SBMM First Impressions: Survivor is just fine, but killer...
Never thought I'd be making a post on the forums but here we are.
For some background before I jump into this; I am a fairly decent survivor though I don't play the role very much, and I am a rank 1 killer. I have about 300 hours in the game at the moment, so not nearly as much as some of the long time veterans of the game but I'm no newbie either.
SBMM has overall been a very negative experience for me. Here's my case as to why:
Firstly, the good. On the survivor side, I practically forgot that SBMM was even a thing and I had fun. In some games, I played against baby killers that had no clue what they were doing at all. I also played against some very talented killers that were typically playing meta killers such as nurse with thousands of hours in the game. I also played against killers that I felt were much closer to my personal skill level, so I practically got the full rainbow. The matchmaking before SBMM for survivor felt very close to this. Generally speaking, my teammates were somewhat useful, sort of hit or miss, but overall nothing crazy.
Now for the main reason I'm making this post, that being the absolute state of killer right now with SBMM. As someone who primarily plays killer and has achieved rank 1, I was very curious to see how my matches would play out, so I decided to do a test run. One of my favorite killers is Wraith, and I have played him quite a bit especially after his movement speed buff. I decided I would play Wraith, and only Wraith, on the day SBMM released and observe how my matches went throughout the day. I spent several hours playing and afterwards, I have to say... I felt completely exhausted.
Throughout my day playing, I achieved many hard earned victories, but I was also completely and utterly destroyed in a small handful of games. I've played a lot of killer and I've encountered insanely organized groups of survivors before that absolutely hammer out gens regardless of what you do, but I have never, EVER, seen more of those squads in one day of playing than I ever have before. Those games didn't even really frustrate me because I knew I couldn't do anything. What was even more frustrating were my victories. I had to play really sweaty, extremely efficiently, had to tunnel people off of the hook in desperate attempts to just get someone out of the game. I had to keep a close eye on hooks and in one game, I outright camped someone to death simply because I needed that person to die or else the game was a lost cause. I absolutely despise camping and tunneling and actively try not to in my games. I don't like to run super sweaty meta builds, just comfort perks that help me out a little bit here and there like Bitter Murmur and BBQ. But the caliber of survivors I was going against literally EVERY SINGLE MATCH forced me into a position where I had to do those kinds of things to win. After I was done playing killer for the day, my brain felt like mush from how hard I had to try in every single game I played. No time to chill, just sweat.
An important message I'd like to extend to Behavior: when a killer player exits a match they have just won and actively thinks to themselves "that would've gone so much better I just played Nurse or Spirit every game" instead of being happy that they won, you are doing something wrong with the matchmaking. Every single killer game I played on the day SBMM dropped was like that, and that simply is not okay.
Now I open the floor to the rest of the community after my long ranty post: has your experience with SBMM been similar to mine? Would you like to go back to the old matchmaking system, or is there some fix you think could be implemented to help remedy these issues?
Comments
My solo Surv matches are really good. I start to play yesterday. Had maybe 4 or 5 rounds. I had good teammates and very efficient. I'm red rank 2.
As next I tryed killer. I only play killer for the daily quests so my strongest killer is Freddy with level 14 😅. Before the SBMM I was in rank 17 and it was possible to finish the daily quest. But yesterday I try with Freddy and my experience was horrible. Gens fly around I had only 1 hook and the match was over after 5 minutes. My second match with killer was the same.
I don't care about losing or winning but my last games yesterday as killer was horrible. I had not even a chance. End screen shows me I was facing people in red ranks. I'm now bronze 4. Before the SBMM it was better.
I think I am done now with the daily quests for killers.
And no, I'm not playing more rounds as killer because I'm a casual player and don't have mutch time to play.
Killer is a mess.
I've played a handful of matches of Clown recently for the archives, but when I went to do a Clown daily after SBMM came on, it was like watching people try to play their first games. Like I'm not gonna pretend that I'm a top tier Clown player but he's an M1 killer and I can play him well enough, so if every killer I don't spam is going to be like that, it's not going to be fun for me or them.
The sbmm works as intended. It matches decent survivors with each other. Which results in problems for killers, because the game is so terribly unbalanced towards survivors.
My solo survivor so far was terrible since MMR. All I got was just full meta OR some super unfun games and killers just tryhard like there is no day tomorrow. 3v1? Don't care. Slugging to get his "4K". Legion with mending add-ons + full slowdown build... Just overall fun stuff... And teammates werent the best either.
Killer was fine tho, for the most part. But I noticed people playing best medkits, tools and keys with offering for hatch. They still died tho for the most part.
"In some games, I played against baby killers that had no clue what they were doing at all. I also played against some very talented killers that were typically playing meta killers such as nurse with thousands of hours in the game." - how is this fine?
Not only that, but so many killers on the roster are unfortunately just not good enough to compete with really good survivors. Its why so many people in other posts on the forums have been talking about seeing nothing but Nurse, Spirit, and Blight. They can compete, whereas every other killer simply can't.
This is something I neglected to mention in my post. I did notice a lot of survivors not only bringing strong perks, but also bringing some ridiculously strong items. Flashlights with odd bulbs, red keys with blood amber, red maps with duration, ranger medkits with charge addons, and of course brand new parts on yellow toolboxes. Map offerings and hatch offerings happened almost every other game throughout my several hour session of playing. Its one thing to run some good perks, its another to also run the best possible item and bring an offering to a very surv sided map like Lampkin Lane.
One last thing I didn't mention but probably should, a large portion of survs I went against were also very toxic and bitter in the end game chat, especially because I did win a good number of games. They seemed to be the types of people that don't lose very often. If the vast majority of my games include these types of toxic players in them too, that's just adding more fuel to the fire.
"I also played against killers that I felt were much closer to my personal skill level, so I practically got the full rainbow." <-- This is pretty much why. And the majority of my matches were like this, I ended up escaping just as much as I died when I played survivor.
Also for me personally, I don't really care too much about winning as a survivor, so that's definitely a contributing factor. Still though, I do see your point -- the whole reason SBMM exists in the first place is to make sure those extremes don't happen in the first place, which is completely fair and definitely something that needs looking in to.
"so I practically got the full rainbow" - same question, how is it fine? You describing a random system, not the one that supposed to match your skill.
"the whole reason SBMM exists in the first place is to make sure those extremes don't happen in the first place" - that's what I'm trying to say. Extremes are not fine.
And that's where the devs need to start balancing.
Their old statement that not all killers are meant to be competitive, needs to be scrapped and most killers need a buff.
Which crashes hard with the "nerf Wraith" threads. In other words, survivors seemingly only want to see 3 killers.