Lobby Shopping vs Going Next

Survivors that have had their lobbies dodged by the Killer already have a longer queue time than normal, so their matchmaking range gets expanded to expedite matchmaking. This means you get more skilled survivors against less skilled killers more often. This causes increased burnout for newer killers, and negatively impacts the killer pool.

At least unless they've changed anything with how backfilling works.

So yes, killers that cherry-pick lobbies are damaging future games. I'm surprised they don't have a soft-ban like League does with multiple sequential lobby declines, if not simply to ward against bot spam who would cause an issue in the other direction: low MMR bot accounts causing newer survivors to go against harder killers.

I'm aware of how it works I just don't think it matters very much. The MMR is already rather loose and either you go against a worse killer which okay easy game, it's even coll, or you get a good killer which can be a learning experience of you they ever want to actually get better.

I swear all this complaining about MMR wouldn't even be a problem if people focused on getting better instead of excuse fishing for when they lose and I mean that for both sides.

Ah, I don't know about the anon mode since I haven't played for a year but the leaver penalty in lobby wasn't for lobby shopping per se but because people would rage quit when their intended champion was picked by the opponent or banned.

You could call this lobby shopping but I would call it simple rage quitting.

Well, you are correct that both stem from a sense of entitlement to some degree but I would also say that a specific killer character with or without 4 gen perks doesn't mean they will play toxic and therefore not a valid reason to exit early.

(Even I, during my experiment phase, had people exiting on hook against me for one of the dumb reasons mentioned in this thread.

But in my eyes, a survivor squad with matching skins, names or group wide last second item switches are a dead giveaway for a team that's not out to play a normal match but to "interact" aka deny the killer at any given opportunity, guarantee a miserable match for the average casual killer.

I personally have never dodged lobbies or rage quit (except for one time when a swf abused one of the old fat shaming spots aka exploit) but I did use the one minute waiting time, since one survivor always not ready up till last second, to check their profiles and played the match either way.

However I am guilty of not engaging with survivor that last second switch or are overly "interaction hungry"/annoying during the match.

I'd even go so far and lock both Killers and Survivors onto their loadouts as well. Because technically you could still last second switch by using the build presets on the top right.

Like I said in my first post, supposedly matchmaking does that anyway. So it's not really making a difference.

If MMR worked well then sure. But it doesn't.

Well I'm mostly saying that from community sentiment that even with MMR the skill levels are wildly inconsistent and they go from getting stomped to doing the stomping back to back.

If we go off the assumption that matchmaking is actually pretty good outside of backfill then yeah leaving could possibly fill in someone wildly mismatched.

In which case I'd say both are a problem, just to very different degrees. Additionally with backfill it's a potential mess up while with a give up it's reasonably guaranteed.

Like a strong breeze vs a hurricane but saying "but are they both wind?". To use a more common expression, apples and oranges "but are they both fruit?"

Well, maybe and maybe not. Those 'baby survivors' aren't always such babies.. A good bit of the time, in my experience, it turns out that that p1 Mikaela was just taking a break from their p100 flashlight-slinging Claudette :)

But it does allow the Killer to take at least some measure to avoid potential abuse. For instance, if I see more than two flashlights, that group can wait for some other chump to ready up.

As someone who got matched against a prestige 100 when i had less than 10 hours of gameplay, and against 2 80+ prestige survivors, one 75+ prestige survivor and one 40+ prestige survivor when i had less than 15 hours……. no. I didnt even had a single prestiged character by that point

Until the matchmaking is properly fixed and dont backfill horribly, dodging some lobbies is a must.

Full stop.

It's been said already, but apples and oranges here:

One is in match, the other isn't. I won't lose my items/add-ons and 10-15 minutes of my time in a lost cause if a killer dodges my lobby. Worst case, I wait another minute or two for the next one. Usually, like 30 seconds.

And let's not forget that survs can and often do dodge lobbies as well.

I don't dodge often, and it's never because I am dodging just shopping for a lobby of newborn potatoes. It might be because it's 3-4 TTVs who you know aren't going to play an earnest match. Or it might be when I have a challenge and am not even prioritizing a win, but with a killer I rarely use and just don't want to face a squad of P100s.

And I know many experienced survs will load into a lobby, see a bunch of P0s and P1s in base cosmetics, and nope the hell right out of there.

Ditching in game is another animal altogether.

This playing as Killer theres no way to circumvent the DC penalty i have to playout the match yes i can leave whenever but ill get a penalty everytime i DC.

Playing as Survivor anytime something doesn't go my way oh see an Artist or i get downed in 10 seconds im first chase i have this ultimate 3rd option hook suicide to circumvent the DC penalty and not playout the match screw over my teammates and i can do this infinitely without reprecussion cause its built in the game.

How is that fair? It's an outdated mechanic that needs changes just make it you have 3 chances to 4% but the meter doesn't drain when attempting

Maybe survivors should be able tol see the killer they are vs to make it more even. Would save a bunch of dying on hooks vs skull merchants lol… maybe at the 15 second mark you can't edit your load out or perks but it reveals the killer and people can decide then if they wish to move forward. Killers gain insane amount of info during the lobby and can shop and cherry pick non swf non flash lights or items they can even check profiles and find newbs. Survivors can't do any of that and you see that fact ripple into the match when people give up early

And that's fair enough! But in my experience, the types of groups that all bring in flashlights are also built to grief even in the event that a Killer comes in with both Lightborn and Franklin's. Nah, I'll move on, there's more where they came from.

Im a simple man. If theres 3 or 4 flashlights, i inmediately bring lightborn

Thats not a dodge for me.

And yet people hate mismatched games, and survivors especially seem adamant about being able to go next as fast as possible when they happen, meaning that they actually do care about matchmaking quality quite a bit. Personally I think its a combination of running the numbers game (more matches = better chance of at least one of them being good) paired with impatience (both for queue times and unfavorable matches.) In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if many people prioritize matchmaking speed because they're expecting poor quality matches and assume they'll need a higher frequency to have actual good matches. Or maybe they just assume that longer matchmaking will be some egregious amount of time instead of maybe a few minutes more.

I still think backfill respecting MMR should at least be experimented and tinkered with instead of just shrugging and ignoring it altogether.

Another point that hasn't been raised is whether there are enough players from different mmr ranges queuing.

The backfilling is speculated to happen when someone of similar MMR dodges the lobby. What about cases where there aren't enough players of similar level playing in the region in the first place? Wouldn't the queue system be forced to grab someone from a higher or lower mmr range to compensate?

There is a possibility that even if lobbies are locked to prevent lobby dodging, there will still be cases of mismatched opponents. I don't think all the "backfilled" situations are purely due to people lobby dodging but probably a combination of dodging and not enough players on both sides for each mmr range.

I say this because last year, I got matched up against a 8k hour Survivor who was streaming. I went back into their vod to check if there was anyone who dodged the lobby prior to me and there wasn't. I had 800 hours at that point in time so I think it would be reasonable to assume that this Survivor would be in a different MMR range from me.

So if there was no backfiling, how did I get matched with this 8k hour player? The most likely conclusion was that there was no one else of a similar mmr range queuing so the game just gave up and chucked me into the lobby.

The lobby locking/hiding player information suggestion probably won't resolve the issue of people from different mmr being matched together, in fact it will become more obvious when it happens.

I don't want to play matches with people who have red text ban records displayed on their Steam profile.

This is one of my main issues with the MMR system. When I get instantly matched with a lobby, it's incredibly obvious that my match making rank has been completely disregarded in favour of finding a match for players that may have been waiting a while.

Personally, I'd like to be able to turn off this quick match making just like we can turn off cross platform. Turning it off might result in a very long wait for a match (or it may not find one at all), but I'd rather not play too many one sided games if there's nobody around my level currently playing. It's a recipe for a terrible time. The majority of the community might be in favour of faster match making, but the choice to opt out would be good.

I think it would help soften the blow when mismatches happen if we knew our own MMR scores too (and also allow players to gauge if the game currently has enough players on to make fair match ups). Letting players know their rank could lead to sweatier games, but I feel like that ship has kinda sailed already.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that mismatches are a big reason for players DCing or making an early exit from trials, so anything that could be done to reduce that would be good for the game.