A Theory on The DC Epidemic: Perk Changes & MMR

I think there's a few reasons but I don't think it's a perk issue mainly. i think specific killers, notably Skull merchant, Nurse, Blight, etc. No one wants to play an uphill battle or against something extremely annoying. I also think another big factor is people being very tilted from previous games or just don't like losing so being first down/first found increases the frustration and people just leave.

Possible reasons why people go next/DC;

An actual irl emergency.

Fighting an uphill fight against ridiculous odds (good Nurse, Blight).

Dealing with something unbearably boring (Skull Merchant, Basement Bubba, proxy-camping Hag etc.).

Tilted after getting out of a previously unbearable/boring game.

Tilted after going against a near-identical situation game after game (usually getting tunnelled/slugged for the 4k).

Getting downed first (due to the rampant tunnelling, getting downed first is often a sign that you'll barely play the game anyway).

Literally just salty.

Doesn't like the Killer.

Doesn't like the map.

Doesn't like the Killer's perks.

Sees a teammate with No Mither or doing an Invocation.

The first chase of the trial doesn't last at least 1.5 gens and is deemed lost.

...

Yeah I could go on but the point is that there's about a hundred reasons to DC/unalive on first hook and most of them are petty.

I don't necessarily think it has to do with perks. MMR has been active for 3 years now. Most players' MMR is going to be more or less settled at this point unless they recently started playing.

Just my opinion, but I don't think anything will change with the DCs and giving up unless there are foundational changes to the flow of the trials themselves. It's getting worse because the game has been out for 8 years and players understand the game more than they ever have. The result of the trial is often more or less locked in within the first few minutes. It is rare to see survivors make a comeback. It happens a bit more on killer in my experience, but it's still unlikely for either side to come back from behind in a trial without the other side making massive mistakes.

Point being, if you're a vet player with thousands of hours and you've seen it before in the first minute of a trial, you might know with 99% certainty that the next 10-15 minutes are going to be a complete waste of time if you stick around. And one of the biggest flaws with this game is the insistence on forcing players to play through terrible games where the outcome is decided 10 minutes ago. Games are supposed to be fun, and I will never fault someone for valuing their time.

It's up to the developers to make the trials feel worthwhile. I don't have a solution. I'm not a game dev. But I can say that 30-50% of my trials on any given night feel like a complete waste of time, like I'm just watching a pre-rendered cutscene. I'm probably not the only vet who feels that way.

Recently I've been hearing people say that the first chase is the most important. And given how Killers naturally get stronger as the match progresses while Survivors get weaker, I can see that point. It is EXTREMELY difficult to recover from a bad start as Survivor. The first Survivor who goes down within the first two minutes of the match likely knows this, that going down so early can doom the entire team, even if they don't give up. This is especially true if someone gets hooked in the basement.

This isn't the only reason, of course, but I believe it is the most common one.

tl;dr, I'm agreeing with what edgarpoop is saying.

The most common reason people give up in my matches is due to unwinnable games and/or hard tunneling at five gens. Something like a strong killer having 4 downs before the first gen even pops is the most common reason by far. I actually don't get that many teammates who give up for silly reasons. I have data for my last 209 solo queue matches and in that time only 7 total people gave up or dc'd because they got downed early. People claim it happens every other game but it is not my experience at all.

I think its a combination of several things :

-Horrible map design: Each new iteration we get is worse than the last one, you know when devs are "reworking" a map, they will destroy it for survivors. There are maps like borgo where you can get 5 pallets in the whole map. Also, they have been adding new tiles that super unsafe, you have very little chance to get if you are lucky one loop. Most of these tiles are just a super unsafe pallet that its there for nothing. If these arent enough for you, you will have a lot, and I mean a LOT of dead zones where there are not even props or not even a window, just plain surface. See new haddonfield, the main street can have 1 or 2 pallets top if not mistaken, then the rest is pure dead zone, and its a big street. Then the houses most of them where nerfed or semi nerfed.

-zone-Antilooping killers. Last killer we got have been anti loops killer, nemesis, xeno, vecna, dracula, unknown, etc. Can be fun for someone with a bit more experience, but the vast mayority of players are not in these group, and they find the killers very hard to even loop. Unironically the most fun killers to face are the older ones, and even the maps. Do you see someone using a map ofering for going to xeno map?

-Lack of comunication. We got a few QoL that are much appreciated, but solo q is still in diapers in comparisson to a 2 man or more swf. We dont have a wheel with some pre recorded messages, or a ingame chat with some limitations. We cant even see other peoples perks. The game push you to be selfish in your gameplay, you have to fight against that and be a bit more altruistic.

-Constant nerfs to useful perks and buffs to useless perks. Meta would be a lot more variable if we had more comunication. I would love to use more team perks, but why should I pick a team perk when i know my team mates wont be sync with me, its much more useful a second chance perk like DS or UB, even more in this tunelling and sluggin meta.

-Tunelling and Slugging Meta: Not sure whats the solution here, but at least we should try some things on PTBs.

-Constant aure buffing perks on the killer side and nerfing distortion. Not a fan of distortion but man, killer can use their strategies such as camping, tunelling, slugging, but oh hell no you wont use a hiding strategy. At this point there is almost anything in the game that doesnt revel your aura and because of this mindgames are useless in most loops so only solution is just hit W and pray to find a loop or a pallet near you.

- For godsake just implement a surrender option. You get you teammate killed at 5 gens because of a robot that will tunnel him out of the game asap, whats the point of continuing that game? It could be a 5 min timer, or something like that, but please this is a real necessity, a lot of games have this utility and it works perfectly, i dont know why this wouldnt be the case here. Im pretty sure even the killer will prefer to go next instead of finding themselves in a 2v1 situation where the 2 survivor will spend the whole time hiding waiting whos dying first.

-Devs trying to fix things that are not broken, and not hearing what community is really asking for.

-Unfair hitboxes and super unfair hits like vaulting a window, being on the other side and receive the hit anyways. Or being hit by a hatchet even when you are fully covered or out of huntress sight for example, only because of the super vague shape hitboxes. These also can be a ping problem, but cmon, why its always favoring the killer?

I don’t know why survivors give up so easily; playing killer can be just as annoying and if I had a way to leave without getting a DC penalty I might use it when I get put up against a team with offerings that spread hook placement, Boil Over, sabotage and flashlights/bangs, Dead Dog or Errie as I know it’s not going to be a fun match.

I guess killers have had to develop thicker skin over the years and are just used to suffering. And talking about hit boxes what about that Head On hit box and how long it lasts, how about getting pallet stunned when you’re no where near it.

It’s always the same arguments, killer OP as they have a power where I can’t run pallet to pallet and make them break every one, or map traversal so I can’t just sit on a gen and knock it out faster than the killer can walk across the map to it.
It’s unfair killers can use aura reading it’s only fair when survivors use it etc etc.

Fact is even when survivor was at its strongest there were still rampant DCs before the penalty and it was even encouraged by some ex fog whisperers. Survivors have always quit over the slightest thing because they only seem to be happy when making YouTube bully compilations and easily winning while rubbing the killers nose in it.

If a killer only moved the same speed as survivor you’d get DCs if they ever got a down probably.

I have been saying this since patch 6.1, it's only going to get worse for survivors.

The devs have chosen their favoured side. The one with a 60% minimum kill rate, not the one with the sub 40% escape rate.

At the bottom of the care factor pile is solo survivor.

They do not care about solo survivor.

They will never care about solo survivor.

Its only Killer followed by SWF that they care about.

Stop wasting your time playing a game when the devs do not care about your enjoyment.

I think playing Survivor is pretty demoralising right now. According to those stats websites, I play 60% Survivor, 40% Killer and understand the frustrations for both sides. But Survivor feels a lot less fun at the moment and here are the reasons I think are contributing:

• Killers get buffs, but Survivor stays in the same place.

If I couldn't deal with Huntress when she had 5 hatchets, how am I meant to deal now that she has 7? Trickster at 4.4 meant you at least had a chance to loop him or maybe make it to the next loop. Now he's 4.6 he'll probably get a hit on you at the loop and then mow you down in the open with main event. I could go on, but I won't. I can't help but feel like this obsession with EVERY Killer in the game having a 60% kill rate is negatively affecting whether or not the Killer is actually fun to play against. If most players who main a Killer can reach 60%, that Killer is probably fine. That's what BHVR should be looking at when deciding on buffs or nerfs. Not occasional Huntress players like me who can't hit a Survivor with a hatchet when they're right in front of me.

• No really good Survivor perks since MFT

I know MFT was a controversial perk, but it didn't deserve to be nerfed into oblivion to become a perk you might run in an anti tunnel build. Since then, we've only had Champion of Light and Finesse. These perks can be strong, but require skill with a flashlight / flashbang or the ability to last in chase without being hit for 30 seconds. I have neither of these things, so bringing these perks is like bringing no perk at all. BHVR seem reluctant to introduce strong Survivor perks without significant downsides or a high skill ceiling. Perks are a Survivor's power. They need to be a little stronger to be worthwhile bringing to trial.

• The MMR pool is too big and nobody actually knows how it works

I strongly suspect there are only two MMR pools and the only thing the system really does is separate totally new players from the rest of us. Thanks to the ladder system, the pool to draw from is so wide you might have 100 hour players in the same trial as a highly experienced 5000 hour player. Sometimes I have ten times the hours of my oponents. Because the pool is so wide, I cannot rank down after losing trial after trial because there is no bracket below me to rank down into. Am I getting appropriate opponents? I haven't survived for 10 games, so why am I still going up against this P100 Wesker? Nobody knows. The system is opaque and whimsical, choosing my opponents at random. It is a source of endless frustration and bemusement to me.

• I'm tired, boss (and so is everyone else in Solo Q)

I'm coming up to 1000 hours in the game but my sense of progress has flat-lined. I haven't felt improvement in my Survivor abilities for months. As time goes by, I have less and less patience available to put up with unfun anti Solo Q strategies like slugging, camping and tunnelling. I'm so fed up with being found first and finding myself on death hook in the first 5 minutes of a trial. So fed up with all the usual Solo Q frustrations. These days, if I get two bad Survivor games in a row I switch to playing Killer or I turn the game off.

• Map reworks tend to favour Killer

Smaller maps obviously favour Killers. And calling the "loops" on some of these reworked maps a loop is stretching the definition to breaking point.

These are just personally experiences though. For me, when I first started in 2017, I rarely saw DC's when there was no penalty. The streamers I saw do it, normally did it at the end of the match. That way they would not gain pips. So while it did affect matchmaking it didn't leave anyone in a 3v1 all match. Of course this was the same era that MLGA also existed and played a big part for some people.

As far as dc'ing as killer goes, I still see killers do it, just not as often as survivors. To me the difference is that as killer, I can just switch up my play style mid match and still feel like I have a shot to get a kill or turn the game around. As survivor, no amount of switching is going to make my teammates be helpful or give me the feeling of hope for an escape. Even playing for hatch is still reliant on how the killer or teammates play as well.

Agreed. Like many DbD opinions, players will still cling to the 2016 notion that killer is the more demanding role. That's not necessarily the case anymore depending on the killer. I'd also add that it's frustrating to lose to what are essentially auto-pilot killer abilities. For instance, I despise Vecna. I think Mage Hand is probably the single dumbest killer ability in the game. And it took me all of 2 or 3 games to learn Vecna vs dozens for Wesker, Blight, etc. So many killers post-2021 feel incredibly cheap from the survivor perspective. Abilities are passive, set-it-and-forget-it, M2 zoning, or just work on a button press without any technical input.

Why do people still talk about MMR as if actually matters? Everyone knows that there isn't any hidden brackets that match people fairly against others in the same bracket. You literally get to a soft cap and then get matched with everyone else that isn't in the new player bracket. The new player bracket is basically a grace period on new accounts which will probably last around 30-40 wins before you're at soft cap MMR and play everyone else.

The reason DC count is so high is because solo queue has been neglected for over a year now and people are generally just fed up of having 1 decent game out of every 10 or so games. It's basically been brewing for months and it's finally gotten to the point you can expect a hook suicide or DC in about 60-70% of you games these days. A chain reaction has started within the playerbase and it's basically became an virtual epidemic within DBD.

Like at what point do BHVR actually do something about it? Do we need to see 90-100% of all solo queue games have at least 1 person DC or suicide before they think about doing something? Its basically at a point now where people will actually start leaving the game for real if they don't sort it out.

Solo queue player satisfaction has to be at an all time low in this game. I guess if you partake in SWF or main killer only you'll be okay though, unfortunately that's not where the majority of the playerbase is.

DC/give up epidemic is multilayered and can't be explained by just one thing; it's a cascade of issues plaguing the game

solo queue has been a dumpster fire for months now, absolutely miserable time which supports why players giving up occurs so often nowadays. At this point I just aim to get into chases with killer because I know the odds are too high against me to queue up with decent teammates, let alone have a chance at escaping

My initial comment was clearly humor. Hardly hypocritical unless you take everything at face value.

Do you remember when the killer could mori with no hooks? Do you remember when ruin regressed a generator unless you got a great skill check? Do you remember release legion?

Things aren't "evening out" they are swinging heavily to the killers favor. DCs are a sign that the survivor experience is suffering with key pain points, just like it did back then.

I don't think that is the case, though.

It is very unlikely that survivors giving up is being caused by the game's balance. That doesn't mean the balance is perfect, far from it, but several disconnects or hook suicides have nothing to do with scenarios where survivors are at a disadvantage.

As I've mentioned, I've had people give up against me while playing Pallet Freddy. I've had teammates who abandoned trials that were clearly winnable. And recently this has been happening way too much.

I never said that balance was the only reason people disconnect. Freddy is an extremely boring killer to play against for some people, pallet Freddy even more so. Trials may be winnable, but at the end of the day, this is a game made for fun. If someone isn't having fun, there is no way you can keep them in the match, despite everyone else wanting the full team there.

That being said, from what I've seen, most survivors DC against killers they don't like, 4 slowdown, awful ping killers, etc. They aren't disconnecting because they lost a chase to some random Freddy with 2 gens left and only 3 hook states.

my frend is a rly good gostface and they get dced on just for the first mark of the game into a down… cause the surv couldnt run them. :/

so yah ppl will dc cause a killer used their power correctly. idgi.