Behavior Interactive has announced some good and bad news this morning. The bad news is that as of 10AM ET today, August 12, the new system for matchmaking in Dead by Daylight will be disabled across all platforms, but the good news is that this decision has been made following a close evaluation of community feedback and the developer is working on how best to proceed in the future.
For now, it would appear that players will return to the previous method of matchmaking based primarily on their rank.
Many anecdotal experiences, including my own, seemed to share similar problems. For example, in the first two days with the new system, I played several games as a Survivor who often floats around ranks 3-5. The experience was not pleasant, because all of my teammates and the Killers were around ranks 17-20. For about two hours I fixed generators, looped the Killer, and won all of my matches while only being downed once in five games, and it was the least fun I have ever had in Dead by Daylight.
Presumably I was placed with newer players because I am often busy and do not get to play as much as I would like so maybe the system decayed by MMR, but then again, I have nearly 600 hours into the game. Unfortunately, it was boring, and the Killers clearly lacked the experience needed.
On the other hand, my games as a Killer felt far more balanced, for some reason. Again because of a lack of time and because I often play with friend, my Killer rank often decays to rank 13. Still, playing as Michael Myers, the Trapper, and the Deathslinger, my opponents were all ranks 3-5, and those games felt great with two to three sacrifices on average, non-stop chases, and some excellent plays from the Survivors to barely make it out of a trial.
While the system does not appear to be working as intended, we should all acknowledge that it is no easy task to create finely tuned matchmaking in an asymmetric multiplayer game where “winning” can be interpreted differently by each player.
If as a Survivor, your number-one objective is to escape and you choose to hide in the grass, that is acceptable. Your teammates will hate you, but Dead by Daylight is far more of an anti-social game than a cooperative experience.
On the other hand, if you are an altruistic survivor, winning means that as many Survivors get out as possible - even if it means your own death. In between, there are Survivors with all sorts of play styles and priorities in a trial, and Behavior Interactive is doing their best to mix and match all those players in a way that is more than simply rank.
In any case, Dead by Daylight has been a fantastic, and terrifying experience for four years, and there is no doubt that Behavior Interactive will eventually have matchmaking in a better spot.
Source: deadbydaylight.com