Kill Rate is not Win Rate

You're compressing stats.

If a survivor escapes one match, but then gets killed the next three matches, their MMR goes down.

Does that mean they have only lost?

Im not finding any of those numbers you posted on that page. I don't really want to go into numbers I don't know but, if a 0k is-20 and 1k is -10. Then it doesn't matter if I lost Mmr as it's just like I said above. By killing that one survivor I lost less mmr. I'm assuming a 0k is the starting point since survivors all start alive. So by killing one, I've gained 10 MMR. Doesn't mean I won't lose MMR overall, as that's basically the fee to enter the challenge.

The page does literally say that they are like mini trials though. But if we go by this:

"Killers gain points towards their MMR for killing Survivors in ranked Trials and lose points if they manage to escape:

Killing 0 or 1 Survivor(s) is considered a loss towards MMR.

Killing 2 Survivors is considered a draw.

Killing 3 or 4 Survivors is considered a win towards MMR."

Then I would call it at face value. That a 0-1k is considered a loss to MMR, etc...

I could be overlooking it but I don't see any where that says this is a win or loss condition of the game though. Just a loss of MMR. A hidden number that has other factors that also decide how it is calculated.

I promise I do understand what you are trying to say. And to be very honest ive been typing this so long I've forgotten what I'm even replying about lol. I don't understand though, why people want to calculate one side individually and the other as a single team or entity. It basically throws out draws on one side which either inflates their win or loss number. It also throws out balancing as a team if we want to consider things individually

Also, something about the stats that have always bothered me is that when they did the "all MMR vs high MMR", they did not specify what percentage of players were. In League of Legends for example, you can see the win rate of each character by their rank, be it either Bronze, Silver, Platinum, Master, Challenger... BHVR never tiered the kill rates on that. So we don't actually know how the best 10% or the best 1% killers perform.

Now, the only thing that may make that difficult for BHVR is that each killer has a different MMR, so it is possible that weaker killers like Myers and Trickster don't even have stats in the really high MMR tier because they simply don't reach that point.

If the only thing that matters is whether you win or lose against a -team-, why do you need to hook survivors 3 times to kill them? Why do you have to do 5 gens if only escaping counts? Why? Why does this have anything to do with what is being talked about? Why do you think you had made a real counterpoint to anything said? Why?

And if you played the game a 100 times, 400 minigames, and ended up plus $600, did you win or lose? It doesn't matter what the induvial result of each set of four mini-games was, what matters is the amount of money you are holding at the end.

Which is how MMR works. It doesn't matter how you break up the minigames or what the result of each set of four was. In the long run, the only thing that matter is the total result. The killer played against 400 survivors and killed 240 of them, how exactly it broke down is irrelevant to the system.

Now you as a player might care more about the results of those individual sets of four than you do the overall whole. Which is fine, but MMR doesn't, so trying to use it to justify a win rate discussion doesn't make sense. As others have said, if you're going off MMR, win rate = kill rate (actually, win rate > kill rate assuming at least some hatch escapes).

Your MMR loss depends on factors like average opponent MMR, length of the match and other similar factors. You will lose most MMR on 0k, but portion of the loss will be mitigated if your opponents have a higher average MMR than your MMR value.

Core factor for MMR outcome is number of kills. Additional factors that serve as multipliers are match length, average opponent MMR and the gap in MMR between you and your opponents

Well True but the metric for whether its a win or loss for killer isn't the same as a win or loss for a survivor, I can get hatch and consider it a win for myself while 3 teammates who died consider it a loss. The metric for what is a win / loss is very self determined since of course the devs don't want to set one.

It does let us know about the player base a bit.

Take nurse for example.

On the lowest end of kill rates. Not once, not twice, but three times in a row.

Strongest killer in the game (not disputing) and yet low kill rate = majority of killer players have a ____ issue.

Why do you only gain MMR after you have killed the majority of the team?

You don't.

That's what I've been telling you. That's what that line says. As soon as you get a kill, your MMR goes up. It just goes back down if you then lose the other survivors.

You asking 'why' is basically asking why your MMR goes down if you lose more than you win. You're just compressing the stats.

According to the MMR system, kill rate = win rate.

And you know what? This could actually be a way bigger issue than it seems at first glance.

If we're defining our win condition based solely on the MMR system (which I would argue is completely backwards, for the record), then we'd still be looking at MMR gain at the endof the match, because that's the point at which you'd logically suggest someone has won or lost. It wouldn't make any sense otherwise.

Ah, but this is where you make the mistake of assuming that the MMR system is, in any way, logical.

Lest we forget the 'If you ran the killer for five gens but then got caught and died in the end, was it really a good play?'-debacle.

I fully agree that it doesn't make practical sense, but that IS how the MMR system works. So when someone points to the MMR system to define a killer win, the MMR system considers every single kill a killer win, and every single escape a killer loss. The match outcome is simply a compression of those stats.

Morever, it is theoretically possible to overall gain MMR from a match even without killing 3 or more survivors in that match, if the survivors in that match have a significantly higher rating than you. In that case you might gain a lot of MMR for killing the players rated more highly than you, and lose little for those that you don't kill, likewise because they are rated more highly than you.

In either case, yeah, the game does not have clearly or let alone strictly defined win conditions for either side, and if we wanted to invoke MMR algorithms for this (which are obscured from us, and from what limited we do know more things than simply "escape" or "kill" play into it, such as order of kills, duration of match, hatch escapes being excluded (but included in escape rates)), killrate would indeed equal winrate.

With regards to the actual topic… Well, it's a tired topic that really seems to serve no point but for people to want to argue that killers need more buffs even if they have 60% killrates. Mind you I don't agree with various of BHVR's balance decisions (or lack thereof), and these stats alone certainly shouldn't inform those decisions. But as an overall indicator they are telling a very clear story as to killers doing more than well enough across the board, including in the - oh-so-competitive - "high MMR" bracket, even against 4-player premades. Even while including hatch escapes and excluding matches with disconnects entirely. It is a significant, major indicator (among various others, such as streamers and tournaments) that DbD is infinitely less "survivor-sided" than some people like to make it out to be.

There are interesting conversations to be had about the asymmetrical nature of DbD and how an MMR system could relate to that, although I've found that the conversations are usually not very interesting since there's often basic biases at play. For instance, when it comes to something like escape rate, people are quick to argue that "survivors only or mostly care about their own escape", hence it would be fine that as a group they may only very rarely succeed - and yet when it comes to things like the late and endgame design, suddenly the remaining 2 survivors should just immediately and automatically be killed or hatch certainly not exist because "the game is lost anyway", the idea of those remaining players still being actual people that may play for their own survival suddenly doesn't factor in anymore (nor the concept of, you know, having actual gameplay in a video game rather than making it about some arbitrary, empty concept of "winning" to the detriment of the former).

Either way, while OP is correct that killrate does not translate 1:1 into winrate (if by winning we mean killing 3 or 4 survivors in a match), I think there is no real or pressing problem with conflating the two because it's a meaningless distinction as far as we as a community are concerned: we don't know the actual winrates, we don't all agree on what "winning" even means, we don't have to care about global average winrates because in the end only our own experience really matters to us, and ultimately from a balancing purpose perspective it doesn't matter whether the devs aim for a higher winrate or killrate for killers than survivors, both accomplish the goal of leading to a killer-favoured balancing (that is to say, certainly even the staunchest of "killrate does not mean winrate" arguers will have to admit that while killer winrates may not be 60%, they will still be higher than survivor winrates due to the 60/40 killrate/escape rate split - which we can see evidence of on NightLight, where killers around the 60% killrate mark showcase a 50-55% vs. 30-35% killer vs. survivor winrate split).

Personally more than the global average balancing, I'm much more interested in or concerned with egregious outliers. I think the game is well-enough balanced for the average experience of players at most levels, leaning killer (a major reason for that being that most survivor groups consist of solos and duos and often pretty mismatchedly so, although there's more reasons too). But it leaning killer is a good thing. What I don't think is a good thing are extreme imbalance cases of a select few overpowered killers/add-ons, SWF loadouts, maps, and the fact that for (killer and SWF) players beyond a certain skill and experience threshold, most matches become laughably easy, winrates of 90+% being the norm and winstreaks of hundreds (or even thousands) of matches not uncommon. These outliers are much more pressing issues in my mind than the question whether the game is killer-leaning enough at 60% killrates on a global average.

Personally more than the global average balancing, I'm much more interested in or concerned with egregious outliers. I think the game is well-enough balanced for the average experience of players at most levels, leaning killer (a major reason for that being that most survivor groups consist of solos and duos and often pretty mismatchedly so, although there's more reasons too). But it leaning killer is a good thing. What I don't think is a good thing are extreme imbalance cases of a select few overpowered killers/add-ons, SWF loadouts, maps, and the fact that for (killer and SWF) players beyond a certain skill and experience threshold, most matches become laughably easy, winrates of 90+% being the norm and winstreaks of hundreds (or even thousands) of matches not uncommon. These outliers are much more pressing issues in my mind than the question whether the game is killer-leaning enough at 60% killrates on a global average.

@zarr You are the only one I have seen so far who has really hit the nail on the head here. The issue isn't MMR, kill or win rates, or whether or not the game is "too Killer sided" (it is slightly Killer sided and as you point out that's a good thing, even a necessary evil). The issue is that the outlier things are so strong, they create problems for the other 99% of everyone else who is in the bellcurve of average, to the point it makes the game feel bad for the losing side in these setups.

It simply should not be possible to winstreak in the hundreds or thousands just because you picked the right SWF setup or Killer, win 90% of rounds either side, run loadouts that make imbalances even more imbalanced as a SWF, force things to always be in your favor, and create such terrible MMR imbalances due to bad matchmaking that babies end up stomped on by a really amazingly good 6000+ hour Xenomorph.