Matchmaking tilt / killer main/ ~45h experience with the game
I'll keep this short and sweet (disclaimer - this will NOT BE short and sweet). I have NEVER, in the last ~10years been so tilted that I felt the need to make a forum account for a game, just to vent.
I realize there are many threads like this and I have read some earlier, yet I want to actually post and re-iterate the fact that the matchmaking in this game is ABSOLUTE GARBAGE.
The games never seem fair and mostly, it's tilted towards the survivors since they play with friends and on voice chat.
I just got out of a game as killer where the 4 survivors were all from the same country, had each other added on Steam aka friends and were clearly on voicechat - 3 of them being red ranks (2 x rank3s and 1 rank4 with the last one being rank 12). I am a rank 15 killer with 45h of experience with the game (probably more than 10h of that was spent afking, looking up resources and youtube tutorials and from what's left you can safely subtract another 30-40% as time spent in queue - another amazing "feature" of the matchmaking system.
So anyway, I don't consider myself a moron and have been a gamer all my life (multiple rank1s in WoW, raided for a world top 50 guild, was SMFC in csgo, Divine 2 in dota, etc) so I picked up the game pretty fast and started working on finesse qol stuff like mindgaming the red stain, learning timings for when to break pallets and when to do loops, learning all the perks survivors use and identifying when they are on cooldown, etc. What I'm trying to say is that the games I've had so far weren't tremendously horrible - esp when the survivors weren't SWF parties. I've had rank 5s and rank7s in my games and I've won a few, lost others..BUT yesterday and today especially, I got a couple of games that absolutely tilted me the f out.
What am I supposed to do as a relatively new killer against a very well organized survivor team made up of sweaty rank3s and rank4s (red ranks) that have the best perks/ know the map and how to abuse it, know when to use their skills and talk to eachother on when to stall and when to push, how to move around the map, how to kite around and take hits for eachother, etc, etc, etc?
I got BULLIED, I feel dirty and USED - they tried blinding me nonstop (which I tried my best to counter), they played DS and baited me to down so they can DS, they bodyblocked me from hooking ppl, they pallet kited just outside range..once they figured out I was sort of new, they took even greter pleasure in doing all these things and got bolder and bolder. I downed a few and hooked them but I was never able to keep them hooked enough to kill.
Towards the end I had one on hook on his 2nd hook, 10% away from dying, one on the ground sort of next to him and the other two running for the gate which was opened - I thought they would gtfo so I went back to pick up the one on the floor and get at least 2 kills out of this ordeal when from OUT OF EFFING NOWHERE, I got blinded and at the very same time, another guy went and unhooked the one that was strung up.
I honestly think, given everything that's happened and the fact I played subpar perks (because I don't have the others unlocked), that I played relatively well for a new player but this is beyond atrocious matchmaking. I've spread my time played on billy because he is top tier and unlocked when you first start out, but I also played trapper to lvl15, leveled Bubba to 35 for his BBQ&Chili and played a few games with an underleveled clown (that I got absolutely destroyed in). Oh and one game as huntress with only 1 perk where I deleted a 2 man team of rank 8s by sniping them with hatchets.
Nothing I've seen thus far gives me any hope that things will improve and I am actually thinking of spending my time and money elsewhere. These matchmaking issues seem to have been around for years and no real effort was made into fixing them or even addressing them in a meaningful way.
Who thought putting new players against ppl with 2-3.000h is a good idea, regardless of if they are surv in SWF or killers? What is the new guy supposed to do? mind you, most newbies won't have my credentials and will be even less prepared and casuals won't make forums posts to complain, they will just quit because the game wants them to suffer and not have fun.
In closing, after they destroyed me and nearly lost 2 ppl in the end to a newbie - they also proceeded to mock me and call me a "NoED b***h" in the post-game. Classy guys!
Quick 2 cents on balancing - survivors are way too op when they unlock everything and learn how to play the game and the vchat element adds even more in their favor if they are SWF. Matchmaking time is horrible for killer and to wait to get into a game like this makes me not even want to play anymore. You will not be able to balance the game perfectly but things can be made to improve the gaming experience of the killer and since everyone keeps saying there aren't enough good killers left playing, I see this as a must and it should be the focus of the balancing team.
- Pallets are OP and their spawn should be diminished - balance this by better loops for the survivors or add an element of skill to looping (other than looking back) to even it out.
- Alternatively make killed lunges register better and/ or give more control to the killer when turning.
- Lessen the healing capabilities of survivors and make investing in it a decision in itself - generally, make the game more strategic and less "run around constantly cuz we can heal anything lul".
- add another layer to escaping, not just power the gens/ open the gate; maybe give an option to hurt the killer if he gets outplayed and even win the game by killing him or sending him back via a high risk/ high reward mechanics.
- DO NOT put new players in games with red ranks. EVER! That's just bad for everyone and if there are really good new players at ranks 10-20, let them rise through and get to red ranks, rather than putting them with red ranks to begin with. The backlash from the reverse is going to be WAY less than it is right now.
This is no longer an indie company and should look to invest some real money into fixing these issues and not just focus on cosmetics and monetizing each Tome/ each clothing piece/ maximizing the grind to keep ppl playing through the carrot on the stick psychology, instead of making the game fun and engaging to play and insuring retention of players through that instead.
I may not have structured my thoughts properly throughout writing this essay and at times, I might have been all over the place trying to cover different aspects but it had the unexpected effect of calming me down enough that I went from wanting to break my monitor to being able to articulate my thoughts and write this ending paragraph.
Comments
Correct me if I'm wrong but in 2017 I believe the profit from dbd itself was 66 million dollars. Which then take into account the amount of dlcs, cosmetics, the rift and new players. That number is probably a lot higher today tho unfortunately there aren't any numbers for last year.
I don't know. I don't follow BHVR's profit line. However, if that's so, you can probably provide a link. Keep in mind, though, that they've hired a lot more people since and paid for expensive licenses.
Yeah but your avoiding the point I made. If they were making the much money back then before behaviour was even the publisher. It's no longer an indie game. They have 650 employees and all that surplus money that they keep. And since you mentioned paying for licenses That's something we have no knowledge on how there handled they could be paid for or done completely differently therefore it isn't a valid argument. I don't want to say Oh they only care about money not about balance but with their latest actions and how stubborn they've been with community feedback especially regarding less content more bug fixes or rework matchmaking etc. It's hard to think otherwise. And now there charging more then a licenced chapter for legendary skins that don't even have their own voice actors despite being marketed as their own characters. It's a disgusting cash grab. There's no point being stubborn and defending them because then we won't get a better quality game, we will just get a bunch more overpriced cosmetic and licenses to attract more people and money.
You've made no point until you can actually establish how much profit they have. It's easy to look at revenue and say "Oh, they must be swimming in money", but companies have running costs.
Dead by daylight made 66 million in profit in 2017. That's not revenue. That's profit. I've literally just said that. And since the games only gotten bigger that profit will to no matter any running costs. But ok let's forget the money side of stuff let's talk about the obvious cash grab I just spoke about which you've completely ignored again. Legendary skins cost 15 pounds over here. That's more then the silent hill chapter which had one new killer and survivor. Defend that.
You said that, yes. I'm waiting for a source for that statement. I could just as easily make the claim that they run at a loss. When you can do that, I'll blow your mind regarding legendary skins.
Star breeze.com. The publisher for dbd back in 2017. That's where I got that figure from. But back to the point I made originally. We shouldn't have to wait months or years for something that could have been fixed ages ago if the devs actually listened to us when we tell them. Matchmaking is broken. But if there track record with listening to the community is any indication it'll probably be 2023 by the time they fix it. We were complaining about god pallets and loops since the game started and look how long that took to get rid of some of them since they decided to make midwitch completely broken in terms of balance and still haven't fixed every maps size issue. It's like they've learnt nothing from previous map issues. They choose to get the license for silent hill so don't say they were probably restricted in terms of what they could have done.
To the OP:
Yes, match making is crap. Hopefully MMR will fix it.
They've already nerfed pallets multiple times.
Healing was already nerfed.
The game is not as unbalanced as you believe. You basically got hit with the best survivors can muster. Naturally as a new player it felt shity. But if you stick around you will get better. I can also tell you that they have been moving things towards a fairly balanced game. They still have work to do. But it has gotten better.
I hate myself every time i play this game. 95% of the matches are just proxy camping tunnelers or people with bbq that slug after 1st hook. You shouldn't be required to run unbreakable and DS to have a chance when you get caught. Next time i feel like $*$%^ myself and play I'll work on gens but I'm not saving one person. When it gets down to where we're clearly only living if we luck on the hatch I'm hiding until they are on the other side of the map. Make the killer check every locker every corner. I'll keep trying but I don't care if it takes an hour. the meta is toxic and there isn't a *&$%$ thing that'll change it. I'm going to do my best to cause them as much frustration within the spirit of the game as they like to cause. All meta perks and flash lights till the heat death of the universe. You get me your gonna have a hard on to take care of before your next match.
To be fair, no one who matters is judging your ability as a killer. If you picked up mechanics as fast as you claim, you should learn counters by trial and error. Playing survivor and seeing how other players handle strengths and weaknesses in certain areas help too.
I'm sorry but you have a very reductive view and I think that's on purpose. I see the number of posts you have and I think you've been around for a long time now so you might have drank the cool-aid too much to see (or want to see) what's in front of you.
I can only link this clip that I saw a few days ago and I don't have any pure revenue numbers (I don't think you can even get those unless the company is publicly traded or they shared it themselves) but it doesn't take a forensic accountant to see that this company is money hungry and has implemented more and more practices to fatten their bottom line, to the expense of customers and all the while neglecting real investments into making the game better and enhancing the quality of the product.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QW6_qIooyUI'm new to the game and have kept my distance from DbD since I always thought it was a sub-par product that aimed at being a cash grab. The only reason I got it was because it was free to play on Steam and then I ended up buying it because I played a few games with a friend which I really enjoyed and then the first few games I had on killer were EXTREMELY enjoyable. The problems only came after I actually forked money for the game and started going more in-depth into it and its flaws. I watched a lot of youtube tutorials and gameplay from Otzdarva, IamTofu, Tru3Talent, Dowsey, etc and saw that if I wanted to have any chance at being competitive, I needed to put even more money into the game.
Initially I had gotten the game and Leatherface DLC because everyone said BBQ&Chili is too good to not get straight up and that it will help me farm BP which are the main thing to be interested in since they run the gameplay economy of the game by unlocking bloodwebs, leveling characters and obtaining power. BP gain is pretty bad considering everything is hidden behind it - for the average person playing, it will take an extremely long time to get characters leveled/ get addons andsee any meaningful progress through the game and you have to realize that not everyone can game 15h a day to grind and satisfy this greedy appetite that the developer seems to induce.
After I had Leatherface and leveled him to 35 to get BBQ, I realized that I needed more and more killers, either for perks (clown for PGTW and Bamboozle) or because they were really good and on top of that they also had BiS perks (plague for CI, Inf Fright). I went and got clown, plague and myers dlc next. Notice that I bought 2 heroes which could noramlly be unlocked via in-game mechanics (iridescent Shards) in plague and clown because iridescent shard gain in game is a joke - and I know, I know - if you play, you eventually make enough to unlock everything (at least the unlicensed killers/ survivors) but how long is "playing enough"? that's the real question here.
You need many thousands of hours to get enough shards to unlock the characters you would need to be competitive RIGHT NOW. I would have to play subpar builds for a VERY LONG time and be extremely hampered by not putting more money into the game. Up to a point, that's fine - supporting the game you enjoy and the company in order to develop more and make the game better. The problem is that they don't seem concerned at all with making the game better, they just care about PR and drip-feeding its customer base into sticking around.
If you want to get a cosmetic ensemble, you need to pay at least 10 euro - each character has several outfits and the cheaper ones are extremely ugly and for some mid tier ones, you would have to pay over 20k Iridescent Shards if you wanted to get them. Everything is centered around getting as much $$$ as possible. Is this value for money? paying thousands of euros to unlock everything? you can do that for free in Overwatch and in other similar games, too.
Moving past the cosmetic aspect and returning to the DLCs - on Steam, if you wanted to unlock all of them right now, it would cost you ~90euro. That's with most of the DLCs being 50% off so in full, you would need to pay closer to 200euro to unlock the "full" game. That's going way past AAA level range for a game that has bugs out the ass and an atrocious matchmaking system, where technically all you do is run around a map (different maps) and doing the SAME thing over and over again. This is an oversimplification but consider everything that goes into a AAA game - voice acting, gameplay design, level design, QA, marketing, market testing, etc, etc.
That didn't happen here and from the get go, they were making bank. If you think this company isn't making bank, you are a fool. It was never more popular than it is today and they are baiting IPs to get you to pay every 3 months for an incredibly low amount of content (1 map, 1 killer and 1 survivor).
Now comes the even more egregious part - after you do pay all that money, you still don't get access to the full game because you need to still grind each one to unlock perks, get addons to help, prestige the chars (for cosmetic which are way way WAY below those on the cash shop in terms of quality and effects) and all that is done so you can then move on to another char and do it all over again, with even more variables in terms of drops (teachables).
The Rift and the Tome are also pretty bad and are made in such a way that requires you to play an ungodly amount of time, in order to unlock everything and only the most dedicated will reach the end, get everything and also get the money back so they can buy the next one. That shouldn't be the case, it shouldn't feel like a chore to slush through the Tome to unlock stuff and it shouldn't feel like work - you should be incentivized to do it because the rewards are extremely cool or you get other things in return. Some of the entries are impossible to do, even..unless you spend more money aka character specific challenges, things that require a specific setup and addons, etc, etc. Why would a new player buy the Tome if they can't even do it?
These are my thoughts, as a very new player, in regards to the game and the company behind it. I'm sure their intentions were good when they started out but to say they aren't milking this for all its worth atm is just being blind to the truth or speaking from a position of priviledge (having everything unlocked, having an ungodly amount of time invested into the game which in turn changes your viewpoints and mental process when rationalizing things).
Look at what happened with the event that's running atm - the game's FOURTH anniversary, a time when everything is ramping up, more ppl are playing the game than ever and the game seems to be at its peak. This should be a momentous occasion for the game and the team behind it, a very proud moment where they should be looking at every opportunity to give something back to the community, to the playerbase that made this game a success. What did they do? they changed the loading screen slightly with some random quotes from a few ppl in the development team, they added an ugly ass crown in-game (THAT YOU HAVE TO GRIND TO EARN ON EVERY CHAR, nice celebration) and they added a cake addon that's supposed to give you a STACKABLE xp buff that doesn't work still.
It's the same cake from last year, with a minor tweak to its %xp from 103 to 104 and yet, it doesn't work. Really? you believe this wasn't intentional? stackable cakes = more xp for everyone = more cakes = more xp = easier BP unlocks = less grind. If you think this wasn't intentional and that they only addressed it when the community really came up in arms about it, you are very innocent indeed.
The crown can't even be used as it's butt ugly and it makes your char easier to spot. You should take the way they thought to approach this momentous occasion as further proof that all they care about is monetization and increasing their bottom line.
Now, I'm sure a lot of ppl will jump 10 feet in the air and become defensive, come here and berate me and saying I have no clue what I'm talking about..look for anything and everything to justify their time/ money spent in the game, etc, etc. This will however not change the facts and wearing horse blinders doesn't help anyone. If you don't cry "wolf" you will get eaten and especially in today's day and age, the wolf is pretty much always at the door, waiting.
The MMR situation won't be fixed fast, the cosmetic situation won't be fixed fast, the BP issues won't be fixed fast, pricing in general won't be fixed..unless people speak about it and make them fix these issues. As long as you get people white-knighting for the company and refusing to see all the bad #########, you won't see any meaningful change and the game will slowly become more bloated with crap and turn away more ppl, either through word of mouth or through the amount of money that needs to be invested, just to start having fun.
I'm literally just asking someone who made a statement for proof of that statement. That's it. I said nothing about my opinions on the price of cosmetics or legendary skins.
This is the routine for the game i think its not a game you should play unless you play with friend or already invest a lot of money in it
You had 5 instances where you hammered that guy, asking him for proof like he's some sort of Wall Street player that knows people and can provide insider information to you. You also kept downplaying the amount of profit YOU think the developer is making, without you yourself providing any proof..that's kind of hypocritical of you, don't you think?
I've worked in the "business" and can tell you that they don't have that high of an upkeep, considering their monetization plan, current game design, the fact they are publishing it themselves and how well the game is doing. Most of their money is going to server costs, IPs and to the design team to make better cosmetics.
I don't want to start an argument and then get to involved in it to stop and go back and forth for years, since ti doesn't make a lick of difference in the end since neither of us have any say in how things evolve but please take a few moments to think how their monetization model is affecting the game - how they need to make sure that the licensed killers and survivors add something with enough impact to the game that it makes ppl buy the DLC but not that impactful that it makes the free and/ or unlicensed chars obsolete.
Balancing around this alone must be a nightmare and having business reasonings behind nerfs or buffs added to a killer or to a perk is not a good idea in the slightest.
I didn't make any claim about their profit, so what exactly am I supposed to provide proof of?
Again, I said nothing about my opinions on legendary skins or even the monetization in this thread, so I would appreciate it if you kept that in mind when replying to me.
Can you post an actual, direct link to the part where they mention the profit?
Not really? I just kinda found it whilst looking around yesterday. Just search dead by daylight 2017 profits into Google and I think that's the right figures. Sorry my minds a bit hazy from yesterday
I just gave my opinion. I'm not some business dude I was literally just making an assumption on how much I think they would be making based on player base and how many ways the do quite greedily try and make money. I love Ddb I'm a big horror fan but the game isn't gonna get anywhere near balanced or better if people constantly defend awful design ideas from devs and unbalanced things in a game that isn't balanced. I want this game to succeed because of it's good quality not because of the many greedy cash grabs it has going. You constantly hammering away for proof or whatever instead of listening to any of my other points isn't helpful in anyway and just shows a clear stubbornness. And earlier you mentioned you betting that there profits are low so if you believe that then surely you yourself should look for proof since you're so bothered about it and not the core issues with the game.