The Core Problems With SBMM - Inversion, 'Snacks' And SWF
So I've been thinking about this for a long while now - I enjoy what MMR has done for the game (compared to ranks) as an intermediate player, but it has it's own problems that have eventually resulted in me taking some time away (aside from logging on for Christmas presents!).
Let's go through them.
- Inversion. By this I mean that the rewards of winning under MMR are somewhat inverted when you look at it a certain way. It's the old 'if you dig a good hole, you get given a bigger shovel' problem. Essentially, I've realized that winning too decisively as killer only rewards me with sweatier survivors, and subconsciously I worry about 'managing' my MMR. I've chatted with some survivors in postgame (yes, I'm something of a masochist) and it's not uncommon there too. A lot, for instance, prefer to get the hatch rather than gate - as this won't increase their MMR. I have...no idea how to fix this, and at least MMR makes smurfing a bit more of a chore - but it is a concern.
- 'Snacks'. I'm sure every killer player below high MMR can attest to these matches - getting thrown into a meat-grinder of an SWF group with 10x your hours played, a map offering, stacked meta perks and addons that just bully you. High MMR survivor groups, at a certain point (not always an SWF) start getting long queue times and eventually it just finds them any old killer as a snack. This is probably a lot of fun for them...but not so much for the killer.
- SWF. Yeah, DbD's big dragon. SWF on it's own is...fine, I totally understand that people enjoy playing with friends and that it can be frustrating to be a solo survivor in a team of potatoes. However, as the devs confirmed recently, there is no MMR adjustment when you play solo/in a group - which is absolutely bizarre to me. Taking a solo survivor/killer matchup at a specific MMR, then changing to a SWF/killer matchup at the same MMR...that's where one sided stomps start happening. I really don't understand BHVR's logic here. Even in a 'pick up' SWF, the addition of voicecoms and coordination, both pre and during match is a staggeringly huge advantage. The industry standard is to adjust MMR for these groups to ensure higher quality of opponent to offset this, and DbD...really should follow.
So yeah. I think that SBMM is a good idea in theory, but it is still a bit undercooked.
Comments
The core of at least two thirds of these issues is that BHVR is really, really unwilling to admit that SWF - specifically, comms SWF - improves performance and allows survivors to perform at greater levels via coordination and shared information, scaling with how many players are in the SWF.
I doubt they're actually in denial of this fact; I suspect it's more because they don't have a solution to the problem that they're willing to implement. Fixing the performance advantage involves accounting for comms or at least a much greater information game than is baked into DBD, and that compromises their original vision of survivors playing the game blind and scared.
As for inversion - that is the big pickle, isn't it? It existed within the old system as well, but since the top end of the ranking system was still a big hodgepodge of skill levels, it wasn't punishing to end up in unless you were at the very bottom of that skill bracket (and the general mood there was that you'd been pushed too far up by the emblem system not appropriately measuring skill, just basic competence, and you should have been in green/purple. Of course, now the emblem system looks galaxy-brained in comparison to the current binary metric we're operating on.)
That one, I don't know how to fix. The idea of highly skilled players being matched with highly skilled players, and not with lower-skilled players that they'll annihilate, sounds great on paper until you realize that the game isn't balanced for highly skilled play and only a few strategies are viable (on either side, not just for killers), which leads to boredom and burnout at much increased rates. It's not just that every match is a sweatfest, it's that a sweatfest involves the same things over and over again.
That said, MMR seems to adjust much too quickly. One 4k or 4e alters your placement by quite a lot and you'll notice huge variances between games. New players report getting one or two 4ks and suddenly being faced with very experienced survivors, when they definitely need a grace period to avoid this.