Why the new Ranking System will FAIL

I warned about the systemic flaws of the Emblem system a while back:

For those of you who've already read the above post, you know why it was destined to fail. However to understand why the new official rank system will fail and will continue to fail I will cover the basic principles of its inherent design flaws.

Football, or any basic sport for that matter operates in a somewhat similar way: 1 team plays against the other. When team A scores team A will get a point. When team B scores team B will get a point. It is irrelevant however that team B has scored 10 points, even though this is a remarkable amount, if team A had 11 points.

In other words, it's not about how much you score. It's about whether you scored more than the other. By definition; there's only 1 winner.

So why is football important to understand DBD? In DBD team A would be the survivors and team B would be the killer, am I right?

Here's the tricky part: The answer is no.

In Dead by Daylight, the killer and survivor are actually both in team A. There is no team B.

In order to understand that, you need to understand the true nature of an opponent: An opponent would be someone who'd win when you'd lose and someone who loses when you'd win. An ally naturally opposite of that is someone who's win-condition is not in contrast to yours and is able to win simultaneously with you. It is of course possible for an ally to screw you over but the principle still stands.

In Dead by Daylight, 14 out of the 16 Emblem Points are what I call "Cooperative Emblems". These 14 Emblems are possible to fill for both the killer and for the survivor if both parties cooperate.

Both killers and survivors can get 4 (Lightbringer) emblems by doing a Gen and letting a killer regress it a couple of times.

Both killers and survivors can get 4 (Malicious) emblems by hitting survivors and healing them back up.

Both killers and survivors can get 4 (Chaser) emblems by simply spending enough time chasing and often enough.

Only when it comes to the Sacrifice category are killers and survivors no longer pure allies. In fact: survivors should always let themselves be killed if they cooperate, as this gives the killer 4 Emblems and gives the survivors 2 if they lives long enough, meaning that both the survivors and killers Double Pip every game through cooperation. Since the last 2 Emblem Points are irrelevant, survivors and killers remain their status of being pure allies.

DBD as a horror game in which the killer and survivors are teammate is in fact to boring that we see one of the strangest events occur in all of gaming's history:

The overwhelming majority out of boredom collectively start game-throwing (about 99% of them) and the Developers themselves cheer this game-throwing behaviour. Instead of playing the game properly, Killers start throwing by trying to kill survivors as fast as possible and Survivors start game-throwing by trying to escape.

Why would they throw away a guaranteed win? The answer is simple: DBD (as defined by the Emblem system) is so boring that people start making up their own win-conditions.

Now you understand the 5 versus 0 problem, you might've already guessed the solution. Just do what football does! There should only be 1 winner! The win of survivors should mean a loss for a killer and vice versa. There is no space for cooperation.

All Emblems would adhere to 1 philosophy: When the survivor's emblem is growing, that of the killer is decreasing and again, vice versa. The moment this is untrue, we have a problem on our hands, and the current Emblem system has that problem 14 times.

One of the problems with this quite popular solution in sports is that DBD is asymmetrical. Of course our worries would've already be shushed if the 2 parties were true enemies, but in this asymmetrical environment how would there ever be at balance?

This simply adds 1 more element to the mix: Not only are the killer and survivor competing against one another. Survivors are also competing against survivors outside the match and the killer is competing against other killers. Here's how:

There are emblems that are directly opposite of each other. For example:

For every generator repaired, the survivors get 20% of the lightbringer emblem. The killer loses 20% of their related emblem.

Once 3/4 of such emblems are in place, we'll have a competitive match without cooperation, but there's a catch:

The winner won't be the team that has more than 50% of the emblem points. Instead, we take the scores of a particular side and compare it to other people's score in the same rank! Confusing? Here's how it would work:

Let's say Im a survivor and I got 30% of the emblems during a match. Now, at lower ranks, a killer will more often dominate than the survivor so we expect such a result. With my 30%, we compare it to other scores within my rank. If people in rank 20 only have 25%, then clearly i'm performing above average and should thus be promoted.

The same goes for killer: If you play at rank 20 and you get 70% every time, well maybe killers at this rank normally get 75% meaning that even though you dominated the survivors, you won't be promoted because you played worse than other players within the same rank.

This same system can look at: Which killer the player is using to make all killers viable rank-wise:

If you are at rank 1 as a nurse, we expect you to get 90% of the emblems. If you have 85% then you might be on your way to being demoted. Yet, if you had been playing Freddy at rank 1 and only got 70%, then maybe you will stay at that rank because the average score wouldn't be 90%, but 60% and you played above average!

Same goes for SWF. It would be able to solve all balance problems rank-wise by using the average score per rank and setting a specific domain for every rank:

Rank 1 would be the best 0.1% players. Rank 2 = best 0.5%. Rank 3 = best 2%. Rank 20 = best 100% etc.

However, we don't have the above solution. Instead we had the blunt ideology of wanting to make ranking "Harder" by increasing the required Emblem points required to pip.

Now see the problem here?

Since it's a 5 versus 0, you don't make it harder since emblems in DBD are obtained through mostly cooperation. Instead, the game FURTHER promotes cooperation above competition. Because there is no competition, 1 player losing doesn't mean that the other is winning. This means that if the killer and survivor do not properly or unconsciously cooperate, they will both lose.

It's time to start running circles in the exit gate and have the killer dance a long: It's farming time.

What people knowingly or unknowingly mean by making rank harder is by creating a rank domain in which only a certain % can be in that rank. Sports is very similar: If you want Gold, you have to be the BEST.

If you want to be worlds best 100 meter sprinter, you have to pass the 9.58 seconds mark. This number was set there by players, not by the creator of the sport.

Yet DBD is the 100 meter sprint sport in which the devs set these marks themselves:

If you run 100 meters in 50 seconds, you will claim the title best player in the world! (followed by nearly everybody simultaneously becoming the best player in the world)

And with the new ranking system: "Oops 50 seconds was too much! Let's make it 5!", and suddenly nobody can be the best player in the world anymore as the record is 9.58. It does not matter how high or low, the system will always fail. It's because the Devs should never had the role to define that treshhold. The players should've set it themselves as the 9.58 was. The olympic players should've set the talent required to make it there... and most importantly: They had to be in a real competition.

I think that covers all! I hope that all of you now understand and have attained the judgement through which you can spot faulty ranking systems from the getgo and how to spot functioning ones.

I also hope that you don't only see that the new ranking system in DBD doesn't work, but also see why it would never work and what the nature of its flaws are.

Thank you for reading!