Lobby Shopping vs Going Next
Why is it that survivors giving up on hook is such a hot issue right now (has been for awhile) and yet I don't see the same energy for killers cherry picking lobbies?
I feel as though the rhetoric used to denounce going next could be easily applied to profile inspecting and lobby dodging and yet I feel as though there's not as much buzz.
How come?
I'd assume it's because the negatives aren't as apparent as someone going next in the middle of a match but I'd argue it's equally as damaging.
I also believe that if survivors should lose the ability to die intentionally on hook then killers should lose the ability to inspect profiles and leave lobbies without eating a DC penalty. And before anyone says Us Vs Them keep in mind this change would apply to survivors too.
This to me would be a fair implementation of 'playing the match you queued for."
Comments
Survivors that have had their lobbies dodged by the Killer already have a longer queue time than normal, so their matchmaking range gets expanded to expedite matchmaking. This means you get more skilled survivors against less skilled killers more often. This causes increased burnout for newer killers, and negatively impacts the killer pool.
At least unless they've changed anything with how backfilling works.
So yes, killers that cherry-pick lobbies are damaging future games. I'm surprised they don't have a soft-ban like League does with multiple sequential lobby declines, if not simply to ward against bot spam who would cause an issue in the other direction: low MMR bot accounts causing newer survivors to go against harder killers.
Lobbies can be formed without a killer and the killer chosen would fall within the average range of the survivors.
I'm aware of how it works I just don't think it matters very much. The MMR is already rather loose and either you go against a worse killer which okay easy game, it's even coll, or you get a good killer which can be a learning experience of you they ever want to actually get better.
I swear all this complaining about MMR wouldn't even be a problem if people focused on getting better instead of excuse fishing for when they lose and I mean that for both sides.
Well then, why don't we help people focus on getting better by reducing the fish in the pond.
Ah, I don't know about the anon mode since I haven't played for a year but the leaver penalty in lobby wasn't for lobby shopping per se but because people would rage quit when their intended champion was picked by the opponent or banned.
You could call this lobby shopping but I would call it simple rage quitting.
Well, you are correct that both stem from a sense of entitlement to some degree but I would also say that a specific killer character with or without 4 gen perks doesn't mean they will play toxic and therefore not a valid reason to exit early.
(Even I, during my experiment phase, had people exiting on hook against me for one of the dumb reasons mentioned in this thread.
But in my eyes, a survivor squad with matching skins, names or group wide last second item switches are a dead giveaway for a team that's not out to play a normal match but to "interact" aka deny the killer at any given opportunity, guarantee a miserable match for the average casual killer.
I personally have never dodged lobbies or rage quit (except for one time when a swf abused one of the old fat shaming spots aka exploit) but I did use the one minute waiting time, since one survivor always not ready up till last second, to check their profiles and played the match either way.
However I am guilty of not engaging with survivor that last second switch or are overly "interaction hungry"/annoying during the match.
I think lobby shopping is mostly happening because of bully squads. I don't see them that often, but I personally don't enjoy games with them, so I just hop into any other lobby. Obviously that isn't ideal for anyone, but neither is dealing with those bully squads.
Quitting in game is just trash, straight up. That's for everyone involved. On Survivor side and one of your teammates quits? Suddenly the team is at a massive disadvantage. On Killer side and that happens? Suddenly the game is not nearly as fun and, maybe it's just me, you just feel bad for the rest of the team. I remember one time I was playing Knight on Midwich (nothing crazy, especially with how I play), and the first two people I hooked just gave up on the spot. I let the other two out because nobody was gonna have fun at that point, but somehow we did. They gave me a couple hook states, a few gen damages, but they did the gens while I just kinda spun around for the most part.
That's really long winded, but I'm just trying to say that while hopping lobbies isn't ideal, I also get it more than just straight up quitting mid-game. Hopefully that all came across right because I'm bad at words as it is, but then plain text behind a screen can be interpreted in ways not intended.
I'd even go so far and lock both Killers and Survivors onto their loadouts as well. Because technically you could still last second switch by using the build presets on the top right.
Not exactly.
If you lobby dodge you do so knowing you're not really effecting anyone. It's pretty harmless.
If you give up you do so knowing you're going to cause the cascade of problems I listed before, and doing it anyways because you don't care if you screw over everyone else.
That's a pretty significant change in mindset imo.
A killer dodges your lobby? Another one will fill it in 15 seconds, you won't even notice you got dodged unless you were paying attention.
A survivor gives up at the start of the match? The match is lost, and you're stuck in an unwinnable game where you'll spend your next 10-15 minutes without being able to disconnect without a penalty.
But somehow these two issues are similar?
Franklins was an ass anyway… let his perk die
Lobby dodging does indeed do great harm, by screwing up the matchmaking big time.
I still see it as a player prioritizing themselves over their teammates and their opponents.
Like I said in my first post, supposedly matchmaking does that anyway. So it's not really making a difference.
If MMR worked well then sure. But it doesn't.
No I don't want hooks suicides to be in the game, that's what my first comment was.
Well I'm mostly saying that from community sentiment that even with MMR the skill levels are wildly inconsistent and they go from getting stomped to doing the stomping back to back.
If we go off the assumption that matchmaking is actually pretty good outside of backfill then yeah leaving could possibly fill in someone wildly mismatched.
In which case I'd say both are a problem, just to very different degrees. Additionally with backfill it's a potential mess up while with a give up it's reasonably guaranteed.
Like a strong breeze vs a hurricane but saying "but are they both wind?". To use a more common expression, apples and oranges "but are they both fruit?"
That's fair. In that case I would say at the very least backfill should not loosen it's criteria compared to a normal search. In addition I think a working AFK detection + removal of perkless unhook attempts suggested was a good approach to the issue.
Giving up has a much bigger fallout so it's a more serious issue and takes a much more selfish and entitled mindset to do that action compared to the other imo.
Well, maybe and maybe not. Those 'baby survivors' aren't always such babies.. A good bit of the time, in my experience, it turns out that that p1 Mikaela was just taking a break from their p100 flashlight-slinging Claudette :)
But it does allow the Killer to take at least some measure to avoid potential abuse. For instance, if I see more than two flashlights, that group can wait for some other chump to ready up.
Seeing prestiges is one thing, it's bad enough itself. But killers being able to check profiles is even worse.
I took a long break, came back to finish the rift. I had a solo lobby with two P100s and EIGHT killers in a row dodged us, the 9th was a sweaty Billy way out of that MMR.
The whole lobby dodging is a joke and exactly as bad as giving up immediately as a surv. Not better by a single inch.
So if I'm a killer with many thousand hours who always plays meta and to win (nothing wrong with this) and I intentionally dodge lobbies that have survivors with similar experience to me (which I can tell because I can view their steam profiles for some reason) in favor of getting survivors that are very new for an easy match is harmless?
I cannot cosign that I apologize.
Lobby dodging is a problem because there's no penalty for doing so and the killers have a ton of information before the game starts, these factors almost seem to encourage killers to lobby dodge because you will win more on average by doing so without wasting too much time.
A simple one minute penalty for leaving a lobby that goes up and caps at five minutes maximum and the removal of the ability to see names or open profiles until the end of the match would curb this issue almost fully without impeding on people who dodge for legitimate reasons.
Like I said though, if this happens then hooksuicides should go with it.
How exactly do you "shop for new players"? Leaving and requing just resets your search. In a working MMR system it wouldn't matter, you can't "shop for new players" because you'll never get matched with them.
There's only 2 ways afaik for that to happen:
In 1 backfill is too aggressive so, as I already stated in a previous comment, the matchmaking should be tightened at the least so that backfill isn't so aggressive if that is what's happening. But players leave hard lobbies not easy ones so that still doesn't explain how you can "shop for new players" reliably if you need to get backfilled in. If anything you'll end up in harder lobbies as killer a ton more as those are the ones people leave. So really this would be affecting killers negatively more (which should still get fixed).
In 2 the MMR itself is the source of the problem because it's too loose, so changing leaving won't really solve anything. As per my first few statement. So MMR should be tightened in general.
New players and vet players shouldn't be matched up I agree. But if that's happening in any sort of reliable frequency that points to a general MMR matchmaking issue and not just a leaving lobby issue imo. So the MMR is the main problem not the dodging. Fix the MMR and you fix the dodge "problem". Change the dodge system and we still have mismatched lobbies.
If this is happening, dodging is just a scapegoat when the actual core problem is the MMR matchmaking. Dodging itself shouldn't reasonably be doing any harm as it just resets the search. The problem comes if the search itself is flawed.
As someone who got matched against a prestige 100 when i had less than 10 hours of gameplay, and against 2 80+ prestige survivors, one 75+ prestige survivor and one 40+ prestige survivor when i had less than 15 hours……. no. I didnt even had a single prestiged character by that point
Until the matchmaking is properly fixed and dont backfill horribly, dodging some lobbies is a must.
Full stop.
If i see more than two flashlights, i pick lightborn.
It's been said already, but apples and oranges here:
One is in match, the other isn't. I won't lose my items/add-ons and 10-15 minutes of my time in a lost cause if a killer dodges my lobby. Worst case, I wait another minute or two for the next one. Usually, like 30 seconds.
And let's not forget that survs can and often do dodge lobbies as well.
I don't dodge often, and it's never because I am dodging just shopping for a lobby of newborn potatoes. It might be because it's 3-4 TTVs who you know aren't going to play an earnest match. Or it might be when I have a challenge and am not even prioritizing a win, but with a killer I rarely use and just don't want to face a squad of P100s.
And I know many experienced survs will load into a lobby, see a bunch of P0s and P1s in base cosmetics, and nope the hell right out of there.
Ditching in game is another animal altogether.
It's that dodging that causes the backfills though!
This playing as Killer theres no way to circumvent the DC penalty i have to playout the match yes i can leave whenever but ill get a penalty everytime i DC.
Playing as Survivor anytime something doesn't go my way oh see an Artist or i get downed in 10 seconds im first chase i have this ultimate 3rd option hook suicide to circumvent the DC penalty and not playout the match screw over my teammates and i can do this infinitely without reprecussion cause its built in the game.
How is that fair? It's an outdated mechanic that needs changes just make it you have 3 chances to 4% but the meter doesn't drain when attempting
Cool, but i wont get stuck as a prestige 1 killer with 25 hours against a survivor team with 340 prestige in total. If thats the price to pay, so be it.
I think you did not understand what JPLongstreet meant.
Because someone else decided to dodge the Lobby, you got into this situation in the first place. You would not need to dodge Lobbies in which you dont belong into if others, who would belong into those Lobbies, would not dodge them before you.
I get it perfectly, but im fully confident that people would still do it even with DC penalties, as survivors clearly prove (it would be less frequent, i will give you that).
And i dont want to get a penalty just because a prestige 87 killer decided to get one.
I understood it from minute one.
Maybe survivors should be able tol see the killer they are vs to make it more even. Would save a bunch of dying on hooks vs skull merchants lol… maybe at the 15 second mark you can't edit your load out or perks but it reveals the killer and people can decide then if they wish to move forward. Killers gain insane amount of info during the lobby and can shop and cherry pick non swf non flash lights or items they can even check profiles and find newbs. Survivors can't do any of that and you see that fact ripple into the match when people give up early
We'd like to ask what happens after if a survivor don't like what they see?
Does the whole lobby get removed? We then get both sides lobby shopping till doomsday. Only 1 dips? Then each survivor who stays knows who the killer is and can switch builds accordingly and while the killer can also switch perks, they can't switch power.
And we feel the need to repeat this: currently survivors can switch entire load outs with the click of a button at the last second. All the info killers get at the start is only info survivors let them have.
Killers can and do just go stand in a corner afk to avoid having to DC. You can even open the gates when they're powered to trigger egc.
And probably the biggest 'not penalized for it' is killers lobby dodging. If the killer decides not to play out that match, they just leave before it's begun. Which currently usually ends up ruining that lobby for 5 other players.
I think comparing a lobby dodge that means 20-30 seconds of additional search with ruining a match of 7-8 minutes a bit misleading at best…… or deceitful at worst.
And that's fair enough! But in my experience, the types of groups that all bring in flashlights are also built to grief even in the event that a Killer comes in with both Lightborn and Franklin's. Nah, I'll move on, there's more where they came from.
It doesn’t ruin a match if a group of Survivors who are bad go against a backfill Killer way out of their league? It doesn’t ruin the match for the backfill baby Killer who’s getting bullied because experienced Killers didn’t want to deal with flashlights/toolboxes? Killers who lobby dodge can ruin matches for five other people before they even begin.
Im a simple man. If theres 3 or 4 flashlights, i inmediately bring lightborn
Thats not a dodge for me.
As i already said in a previous thread, i dont think backfill should skip MMR.
But thats not really a players fault. Especially not a 20 hour killer who doesnt want to fight presiges 80+.
Thats the fault of the guy who thought matching people with 2k hours in the game and people with 20 was a good idea.
Well if a killer decides to dodge a lobby im in, i'll never know because i dont pay attention to the boring lobby screen anymore. But if a survivor ragequits mid match i have downsides on both sides if i am their teammate or the killer.
So you alredy have a big difference there. Though i wouldnt mind if it were to be implemented exactly like you said, as long as we can get rid of people that dont even want to play the game im fine.
I’ve noticed how bad it’s gotten. It’s not enough to impose arbitrary limitations onto the Killer. Now Survivors have to control how other Survivors play. If that’s not entitlement I don’t know what is.
Each and every time they ask this community if they want quality matchmaking or faster queue times, the overwhelming response has always been in favor of queue times. So the only real chance for their MMR system to work as intended is that first or maybe second lobby, and the dodging & shopping around messes that up.
Kinda sad tbh
And yet people hate mismatched games, and survivors especially seem adamant about being able to go next as fast as possible when they happen, meaning that they actually do care about matchmaking quality quite a bit. Personally I think its a combination of running the numbers game (more matches = better chance of at least one of them being good) paired with impatience (both for queue times and unfavorable matches.) In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if many people prioritize matchmaking speed because they're expecting poor quality matches and assume they'll need a higher frequency to have actual good matches. Or maybe they just assume that longer matchmaking will be some egregious amount of time instead of maybe a few minutes more.
I still think backfill respecting MMR should at least be experimented and tinkered with instead of just shrugging and ignoring it altogether.
I agree better quality matchmaking should be the priority. But right now the only ways I see to make that happen is we tolerate longer times, or we lock the lobbies once all five players are found, or we get rid of lobbies all together.
And I do not believe any of those three options currently have enough support from anyone, players or devs. So here we are.
Another point that hasn't been raised is whether there are enough players from different mmr ranges queuing.
The backfilling is speculated to happen when someone of similar MMR dodges the lobby. What about cases where there aren't enough players of similar level playing in the region in the first place? Wouldn't the queue system be forced to grab someone from a higher or lower mmr range to compensate?
There is a possibility that even if lobbies are locked to prevent lobby dodging, there will still be cases of mismatched opponents. I don't think all the "backfilled" situations are purely due to people lobby dodging but probably a combination of dodging and not enough players on both sides for each mmr range.
I say this because last year, I got matched up against a 8k hour Survivor who was streaming. I went back into their vod to check if there was anyone who dodged the lobby prior to me and there wasn't. I had 800 hours at that point in time so I think it would be reasonable to assume that this Survivor would be in a different MMR range from me.
So if there was no backfiling, how did I get matched with this 8k hour player? The most likely conclusion was that there was no one else of a similar mmr range queuing so the game just gave up and chucked me into the lobby.
The lobby locking/hiding player information suggestion probably won't resolve the issue of people from different mmr being matched together, in fact it will become more obvious when it happens.
Because killers dodging the match before it starts doesn't give the killer a direct in match benefit and handicap 3 survivors.
Should survivors have the ability to see the killers and dodge killers who have toxic playerbases?
They've already told us a bit about how this happens when they did some live MMR testing with the game about a year and a half ago.
The matchmaking system initially looks for players who are relatively close in MMR (this range is one of the variables they tested).
If the system can't find enough players to fill a 'perfectly matched' lobby after a little bit (another variable), it expands the MMR range it's using (yet another variable) and looks again.
This process basically continues until the lobby is full, ideally… however, if a player leaves an already full lobby, the system uses a fairly wide band of MMR range (again, another variable) to fill that slot as quickly as possible.
When the devs did their testing, they tweaked all of these variables every day for over a weekand asked for feedback from the community for how games felt every day, but didn't tell us what they had changed. The consensus from those tests were that getting into lobbies faster was most popular (meaning MMR ranges vary more in a lobby). Lobby dodging does this fastest.
Oh, and one of the tests they did without saying what they changed was to use the old 'rank' system from before MMR. And that was one of the least popular options.
I don't want to play matches with people who have red text ban records displayed on their Steam profile.
This is one of my main issues with the MMR system. When I get instantly matched with a lobby, it's incredibly obvious that my match making rank has been completely disregarded in favour of finding a match for players that may have been waiting a while.
Personally, I'd like to be able to turn off this quick match making just like we can turn off cross platform. Turning it off might result in a very long wait for a match (or it may not find one at all), but I'd rather not play too many one sided games if there's nobody around my level currently playing. It's a recipe for a terrible time. The majority of the community might be in favour of faster match making, but the choice to opt out would be good.
I think it would help soften the blow when mismatches happen if we knew our own MMR scores too (and also allow players to gauge if the game currently has enough players on to make fair match ups). Letting players know their rank could lead to sweatier games, but I feel like that ship has kinda sailed already.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that mismatches are a big reason for players DCing or making an early exit from trials, so anything that could be done to reduce that would be good for the game.
The system isn't being subverted though.
The current system isn't particularly good and prioritizes matchmaking speed over balanced matches when it is working properly. It isn't like MMR changes function just because a killer leaves the lobby since it not that narrowly gated to begin with and since by default we can't see the MMR scores you have no way of knowing how much of an actual difference there is.