I would like to see them test out either locked lobbies or no lobby at all. Let their matchmaking system have its best chance to do its thing and see how it affects trails. So many evils come from the one-sided stomps, and most of it goes back to backfilling.

so? your a replacement whats the problem? u dont know that if u dont like being a replacement then do SWFs replacement means u joined a 3 man swf as a solo

So your ability to sift through lobbies for whatever reason is more important than proper matchmaking?

Games should be fun first of all. The MMR as we currently happens allows for too many mismatches between newbies and experience players, and needs to be addressed.

You bet your bottom dollar I'm going to leave a lobby if my Pinhead gets a team of clearly new, itemless, baseskin Megs because that's not fair to them. It's not my fault the matchmaking failed to do it's job, and it keeps doing that a lot lately. Similarly, if I'm coming in to do a Legion Daily that requires the game to go for a decent length of time and I see an OBVIOUS gen speed Squad with a bunch of toolboxes, I absolutely should be able to leave that lobby and find people who clearly are not just trying to win super hard while I am casually doing challenges. I don't want to be sweat all over by SWF team Six or a Blight on his 1765th win in a streak, I'm a casual player and that isn't FUN. Bouncing between babies and sweat city might be fun for you. But not me, friend. Not at all. I want a more balanced experience.

FUN for everyone is by all means more important than an arbitrary number that predecides how difficult the round is for you, and doesn't even work half the time. I wouldn't be saying this if matchmaking as we have it now was working. But it doesn't work as intended, and it's obvious.

We could prevent all lobby dodging by removing pregame lobby completely. It would be much faster to get into a match, plus it would be way better for matchmaking. Just match 5 players, have an "accept" button show up, and send everyone straight into the match with their current build which they would be responsible for having fixed before they find the match.

The only downside is that survivors don't get to chat with others before the match starts, which is kind of sad and means fewer funny interactions like that… But this isn't even something console players get to participate in to begin with so I'd say the good outweighs the bad here.

Bonus point for the killer not being able to lobby shop, check hours of people on steam, check for SWFs, counter items with perks when they see many of them in the lobby. In my mind, the lobby just wastes time. It's neat and I get why it's there but it feels outdated to me and has some pretty negative effects on matchmaking.

That seems like just passing what you think is a problem onto other players, at the expense of matchmaking having its best chance to get something fair-ish, without the horrible backfilling. Over time the MMR system would even out a lot if we just would leave it alone.

I have also recommended doing away with the current lobby. The killer should still be able to see items brought, to consider Lightborn or Franklin's. But going through profiles probably shouldn't be possible. I'd like to see that tested out, and watch how it affects matchmaking quality.

Unfortunately, JP, removing prestiges renders your theory here incorrect that removing lobbies would fix MMR. The removal of them greatly decreased overall lobby dodging, and you are correct that this can be seen as MMR has in fact mostly evened out due to less of it. The majority of lobby-dodging based backfill issues has gone the way of the dodo, but yet the MMR is still uneven. But since there's so little of it now, simply removing lobbies will not change much more - and will add further frustration. Removal of lobbies will not improve MMR much, but will increase the amount of Killers ragequitting mid round due to the game being too hard for their comfort level, either leaving the round or throwing to let the Survivors win. And, it will also increase the number of Survs giving up too, due to getting a bad teammate or the Killer they got being too hard for their comfort level. Nothing will change about the MMR system itself, meaning the issue IS with the MMR system in that it is prioritizing constant challenge based on how hard the player sweats for a win, not fun and balance or a decent comfort level for a given player.

In other words, the problem with MMR isn't that people are smurfing to get easier lobbies. The problem with MMR is that it expects the player to always forever improve to win even when improving further with a Killer or given Survivor setup just is not possible. it creates an "always a bigger fish" scenario where there is no feeling that you are getting better because your skill is rewarded with difficulty and inevitably losses instead of better performance or winning more. In EVERY other game, even difficult ones, your ability improves as you beat bosses or earn upgrades. Not here. There's no reward feedback loop after a while, just difficulty and challenge. That breaks the game's skinner box system and makes people simply not want to play. Compounding that is the fact sometimes it does in fact glitch and throw you babies or a nightmare group/Killer at the wrong time, especially if you are brand new or the data just got reset. How is that fair? Imagine if in something like Overwatch 2, you got mostly teams your skill level with challenge increasing a bit to match, but then at top rank you suddenly got a baby team out of the blue not due to dodging, but due to the game just messing up for the baby team. The same issue is happening here.

Many games are difficult consistently and do not allow you to change the difficulty. Many online games also use MMR systems to give skill based challenge. But no other game except DBD creates conditions where you can win so much, games start to feel like a Dark Souls run against an insurmountable foe with no rematch option or chances to learn from the mistakes you made because the game was never winnable for that player, which creates frustration. There is one type of game that does though - arcade games, which are so difficult because they exist to eat quarters - and when you lose, they give you the option for more chances to try and win in that given run. That just shouldn't be how home video game releases are designed.

Besides, as someone else already pointed out you can't force people to play a bad, frustrating, unfun round. Forcing people to stay in lobbies they don't want to play in isn't going to make MMR better - it's just going to make queue times and the quitting issue worse, which will kill the game because people will simply not play. After all, why should the game decide how much fun I get to have for me?

• Can we reduce the countdown to 30s? Or have a system where you get a BP bonus if you Ready Up sooner?

I don't mind waiting patiently until all of the lobby-dodgers have gotten it out of their systems, but since it's MY deferral that's letting thou pick and choose thy ideal match, could y'all throw us a bone or something?

Oh, no, there absolutely was a debt. It just got paid by someone else so you didn't have to play the matches you thought were too scary.

edit: I don't know how to formatting

I'm not sure what there is to clear up. If you step away from keyboard after searching but before accepting the match, you'd not end up on hook since you wouldn't get into a match. If you step away between accepting and the game loading in, which begins immediately after accepting, then that's just out of order. Right now, if you go AFK at any time between pressing search to find a match till you're in a match, then you'll be AFK ingame. But if we remove lobbies, then there will be less time between you search for match and get in game, plus you'll have to confirm. I just don't see how it could increase AFK in any way. Maybe you're thinking of a scenario I haven't thought of here.

While it is true that other games with matchmaking often let people strategize in lobby before the match starts, that's usually reserved for games like mobas or something. With DBD, I don't think I have ever seen people ever strategize in pregame chat. And again, if any of your teammates are playing on console, they can't strategize with you anyway since they don't have pregame chat. I just don't see the point of pregame lobby existing personally. I think you underestimate how much easier it would be for matchmaking to give people good matches if it didn't have to account for backfill, which BHVR themselves have admitted it a big problem. But maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't think lobbies are going anywhere any time soon regardless.

And you are not entitled to pick the easiest game possible for you. Killers cherrypicking their Lobby has to end at some point.

@Topic:
Highly agree. Either it should be removed completely (e.g. by removing the pregame-Lobby) or it should be punished by a longer wait time. The more someone dodges, the longer it takes for them to find a game.

Removing the pregame-Lobby is the better solution tho - it would not increase wait times overall and once you have 5 players, you can go into the match immediatly.

Survs cherry pick too. As a console player I get dodged constantly by pc players because of the bad rep we have. Some of it is understandable I guess but it still sucks being treated like a leper just because of the platform I play on.

tbh if you see four survs with identical cosmetics they're clearly there to troll and there's no point in playing

I get the frustrations of groups like that, but simply dodging them is just passing along what you believe is a problem onto others and messing up the matchmaking at the same time. Has to be a better way.