Dead by Daylight Turns Skill-Based Matchmaking Back On for More Testing

Behaviour Interactive has once again brought back skill-based matchmaking in Dead by Daylight for [...]

Behaviour Interactive has once again brought back skill-based matchmaking in Dead by Daylight for another round of testing. These sorts of matchmaking tests have been around for a while now and have come and gone periodically to help Behaviour organize a better online experience in Dead by Daylight where people are placed together based on skill levels and not solely on ranks. An exact end date for this test wasn't given, but we know that it'll last for at least a couple of days.

Ranks in Dead by Daylight are the most obvious player-facing indicator of how much time a player has spent with a Killer or Survivor and how proficient with that character they are, but those ranks won't be good indicators of skill during the test. Behaviour cautioned against worrying too much about these rank discrepancies last time the skill-based matchmaking tests ran and said that ranks "are not a true indicator of a player's skill and are no longer used for matchmaking."

The result of this test is that you could see Rank 1 players going up against Rank 20s. That's the extreme example, but Behaviour explained that these ranks aren't always representative of a player's skill.

"Ranks are not a great way of figuring out how good a player is at the game, because it primarily focuses on 'How often you play' and not on 'How skilled you are when you play,'" Behaviour said last year when the tests started. "Based on our matchmaking studies, there are a great deal of 'low' ranked players (15-20) who can easily play just as well as 'high' ranked players (1-5), but they simply don't play enough games in a month to increase their rank before they reset on the 13th."

Behaviour said the opposite can be true as well where high-ranked players don't have the same skills as those with lower ranks thus creating these games where things look wildly unbalanced but really aren't.

As for the state of ranks, Behaviour said last year that this test was being done independently of the rank system in Dead by Daylight for the sake of speed which explains why you'll still see a rank for you characters. Behaviour said last time it's "exploring different ideas like turning them into a monthly activity tracker and reward system" as ways to revamp the rank system.

The skill-based matchmaking test will be live for a couple of days with no announced end date.

0comments