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MMR Has Negatively Impacted The DBD Forums...
…and Im tired of pretending like it hasnt.
Obviously, going forwards I must address that this is not addressing the community as a whole, moreso just a small thing Ive noticed that has overall negatively impacted the forums (at least based on personal experience).
MMR, or Matchmaking Rank/Rating, is used in DBD to try and determine the level of skill a player has and tries to place them with players roughly around their skill level (slightly lower, equal, and/or slightly higher) to try and make matches feel more balanced. Overall, I have no issue with SBMM in games as long as they are designed in a way that fits the needs of the players.
My main issue with MMR is how MMR has been used in a manner, especially in discussions, that is often used to attack others or shield criticism towards things within the game. Or in other words, youll see "you must be low MMR" or "Im high MMR so this cant be" constantly, as if MMR is the magic system that equates to a level of credibility.
Perspectives matter. Regardless of MMR, people can have opinions that you disagree with, since they are coming from a different perspective. Even if a player is high or low skill, their input matters since DBD is a dynamic game with a wide variety of playstyles and skill levels, DBD is inherently an ecosystem where all parts matter, and MMR is often used as an excuse to dismiss others or to try and invalidate their opinions.
Overall I find that MMR has left a negative impact on the forums since discussions can easily just de-rail into "well who is more skilled" or "who has the more credible opinion" instead of understanding the idea that we can just have different opinions, we can agree to disagree.
This was an issue back when Ranks were a thing as well, Im not going to ignore that, and part of this has to do with how people discuss things in general; but I found the introduction of MMR to be worse than Ranks since MMR is take a bit more seriously when it comes to balance discussion and skill expression.
:(
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I feel that OP. The fact everyone throws it around here like they actually know -anything- about their MMR just makes me chuckle everytime. Not to mention, its easy to see when a person has nothing to fall back on, and tries to use MMR something something as their basis.
Its more a joke anymore, and not something I could ever take seriously. Im not even sure BHVR is being honest when they say it's an actual system, because it just doesn't seem to work.
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The MMR might as well be a complete fabrication that never existed and it would be the same.
Also, seeing the posts about how hard the "high MMR" is, makes me perfectly comfortable with my probably-not-high MMR.
To the topic though, saying that someone's opinion is wrong because of MMR is just dumb.
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I think you're right that MMR is pretty often used to dismiss the thoughts of others in discussions. But I kind of also think that any ranking system will probably be used that way.
Even if we take away all ranking systems, there will likely be people who try to validate their opinions at the cost of other people's opinions.
I think you're right that it would probably help a lot if more emphasis were on positive discussion and understanding that we're all trying to enjoy the game. Like if instead of this motto that "I'm not responsible for your fun," or "your opinion is weird", we instead had more people saying "I hear you. Let me think about what you said."
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Yeah I've noticed it's often used to dismiss opinions, particularly the whole "you must be low MMR then" as though that makes a difference. So what if they are low MMR? Someone has to be. The low MMR bracket doesn't magically disappear once said forum user leaves it. But ultimately none of us know what MMR we are at, so it's meaningless to even bring it up.
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I agree.
And I'll say, you can probably change the title to:
MMR Has Negatively ImpactedTheDBDForumsBecause it is the truth, imo. Ever since the first few tests this system has been causing nothing but problems, which is one of the reasons why many of the initial MMR feedback posts were negative.
I think the "I'm high MMR" threads and comments are somewhat amusing, because we all know there is now way to verify that. As far as I'm aware, the only thing BHVR has ever said about the infamous high MMR is that the number of players who actually got there is smaller than we would think, especially with countless comments from players who insist they've climbed to the top.
Alas, I see the problem you're describing here.
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MMR is extremely negatively impacting dbd community, but not in the regular way most people think it is.
Taking in mind how flawed it is, how soft MMR cap is so low and most of community is not even aware of it, it is negatively impacting dbd community in the way that it creates that "i'm high MMR" illusion in heads of people, making them think they are facing some strong opponents, while they are usually getting matched against people with kinda low level of macro knowledge.
If MMR system was more strict, we wouldn't have this kind of problem, but we'd have new problems:
- people would realize how tight to current MMR system balancing is tied;
- we'd have significantly longer queue times (no problem for me)
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Before mmr it was ranks.
"Oh, you're not iri 1? Then your argument is automatically invalid!" has now just turned into "You're obviously not in MY mmr so your argument is automatically invalid!"
It's literally the same
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tragically, i'm still seeing people using the "Iri1 killer/surv" argument
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wellllll.....I'm gonna need to see some high mmr paper work before i read any of that iron cutlass.
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It's just another form of tribalism that's easy to undermine by publicly and relentlessly refusing to take it seriously.
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As high mmr I'm not offended if someone say to me that I'm low mmr because it's true. 🙄🤫
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mmr is a scam, even if the mmr exist ( what i doubt) the problem is that priority is on the queue time not on mmr.
As survivor , i find myself against chitai ( 11K hour , fogwisperer , he destroy my team without any suicide / leave in less that 5 minute )
As killer, I'm new on killer. I have maybe 200 hours, I start playing killer because I found it far more easy than survivor. Yesterday I go against a full team at 2k hours each.
Moreover, when I play survivor, my mate is between less than 100 hours and 5K hours in the same game.
Maybe show mmr on loby could be good ( only my own mmr ) so ppl will stop talking ######### about this0 -
Before MMR, the average kill rate at red ranks was 68.19%, and 7 of the killers had over a 70% kill rate. Is that what you want?
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I think it's something that can't really be done halfway, which is what the devs have tried to do. You can't tell players there is an MMR system and then hide it.
That allows developers to have more control over discourse, which they'd understandably want. But it also allows players to completely fabricate any reality they choose. Hiding MMR is a two way street, and I'm not sure BHVR realized that at the time. Totally understandable why developers would want to hide it, but there's a cost when you tell players it's active and then hide it.
I'm not sure that hiding MMR accomplishes what they think it does. Players who don't care about it probably would continue to not care about it. And players already sweat out games for an invisible number. Again, you've told players MMR is active. They know it's there. People aren't going to lose object permanence regarding MMR because it's hidden.
Everything that hiding MMR is supposed to prevent happens anyway. People make up their own MMR, they use a made up "high MMR" as a sort of credential, and the game became infinitely sweatier (subjective).
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There is no MMR. The playerbase chose shorter wait times. All the Matchmaker does is group by wait duration.
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Agree with the points the OP has made, but I think an even bigger issue is people who come here and throw out opinions about the experience of either the killer or survivor side when they don't bother playing that role at all. Pretty much every "us vs. them" post or comment, which I think is the main source of toxicity in this community, is coming from someone who has never played survivor or killer. There would be a *massive" reduction in these kinds of posts/comments if everyone took the time to experience both roles.
The point about people using MMR to validate their own opinion or invalidate others' is certainly not unique to this game. That's going to be an issue with every game. The experiences of low skilled vs. high skilled players and new players vs experienced players is always going to be there.
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The devs would beg to differ
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I believe the only reason they hide MMR is because it would prove that the SBMM system is functionally useless. Many players already know this based on their experience, but if MMR remains hidden then there's still no way to prove it with actual data. Like you said, the stuff they are trying to prevent by hiding MMR already happens anyway. The only reason to hide it then is to try to conceal how broken it really is.
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People have done this before MMR and will always do it in any game because they think it automatically makes there opinion right
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How are we all forgetting that everyone on this forum is high mmr?
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Nah only the top of the top can possibly be high MMR, like that guy, or that one, probably that one too, and that crowd of ppl is obviously high MMR as well and-
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Tbf - I'm totally fine with how matchmaking works now.
Playing only against "sweatlords" isn't something I'd want to do to myself. So I'm having them - but not too much - again it's just fine.
The same with very easy matches - I don't want to play only easy games, makes no sense especially in PVP games.
There is no perfect balance between sweaty games and easy ones that's 100%. But I'm fine with how it is right now. I don't know what is going to happen if they change MMR system - it could go worse.
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Pretty sure the influx of hackers forced them to reveal how it actually worked. A few cc’s started interviewing hackers who claimed to have knowledge of how it functioned, which lead to that knowledge ‘breaching containment’, so to speak. Players then used that info to make wholly unsubstantiated claims, which couldn’t be debunked without evidence from the devs themselves.
But there’s also the inherent entitlement that comes with actually sharing the exact number with the player. There will be players who will use their number to “support” their balance takes, whilst also using it to disregard others’ opinions. They mentioned this as the main reason why they keep the numbers hidden. It doesn’t result in anything really productive.1 -
Agreed.
unpopular opinion: taking DBD seriously or leveraging MMR for DBD is a bit of a joke.
It's like saying you've got high ranking in playing mini golf and shitting on the casual customers at the mini golf center.
I know I'll get counter arguments but hear me out….
- There is no official ladder for DBD
- DBD is not a big esport
- 99.99% of us playing it, are playing it in a casual manner
- Your MMR means nothing
- Also…remember this is played SUPER SUPER casually on console and is part of game pass. You literally have people in your lobbies that will never turn the game on the next day or week. Remember this. This goes back to the mini golf center. Imagine arguing with a 50 year old grandma that is at the mini golf center and won't ever play it again for the next 365 days until her nephews next birthday.
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The reason why the game hides MMR is so players can believe they are better at the game than they actually are.
That’s the real reason why the game still has an aim dressing bug that steals hits from the killer. When survivors 360 and the killer misses a hit, the survivor might think they outplayed the killer, and they did a skillful move…. but in reality the 360 triggered a game bug that stole the hit from the killer. There wasn’t any outplaying happening at all, just a game bug.
And imagine if this bug ever gets fixed. Many people would complain 360s got nerfed, and that lowered the excitement from their games, and that chases feel “hopeless” if they can’t cause the killer to miss a hit.
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You can also see people taking video games more seriously than any other hobby extending an overly serious viewpoint to other aspects such as how to balance the game, people should balance for the top, etc which leaves out the reality of the situation; DbD is a video game that we pay to play. It's a hobby and while people who focus on it should take pride in their achievements these achievements are no more notable than any other hobby. As an example if I said I had a castle on Siege Perilous almost nobody would care, know what I was talking about or understand whether or not that was prestigious. Nobody who doesn't play DbD cares about anything in DbD and, if the servers eventually shut down, nobody will care about anyone else's accomplishments in a short period of time.
While people should take pride in their accomplishments in their hobbies it's healthy to keep in mind that those accomplishments are, in reality, about as consequential to your life as saying you're the best darts player at your local pub and looking down on new players or lower MMR players in DbD is as cringe worthy as looking down on a new darts player in your local pub (or the grandmother playing mini golf in your example).
People focusing on 'high MMR and player's skills!' are being unhealthy and acting like elitists in a casual game that has no actual bearing on their life other than entertainment value. And, unfortunately, having MMR has increased the number of people talking about 'high MMR' even though you can't even see the number or know where you stand.
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Not true. It was always like that. Before mmr, it was iri grade or hours. But even then people belittled others for that bc it was so easy to reach, that they preferred to talk about their winrate or even winstreaks.
But it didnt get worse, the forum is always the same. The same arguments, where everyone only cares for their own opinion, the same posts how killer are absolute op/devs are killersided, right next to the post who says survivor are op.
And of course also the posts how this game is dying, the community got worse/more toxic etc
It was like that three years ago, its now and it will always be.
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i dont know what i hate more about mmr;
the fact that you cant even see your current mmr
barely any info than a redacted but confirmed wiki fandom page with some random posts throughout the forums
or punishing swfs who dont have 40k hours combined by sending their mmr into the strathsphere where they get destroyed by much more skilled killers over and over and over again
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We've found out via data miners the MMR exists. There are still some who doubt this, but no amount of evidence will change their mind, so no reason in persuading otherwise.
It's not SBMM. It works like a sports league, where the better the result the higher they go. The issue is there are a fair few variables which impact MMR. Maybe 4K gives the best result, but the time within the trial or how long it's been since someone played that role, impacts on how much the rating goes up. Really, it's RBMM (Results-Based Match Making).
As for people who still use the argument that someone "must be low MMR", fortunately fewer do it, and they are mostly mocked for even trying to use this. I doubt anybody gives any credibility to these sorts of comments anymore. Nobody cares, because it's the internet. I could claim I have beaten Ayrun every time I faced him (obviously, I haven't - not even faced him once!), and other than likelihood, there is nothing to prove or disprove otherwise. People should rightly laugh at those claims, and pity somebody who clearly feels insecure enough to bring it up.
Yet finally, even if we knew our MMR, it doesn't lessen the importance of what they had to say. There are some elitists out there who want it shown, so they can put weight on those who aren't doing so well and give them more value (or so they think), but it makes little difference. The game should be balanced where the most players are. Balancing it because someone in the top 2% says so isn't representative. The whole MMR discussion just needs forgetting about, really
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Actually, there have been people on these forums that we can definitely tell are lower MMR or average MMR, from their streamer videos.
It doesn’t matter if MMR is a hidden number. We can easily tell from videos, by how the killer is playing, and how the survivors are playing, if the lobby isn’t anywhere near high MMR. And, of course, we look at multiple videos, to make sure these are the types of games that killer is normally getting.
The real problem is when people try to claim that players are a certain skill level because of the number of hours they’ve played, or that a player is an expert with a specific killer because of the number of hours they’ve played that killer. That is far more damaging to the community than guessing someone’s MMR.
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i miss the old system, SBMM was a mistake
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I agree and I understand DBD is some people's "main" hobby but again with the game pass issue - theres a massive "transient" population of DBD players that come in and out. Sometimes their ONE AND ONLY experience is with "TOXIC MMR KING/QUEEN" which is quite frankly akin to your pub example - "lets ######### on the tourist playing darts visiting the UK" - it doesn't make sense and it kills the game. If the long term community keeps this up, the game will get a bad reputation for toxicity and people will avoid it.
I suggest they add a ladder system and have ranked/unranked matches. The ranked matches have severe consequences for leaving and give better rewards at end of season. But I suspect the playerbase doesn't exist for this and/or its just too hard to have a true ELO ladder in a 1v4 game.
Also, BHVR isn't exactly the most capable game developer. I do like what they've done but I've been playing since 2020 and I get the feeling the game surpassed their capabilities a long time ago. They missed the boat on making this game "Massive" a few years ago. Peak players peaked at 100K concurrency on STEAM in 2021 or 2022, it's never surpassed that and probably will never unless something drastic happens to the game.
Until then, DBD will squarely remain "janky desync huntress axe niche game" im afraid.
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Killers are always high MMR, survivors are always low MMR. So no debate is ever accomplished because BHVR has protected killers in thinking they are always high MMR to maintain power role status in a video game. MMR cannot function without fair balance. MMR killed the game and ruined discussions too.
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Part of the problem I think is that BHVR have told players that there's MMR in the game, but to a good number of players, (subjectively speaking) it often doesn't feel that way. That causes frustration because there's an expectation that you'll be going up against opponents that are at your level and that's often not the case.
I personally think there is MMR, but it's only fairly strict for players at the extremes: completely new players and very, very highly experienced / skilled players. Watch two god tier Survivor main streamers queue as a duo and you'll see they will face off against the strongest Killers in the game playing for a world record fastest 4K at 5 gens. The same goes for the lobbies of any strong Killer main streamer. These guys make the game look more like hard work than fun.
But I think everybody else is in the same giant pool of players. From 100 hours all the way up to players with 5000+ hours and a deep knowledge of the game. Even a very skilled Survivor main like JRM could be in the same pool as the rest of us, especially if they play a lot of Solo Q on stream. That's just the way of Solo Q. The Killer always knows what their plan is, but the other 4 Survivors in the trial have know idea what their teammates are thinking. It's an inherent and intended weakness to the team aspect of the game that SWFs get to bypass.
So I think it's best not to think too much about MMR. Doing so only seems to harm my enjoyment of the game, tbh.
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We can tell whether they're having good or bad games at a specific time, not necessarily their bracket, although I do get your sentiment. As an example, as a Survivor I'm very inconsistent. One trial I could be an amazing juicer and win the trial effectively, whilst another time I could be the broken cog which causes a potential 4-person-escape to a 4K. A streamer can have good and bad days. So, you can guess or estimate, but not know.
I do hear your point about guessing a skill level based on the number of hours they put in. It's one reason I'm glad Prestige was hidden at the start, because at the end of certain games a P100 would be found to be playing horrendously, whilst the single figure Prestige players would be carrying the team. It just added to snobbiness.
However, it does prove my concern that showing MMR is unhealthy, since people judging because they see a figure is problematic. There are people who will absolutely weaponise this information and become intolerable as a result, even if their escapes were through riding on the backs of others. It's not information BHVR should feel they ever need to share.
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