The Survivor Queue Mystery...Am I Missing Something?
So got my Iri 1 on killer, time to do some survivor.
I wonder how many others have noticed this.
6am: Yay, instant queues!
3pm: Queues are still zippy.
6pm: Instant killer queues, but my survivor queues are taking a while.
There seems to be a correlation between how long survivor queues are with active player numbers - the more people online, the longer my survivor queues are (and correspondingly fast my killer queues are).
I wonder why.
Comments
The faster my Survivor queues, the longer my Killer queues, and vice versa.
That's what I've been experiencing
That makes sense, because the side that's 'needed' will have the faster queues.
I also get why survivor queues can be fast sometimes - as there are 4 spots available in a game for every 1 killer spot.
Where I get confused is how this seems to correspond to time of day, where off-peak sees faster survivor queues and prime-time sees faster killer queues.
I think because prime time is in the evening and most people like to play with there friends and it's more likely that your 4man is complete in the evening. And then the shortage of killer shows because when the killer qs are longer its because many people play killer while there team isn't there.
I think this is exactly it. It's not so much a killer shortage as much as people prefer different roles at different times of day. I'm much more likely to play killer on a weekend afternoon vs a weeknight when my friends are on.
That being said, I think it's a bit of an issue because the role imbalance makes for poor matchmaking. Games are much better for me at off-hours for both roles. I go as far as playing on EU servers for solo survivor during peak NA hours because the MMR range gets too wide with teammates. Not sure what a solution looks like, but it has been the elephant in the room with MMR since it launched.
I've said this for awhile now, my queue times are always based on time of day. During day until about 7pm my survivor queues are always fast while killer is slow, then after 7pm they switch. I figure at night is when more people are playing with friends so if playing DBD there is only one side they can play if they're to play together.
I play in eastern US time zone. This is the trend I always see: killer queues are longer the earlier in the day you play. Once you get to evening time, survivor queues are 5-10 minutes and killer queues are zero wait. This is because the number of survivor players increases throughout the day and peaks at night. More and more people go online to play with friends as the day goes on, and they are are playing survivor. The % of solo players is higher earlier in the day and they are more likely to pick the killer role. I think another factor is that a lot killer players (myself included) prefer to play earlier in the day when sweaty 4-man SWF bully squads aren’t as prevalent. My daytime matches are almost always more relaxed than evening matches. I work during the weekdays, so unfortunately my ability to select my playing time is pretty limited.
People are home from work in the evenings and want to play with their friends. So lots of survivors online
There isn't really a solution for that you either make the matchmaking fair but then you get stupid long q times and the top braked just sees the same 20 players or you go for shorter times but then you have stupid unbalanced matches no matter what people will complain and finding a middle ground isn't easy I think.
Another thing I think is that of course people will flock to play with there friends in the evening so there is a shortage of some kind. I would like to have an option to play killer with a friend atleast one. But I don't know how or if it's even possible to implement this without splitting the community and making the times even longer