The Second Biggest Failure of BHVR'S MMR System
Hi forum peeps. Wanted to put my thoughts about the MMR's 2nd biggest flaw into here as someone with 1,8k hours ATM. (I play both sides extensively and this system has worsened my experience substantially on both.)
Alright. Let's get to the point. The problem with the system is that it doesn't acknowledge that this game is WILDLY IMBALANCED. What do I mean by that?
Well,the largest controversial topic about this system as of the past 6 months was the "win condition" which the developers have outlined universally as "escape" for survivors and "kill" for killers. Here's where the flaw comes into view,in my opinion.
As an example,let's imagine 2 games against the same group of survivors with average skill and perks. One will be with a Trapper without any addons and another will be a 3 blink Nurse with 4 slowdown perks.
It seems really painfully obvious that the victory condition for those two situations can't be the same,the power imbalance is immense. If the Nurse even gets a single exit gate escapee,she MUST have done absolutely horrendously,but if the Trapper has gotten one escape,he probably did okay,considering his horrific early game and overall strength.
While I can agree with the developers' thought of just ignoring the edge cases and averaging the thing out if we look at this where there isn't a wild difference in balance from match to match solely based on the Killer and the perks each side brings,this isn't the case for us. Defining a win condition to be the same for a wildly overpowered killer and one that could arguably be the game's worst killer is just such a horrible idea on so many levels.
BHVR. Please. If you want a functional matchmaking system,the first step you will have to take is acknowledge that your game is wildly imbalanced and take into mind while calculating the MMR changes how much "strong stuff" did a player bring (i.e DS/BT/Medkits or Nurse/Ruin/3 Blinks).
Secondly and this is different from my main point - just smoosh everyone with about 1K hours+ into the same MMR category. Below,sure,throw them all according to your win conditions. But you shouldn't send us against people with 300-500h. We just have more sheer game knowledge.
Don't know why I bothered to write this out in detail,but hey,one can hope they will listen.
Regards,
Kizu.
P.S. Share your thoughts on whether you agree or not (or where you think I am wrong!)
Comments
You're right.
The devs decided to implement MMR and called it a day. They either missed the memo where if you want to make a competitive game you must design the game from the ground up to be competitive or they were just too lazy (most likely) to implement wide spread changes to make the game more competitive.
The grind, SWF, killer fundamentals, soloQ woes, boons, certain perks, all contribute to a casual mindset and gameplay.
The grind is too long for new players to be competitive (you absolutely need certain perks to be competitive) and learn competitive playstyles. They will get placed in low MMR and not learn the game from a competitive standpoint. Just dealing with potato survivors and killers isn't going to teach them the game and is going to just waste time for them until they grind up enough BP to get certain perks.
SWF in a game designed to be played SOLO is just a stupid idea for competitiveness. They refuse to balance around this.
Certain killers are just fundamentally bad (Clown, Freddy, Trapper) and will never be at a competitive level in their current state. Guess what this leads to at high MMR? Same killers. Every. Single. Game.
Solo Q is just bonkers at mid to high MMR. Killers will play to win and if you're not in a group there's a good chance you're getting tunneled out of the game if you go down first. While you will still get tunneled out in a SWF at least your teammates can communicate better for rescues or completing objectives while avoiding the killer.
Boons were just a fundamentally bad idea, again. A perk that receives TWICE it's immense value on certain maps (indoor maps) is ridiculous. This of course is compounded by the fact that SWF can quadruple the value for a OCTOTUPLE of value if indoor maps with good communication.
Some perks are incredibly overloaded. yes it's dead hard. yes it should be changed completely. it was a terrible perk from the start and it seems like no effort went into designing it with the game health in mind.
Overall, the devs should have changed the game fundamentally to make it more competitive in the first place rather than just slapping MMR on and calling it a day. But what can we expect from devs who take 5 years to implement colorblind mode in a game where YOU NEED TO SEE CERTAIN COLORS TO PLAY AT ALL.
Hmm.
Okay, a few things.
totally disagree with combining everyone with 1k hours into one queue. I know I'm closing in on 1k, and when I'll get there I'll be far less experienced than someone with 8k.
Yes,but at that point,you're going to have way too few players to do active matchmaking tbh.
I'd worry about creating 'MMR hell' zones accidently by doing this
I'm already in one as survivor personally.
For me what happened is I went into hell as survivor and my killer matches were practically just all 3K+ hour squads as Killer,which honestly sucked a lot of enjoyment out of it.