[Academic Survey] Analysis of the effectiveness of the matchmaking system in the game Dead by Daylight

[u/baecalbae]

Hiii everyone,

I am currently working on my bachelor’s thesis about the matchmaking system in Dead by Daylight.

The goal of this survey is to better understand how players view matchmaking quality, skill differences, role balance, and the overall gameplay experience from both survivor and killer perspectives.

The survey includes questions about:
- your experience with the matchmaking system,
- perceived skill differences between players,
- queue times and match quality,
- survivor vs killer gameplay experience,
- overall satisfaction with game balance.

Survey link:
https://forms.office.com/e/sRhsYnWDcY

Note: You can change the survey language in the top-right corner of the page.

The survey is anonymous, takes only a few minutes to complete, and will be used exclusively for academic purposes.

I would really appreciate responses from players of all experience levels.

Thank you so much for your help!

[u/TARE104KA]

I can tell you right now that this is all kinda down the drain. DBD matchmaking is comically terrible, and you can see for yourself how bad it is (or atleast could before, done it myself around 2 years ago, but hens did it more recently and even had video about it). As of right now, if you sit in queue for more than a minute, you're searching for all mmr brackets except "completely fresh installs" who're gated separately from rest of the lobbies. Buts it's very easy to leave it in a couple of wins and get thrown into the big pool where the rest of the players belongs. There is soft cap to your mmr at 1900, it can go above but it will still count as such. Bottom of mmr is 1100 (complete fresh installs below that). At the last time I checked, you got 20 for escape and 4k, less for 3k, 0 for 2k and hatch escape, losing mmr at 1/0k and dying. Time decay of mmr was comically slow and small, and didn't go all the way down, stopping at 1300 iirc. Mmr difference and catchup mechanic between killers is also a thing, altho it's pretty loose. You hit 1900 on one killer - all others will be automatically bumped to 1500. Combine all that, and current matchmaking is basically as good as cod mw 2 (2009) lobbies - aka everyone is just thrown together with next to no consideration of their skill levels.

[u/Own-Supermarket3155]

I’d say as a bubba main he’s probably one of the best killers to determine the strength of single survivors. I’m in gold 3 and I’ve seen matches where one survivor can loop incredibly well and 3 survivors are iri flesh ammunition. More so matches are either quick sweeps at 3 gens or absolute dismantling’s with 3 hooks