After life quit getting in the way of much recreation time, I had an opportunity to sit down and fire up Dead by Daylight on the PlayStation 4. A couple of things had changed since the last time I stepped into the Fog. I have yet to play as Freddy Krueger, following his rework. I’ve found that I’m actually trash at playing as the Demogorgon, and worse, I’ve yet to sit down and watch "Stranger Things."
When I decided on a loadout, I readied up. A minute went by and I had yet to be put into a game yet. That’s odd, I thought. Queue times aren’t usually even this long. Maybe they’re just especially busy today. A couple more minutes went by, and I cursed my “livin’ in the boonies” internet connection once more. After roughly five minutes, I finally had a lobby waiting for me. All I needed were some Survivors to chase, sacrifice, and then bitch me out in my inbox.
The life of a Killer main is not a glamorous one, folks.
To get to the point already, it took entirely too long to get a game queued up, even with my backwoods internet. Apparently, I am not the only one that has had such issues with matchmaking, and as such, the developers are setting their sights on fixing said problems, as realized in their most recent status update.
The team identified three pillars to their matchmaking algorithm: time, ping, and fairness. Striking a balance between these three tenets has never been particularly easy, though the recent addition of dedicated servers has helped mediate some of the issues. Add to the fact that the game is asymmetrical (4v1), and keeping all of the Fog dwellers content is a herculean task.
As such, the devs have offered up two solutions, both of which are going to be monitored until the confidence in these measures is built up. The first is a hidden skill level measure, which will serve a handful of purposes. It will cushion the blow of losing to a higher-ranked opponent, while coming down on high-ranked players who blow a game to a lower-ranked adversary. In addition, a measure for ranking Killers will be added, which will allow for testing out new Killers without fear of sacking one’s player rank solely because they’re testing out the new guy. Secondly, the matchmaking will now be in batches. Pools of players will be drawn together and sectioned off into the most fair matches possible in said pools, rather than waiting for the ideal opponents to enter the queue and further delay wait times. This will allow for fairness to be the name of the game, without the need for twiddling thumbs.
Player ranks will now be more of a reflection of the dedication, rather than the hill that the matchmaking system dies on. It will be interesting to see how these changes will pan out, though the update cautions that these changes will be gradual, as opposed to rushed out for the next chapter, as some had feared.
Read the full update on the Behaviour Interactive forum.
