Are Kills and Escapes A True Indication Of Skill?

Kurri

You all coaxed me into watching the Q&A, and really the only question(s) that stood out to me was about how SBMM should be determined. Anyways so we're on the same page, and through the trusty use of technology I will post the exact question and answers for "would it be possible to change the SBMM system to be more skill-based and not based on kills and escapes" from the Q&A here. (Yes it is word for word).

Peanits; “Next question comes from @jessicarevane who asks ‘would it be possible to change the SBMM system to be more skill-based and not based on kills and escapes’. I know you can talk about this all day.”

Patrick; “Yeah I've got some notes here, but I'm desperately trying to keep it brief, so please understand I am simplifying some things here. Don't read too much into every detail I'm saying. I'm trying to keep this brief but there's a common misconception that by using just kills and escapes to adjust your MMR it's ignoring skill in the game.  This isn't the truth though. This is false. Kills and escapes are proxies for skill. The skilled play inherently leads to kills or escapes.  Think about sports and I'll use hockey as an example. Because I'm Canadian. You wouldn't say “they only count wins when placing teams in the standings, but they should also count shots on goal too. A more skilled player takes more shots, and while that's certainly true, it's important to remember that shots lead to goals which lead to wins. So you can kind of cut the middleman out there. And that's the key, right? Skilled play leads to wins if they don't, are they really skilled plays? Right? If you're skilled, play doesn't get you to win. Was it really a skilled play in the first place? Everything leads to the same place in DBD, killing survivors or the survivors escaping alive. That's what MMR predicts the chances of the killer killing survivors or them escaping alive and it is actually very good at doing that. However, we're looking at some improvements to the current system. An example; Is to take team results into account for survivors in addition to the personal results. This takes some time. We have to iterate on. There's lots of fun maths, which you know again - we can talk about forever, but we need to prove it out that it's working, that there's value in it and correlations and so on. More details on that will - more details on that and skill-based matchmaking in general are actually in our last blog post as well.”

Peanits; “We have a similar question or not directly similar, but pretty close from @jefelipe_, who asks ‘why don't hooks count towards your rating.’ “

Patrick; “Yeah, this is a great example of what I was just talking about a minute ago and a specific case that we did consider and look at and think about quite a bit. The thing with counting hooks is that you end up with weird cases that don't make sense when you take it to its extremes, say you're a killer who hooked every survivor twice, but none of them died. If you count those hooks towards your rating, then you can easily add up in a situation where that scenario counts as a ‘win’ that moves you up the standings, but that feels weird. Did you really win? Should your rating go up and make you face stronger opponents - even though all of the survivors got out alive? Probably not. That would probably be not right. That's like an obvious moment of like ‘that doesn't doesn't really compute’. It also doesn't make sense for the survivors. If you call that a killer win, would that be the survivor's loss(?), but they all got out alive, so that feels weird to call that a loss on the survivor side - unless you start saying that everybody in that situation wins and then as soon as you can have everybody in a game winning you get some really weird maths. Some really crazy stuff starts happening really really fast so that's part of why we boil it down to kills and escapes as a proxy for good play in the game. It solves all those problems and it solves a whole bunch of other ones that I'm just not going to get into now because I think we have like one or two other questions to get into.

Peanits; “Yeah, one of the trickiest parts of a system like this is that you need to clear, win and loss because if both sides can win you end up in a situation where ranks just endlessly climb and then eventually the match meeting system can't really give you a match because everyone's like some astronomical rating okay so getting into a completely different question…”

I wanted to see more conversation on this and insight, because all I can think about is the situations that are indications of skill, but because of things outside of that players control would end them up dead, escaping, killing, or letting a survivor go. For example;

1. What if a survivor distracts the killer during the end of the game ultimately sacrificing themselves so 3 survivors could escape? Which does take a lot of skill to do, because you need to track where the other survivors are, where they most likely would be running to escape, tracking the killer, and keeping the Killer on you - meaning in many cases you have to look better to be chased than your team who is escaping, while at the same time surviving long enough for that team to escape. You die and your MMR goes down?
2. What if as Killer you do hook everyone twice, and then let them all go. Should this be allowed as a method to control your MMR, so you have easier matches?
3. Hatch. Should the Killer lose out on a 4k, because a free win mechanic exists, and should/does a survivor gain MMR for the Hatch mechanic. What about the 2door/hatch method. Where you wait out a door till the Killer closes the hatch, giving you just enough time to open the door and escape, should a survivor be given MMR in that situation - did that take skill?
4. What about AFK killers, camping killers, or being tunneled out? What if you get sandbagged, or your team doesn't know how to trade aggro when your team is on their second hooks. What if your team doesn't perform saves?
5. What about survivors that does nothing but sit on gens, and blendette?

I am sure I can go on, but I think you understand my point at this point. A lot happens in game that determines skill, but doesn't just match up to kills and escapes, a lot of it is Assists, and factors you have no control over. I'm sure the perks you take as Survivor, and the Killer you choose to play also would greatly determine your ability to escape and kill survivors. Also what if Killers just let all survivors escape after 2 hooks? Is that a way for them to control their MMR rating for easier matches? Should Killers be allowed to do that? Is it intended for Killers to be allowed to do that?

List goes on. I want to hear other's opinions, and see more discussion.