Dead by Daylight is constantly changing, so it only makes sense for the matchmaking system to follow suit and continually evolve. We often make small tweaks behind the scenes to strike the right balance between wait times and match quality, but we’ve also been working on some bigger improvements to the matchmaking system thanks to your feedback. In this post, we’ll discuss two changes we’ll be making to the matchmaking system in the 6.4.0 update. These are:
- Team Based Ratings: Adjusting Survivor ratings based on the team’s performance as well as your own
- Extended Breaks: Better handling for players who are coming back from a break
We’ll dive into each in more detail later in this post, but first we want to give some context for how the matchmaking system currently works.
How Matchmaking Works
The matchmaking system’s job is to pair you against opponents where your strategy works roughly half of the time. To do this, we give each player a hidden rating that evaluates their performance. The matchmaker then uses this rating to pair you with players of a similar rating.
In order for this to work, the matchmaking system needs a win condition to determine if your rating should increase or decrease. In our case, the win condition for Survivors is escaping the trial, while a Killer’s win condition is killing Survivors. Since the game is asymmetrical, each Survivors is treated like a separate one-on-one match for the Killer. How much rating you gain or lose also depends on the ratings of your opponent: You’ll gain more rating by beating someone who’s rated higher than you and lose more by losing to someone who’s rated lower than you.
It’s impossible for a matchmaking system to accurately assess your ability from a single match due to the sheer number of factors at play. Instead, the matchmaker works over the course of many matches to gradually settle you into a place where you are comfortable. To give an example, if you lose a match, the game doesn’t think you suddenly got worse- it expects you to lose some matches! If your rating is currently lower than it should be, you’ll end up winning more matches than you lose, and that loss will quickly be offset. Or if you’re already where you should be, you’ll win a roughly equal number of matches and hover around the same place.
To be very clear, kills and escapes on their own are not a direct indicator of skill, but rather a proxy to skill, meaning playing well will improve your odds of winning. Ultimately, the matchmaker isn’t trying to judge whether or not you are the best player in the world, but rather find a place where your strategy works about half the time, regardless of how skillful it is.
Team Based Ratings
One challenge unique to asymmetrical games like Dead by Daylight is how we handle teams. Most games can check which team won a match and adjust their ratings accordingly. But this isn’t possible in an asymmetrical game like ours since Killers are playing solo. To get around this, we treat each Survivor as a separate one-on-one match. This way, the Killer can gain rating by killing three Survivors without the Survivor that escaped losing any rating.
While this works for an “everyone for themselves” mindset, team-oriented Survivors would often find it punishing to die heroically to save their team as this would be treated like a loss. This was the most common feedback we’ve received since the introduction of this matchmaking system, and we’re pleased to say that we have a solution incoming.
Starting with 6.4.0, Survivors ratings will be based both on individual & team performance. Whether you gain or lose rating will still be determined by whether or not you escape, but how much your rating is adjusted will be affected by how many Survivors escape the trial.
For each teammate that escapes:
- You gain more rating if you escape
- You lose less rating if you die
For each teammate that dies:
- You gain less rating if you escape
- You lose more rating if you die
For example, if you die but every other Survivor escapes, your rating will hardly drop at all. In other words, keep your team alive for best results! With this change, we aim to put a bit more emphasis on teamplay without removing the lone wolf playstyle.
Extended Breaks
Whether something important came up in your life or another game caught your attention for a while, we all take breaks from time to time. At the moment, coming back from an extended break can be a little rough as you’re trying to shake off the rust while playing against the same opponents. It can take a while for your rating to slowly drops to a place where you’re more comfortable. To make returns as smooth as possible, we’ll be improving the way the matchmaking system handles players who haven’t played in a while.
The matchmaking system has a confidence level. When you first play the game, the matchmaking system knows nothing about you, so it cannot confidently determine where you should be. As you play, your rating will shift far more than usual while it tries to figure out roughly where you belong. Over time, it learns more about you and its confidence increases, causing your rating to change less after each match.
Simply put, after long break, the matchmaking system will lower this confidence level until you’ve played a certain number of matches. This way if you’re feeling rusty, your rating will drop much quicker than before, letting you face easier opponents much sooner. Meanwhile if you play as well as when you left- say if for example you’ve been playing similar games while you were away- you’ll stay more or less around the same place.
Like Team Based Ratings, this feature will go live with the 6.4.0 update. We hope this makes the experience much smoother for returning players.
As always, matchmaking is an ongoing process. We’ll keep an eye on things behind the scenes to make sure that everything is working as intended, and we’ll continue to make small adjustments as needed. Most importantly, please keep the feedback coming!
Until next time…
The Dead by Daylight team