A Community Suggestion for Improving Matchmaking, Reducing Burnout, and Supporting Both Casual and C

This game simply doesn't have the overall playerbase size to support two permanent queues.

Thank you for putting into words everything I’ve wanted to say. I wholeheartedly agree.

Well let me give you an example…

Imagine you are a pro blight player and you try to archive a 2000+ Winstreak

Where would you go for the best chances?

In the ranked mode where most of the people tryhard and could beat you

Or in the Casual mode where you can slug and tunnel as much as you want against uncoordinated teams?

Yes you do and maybe many others.

And meanwhile others stomp the casual players.

And the tryhards are still stomping casual players.

Even now, when there’s no separate mode! I mean, even now!

Why do you think separating the modes would suddenly stop this from happening?

The point is, whether Casual and Ranked are separated or not, this has always been happening—and it still is.

Pro Nurse

• If they go to Ranked mode (solo only), they’ll face four solo survivors with extremely high MMR.
• If they go to Casual mode, they’ll keep stomping players of various skill levels, just like now. (Since MMR isn’t working in the current mode, it’s effectively Casual.)

SWF

• If they go to Ranked mode (solo only), they’ll break up the group.
• If they go to Casual mode, they’ll keep bullying the Killer, just like now.

Casual and beginner players

• If they go to Ranked mode (solo only), both Survivors and Killers can face opponents of similar skill.
• If they go to Casual mode, they can experiment with minor builds, but they can also get bullied by Pro Nurses or SWF. This is no different from the current situation.

In other words, I believe that separating the modes has almost no downsides and mostly benefits. What about you?

Any “downsides” you can think of are already happening right now.

There a number of problems with trying to introduce a ranked mode into DbD.

1: Time - usually people want some adjustments made to rank mode, this adds another thing for BHVR to spend time on and balance.

2: Asym nature - compared to other games, where the best can hit the best, DbD is inherently split into two groups. The best Nurse player can never face the second best Nurse player for example. So you're trying to rank unequal things, which is what the current MMR system already does.

3: Waiting - the thing that makes MMR not work normally is the rush to match people up. If you were willing to give MMR more time, you wouldn't need a separate ranked queue (it also would always take a long time to match the upper ends in DbD - which is better served by the structures that already exist).

4: Queue splitting - The game needs a roughly 80/20 split. If the ranked mode pulls more killers than survivors, you've unbalanced the queues for both sides.

Onto the OPs post

Right now, DBD tries to serve two very different groups with one system: players who want relaxed, experimental, or challenge‑focused matches, and players who want high‑intent, competitive matches

I'd argue that most players want something in the middle (i.e. a third group). Players who want to play seriously, but aren't worried about memorizing every map or having to bring meta into every game. Splitting into two groups actually leaves these people out, which, as I said, is my guess for being the majority of players.

Casual mode becomes the “play how you want” environment. 

DbD needs MMR because a weak survivor brings down the team far more than a strong one can uplift them. You're creating a mode where killers would have a tremendous advantage and, being this would be the mode all new players would start in, it would not be very desirable.

A game that is something like a 5v5 doesn't have this concern as much because if you just randomly assign players you have a decent shot of getting a balance randomly, it doesn't work that way for DbD.

Players don’t play the same amount every month. If someone takes a break, they shouldn’t return to sweaty, high‑MMR lobbies. 

They also don't lose all their skills just because they took a break and showing up and dominating lobbies below there skill is the same issue, just in a different direction.

Killer‑Specific MMR Weighting

A number of concerns with this

1: If we can't trust BHVR to balance each killer, how are they going to implement this system?

2: You create unsatisfactory experiences for the survivors - oh, we hit a Trapper, we're going to win but the game doesn't actually mean anything.

You could do the same thing on the survivor side, where they could run off meta perks but then have a loss count for less. But you're now adding in player selected handicaps which allows people to game the system.

SWF and Solo Queue MMR Analysed Separately

Competitive mode finally gives Behaviour clean data.

I don't know why you think they currently lack this.

SWF groups could have their own MMR curve, faster MMR increases, and group‑based MMR.

If a group plays together, consistently, they already have this.

If a group does not play together consistently, the above change wouldn't do anything.

This system would reduce burnout, reduce smurfing, fix mixed‑intent lobbies, make experimentation safe, make returning to the game easier, improve match quality, support tournaments, give players meaningful goals, and provide Behaviour with clean balance data

Burnout - don't see how.

Smurfing - well, in the sense that you have an approved smurfing queue I guess it does.

Mixed intent - no, you still have this very much in both queues, there's lots of gradations on how seriously people treat the game.

Experimentation - you're presuming that the casual queue won't care about winning at all. People would still get angry at each other.

Returning easier - that's always going to be a difficult issue.

Match Quality - Arguable on the ranked queue, but worse for the casual queue.

Tournaments - that's a different thing

Goals - Yes, but its arguable whether this is something a game should have. You're now catering to one section of the player base at the expense of others.

Data - they have this, people just don't like the way they use it.

I also agree, that many player would use it to get free wins, but the winstreak guys would probably stop. They want to show their achievements and then everyone would mock them for choosing easy mode over the comp. mode.

I think the best way to keep sweats out of a casual queue would be to design the mode to be totally unappealing to them. I mean, BHVR just spent 6 months developing a bunch of tunnelling and camping mitigations that the sweatier players absolutely HATED. Why not use those in a new mode?

Heck, I think if they were to create a fully randomised Chaos Shuffle with most of those anti-tunnel and anti-slug mitigations in place, it could be a good first effort at creating a DBD "casual" mode. They could also add stronger base-kit gen slow down and regression for rewarding the spreading of hooks (say a stackable pain res or pop effect that gets stronger with each unique hook or a grim embrace effect to block all gens for getting your first 4 hooks on 4 different Survivors).

If they didn't want to go the Chaos Shuffle route, they could limit perks slots for specific classes of perks (only 1 slot reserved for slowdown on the Killer side and 1 gen perk on the Survivor side) or make SWFs play with more randomised perk slots the bigger their party happens to be (Solos have no restrictions, duos get 2 randomised perks slots, trios get 3 and a full team plays with fully randomised slots). And a cool down in place for Killer blinds, so you can't keep blinding the Killer repeatedly in quick succession.

These are just ideas, of course. I admit some of them are a little artificial and might make DBD feel a bit too video gamey to some players. But I'm sure they could come up with a mode that retains the essence of DBD, while still limiting the more frustrating parts of the game (and doesn't obliterate queue times or get old fast in the way that 2V8 does).