Could you bring back the old rank system? Please, for the health of the game.

Jean_Cobra

I wasn't there when people thought it was relevant to change the objectives to survivor and killer, but quite clearly, it was the worst idea of ​​the century. Allowing killers to progress through their ranks only by the number of kills, instead of a real focus on Brutality, Chase and Sneaky, has enormously strengthened Slug, Tunnel and 3-gen in one direction.

I didn't experience the era of the old ranks myself, but having seen games on YouTube from that era, it seemed more, healthy to me? More fun?

I've been told by veterans of the primarily slayer game that this shift in objectives is primarily one of the reasons why toxicity among slayers has increased. Since now there is no point in increasing Brutality or Chase, or even stealth, now it is imperative to do a 3k/4k, by doing tunneling or slug. It was commonplace at the time, but obviously not as much as now.

I only have 2000 hours of play, and I'm starting to understand now, both as a survivor and as a killer, why so many people are disgusted that this decision was chosen. Because seriously, with this system, you cannot really playing chill as Killer. Not any longer. 

If you don't want to change/remove SBMM that's fine, but please revisit the Killer and Survivor objective system to get some pip on rank progression. The health of the game depends on it.

THE_Crazy_Hyena

I went more into detail about how the classic ranking system could be implemented. It is a long read, but I think it would work WAY better than the current system.
You can read my post here:

@THE_Crazy_Hyena said:

Disclaimer: This will be a long post.

The current issues:

It should come to no one's surprise that the matchmaking system we have today is fundamentally flawed, where matches can wildly vary from game to game. i.e. No consistency whatsoever. Points of interest below:

• The algorithm prioritizes speed over quality, therefore being inconsistent.
• MMR is being determined by a single factor per side; Kills vs. Escapes. No incentives to do anything but the main objectives in the match, by any means necessary.
• The highest MMR group (or bracket) has a very wide span, causing players who are in the bottom-end of the group to be matched against players way beyond their own skill level.

JRM made some good points in his video, talking about matchmaking, and the aspects of ping, facing the same killer/or people over and over again, and so on.

Potential ways to fix the player experience:

Firstly: Adding a ranked mode, where players are sorted by their ranks

This is like the old matchmaking system, where players were actually ranked based on their in-game performance. Emblems earned contributed to this. This promoted varied playstyles on both sides, making matches much more enjoyable.
Having multiple factors determine the way you rank up or down is a much better way than just going off of kills or escapes.
Now, I will go more into detail about how the ranking system would work further down.

Second: Add a quickplay mode without MMR brackets

This mode is just for players wishing to play a quick match, without having to worry about ranks or longer queue times. Granted, you will face completely random people of any rank, but for just a chill, no stakes mode, I have a feeling that players would not sweat their balls off, and instead just trying silly stuff, without the reprecussions of MMR.

Third: Weekly game-modes

As the title suggests, since there has been experiments with new game mode modifiers in the game, why not have a weekly game mode on a rotating basis, i.e. one week of the pitch black mode, one week of My Little Oni, one week of the upcoming random perks mode and so on, with more new modes being added down the line.
This can work well when combined with the quickplay mode, and all you have to do is to select the modifier before finding a game.

Ranks. How they work, and ways to prevent de-ranking abuse:

How the ranks work.

1. When starting out, you will need to play 10 placement games. At first, you start out at zero, being equal to every other player out there.
2. Placements work off of the pip system. The more pips you earn (up to 2 per match), the higher your placement rank will be.
   0-1 pip = Rank 20 (ash/brown)
   5 pips = Rank 16 (bronze/yellow)
   9 pips = Rank 12 (silver/green)
   13 pips = Rank 8 (gold/purple)
   17 pips = Rank 4 (Iridescent/Red)
   20 pips = Rank 1
   This will make it easier to place players into their respective skill brackets.
3. Skill brackets work in a tier of 4. Once you get placed in your skill bracket, you would rank up and down as normal, but a soft-cap on deranking would be set at one skill-bracket lower than you currently are. So for example, if you are rank 2 (red), you can not de-rank past rank 8 (purple). This needs to be in place to protect newer and less skilled players from higher ranked players looking for an easy stomp.
4. Also, in order to protect lesser skilled killer players, SWF groups with a wide variety of ranks will have a biased search parameter based on the highest ranked player, and an average of the rest.
   If said group consist of 1 iridescent rank (between 4 and 1), 2 green and one brown, the likely opponent would be a killer in the purple ranked bracket (between 8 and 5).
5. Rank resets happens on the 13th of every month. Though, this would need to be a soft reset, where players are moved down one single bracket, also to prevent higher skilled players from abusing rank reset as a way to stomp on lesser skilled players. Bloodpoint tiers are awarded based on the highest achieved rank.
   Ranks 20-17 = 100k BP
   Ranks 16-13 = 250k BP
   Ranks 12-9 = 500k BP
   Ranks 8-5 = 750k BP
   Ranks 4-1 = 1M BP
   Rank 1 also gets a free item or cosmetic, as an award for doing well.

How to rank up.

Survivor:

• Teamwork - How well are you able to work as a team. Bonus points towards emblems for co-operative actions, such as working on generators, altruistic healing, taking chases and/or protection hits for other survivors.
• Individual skill - This could be a culmination of a percentage between skillchecks (good vs. great vs. missed), and how well you do objectives that helps towards winning the round, such as doing totems, setting up boons, how long you can last in chases, pallet stuns, flashlight/flashbang saves and so on.
  Excessive generator progression does not grant you any points.
• Survival - How long you last before ending up on a hook. Did you escape or not, did you open a door, or did you escape via the hatch?
• Wasting the killer's time - If you are chased and hooked early, before any generators are done, and if you are also being proxy-camped by the killer, you will earn points that your teammates get, whether it being generator progress, healing or cleansing totems. This also applies if you are immediately being chased upon being saved from the hook. This will lessen the impact of being the first person hooked, or being the victim of tunneling, since you were being beneficial for the team's success. - Extra points awarded after the match ends for every other survivor you helped escape. - This will also feel more rewarding, especially if you were tunneled out after bringing a hard-earned Bloody Party Streamer.

Killer:

• Chases - How good are you at ending chases with survivors. Bonus points awarded for shorter chases and out-smarting survivors.
• Power usage - How well can you utilize the killer's power to secure takedowns, or injure survivors. - Bonus points, and higher amounts are given for securing takedowns with weaker killer powers - This could work as an incentive to use lesser used killers, such as the Trapper.
• Pressure - How good you are at applying pressure on the survivors, i.e. patrolling generators, regressing progress and interrupting actions. - The longer you can prevent the first generator to be finished, the more points awarded, with diminishing returns awarded for each subsequent generator finished. - This is a measure to prevent games being held hostage by 3-genning.
• Hook stages - How many hook stages you get throughout the match. 6 or more grants more points. You gain much less points for hooking the same survivor twice in a row. This is one measure to prevent excessive tunneling. If you get 8 hook stages, and even if all the survivors escaped, you still get a fair amount of points in this category. If you also did well in the other categories, this could prevent a de-rank and even earn you a pip. - Massive bonus points awarded for sacrificing/killing survivors after 8 hook stages.
  To also prevent excessive camping, no hook stages or points are awarded if you are within 16 meters of the hooked survivor when they reach the struggle phase after 45 seconds, or when they are sacrificed from the struggle phase. - To prevent survivors abusing this mechanic, escape attempts during the first stage, or letting go during the struggle phase will automatically award the killer with hook stages and points, regardless of distance.

Server-side improvements, implementing more choices, and matchmaking quality.

As JRM pointed out in his video, on how to improve the server-side of things.

• Matchmaking should prioritize the best ping available.
• Hit validation should also be based on ping. If your connection is good, you should not be punished for it.
• Give players the ability to select regions, instead of automatically assigning players to the "best" region closest to them.
• More servers in general, but have it so that regions will have a main "pool" to matchmake from, if that makes sense, and the server chosen is based upon the players location with the best possible average ping within the selected server region.
• Give players "protection" from facing the same killer twice in a row, and disable map offerings if it sends players to the same realm twice in a row. This will greatly improve the quality of the matches, since no back to back matches will be the exact same.

Quickplay, the random game modes and general improvements that could be done.

• Quickplay is unranked, and does not have any pips in the end-game lobby. This is just a chill mode where players of any rank could face off against one another, without the fear of losing pips or anything.
  A dynamic point system could be implemented to help players of lesser skill gain more bloodpoints from playing, if they were to be matched up against someone of much greater skill. A fresh player queueing for quickplay could earn 4x bloodpoints for instance if they matched against someone who was in the red ranks. The inverse would be true for higher ranked players, where a deduction in points would be present, if they were to completely stomp the new player. Since most players play the game to unlock and prestige up their characters, it would be fair to new players if they got more in the beginning to help them get going.
• Random rotating game modes on a weekly basis could work well. One example being Overwatch 2, where the "arcade" section has rotating game modes that change daily, as well as limited time modes. League of Legends has a similar feature as well, but these modes are up for around 4 weeks, or every two patches, with a pause in between.
• Per now, we have had two "modifiers" in DBD, with a third one on the way. This could be a good starting point for a more permanent feature with a rotating game modifier, that could be selected in the quickplay mode.
  - Light's Out
  - My Little Oni
  - Perk Randomizer.
  - Plus any future modes that the devs has planned.
• For general improvements, I would highly suggest adding rewards to players who prestiges a character all the way to P100. The most accepted award would be a special character skin, akin to the legacy skins, but with an iridescent glow to it. There should definitely be rewards for putting so much time and effort into a single character. Maybe as a permanent reward for spending so much time, using a P100 character could also increase the bloodpoint gains by a moderate amount (50% or so).