This indicates the issue that some players are led to believe they are at the top of the top, which will impact their attitude towards the game. After all, if you're already one of the absolute best players in the game, then what do you have left to learn? How to use better perks? How to tunnel quicker?
I think this is one possible reason why the meta in this game always becomes so narrow. On both sides we have more than 100 perks. But you only see about 10-15 of them. This is partially because a lot of perks in this game are frankly horrible. Like Red Herring or Bloodhound. But not all of these perks are actually so bad. Sometimes you get the most value out of the most unexpected perks.
But when there are perks that are better and you're playing against the absolute top of the top players with only about 20 people in the world that could ever hope to compete with you in terms of skill, then of course good perks aren't enough. You need something stronger. You need the best of the best and you need it every game. You need 3 gen regression perks as a killer and an info perk and if you do end up losing, then of course it's only because you needed a 4th gen regression perk. You need WoO, Lithe, Adrenaline and Resilience with the best item (usually a toolbox or medkit) and a map offering. Every game. Because otherwise, how are you supposed to win? You're already so good, that you can't improve anymore when it comes to actual gameplay.
This is something I witness on both sides. I do not say this doesn't affect me in any way because if it does, then how would I know? I'm saying, that the game sends a message, that you are way better than you actually are. As a killer even more than as a survivor because a 60% kill rate means, that you should win more than you lose, which is something you feel even if you don't intentionally keep track of it. But it also happens as a survivor because you will often feel like something was out of your control, so you played perfectly but lost anyway.
It seems that many people don't feel comfortable with running different perks either because they fear, they will not be able to uphold their perfomance or because they haven't learned to play without them.
The notorious "high MMR" argument, that was quite common when MMR was first introduced has fallen from grace over the years. I suspect this is because some would agree with me, that we are probably not all in high MMR and making this claim without any kind of evidence to back it up (which does not exist) is not a very strong argument. So it seems to me that many of us, focus more on how our matches feel and what we experience than some theoretical number, that determines how good or bad we are.
Which also doesn't work all that great, considering that we know it only takes kills and escapes + match time into account. So you could play Blight on Midwich with 3 gen regression perks and NOED and only get a single hook and camp them with NOED to get a kill and still be considered better than the survivor that looped you for 5 minutes straight. Or you play perkless pallet Freddy on GoJ and get 8 hooks but no kills and are considered worse than the 4 people that played in a SWF with clock call outs and used their absolute strongest load outs. Obviously both of these examples are pretty extreme but the point is to show, that kills / escapes do not tell the full story.
So we have multiple issues with MMR that all kind of defy its purpose. To provide a more balanced but still well rounded experience. I believe that MMR doesn't try to consistently match you with people that are exactly on the same level as you but people that are sometimes a little better and sometimes a little worse. This is (as far as I know) the way MMR is typically implemented, though feel free to correct me on that, should that be wrong.
The point of this lengthy rundown is, that the matchmaking very heavily influences our perception of balance and it's very hard to keep these 2 apart. Who is to say the killer played better than the survivors or vice versa? We can only determine that on a case by case basis, which is quite hard, when you think about how different both roles actually are. We have 2 completely different skill sets after all and then we need to factor in how big of an impact their loadouts made.
I reckon this is not something a new player will be able to do quite as well as people with more experience. They won't have the knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of different killers, maps, perks, items and addons and as explained above they could be more inclined to believe that they are a top percent player.
If you made it this far, then congrats, here is a cookie 😘:
My question to you is; can and should this situation (deceiving players into thinking they're way better or worse than they actually are) be improved? How would you go about it and why do you think it would be an improvement overall?
Comments
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That what I wonder too even I lose I still only get tunneling P100 killers. My teammates still sucks too well and even if they know somewhat what to do it's not enough when all I face is sweaty killers. Full try hard swf is when I do fine and for some reason we get worser killers more...
This problem just not on survivor I get then sweaty swf survivors on killer. When obvously those P100 killers should face then. It's not as bad situation but after losing on survivor I go to play on killer to have one good game... Where are these survivors when I play that side?
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How you manage your MMR to get good variety instead sweaty matches?
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I switch up perks and play styles and when I can't win with whatever weak build I run, then I try and accept that and focus on something different (like learning more about the killer I'm playing). It has worked pretty well so far (except that that time I mentioned). Some matches are not meant to be won.
For a while now I have been playing different killers with only Lightborn and Lethal Pursuer. It helps me keep my game sense sharp because I don't have BBQ to rely on and because I don't typically use gen regression either, I am more or less used to some matches ending too quickly for me to win.
I also play mostly without items, addons and offerings. For some very weird reason I hate to use consumables. I'm always affraid they might run out even though I know, I will never get through my 3k addon stacks on Billy.
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I think the post mostly hits the nail on the head. Whether the devs like it or not, intend it or not, or design it this way, players do approach this game more competitively than they ever let on. It does no good to essentially hand waive it and say "don't do that", because players are going to do it anyway. And if you don't adjust to player sensibilities, you end up with what we have.
It is not a bad thing to tell players they are relatively less skilled or average at the game. It's a good thing! Look, you're running the best perks+add ons and you're still losing half of your games at average MMR/rank. There's a lot to improve. How is this bad information for a player to have?
Half the sweat in this game comes from players constantly trying to punch above their weight class because they have sub-1k hours, think they're "top MMR", and cheesed their way near or above the soft cap where they don't belong. And now they're constantly compensating for being overmatched.
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MMR being confusing is not much different than the game itself. Almost nothing is explained and the devs rely on players watching YT videos in order to understand anything.
Solo queue matchmaking certainly does make me walk away from the game sometimes. It's fine to have a bad match based on matchmaking sometimes, but not ten matches in a row.
Certain perks feel necessary to run because they are needed to avoid the worst parts of the game. Gen regression to counter strong toolboxes, anti-tunnel perks to avoid getting hard tunneled out early game. It makes sense why many perks feel like a QoL boost. Many have been introduced to deal with problems created by the game loop or other perks. If you don't use OtR, when the killer body blocks you off hook and counts to ten, you're going back on the hook. Needing a perk just to deal with something that is obnoxious.
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I don't know if I would say it's intentionally deceptive, but I do think that it's not transparent. As Tru and Otz said, the system is not explained to the player base very well, if at all. As a relatively new player of just over a year, I had to do my own research on forums and such to learn this game even has an MMR system (alongside a great deal of other poorly explained gameplay mechanics, but that's for another discussion).
I think the bigger issue stems from the SBMMR system being suspended most of the time in order to bring down queue times. I'm under no illusions, I am definitely not high MMR. But I've almost certainly been matched up with players that are a lot higher in MMR and also a lot lower. Telling your player base that the game has skills-based matchmaking, only for them to find dramatic swings in the strength of their opponents or teammates leads to players thinking that the system is broken, or simply doesn't exist.
Personally, I don't think the system works for Solo Survivor at all. Mainly because selflessness is rewarded for SWFs but punishing for Solo players. SWFs can afford to sacrifice themselves for the good of the team because they know that in the next trial, another member of the group will do the same for them and they can still maintain a good escape rate. Solo players on the other hand have to play selfishly to be consistent, which leads to frustration and resentment among the player base towards "rat" survivors playing for hatch / stealthing when things start to go wrong or otherwise looking after number 1.
I like that the game supports different playstyles, but maybe for the good of a functioning MMR system, it should take into account the performance of the team over all when calculating MMR. It should be weighted towards rewarding team play a little bit more than it currently is. For all I know, it may already be doing this. But we'll never really know, because again the system is not transparent and communicates very little information to players regarding performance.
Basically, we have two feedback systems that are visible but ultimately meaningless (prestige and grade) and one ranking system that is totally invisible and opaque to the players. So no wonder there is so much confusion, frustration and lack of understanding about how MMR does (or doesn't) work.
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I think it might have something to do with how you might feel like you have to be the best in competitive games and telling a player, they're not quite that good yet can really sting. It hurts one's pride in a sense.
So they might need to include something else to show players that they still do well even if they aren't among the most skilled players in the world. That could possibly be based on the emblem system. For example: "You did really well in this match, so here is a little reward." and then they get 500 shards or whatever.
I would also like the devs to be more forward with tutorials. We 35 killers in the game but their powers are barely explained enough to have an idea on how to actually play as and against them. There is no general introduction to types of perks like info, chase and slowdown either and not even the AFC is mentioned in the tutorials. That makes learning the game pretty hard because half the time you'll have no idea what the hell is actually going on.
MMR being confusing is not much different than the game itself. Almost nothing is explained and the devs rely on players watching YT videos in order to understand anything.
That's a good point.
I think it's mostly fine to be expected to use 1 perk slot to fill into a particular niche (i.e. gen regression, info, anti tunneling) but I would very much like them to provide us with more good options. So you can still have a lot of variety while filling in the gaps. With info perks they do a pretty good job for example. There are a lot of options, so should you need one, you have a lot of perks to choose from and it doesn't feel like you have to run a specific perk or two.
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I'd love to see more perks become basekit, even if they need to be watered down somewhat or have deactivation conditions. Things like OtR for body blocking unhooks, even if it only activated for thirty seconds, or UB with a one time only use for slugging. Killers could get something like Lightborn, but have it only activate on successive blinds, so it doesn't invalidate perks and items, but it does protect the killer from bully squads.
It would give players more freedom to use other perks if the worst possible scenarios were not something that everyone was constantly worried about.
These are just off the top of my head suggestions. I'm sure there are plenty of issues with those ideas, but they are just examples.
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I disagree with the idea of more base kit perks. I'd like to see them make further adjustments to existing base kit mechanics.
This addresses the bodyblocking issue (although the other way around).
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I remember talking to you about this a little while ago about how the mmr system has moments where it “breathes”- in that each ladder (survivor ladder and killer ladder) sometimes grind past eachother or go up and down with each other but at separate rates. This could very well be why some games just feel so off and strange. When you couple this phenomenon with people playing different than they usually do plus adding people prioritizing challenges it will lead to clumps in certain mmr ranges that need to be equalized. This sometimes will creat a reverberation effect at the top and low ends which naturally create bounce back effects.
It’s like imagining mmr like water sloshing back and forth in a container except do it twice one for survivor and one for killer.
Because of this it is very difficult to know where in the ladder you actually reside. Which for me is a little bit futile in trying to figure out. My best advice to anyone is to first find a way of playing that is fun for you. After that the mmr system will (mostly) work to legitimize your playstyle into a 60% killrate.
When it comes to making judgements based off of mmr it is very difficult and almost impossible since we are never shown our mmr and since the system always tries to place you where you belong based off of your playstyle. Because of this a player can run into situations where they think the game is very easy because they “win” so much when in reality they are just being kept within their average/lower mmr range. The reverse is also true, good players may not feel as good because they lose more than they should but that’s because they are above the soft cap.
Overall it’s an interesting system one that I believe ultimately is a benefit but it definitely comes with its own baggage.
As for the badge system, yes it absolutely needs to change. Too many newer (and sometimes veteran) players equate experience with raw skill. There is a small correlation that experience translates into skill but not as much as people think. The badge system and scoring should stay the same under the hood but it needs to be redressed. Call it a “Killer’s bloodbook/killbook” or something and for Survivor make it like a punch card or something like that. Just make it an obvious bonus separate from any kind of skill report card. People will still conflate it with skill but it’s a start.
Thank you for the cookie 🍪 it was delicious.
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A fair point, but I would counter that part of the problem with DbD's playerbase is that they take pride in the illusion of being a top player. Anybody can rattle off 10 wins in a row, look for a reason that a team was a SWF, and then decide they must be top MMR. Anybody at any skill level can find a reason to believe they're in the top skill bracket, and that's problematic on a certain level.
Just look at these win streak killers. They get fed easy 4ks for a hundred games but have an absolute meltdown the second they're matched appropriately and get 2 outed. Would players even be going for streaks if the game pointed out for the world to see that they were farming relative noobs?
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Initial feelings and where we are at now: I too thought it was garbage on release, however I still feel it is bad to this day. I enjoy 2-hook tangoing as Killer (2 hooks each Surv and release), and that is possible under Rank based matchmaking without diminishing match quality. Under MMR, you are forced to kill people in order to not have your matchmaking sabotaged.
MMR/Rank Visibility: This was something that was also much better under ranked. Even today people on this forum dismiss arguments out of hand because 'you must not be in top MMR', or seeing a >70% win rate and still thinking, 'well you must have low MMR despite the win rate'. Ranks was so much better, because it was visible, and people can't dismiss your claims on baseless reasons.
MMR/Rank Methodology: MMR is blindly using K/E, which everyone knows is a hilariously inaccurate metric. Distortion rats can climb MMR because they don't lose MMR when they get hatch. Rank based matchmaking at least measured the various in-game acts, so it directly measures your skill (at least greater than K/E) when you play the game. Now there are some exceptions, like Wraith chases in cloak, or old facecamping/current or old tunneling, but it mostly measures things correctly.
How MMR is intended: MMR in its original form, was intended to give a bell curve experience. In 10 matches, you are supposed to get 1-2 auto losses, 1-2 free wins, and 6-8 even difficulty matches. The auto loss and free wins are supposed to basically be palette cleansers between the higher stress even matches. The problem with DBD's MMR, is that you have 1 v 4 instead of 4 v 4.
In a 4 v 4, the best player on a given side should likely have a fair match against the best player on the opposite side, but destroy the remaining 3. The MMR is averaged and compared, so you have 1900/1800/1600/1500 vs 2000/1800/1600/1400, both avg, 1700. DBD has the 2000/1800/1600/1400 vs the lone 1700. That allows a Killer to always win because they can crutch by killing the 2 underskilled players every match. When the Killer actually gets a fair match with 1700/1700/1700/1700 vs 1700, they can't win by leveraging their opposition's lack of skill. That forces Survivors to sweat, expecting this to happen, and forces Killers to sweat because Survivors are expecting Killers to sweat. This negative cycle of sweat grows upon itself, until we have the horrible state of the game today.
Fixes:
There are two major issues currently, visibility, and methodology. You should be able to see your own rank/MMR, even if we decide to hide it from others. I can understand the argument for public or private MMR. As far as methodology, we need to shift the MMR from Kills to hook states. Have >8 hooks be considered a win for Killer, and camped states/1st hook kills count as more than half, but less than normal. 2 hooks each Surv should be a tie. This also allows for more granular wins. Personally I think a first hook kill should count as 2.02 (1, 0.51, 0.51), that way 4 first hook kills is still a win, but not a preferable means of play. It might even need some balance adjustments like the 2nd hook on each Surv is worth more (0.75, 1.25, 1.0), or maybe the first instead (1.25, 0.75, 1.0). The main issue is we need to shift to hook based MMR if we want to still use it.
Edit 1: Simple GrammarEdit 2: Fixed < to be > and added more context for that section
Post edited by mizark3 on0 -
"part of the problem with DbD's playerbase is that they take pride in the illusion of being a top player."
This is the truest sentence I have ever read but I don't think there is a fix for this because bluntly if you shatter this illusion players won't play as much.
In general if Platinum or Gold is the middle of a ranking system in a competitive game I can assure you the average player is as good as a silver player because as soon as some people start losing in a ranked game they stop, losing rank is bad and they do not want to lose more. Some players play for a while and try out ranked see they are not good so they never return and play the casual gamemode.
Another thing to take into account is most players normally have better things to do than put loads of time into a game to get better so they won't ask for ranks to be hidden on the forums or to not be told they will just play less if you change it.
I dont think this is a fixable issue because most players will play a few hours want positive reinforcement then stop the only way I can see to make a visible display how good you are work is with both a ranked and casual que but in a game like DbD i dont know how that would look.
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I've only ever been around for the MMR system. Whenever I hear about the rank system it sounds so much worse, but I didn't actually play under it.
For one thing, the implementation of MMR in DBD is indeed quite deceiving. As Otzdarva explains, at no point is it ever explained to new players, that grades have no impact on matchmaking.I don't think players being unaware of MMR is a big issue. The majority of players, I'd guess the vast majority, will never look at forums/reddit/etc. They have the game, they play the game, and that's it. They might not even be aware there is a matchmaking system.
Which also doesn't work all that great, considering that we know it only takes kills and escapes + match time into account.I don't think this is true. The goal is to get the situation where players have roughly balanced matches. If you want to play a weaker build, over time that will get you to even matches with the weaker build, if you take a stronger build you'll get the same result.
Who is to say the killer played better than the survivors or vice versa?How important is it to know though?
As a game DbD has tons of random elements and the element to snowball quickly. A single game is not really an indicator of who was the better side.
My question to you is; can and should this situation (deceiving players into thinking they're way better or worse than they actually are) be improved? How would you go about it and why do you think it would be an improvement overall?I think if people actually saw their MMR they would sweat much harder.
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Overall it's an interesting system one that I believe ultimately is a benefit but it definitely comes with its own baggage.
I agree. MMR by now really isn't so horrible anymore. At least the overall match quality is fine.
I would still like the devs to be more transparent about how the matchmaking works, especially in-game and make a few adjustments to how MMR is calculated or change the rewards for kills / escapes vs. actual performance. The most god like survivor in the world that loops the PTB Twins for 5 gens (not that that's realistic) and then dies barely gets anything out of the game, while their team mates get the objective points (not many but still quite a few) and the escape points. So they are likely to go out with more points, have their MMR raised and be considered the better players than the 1 that actually did the heavy work.
I feel that this is also part of the reason many solo queue matches feel as unbalanced. Because 4 survivors that aren't good in chase but can do gens will mostly not have a good time against even average killers.
Too many newer (and sometimes veteran) players equate experience with raw skill.
This is something I have seen especially veteran players do. You can go look for some streamers and they will often think, they are super good at the game, when in reality they might only be super good at some aspects of it and pretty bad at others.
I for one believe to be somewhat decent with Hillbilly but put me on Huntress and I'll struggle to hit a survivor on a gen with a homing hatchet. I know this might be controversial but even Otzdarve isn't a god as and against all killers. He plays fairly well for the most part but it is obvious that he doesn't understand some killers as the people that main them do. The same goes for other content creators and players too.
I mostly break the game down into 2 key components:
- The 1v1, which is basic chasing and all that is included.
- The 1v4, which includes the decision making, prioritisation, positioning etc.
Especially the second part is something that only comes from experience. I'm not an amazingly skilled player when it comes to mechanics (took me a looot of time to learn Billy and I still have much to learn) but after a few thousand hours in the game I believe that I can win many of my matches just from keeping track of survivors, smart chasing (I.e. chasing survivors into dead zones), cutting survivors off etc. and it's something that I see on other experienced players as well.
Thank you for the cookie 🍪 it was delicious.
You deserved it for reading through that all. 😉
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It's too late for devs to make MMR visible to the general population especially with how matchmaking works to minimize long queue time, people would start posting SS of 3 high MMR players paired with one beginner Claudette or a 50 hour killer versus 4k hour Survivors with offerings and strong items.
I suppose in the past, the intention of hiding it was to prevent elitism when discussing the game. However people are already kind of doing that "You must be low mmr etc" so hiding it kind of defeats the purpose. Devs are damned regardless of whether or not they make MMR visible.
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I do agree that the whole devotion, rank, mmr is a complete mess. It’s extremely confusing for a new player. Rank and even devotion for that matter currently serve no real purpose other than to confuse people. It’s convoluted and just extra bloat.
I think mmr is bad for the game and I think the grading system and rank for matchmaking was the best system we had. The devotion system took into account much more of what went into the match than just kill or survive.
Mmr only works when a game is generally pretty balanced at the higher end. That is not dbd, at all. It’s balanced as a party game for casuals. Dbd doesn’t know what it wants to be and it’s trying to be both. Either you keep mmr and balance around the higher end or we keep balancing casually and then mmr needs to be removed. People only want to play good vs good when the game is balanced for good vs good. Poor matchmaking is necessary in a game that isn’t balanced for the high end because it helps cover up the problems. This is similar to why we can’t see mmr or swf in the post game lobby right now, it’s only purpose in being hidden is to hide the problems so we can’t point it out.
Remove mmr and match based on rank again in my opinion. That was the best system.
And they seriously need to stop hiding everything from the player base. Hiding mmr/rank and swf is very frustrating. People like to be able to see their rank/mmr as it gives them goals to work towards and makes them play the game more.
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It never had a real purpose in being hidden other than to cover up the problems so people couldn’t point them out. I think the whole “elitism” excuse was just a cover for the real reason. Covering it up to block elitism is just silly and stops nothing.
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I think the best we ever had was the Ranking System with the actual rank reset, before patch 3.4.0
It wasn't perfect, but it was definitely better than everything MMR has to offer.
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I ate that cookie and enjoyed it🥳 now I’m taking a nap😌
…wake me up when this game is worthwhile again
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