The biggest issue I have with SBMM is playing with friends. None of my friends enjoy playing with me because they get destroyed in my lobbies and don't have any fun. They talk about how when they play solo it's an entirely different experience. #FSBMM
sole reason why we dont play cod anymore. solo mp feels like alcoholism, party feels like masochism. sure, its purely skill issue but in late 20s and beyond gaming skills are far from priority for most people
This 100%. My best friend and the guy I’ve played with the most tells me about how well he was doing in his cod lobbies earlier and that he’s so excited to get on and play with me, and then when we join in together he gets curb stomped and ends up quitting. How is that fun for anyone?
Reason I quit. I did just fine most matches... Even to an ungodly degree at times with awful loadouts while my team struggled, and it just got old, because support loadouts now are absolutely crap so you can't even be the team crutch!
@@GardenFootCreatureUnfortunately for me, I'm at the bottom no matter if I win or lose. My kd in old CODs was 1.5 -2. Now I have a .94 and every game is an uphill struggle. Every single one.
I just miss the genuine random mixed lobbies we used to get. Now everyone on the enemy team is either a Faze member or a Bot and there’s no in-between.
@@elliottfussell3523 that's not true, like literally at all, I'm sure your source was the doc sheet to dev tweet, both wrong, they are referring to team balancing, which was in fact in the game, the players were sorted by connection, as those games worked by hosts and not servers, the teams were then balanced so they would have a mix of both skill groups, it's okay to be wrong, don't be ignorant.
A note from an average casual player. Not played MP for many months. My last experience was a 10 game losing streak getting smashed by obviously better players. If lobbies were random I could accept it but the fact the algorithm chose that experience for me was too much to take. Could care less about stats or being good, just want to have fun.
Exactly fun over stats Stats may be for fun for some but I'd sacrifice stats for non-disbanding lobbies and having to sweat or get destroyed I loved to goof off in matches created the best memories like ninja defuses playing using an AA-12 shotgun as a sniper with optics and slugs or competing with a buddy for rocket launcher headshot kills going for silly killcams inghosts with switching the thermal hybrid on and off just a solid good time with friends
@@DillyBobBananaGood times. I remember in the og mw2 me and my buddies all put on riot shields and C4 and all hid in the same room waiting for enemies to wonder in. The enemy ended up switching to C4s and riot shields too. The whole lobby was laughing afterwards.
A big thing that a lot of people don't talk about with SBMM is the lack of fun and engaging casual modes outside of matchmaking. If you remove SBMM in a game that exclusively focuses on competitve matchmaking then the people that aren't as good are going to stop playing. What they seemingly haven't considered is the solution of adding more casual experiences that are fun to play with friends, regardless of their overall skill. This was a big reason I played tonnes of WaW, when you weren't doing well online you swap to zombies/co-op campaign. BO1 had zombies & wager matches, MW2(2009) had spec ops (and fun custom games that have disappeared due to the lack of social features) etc. Online gaming used to be a social experience and that's what made it fun, even when you were getting stomped. If you want to cater to casual audiences, create fun casual things to do outside of matchmaking, because matchmaking will never be casual fun now that people have been playing for years, getting better and better. I know MWIII has a zombies mode but it's not the same and super grindy compared to the simplicity of the older modes. They are creating a game that is fun for skilled players and then complaining that if they remove SBMM then all the casual players don't play...
Hahaha I actually had to search for it on Reddit since I couldn't remember which video that gameplay was from but I remember someone posting it on Reddit
@@TheXclusiveAceThe team balancing in SBMM is brutal, the last COD I put a lot of time into was CW and despite having a ~3.5 KD and ~1100 SPM at my peak play time, I only had a 56% win rate. And I’ve had an even worse experience with the small amount of time I have spent in MW2 and 3.
@@PbZeppelin Solo is the freakin worst in the modern era of cod. Team mates are just so bad since I'm a decent player. I lose because of them. So now a days I play in groups as often as I can and the lobbies are way easier.
@@hrhhrhrh well, I’ll admit I complain a lot due to bad team mates, but I’m a 3.1 KDR player in multiplayer, and when solo queuing it is brutal having to get 40-50 kills every game just to stand somewhat of a chance to win 😔 I too get tired and sometimes wanna relax a little bit and try some off-meta guns and snipey snipey!
@@hrhhrhrh I’m convinced that the MWIII subreddit consists of a bunch of Activision and Sledgehammer bots. They will spam you with downvotes if you even mildly criticize the game. It seems like the entire purpose of that sub is to market the game including operators and other bs.
@grrinc I don't think they are, but this is still Activision we're talking about. If you think their goal should be to satisfy you with their explanation, then you're wrong.
@@zombieslayer9304 I don't want those back, ever, but you can't tell me people knew they'd eventually open up based on how they flat out ignored us for 5 years.
They’re trying to predict your skill level based on your performance, yet your performance is based on the ever-changing skill level of each lobby you get put in. it’s literally a redundant cycle of insanity. You can’t have one without the other and there’s no way to establish a baseline of skill level for every single cod player. It literally turns the player base into skewed pools of curated/manipulated experiences. They also claim that bad players quit the game which means high skill players will end up only playing against other high skill players (which isnt an enjoyable experience) yet their solution to this is making high skill players play against only high skill players. They are contradictive in their statements and are creating the very problem they claim they are trying to avoid. Instead of being honest with the player base and admitting the reason this exists is to manipulate bad players into liking the game because bad players stop buying and spending money on the game when they do bad bcuz they lack the determination to want to grind & get better so they make the loyal hard-core high skill players have a bad experience because they know they will stick it out and keep playing. They are literally ruining one group of consumers experience to make another more enjoyable over money. that’s it. Point blank. Period.
You sound like the same broken record as blame truth. I won't deny you have a point, but this is just a misunderstanding (it's explained later) on why this sbmm is bad. It fails to fundimentally address the underlying philopshy and instead hinges on that they're lying about balancing when they aren't. They are being truthful, and the truth is, is that the sbmm sucks at its job. The inability to balance the game properly is the issue. Not necessarily because the sbmm sucks at doing its job but that their method and philosphy of what makes it balance negatively effects the game, lending it to manipulative tactics to maintain player retention. Of course, lesser skilled people won't play the game if they get stomped. A solution is (as stated) was to isolate skill groups. I dont know what your issue is with this specifically, but you unironically just ramble without making a point. While I do believe it is to make money, that is just a live service thing. I don't think sbmm has anything specifically to do in majority with making players spend money. While it goes hand in hand, I doubt that to be a sole reason. I'm not trying to stomp on your opinion, but I find it faulty due to negligence on stated parameters and underlying philosophy and misunderstanding of game balancing on both sides. You don't state a solution but rather simply scream about it, and activision creates a falty solution you seem to express an issue with. I hope this is constructive and received in good faith.
@@ShadoDiablosXD ngl i see what you're saying, but i lowkey dont blame him for seeing it that way, the company is shady in itself & is no stranger to this kind of stuff, we're basically at the mercy of what they decide to put out & how they put it out there & because of their history its understandable they seem to lie through their teeth or at most skirt around certain areas or only give the partial truth sprinkled in a bunch of jargan to sound more analytical & fancy rather than straightforward & blunt to the point
@@Deadpool.... Ya. I don't deny that they are ultimately untrustworthy, but they are untrustworthy (in my eyes) for a lot more conventional reason rather than JUST financial gain, especially in terms of the actual devs decisions in game design and not just the marketing department and activisions company decrees. They have ruined a lot of trust, but I find it hard to say that its ONLY because of money. There's so much more that goes into this and I think some people (most notably blame truth, I mention him because hes VERY vocal) seem to forget that the design of the game matters just as much if not more than the decisions made to monotize it and should be seen through that lense more honestly. Blame truth and his followers. i think hyperfixate on the narrative that its a lie rather than just simply taken it as what it is, bad design. This isnt a critique of anyone but rather I prefer to view and as a personal statement. Too many people have been wrapped up in the narrative to pain activision as liars and frauds when thats just not true. They omit a lot, but they certainly dont lie. My issues with a large number of cod haters (they're still valid) is that they forget what the narrative actually is and I dont blame them. A franchise they love now feels abusive by nature. But again, just to yap a bit longer, we all need to remember that its largerly bad design. Not manipulation. They aren't telling us to be happy, they arent gaslighting us to agree. They are openly and honestly stating their practices, and its up to us to identify WHY they dont work. Not scream. how bad we're hurt. Nothing can get done if we dont face the simple and rather underwhelming fact.
most games with matchmaking tend to have a hidden mmr, the only way to get around that is to play games with a server browser like TF2 or the og COD4 on pc
Hunt is a prime example why you don’t show MMR. High MMR either get insanely boring in their playstyle or throw to sink their MMR back down. I know I do.
11:15 that's why I find these types of conclusions sus. Like if they were "sure" this was the case, why not reveal the data? Especially if this is a common talking point within the community, it would be one thing if they gave all the data and said "hey we know you guys want this but we tested it and it doesn't work, here's why", but by kinda throwing it under the rug and saying "it didnt work, moving on" it makes it seem like maybe they didn't thoroghly test it because they don't want to go that route.
My question with this is why it was never a problem in older cods? Like all of these reasons would have been true before but cod has never been as successful as back then
If you haven't played in a while, you would have been put in low skill lobbies Those are low skill lobbies now, welcome to modern gaming where even 12 year old Timmy us training to be an esports star
"Some of you may hate the franchise you love. That's a risk we're willing to take." I appreciate them being vocal with the community, but I just can't play these games anymore. Xdefiant is getting my playtime cause I can chill and play with my friends. Thanks for highlighting all the negatives of their system.
The problem is that change doesn’t always mean success. Call of Duty is going to suffer through New Coke syndrome over these next few years until they go scrambling to find their original recipe that people fell in love with.
The big takeaway was team balancing. It only verified what we all kind of knew and it doesn't feel very "fair" to either spectrum of player. Mix in parties and you get super wild swings. I seem to face parties all the time where if there were reliable teammates, i could give them decent fight. But no, my team can't win any of their gunfights, there's streaks in the sky, and I'm trying to take those out by myself while getting killed from every single angle. Then you get the obligatory "EZ" from the enemy team. There is only so much one individual can do. I think the match should prioritize mercenary based matchmaking first and then look at matching up to parties. I just want to play and have an "unpredictable" match outcome. Right now, you can tell within the first minute that the outcome is already decided.
As a rather average player and as one that refuses to change classes based on the sbmm killing the match (shit isn’t fun anyways so why bother), it’s absolute garbage to play. The common argument for sbmm is “if you don’t wanna sweat every game then don’t.” I’ve been trying to git gud with the kar (prefixe, I know it’s insane, but I’m used to the likes of the mors, stalker, and mcpr. The speed difference and lower zoom kills me) and it is genuinely a garbage experience. In higher sbmm lobbies, I get sweated on by movement sweats and meta slaves simply bc I’m using the kar and when I get into lower lobbies I literally dismantle them. There is no organic experience. It’s “I did good in this lobby, time to get a bad map AND a shit lobby.”
Trying new guns YOUR NOT GOOD AT is a pain. You get stomped 3 games, do all right for one (8 kills over 3 games isn't much practice with the gun). The game assumes that you gave little Timmy the controller. Next game you stomp the other team. Process repeats till you stop getting the game that lets you stomp.
@@joebob3683 indeed. I get a good game in with the stalker for example, and the next game I got guys that are using 6 superi speed builds with cdl skins that never miss headshots and 4 taps. So fun.
@OgCassette you are aware that most guns need to be unlocked and leveled if you don't want to shell out even more money for the blueprint, right? Besides, we were talking about getting outside our comfort zone.
There are a lot of statistical errors in their findings which I think are important to note: 1. Activision is assuming that the 14 day trial period of loosening sbmm was 100% the reason for losing lower skill players. However, there are multiple outside factors that could also affect this data, such as a new game coming out that attracts a good amount of your player base, ie- Xdefiant. That other game could steal lower skilled players where higher skilled players who consistently play call of duty are not as likely to switch to a different game. 2. I believe you hit the nail on the head with the team balancing portion spot on. As an iridescent level player, playing pubs solo feels pointless. Even when dominating a lobby over and over, there is rarely a game where I am not forced to try my hardest in order to be competitive in the match, due in large part to my teammates not being on the same skill level as the opposing team. 100% agree with you on that. It feels that I actually have a less than 50% win chance in many of those games and my team will get blown out. 3. Regarding ping in searching, they say that, although slightly, ping actually increases as your skill rating increases. I believe this can be explained for a number of outside reasons. The top reason being, higher level players are more likely to pay for higher level internet capabilities ie- fiber optic. This could explain the differences in ping between the skill levels of players. Sbmm is a very difficult topic and I understand they are doing their best to keep the player base high. I think it could be a cultural issue where gamers believe they need to be good at a game instantly nowadays. In the past with minimal sbmm, a new player strived to get better and be like the players that dominated, so they played more in order to get to that level… at least in my experience growing up in the cod community. Great video!
Well written and I absolutely agree! I remember when I started COD it was the account of the previous owner of the PS4. He had had 1.4 K/D so first I got absolutely stomped in the lobbies I was put in often getting 0-3 kills. But the game was just so thrilling that I wanted to become like those who killed me over and over. Gradually the game adjusted the lobbies for me and I got better and was starting to get more towards K/D 1. The next ear I bought the next COD and my own K/D was over 1 and I was so proud I was a loyal fan up until MW2019. In that game the maps were shit and for some reason all the matches felt super super sweaty. I stopped playing bc it was not fun. Needless to say, I've not returned, which is sad even for me. Sometimes I would like to buy and play a COD game but with the current state of SBMM, I just know it wouldn't be any fun like in the past...
Ironically I think the problem of new players wanting to be good instantly might stem from those older players because back then cracked players were an outlier especially in the age of tricks trickshotters but now everyone thinks it's the standard.
One of the most frustrating aspects of it for me is that it is blatantly obvious when they match me with people that are allergic to the objective. It is frustrating, because I ALWAYS play the objective, and there are games (like Dom or Hardpoint) where I am all by myself, almost capturing a Dom point or holding the Hardpoint by myself, suddenly getting killed a few milliseconds from capping or having 3 enemies rushing in at once, from multiple angles, to take the Hardpoint. At that point I look around and scream, "WHERE IS MY TEAM!?!" And while this is not every game, frequently it is that way, that I'm the one having to carry the objective for all of my teammates. The worst is when you see the enemy team is pretty even with objective score, while I'm the only one who was objective during the game. The culprit is how SBMM works: I play the objective frequently, so it matches me with people who don't to balance out the team. However, since no one on my team even goes near the objective, I have to pick up the slack, thus pushing this difference further and further. For the most part, skill between the teams isn't that far out of the ordinary from before 2019: there were plenty of times I would be stomped, would stomp or end up dead even. The only issue for me is that it seems to be far less objective players than before. Also with ping, the problem isn't that it's connecting me to far away servers, the problem is often the servers themselves. I frequently get under 20 ms of ping, 350 down, 10 up, and yet I still get frequent packet burst, latency variance, extrapolation and even packet loss at times. Most matches have packet burst to an extent, but rarely is it over 20 ping, and only sometimes it freezes at 40 ping (it doesn't change through the match if it hits that level). From everything I've heard, packet burst is a server side issues, so Microsoft really ought to think about investing in some better servers, but at this point I doubt they will do anything like that. Why invest in your highest grossing product to improve player experience when you can get your execs another million dollar bonus, am I right?
I can't speak for everyone but when I feel the same way and played a few games and lose while literally trying to do everything, I'll purposely not cap objectives out of spike because I'm frustrated and I know if I don't try we'll lose and next game I'll be paired with players who actually care. It's out of frustration for me when I don't but if I choose not to and see my team trying I'll usually change my mind and help out.
The best thing about XDefiant has been having a non-manipulated matchmaking experience. I know that if I'm going off or not doing well in a match, it has far more to do with my individual performance rather than a system manipulating my experience to keep me playing. If I suck, I'd much rather keep playing to improve than be handed easy games.
Of only the game wasn't such an unpolished turd with the worst net code in a decade and everyone bunnyhopping 24/7. On top of that it's also a whack ability shooter with dumb powers. And looks worse than MW2019...
I think it's great to play XD *and* COD for that reason. The competition is really high in XD because of no SBMM- like you can sometimes be up against the very best players in your region. It makes you a LOT better even if your numbers are meh. And it has some frustrating hit reg etc- BUT when I go back to COD after a few hours of XD it feels like a cakewalk by comparison. I don't know why it has to be a binary choice, XD is free. It's like being a golfer and only ever playing one course.
Props to you, really Taking a beating as a lesson is quite noble but that's clearly not how the most of the players think (And why SBMM was created in the first place)
As an upper skill level player I HATE having teams of useless bots. If there were no killstreaks I could deal with it, but the bot team mates just keep giving the other teams streaks. Doesn't help that they also almost never care about objective either so I'm stuck not only being a slayer but also have to be the only one going for tags or objective points
@Redmont_ I have no idea what you're trying to get at but clearly you don't understand how the sbbm system works. Switching modes does nothing for the people I'm paired with after the first couple games. I regularly get 60+ kills in games with team mates that range from the single kills at times to maybe in the 20s if I'm lucky. It honestly blows my mind how it's supposed to be fun for me to be paired with multiple people playing on 2 sensitivity while the other team are sweats like me or at least somewhat competent enough to be useful. I get litteral bots wayyyyy too often to feel like I can stand playing the game to keep trying to carry sacks of potatoes
@@puppetmasterI2 It's difficult to go back to MW2, I loved the TTK in it but operator movement and interaction felt way too slow. I really wanted 100hp for MW3
Had 192 kills with the most captures on my team (Das Haus HQ), lost 170 to 34. Whole team went negative and the number 2 player had 57 kills.... gotta love the team balancing part of sbmm. I lose the majority of my games despite always having top kills and almost always the top caps.
happens to me too, idk why they can't just fill the lobby with good players instead of putting people into a game they can't even compete in, i had a tdm lobby today where i got over 3kd and the person in 2nd got 0.55
The issue with SBMM is that the outcome of a match is determined not by player's skill, but rather by how many players in each team decided to play the objective today.
The paper just highlights the same thing people already knew: SBMM keeps lower skilled players from quitting and potentially making the game even harder and more beginner unfriendly. It's unfortunate, but there's not much we can do about it. What needs to be improved, IMO, is team balancing, because I have a 0.93 K/D and I am having to carry people almost every match.
If anything, SBMM makes it more beginner friendly. And even though people knew, the high skill players were still arguing against SBMM, despite SBMM being the standard in every modern PVP game and stats showing that it's factually better for the overall enjoyment for the players.
The notion that sbmm exists in other games and people don't complain is bs. I don't play apex legends, cod, siege, dead by daylight, fortnite etc. because sbmm is unfun. Difference is cod has been around for a very long time and it wasn't always like this. It might be the standard nowadays but there's a lot of players that were enjoying the franchise well before it became normal.
MMR decay is without a doubt a thing. When I go back to MW19 after a year of not playing, my first 5-10 games feel like I'm playing against recruit bots, it's so easy I could play blindfolded, 15+ killstreaks with 0 effort. After that, it goes back to sweat or go negative. Edit: "stay in lobby" should be on by default with no indication anywhere that it's on, and you should have to go out of your way to press "search for another lobby after game" to leave that lobby. I know that's not coming, because being able to stay in the same lobby means you're not letting the game find "the new optimal lobby based on your recent performance" for you to be in, but instead you stay where you want to be, and that's not allowed. Edit 2: I don't want any matchmaking at all, I want the only option to be a server browser, like what we had in CoD 4 and WaW on PC.
They will never show you your SBMM rating because bad players don't know about SBMM. They just assume they are average skill - If they were hard stuck in bronze they would realize they are bad and get discouraged, which would lead some of them to quit (and stop buying skins).
Dude, I got to commend your work ethic. You always impress me with doing these daily videos but now doing videos like this on top of being a new father! We’re about the same age and I have a one month old also, so I understand it’s tough, but man you’re killing it. Good work.
Hearing that team balance will match bad players onto good players teams at 11:54 is so refreshing. I was having a self identity crisis thinking that I was actually bad at the game, and was being put in low skill lobbies despite CONSTANTLY being top of the leaderboard with kills.
I wonder if some players create a game-breaking hardware hack that will combat Activision’s SBMM instead of hacks that give you aimbot, wall hacks, etc.
Never hacked before but this would make me change that Doubt its possible though, considering its not possible to hack yourself cod points, and both involve hacking the server itself instead of hacking your client
I totally think they're manipulating the latency. There are games where I'm basically a laser that never misses. Then I'll have several games where I lose every gunfight. I mean I get melted almost instantly then watch the kill cam and see that I was standing there for like 5 seconds doing nothing
Honestly Ace, I wish you took a stronger stance in this video & challenged the study a bit more. I know you try to be a reasonable voice in the community that cuts through the hype to find facts, but I think your lack of challenging the study at parts took away from that normal perspective I appreciate so much. Without data, many of the claims in this white paper hold no more basis that the salty codfluencers complaining about SBMM.
I just started playing on a 65" TV instead of a dedicated gaming monitor because of house displacement due to injury. MAN playing on a TV sucks sooooo bad. I know it has nothing to do with the video, but i just had to say playing on a Monitor just feels better. Maybe because i havent played on a TV in 10 years or so. Anyway have a nice day 😊
I said this on Blame Truth’s video. Have a 20 level newb only playlist like XDefiant. In addition then have a video play that must be watched showing the difference between Pub and Ranked, matchmaking and how you can leave a lobby that is “too tough” and you have to press X or 🔼 to continue.
It stated through the white paper a few times, that they dont want people to leave games as that usually correlates with a player not having "fun." So any solution that involves leaving is not one that would be considered.
@@DeathJr96R hmm not sure if overall KDR is the right way to go about it, because then everyone would slowly migrate to a 1.00 KDR as it averaged out over the game’s lifecycle / year
@@PbZeppelin that is whats already happening... before mw2 (where i think they tightened sbmm even more, than with mw2019) i considered myself a pretty good player, around a 2.0kd... after mw2 dropped i dropped down to a 1.05 and finally stopped playing after mw3 season 3 altogether... the average kdr spread has shrunk immensely, back in bo3 or bo4 a 5.0KD player wasnt anything rare (at least EU servers), but now? its almost impossible to see a player with stats in that range. (sorry if something is spelled incorrectly, im just some german fool ^^)
@@PbZeppelin Isn't that already happening? Before MW19 my KD improved every cod by about 0.1 or 0.2. Ever since MW19, my KD has been 1.00 or 1.01 in every single cod. It doesn't matter if I play seriously or just mess around or do challenges, it always stays the same.
The issue is one good player in a bot lobby will ruin the game for ALL of the players on the opposing side - so if a good player queues with a bad player, I doubt they actually average the skill, but rather weight it towards the high skill player. That way only one person has a bad experience (your friend) rather than the whole enemy team.
Yes that is right. I play with two friends,me and one of them are 2 kd run and gun the other is 0.8 kd,he can't play,when we play with him yes it is easier for us but for him is unplayable.
The hardest issue with SBMM for me (in casual matches) is that I think that it is genuinely important to have a place for new players (or low skilled players at the same level) to fight it out without being obliterated by some of us sweaty tryhards. BUT that means it'll probably be exploitable and some sweats will find a way to get in there and ruin it for the newbs. Second BUT: apparently it's very, very difficult to get it right... I love having a vast difference in player to player skill level in casual matches. I like stomping one match and then being like ''wtf... is this guy hacki... no wait... he looks legit.... How does he do this?" the next match. If that's possible, while retaining lobbies (or having community servers for this purpose) and implementing a good variety of SBMM for ranked play... well.... that'd be perfect.
I'm glad this video was made because this is something I've wanted to see for a while, but sadly I've seen the worst outcome from the loudest (and frankly worst) critiques of COD. One I absolutely disagree with entirely is like Blame Truth. I get the points he tries to make but he lies so often about things and hes done it again with this white paper. I'm glad channels like yours exist to break down things, an honest, transparent, state-it-as-is approach. I just hope the community can show maturity in voicing their critiques instead of blaming variables that can apply to any game.
eomm is either 1. a fancy name to describe what they explain here (maximize players retention and playtime through the described system) 2. maybe you re right and there is another mechanism that also maximize playtime through the win / loss / loss / loss / loss loop that is described in their old eomm patent.
I'm not a huge CoD player, but my 2 cents are that every multiplayer would benefit from persistent lobbies and a robust, majority-kickvote system. Don't let players report others 100 times a game on the fly, but do let them start a vote to remove annoying players.
Everything they mention don’t mean squat if connection is not the number one priority. Because as long as ping is not king their system will fail. At the end of the day nothing will change and everyone just has to accept it.
SBMM wouldn’t be much an issue if the servers were more stable. I feel like the only reason I get beaten is not because the opponent is better but because he has a better connection
Ace, thank you for the breakdown!Very informative and helpful. Now I can confirm what I’ve suspected, they manipulated my MP experience. I mainly play solo Small Map moshpit (Core & Hardcore) to grind GrandMastery, complete challenges, etc. Majority of the time I’m always the best player on my team and everyone else goes negative or doesn’t play the objective. It’s frustrating to play a game with a goal to improve just to get punished. I’m not even that good currently have a 2.1kd went down from 2.4kd.
I'm not sure I agree with the whole "friendships and rivalries" thing since COD lobbies are still super toxic and worthy of just turning off VC and text chat entirely, but I agree it would help more with consistency, especially ping wise. Would definitely be in favor of lobbies no longer disbanding at the very least.
As a black man "Friendships and rivalries" means I get called the N-Word 20 times a minute the second I open my mouth. I'll have VC on for Warzone and MWZ, but never 6v6.
And? Just because you hate using VC doesn't mean other people do. Were aware of how toxic BO2 lobbies were, yet we still loved them and miss it. Some people are more sensitive than others and have different preferences but that's okay. COD is missing that social element it once had.
@@Hybred That's my point, some people have nostalgic experiences, and that's alright, but I personally never had a good interaction back in the day. I'm just voicing my opinion.
@@Rayuzx but I'm not being nostalgic. I genuinely like the social aspect of COD, it was the main reason I got on to play. With no VC chat I highly doubt I and many others would've played that game for 4 years
This is why I play xdefiant. I can actually play with my friends and we can all have a good time again. They aren’t miserable anymore playing in my lobbies
There is no excuse to disperse lobbies, if i play a game of free for all and you've determined that this lobby is fair and balanced there is no reason why the lobby needs to break up after one match, nobody drastically improved or regressed in skill over the course of this game, they need to look at skill over a longer term and not just over the past couple of games, the fact that this exists in modes like gun game is laughable too.
Ace I’d have to say I disagree about having any real form of skill matching in casual lobbies, at least in terms of establishing a lobby. I think that performance should be strictly merit based and people who want a better experience can earn it like we all had to. There is nothing wrong with improving and even getting gratification from the sense of progression. I do 100% believe, as a high skill player myself, that team balancing is an absolute necessity. Is it annoying to carry a bad team? Yes. It is much better for everyone overall though and the game doesn’t revolve around me.
I think the numbers are exaggerated in some way when it comes to players backing out and player enjoyment. I played probably 50-100 games of Minefield stretched across the entirety of it being present. And keep in mind there was zero SBMM in that game mode. I never experienced anyone backing out or players having a bad experience, even though there were absolutely players being stomped on. These statistics have to be skewed in a way that fits their narrative because I just did not experience that.
My experience with minefield is the same as yours probably played like 40 -80 games had like a 2.6 KD nobody ever quit It was allowing me to play players im normally not allowed to play in normal Sbmm lobbies
Eagerly waiting for the 'Input Whitepaper' now... Let's see their metrics: %using each input, %precision for each input, average K/D per input and skill level, AA strength vs player engagement/retention and much more
So their goal is to make sure everyone meets the minimum threshold for enjoyment and no one truly gets to enjoy the game because once you reach that threshold they're going to ruin your experience to boost someone elses
I know we’ll probably never get this info, but id be curious on the timeframe which data was taken. Was it mostly SBMM that drove people away or did a new AAA game just get released, was it beginning of a new season, middle, or end, was it over multiple seasons? I think the timeline would be pretty revealing
That was the first thing that came to my mind. And forgive me if I'm wrong, they didn't ever state whether the numbers even stabilized to their baselines or how long it took. Would be pretty important to know as well to know they aren't just spouting out jargon to justify decisions.
I really appreciated how you did this video. As someone who thinks a level of SBMM is necessary to keep relatively even matches (blowouts to me suck and also having super easy matches aren't fun) to make the game fun I like that you aren't overly negative. I see channels like Nerocinema act like it is the end of the world and be so overly negative that it feels ridiculous. That said Cods SBMM implementation is very frustrating and absolutely should be loosened. Ironically with how fast the sbmm changes it almost feels like there is no sbmm sometimes since it feels like you go from either lobbies being too easy or getting stomped on in recent cods. Which was the problem with really old cod games mp lobbies with not much sbmm at all.
The lag is real man, i been playing a little better this season just because i been using the new weapons and the lobbys been lagging like crazy, thats the worst part in my opinion, THE LAG.
Do you mean lag or do you actually mean game engine optimization? There's been a serious issue with game engine optimization since season 4 reloaded, to the point where I can barely play or I have to reset my game every two matches. Lag will feel very different such as rubber banding, which I do feel occasionally, but right now the biggest issue is game engine optimization which will have game engine stutters, possible audio crackling, and overall the optimization and performance will worsen as you play more games and more time goes on without resetting the game.
I don't play MP Shooters often anymore, but I really enjoy the XDefiant matchmaking. I'm almost constantly third place in every game. The player in first place is always insanely good, second is very good and then there's me who's just above average. In CoD I get first place in my first two games, and then in the next ones I get completely obliterated. I have no problem with a game being competitive, but that's why there is a ranked mode I have no Idea how Activision thinks that SBMM is a good thing, rather then grabbing more money out of less skilled players who are willing to pay for skins
I feel like a better team balancing tactic would be a kickball style balance. Take the highest skill player, put him in team A. 2nd highest goes to team B, 3rd highest goes to team A and so on and so forth
This explains so much. I'm always changing my load out as I believe it improves my game being versatile. Of course my KD suffers but I've given up worrying about it. Odd though, as soon as I get sweaty initially I'm a machine then suddenly not so. What I suspected but didn't know till now was my ping seemed to get worse too and you have just confirmed this to be so.
I am a above average player I sit at 1.8 to 1.9 . I find the sbm annoying it makes me feel stuck in a loop of playing in stacked lobbies against me or put into matches that are almost done and the team I get put with are being murdered. I am solo player as well
I know I’m late to the party on this video, but you essentially nailed it on the head about persistant lobbies being basically a massive fix for how this SBMM works, and we had this and was proven to work. If they really care about players of all kinds, they will bring this back, because even if SBMM is strict, you can back out and find those lobbies that are easier or just tough enough where you want to stay in those lobbies over multiple matches, but as they mentioned in the paper. They are able to use the disbanding lobbies to get the data a lot more efficiently and accurately because of it. I could be wrong with how I interpreted it but that’s how I saw as to why they kept disbanding lobbies
You people would bitch MORE if they did that. It's not like taking it out will magically give you matches that are all similar. Old cod swayed wildly from match to match. It's called playing online. Some of you should be more worried about enjoying the game than your K/D and who's responsible for your lack of kills 🤷♂️
@@rabidkangar00Lmao nah xdefiant and crucible in destiny 2 taking out aggressive sbmm in casual playlists all had a net positive effect on player progression and organic matchmaking. It would not be different for cod to make it connection based and keep retaining lobbies based on whoevers around. People can choose to leave and find another match or play against a random group again and again. This dogshit eomm system only exists to milk money from shitters by protecting them and keeping them in their bot lobby elo.
Not really. If you go back to a game like BO4 or something like that, it's an absolute sweat fest, now. So they weren't lying about that feedback loop, at least.
I might be crazy but I might’ve been part of the testing with the reduced SBMM. For like a week or so, I would get into matches quickly and not feel like I had to sweat just to get 20 kills. I was able to sit back, relax, and finish up the Interstellar camo grind. Then one day, everything went back to the typical super sweat lobbies. I haven’t played a game since Season 5 released because of how horrible the lobbies were (though that’s the usual when a new update drops).
Still no data on the aim assist issues? I can't be the only one whose AA gets cranked up and down on its own. And of course, they refuse to release data that doesn't support what they want to do, typical.
The system doesnt take into account camo grinding, challenge grinding, or anything fun. You have to get railed until you end up in lobbies where completing these things are possible and then you can just put on the meta weapons again and dominate the lobby.
@1:40 thank you Ace, this is the EXACT reason I have not bought COD since 2019. It’s not about having ZERO SBMM, but it’s the amount in which they ramped up SBMM for modern titles.
After Xdefiant premiere I touched MWIII two times and I left after two matches. This shows how real these stats are. If game would be fun I would stay. This is the factor thats the most important to keep ppl playing. Why they are not willing to give us NOSBMM public playlist? Everyone should be happy and did not leave the lobby
Look I have played COD forever. I used to know my skill based on K/D now, that is impossible. As Ace said challenges will destroy your K/D with non-meta guns. I can be top of lobby and lose, and sometimes be at the top and win. Was I the one meant to carry the team when my team lost and all teammates sucked??? So frustrating COD mostly lost me to XDefiant, due to their SBMM.
I actually started playing mw3 again and I’m having fun with it but MAN is the game trying to make me quit lol Currently I’m grinding camos so I’m not always using the best guns but some games are just impossible because of SBMM. Luckily my friends have also gotten back into mw3 so i can piggyback off the fact that they’re not as good as I am and while I’m playing with them, I can actually enjoy the game and have fun while grinding camos. I just miss the old days when you had to be good at the game to be good at the game. You didn’t have artificial numbers going up and down in the background making you think you’re improving just so you won’t quit the game so you’re more likely to spend money on skins and then battlepass. Like you, I’m not the best player ever but if I get going I can compete with the best. But, that means my matches are all over the place with SBMM. One match I’m playing Optic 1v6 getting spawn trapped and shot through walls with 6 killstreaks going off all at once, and the next match I’m fighting kids with no thumbs because I went 0-40 against Optic last match lol (clearly exaggerating a little) Oddly enough, I feel like I have actually improved a lot over the past week. It wasn’t because of anything SBMM did though. I’ve really been focusing on my aim, map knowledge, abusing headglitches, running the best perks/attachments and field upgrades (since I’m grinding random camos), and always being gun up ready to fight. Again, I did that on my own, SBMM didn’t do any of that. I went out on my own in bot lobbies, watched tips and tricks videos and I put that into practice during matches. SBMM as a whole, isn’t helping the community no matter what their stats say. Very few players are going to TH-cam, Reddit, private matches etc, to learn and improve. Most have a bad match, blame SBMM, and move to the next without looking at themselves anymore. Yes, about 50% of the time it was SBMM putting you into a very high bracket that match, but it’s also equally as possible, based on the stats from this video, that you were the bot for that lobby to be an even match and could’ve learned something from the match to improve on later.
MW2023 was my last cod I will ever buy. I am an above average player and the manipulation is too overwhelming!! The game is not fun at all after three matches it becomes unbearable!!
Call of Duty was the one game I’d get on and have such a blast with friends. Now ever since MW19 no one in my friend group wants to play with each other, especially me. They all talk about how well they do in their own matches but when I party up with them, it’s just them raging 90% of the time due to my lobbies. The game where I met most of my online friends is now the game where none of them want to play together.
They do. It's just that once they get good, then why should new players come in just to get stomped? They want players to *keep* coming, and they aren't all gonna be immediately good.
Gaming should've had better gatekeepers. It was all downhill once it became the biggest form of entertainment. No reasonable person would buy skins at these prices. People laughed Bethesda off horse armor almost 2 decades ago. Now for the price of a good indie/couple year old game you can get a skin pack that doesn't carry between games. Is whaling really that much more profitable than $70 to unlock every cosmetic that many more people would be willing to buy?
SBMM keeps me (a very average 1.01 k/d player) from playing streamers and extreme sweats. Keeps me playing a majority of normal players and keeps me away from terrible players. I will always want sbmm because I don’t have time to play constantly and be as great as those who have no lives or do this for a job. I don’t have time to keep up with metas. And I play to have fun and relax. Not have to try just to break even
Here’s the thing you’d still be playing average players even in the old matchmaking. Hell you might even make new friends because lobbies stuck together and your connection was consistent
If you an average player have that one off game you drop a 3kd you’d still meet streamers that destroy and send you back to an easier lobby….. up and down like that
@@JFabersyou’re* and how so? Because I like playing a game for fun? Not for needing to be better than others? Sounds like it’s your ego that is the problem
I think something that would solve some of the team balancing issues would be to remove playing the objective from your skill rating. This would make it so that the sbmm is only trying to balance out kills between the two teams and allowing strategy and playing the objectives to actually be rewarded
One of my biggest issues is how the lowest skilled player(s) in a party are often in over their heads with the matchmaking. I'm much better than most of my friends who only play once every week or two. When we party up, the lobbies are much easier than normal for me, but my friends feel like they are fighting for their lives every match. Makes it hard to just chill with the boys.
Nailed my experience as a solo player. Feels like 75% of lobbies (Domination) I start with only 5 teammates, eventually get a 6th, 2 quit, etc. And feels like it's even worse since the start of S5. Every game is the CDL Finals.
rapidly changing skill ratings is exactly as you described for me and my experience. I am someone who doesn't want to use the same loadout every single time. I like to swap it up constantly, it keeps it fresh. Doing that always means getting fucking wrecked, getting mad as hell, and quitting.
5:25 I noticed this before this whitepaper came out. If I used meta loadouts, my lobbies would be full of people using the meta loadouts. On the other end, if I used a knife only class, I can be certain that in a few games, there would be a LOT of knife only players in the lobby (as well as shotgunners and snipers, may be a sort of TTK matching?) Great video breaking it down for us, you always put out great work. Hope you and your new family are doing well!
Another thing I noticed is that in lowered skilled lobbies meta does not matter. That makes it so SBMM always bounces good players around so you never feel like you get a fair game. So lets say you're an above average player doing a weird challenge or trying something off-meta. Your first game you will get crushed since you probably have a really high skill rating from playing meta lobbies. After that, for your next games you will gradually be bumped down into lower and lower skill matches. Once you get to the point meta does not matter, where map awareness and other skills are more valuable, it will not take long for you to start crushing lobbies. After the first game you start to actually do good, SBMM will again punish you and the next game you will get crushed. This makes it so you never get a stable experience and it is really frustrating as you cannot tell if it's actually the gun you're using that's the issue or maybe you're getting tired and your aim is not on point. It gets to a point where in-game I'm actually thinking to myself maybe I should stop getting kills since I don't want a horrible next game.
I love how they show that high skill players tend to have lower ping, as if they actually get matched to servers nearby. In reality, lower ping creates "high skill" players, or really just well performing players. Basically they just hoped we'd get the cause and the effect backwards.
Great video as always Ace! I read through the paper myself earlier and felt it only reinforced what we already knew although I did appreciate the clarification on some of the more nuanced sections. I agree with all of the points you made in this video and really hope that they consider bringing back persistent lobbies in the future as unlikely as that may be.
I totally agree with you on breaking up the lobbies. I made a ton of friends in MP in COD WW2. Now, nothin, zippo, none, nada. It removes all the social from MP. I might as well be fighting bots.
I totally agree with you, a moving average of your skill rating would be much more enjoyable. One of the reasons I stopped playing COD was how predictable the SBMM would give me easy or hard lobbies. If I did well I would know I'll get stomped next game. This is very unsatisfying and made me feel that my outcome in a certain game was predetermined by SBMM.
Disbanding lobbies is my biggest issue as well. I don’t mind getting stomped on if I can come back in the next game and learn from it, trying new tactics and weapons. At that point, my goal in the game isn’t to win anymore, it’s to do better than the last game, or finally win a gunfight with that top player. If they brought that back, I’d be interested in coming back to COD as well.
I do think the lower SBMM test period they're talking about was around the time of Cache being in the game. I noticed a significantly easier set of lobbies despite multiple games of 2.5+ KDs with 25+ kills in a mix of solo queue and parties
Man stop believing them! My friend on WZ has the hardest lobbies ever where im struggling to get 3 kills on a respawn gamemode while when its mine I can easily get over 10… these charts don’t prove nothing. How do they know if player2039 didn’t leave due to not liking the map? Had to go? Internet dropped out? Went to play another game? They dont know nothing. They need to make a POLL. A true poll
12:47 as a solo q player, this is my experience every day. Sometimes I end up on the other side of that scoreboard, but more times than not, there’s no winning the match, and if the skill balance is really lopsided against me, I just bail and let that lobby burn.
This is why we need servers browsers in multiplayer games so we as players have the control over our own experiences in game. I want to play BO6 and it looks good. But I will wait to see how they handle SBMM in BO6 before I devote time to it. The strong SBMM is why I stopped playing COD. I hate that my experience is completely manipulated by an algorithm and it determines my gaming experience. Feel like I’m some fucking rat in a maze being monitored by Activision!
When I play KC solo, I often have more tags (confirms + denies) than the rest of my team combined. Oh yeah, I usually am the only one with a positive K/D. FUN!!! 🎉🎉🎉
I am in my 40s. I play COD with buddies as a casual thing and I only play be cause I always played the franchise. But year over year it’s been less and less. So often we play and just hope we have 1, maybe 2 games where we don’t either run into cheats, squads or just crazy lobbies. If I drop 50 one game it is essentially time to call it a night because we know the next games are going to be frustration. So my performance doesnt even just negatively impact me. It impacts my buddy as well. At the end of the day between SBMM and cheating the game is fun maybe %10-15 of the time. And there are plenty of night where we just pass on playing because it is just not worth the frustration. Especially knowing it is not that we may just get unlucky one night. It’s that the game itself is dictating the experience. Intentionally. No one likes to feel manipulated and there is no way around that anymore. So their graphs on people coming back in 14 days see,s irrelevant to me. I’ll be back in 14 days. But instead of my playing 10 times in 14 days… I’ll play 4. Then even on those occasions i drop 50-70 kills. It isn’t even satisfying because i just feel SBMM threw me an artificial bone.
I didnt play the game for months because i was focusing on my studies. When I came back I had such a good time, my matches actually felt like casual matches. I could chill, didn't need to sweat like crazy, I actually felt relaxed playing cod. I even got my second ever MGB in one match. However, after that first day I came back, the next days were extremely frustrating. Every lobby I got into was filled with enemies using meta loadouts, sliding and jumping like cracked up rabbits, and they were generally just playing as sweaty as ever. It hasn't gone back since. Casual CoD should be relaxing, enjoyable, without you having to constantly have to put 10000% into every lobby. With how it is now, you have to play the game like it is ranked just to have a half chance of competing... In causal.
The biggest issue I have with SBMM is playing with friends. None of my friends enjoy playing with me because they get destroyed in my lobbies and don't have any fun.
They talk about how when they play solo it's an entirely different experience.
#FSBMM
sole reason why we dont play cod anymore.
solo mp feels like alcoholism, party feels like masochism.
sure, its purely skill issue but in late 20s and beyond gaming skills are far from priority for most people
This 100%. My best friend and the guy I’ve played with the most tells me about how well he was doing in his cod lobbies earlier and that he’s so excited to get on and play with me, and then when we join in together he gets curb stomped and ends up quitting. How is that fun for anyone?
I got in the lobby of a friend of mine and I got 106 kills with 60 deaths K/D of 106/60 it’s really a whole other experience
@@rubbermyducky5998You just described exactly why it exists though... You can't be this unaware, right? Right!?
Same feeling with my dad and friends. My dad and uncle cannot keep up with my lobbies and end up quitting after a few games
I love being consistently at the top of my lobby & still losing more often than not.
this is pretty much the only type of match i get anymore
Reason I quit. I did just fine most matches... Even to an ungodly degree at times with awful loadouts while my team struggled, and it just got old, because support loadouts now are absolutely crap so you can't even be the team crutch!
@@GardenFootCreatureUnfortunately for me, I'm at the bottom no matter if I win or lose. My kd in old CODs was 1.5 -2. Now I have a .94 and every game is an uphill struggle.
Every single one.
The game basically tells me I gotta be prime LeBron to get a win
Yup dropped 150 kills one time and still lost 😂
I just miss the genuine random mixed lobbies we used to get.
Now everyone on the enemy team is either a Faze member or a Bot and there’s no in-between.
Try xdefiant
They were never genuinely random
@@elliottfussell3523of course not, they used connection, so even better
@@lucianorider6748 no. There was SBMM back then too
@@elliottfussell3523 that's not true, like literally at all, I'm sure your source was the doc sheet to dev tweet, both wrong, they are referring to team balancing, which was in fact in the game, the players were sorted by connection, as those games worked by hosts and not servers, the teams were then balanced so they would have a mix of both skill groups, it's okay to be wrong, don't be ignorant.
A note from an average casual player. Not played MP for many months. My last experience was a 10 game losing streak getting smashed by obviously better players. If lobbies were random I could accept it but the fact the algorithm chose that experience for me was too much to take. Could care less about stats or being good, just want to have fun.
Exactly fun over stats
Stats may be for fun for some but I'd sacrifice stats for non-disbanding lobbies and having to sweat or get destroyed I loved to goof off in matches created the best memories like ninja defuses playing using an AA-12 shotgun as a sniper with optics and slugs or competing with a buddy for rocket launcher headshot kills going for silly killcams inghosts with switching the thermal hybrid on and off just a solid good time with friends
Absolutely. Let people find what engages them to play over manufacturing engagement based on stats. 👍
@@DillyBobBananaGood times. I remember in the og mw2 me and my buddies all put on riot shields and C4 and all hid in the same room waiting for enemies to wonder in. The enemy ended up switching to C4s and riot shields too.
The whole lobby was laughing afterwards.
If you don’t care about stats. Then why do you complain about 10 game losing streak?
@@niarbrebyc Your ps4 is lonely.
Pleb.
A big thing that a lot of people don't talk about with SBMM is the lack of fun and engaging casual modes outside of matchmaking. If you remove SBMM in a game that exclusively focuses on competitve matchmaking then the people that aren't as good are going to stop playing. What they seemingly haven't considered is the solution of adding more casual experiences that are fun to play with friends, regardless of their overall skill. This was a big reason I played tonnes of WaW, when you weren't doing well online you swap to zombies/co-op campaign. BO1 had zombies & wager matches, MW2(2009) had spec ops (and fun custom games that have disappeared due to the lack of social features) etc. Online gaming used to be a social experience and that's what made it fun, even when you were getting stomped. If you want to cater to casual audiences, create fun casual things to do outside of matchmaking, because matchmaking will never be casual fun now that people have been playing for years, getting better and better. I know MWIII has a zombies mode but it's not the same and super grindy compared to the simplicity of the older modes. They are creating a game that is fun for skilled players and then complaining that if they remove SBMM then all the casual players don't play...
Ace was saving that screenshot at 13:43 🤣🤣🤣
Hahaha I actually had to search for it on Reddit since I couldn't remember which video that gameplay was from but I remember someone posting it on Reddit
Looool that was insane
Sad. This is my every day, probably every single match if I play solo.
@@TheXclusiveAceThe team balancing in SBMM is brutal, the last COD I put a lot of time into was CW and despite having a ~3.5 KD and ~1100 SPM at my peak play time, I only had a 56% win rate. And I’ve had an even worse experience with the small amount of time I have spent in MW2 and 3.
@@PbZeppelin Solo is the freakin worst in the modern era of cod. Team mates are just so bad since I'm a decent player. I lose because of them. So now a days I play in groups as often as I can and the lobbies are way easier.
So basically all our nights of rage and frustration and venting to each other in our parties voice chat is completely validated now.
Yessir
FACTS
Yep, but it's funny that people on the subreddit say this type of SBMM is a good thing and only the only people that complain are from the sub.
@@hrhhrhrh well, I’ll admit I complain a lot due to bad team mates, but I’m a 3.1 KDR player in multiplayer, and when solo queuing it is brutal having to get 40-50 kills every game just to stand somewhat of a chance to win 😔 I too get tired and sometimes wanna relax a little bit and try some off-meta guns and snipey snipey!
@@hrhhrhrh I’m convinced that the MWIII subreddit consists of a bunch of Activision and Sledgehammer bots. They will spam you with downvotes if you even mildly criticize the game. It seems like the entire purpose of that sub is to market the game including operators and other bs.
The manipulation going on vs the fun factor is absolutely insane atp.
It's insane that they're actually explaining this. I thought they'd *never* talk about it.
They’re doing damage control. Selective talking points.
@@grrinc Exactly but EOMM is still in the shadows never seeing the day of light
@grrinc I don't think they are, but this is still Activision we're talking about. If you think their goal should be to satisfy you with their explanation, then you're wrong.
We never thought supply drops would leave either
@@zombieslayer9304 I don't want those back, ever, but you can't tell me people knew they'd eventually open up based on how they flat out ignored us for 5 years.
They’re trying to predict your skill level based on your performance, yet your performance is based on the ever-changing skill level of each lobby you get put in. it’s literally a redundant cycle of insanity. You can’t have one without the other and there’s no way to establish a baseline of skill level for every single cod player. It literally turns the player base into skewed pools of curated/manipulated experiences.
They also claim that bad players quit the game which means high skill players will end up only playing against other high skill players (which isnt an enjoyable experience) yet their solution to this is making high skill players play against only high skill players.
They are contradictive in their statements and are creating the very problem they claim they are trying to avoid. Instead of being honest with the player base and admitting the reason this exists is to manipulate bad players into liking the game because bad players stop buying and spending money on the game when they do bad bcuz they lack the determination to want to grind & get better so they make the loyal hard-core high skill players have a bad experience because they know they will stick it out and keep playing.
They are literally ruining one group of consumers experience to make another more enjoyable over money. that’s it. Point blank. Period.
You sound like the same broken record as blame truth. I won't deny you have a point, but this is just a misunderstanding (it's explained later) on why this sbmm is bad. It fails to fundimentally address the underlying philopshy and instead hinges on that they're lying about balancing when they aren't. They are being truthful, and the truth is, is that the sbmm sucks at its job.
The inability to balance the game properly is the issue. Not necessarily because the sbmm sucks at doing its job but that their method and philosphy of what makes it balance negatively effects the game, lending it to manipulative tactics to maintain player retention.
Of course, lesser skilled people won't play the game if they get stomped. A solution is (as stated) was to isolate skill groups. I dont know what your issue is with this specifically, but you unironically just ramble without making a point. While I do believe it is to make money, that is just a live service thing. I don't think sbmm has anything specifically to do in majority with making players spend money. While it goes hand in hand, I doubt that to be a sole reason.
I'm not trying to stomp on your opinion, but I find it faulty due to negligence on stated parameters and underlying philosophy and misunderstanding of game balancing on both sides. You don't state a solution but rather simply scream about it, and activision creates a falty solution you seem to express an issue with. I hope this is constructive and received in good faith.
@@ShadoDiablosXD man shut up.
The man laid out his point plain and simple, but activisions ballsack is blocking your vision.
@@ShadoDiablosXD ngl i see what you're saying, but i lowkey dont blame him for seeing it that way, the company is shady in itself & is no stranger to this kind of stuff, we're basically at the mercy of what they decide to put out & how they put it out there & because of their history its understandable they seem to lie through their teeth or at most skirt around certain areas or only give the partial truth sprinkled in a bunch of jargan to sound more analytical & fancy rather than straightforward & blunt to the point
@@Deadpool.... Ya. I don't deny that they are ultimately untrustworthy, but they are untrustworthy (in my eyes) for a lot more conventional reason rather than JUST financial gain, especially in terms of the actual devs decisions in game design and not just the marketing department and activisions company decrees. They have ruined a lot of trust, but I find it hard to say that its ONLY because of money. There's so much more that goes into this and I think some people (most notably blame truth, I mention him because hes VERY vocal) seem to forget that the design of the game matters just as much if not more than the decisions made to monotize it and should be seen through that lense more honestly. Blame truth and his followers. i think hyperfixate on the narrative that its a lie rather than just simply taken it as what it is, bad design. This isnt a critique of anyone but rather I prefer to view and as a personal statement.
Too many people have been wrapped up in the narrative to pain activision as liars and frauds when thats just not true. They omit a lot, but they certainly dont lie. My issues with a large number of cod haters (they're still valid) is that they forget what the narrative actually is and I dont blame them. A franchise they love now feels abusive by nature. But again, just to yap a bit longer, we all need to remember that its largerly bad design. Not manipulation. They aren't telling us to be happy, they arent gaslighting us to agree. They are openly and honestly stating their practices, and its up to us to identify WHY they dont work. Not scream. how bad we're hurt. Nothing can get done if we dont face the simple and rather underwhelming fact.
@@ShadoDiablosXD that is a good observation, a little lost nugget of the larger equation
The fact there's a hidden MMR and they can turn down or crank up SBMM at any time with you not knowing is disgusting.
We are basically activision lab rats.
most games with matchmaking tend to have a hidden mmr, the only way to get around that is to play games with a server browser like TF2 or the og COD4 on pc
Hunt is a prime example why you don’t show MMR. High MMR either get insanely boring in their playstyle or throw to sink their MMR back down. I know I do.
That is how it functions in probably every multi-player game you play lmao
@@zoottiithat’s a you problem.
11:15 that's why I find these types of conclusions sus. Like if they were "sure" this was the case, why not reveal the data? Especially if this is a common talking point within the community, it would be one thing if they gave all the data and said "hey we know you guys want this but we tested it and it doesn't work, here's why", but by kinda throwing it under the rug and saying "it didnt work, moving on" it makes it seem like maybe they didn't thoroghly test it because they don't want to go that route.
My question with this is why it was never a problem in older cods? Like all of these reasons would have been true before but cod has never been as successful as back then
Yeah... and if the tests themselves were rigged to give them the results they wanted too... That's the feeling I get.
Played a few games of mw3 and instantly remembered why I quit cod. Everybody was sliding and bunnyhopping on steroids.
Skill issue the average gamer isn’t a bot anymore
@@llamaonmy4683exactly man
Play ranked, problem solved.
I don’t touch pubs anymore.
That shit is torture.
If I’m being forced to sweat, i at least want SR for it 🤣
If you haven't played in a while, you would have been put in low skill lobbies
Those are low skill lobbies now, welcome to modern gaming where even 12 year old Timmy us training to be an esports star
Git bad lmao
"Some of you may hate the franchise you love. That's a risk we're willing to take."
I appreciate them being vocal with the community, but I just can't play these games anymore. Xdefiant is getting my playtime cause I can chill and play with my friends.
Thanks for highlighting all the negatives of their system.
xdefiant is no better its still the same 5 loss 2 wins
@Redmont_ That's prolly cuz ur ass
The problem is that change doesn’t always mean success. Call of Duty is going to suffer through New Coke syndrome over these next few years until they go scrambling to find their original recipe that people fell in love with.
Yes sir. I left that cod nonsense a long time ago
@@Redmont_sounds like a skill issue
The big takeaway was team balancing. It only verified what we all kind of knew and it doesn't feel very "fair" to either spectrum of player.
Mix in parties and you get super wild swings. I seem to face parties all the time where if there were reliable teammates, i could give them decent fight.
But no, my team can't win any of their gunfights, there's streaks in the sky, and I'm trying to take those out by myself while getting killed from every single angle.
Then you get the obligatory "EZ" from the enemy team. There is only so much one individual can do.
I think the match should prioritize mercenary based matchmaking first and then look at matching up to parties.
I just want to play and have an "unpredictable" match outcome. Right now, you can tell within the first minute that the outcome is already decided.
Sending "EZ" in chat is extremely cringe at this point. Earlier this year it was fresh and new, now it's just incredibly cringe.
As a rather average player and as one that refuses to change classes based on the sbmm killing the match (shit isn’t fun anyways so why bother), it’s absolute garbage to play. The common argument for sbmm is “if you don’t wanna sweat every game then don’t.” I’ve been trying to git gud with the kar (prefixe, I know it’s insane, but I’m used to the likes of the mors, stalker, and mcpr. The speed difference and lower zoom kills me) and it is genuinely a garbage experience. In higher sbmm lobbies, I get sweated on by movement sweats and meta slaves simply bc I’m using the kar and when I get into lower lobbies I literally dismantle them. There is no organic experience. It’s “I did good in this lobby, time to get a bad map AND a shit lobby.”
Trying new guns YOUR NOT GOOD AT is a pain. You get stomped 3 games, do all right for one (8 kills over 3 games isn't much practice with the gun). The game assumes that you gave little Timmy the controller. Next game you stomp the other team. Process repeats till you stop getting the game that lets you stomp.
@@joebob3683 indeed. I get a good game in with the stalker for example, and the next game I got guys that are using 6 superi speed builds with cdl skins that never miss headshots and 4 taps. So fun.
The kar IS a meta load out buddy.
@OgCassette you are aware that most guns need to be unlocked and leveled if you don't want to shell out even more money for the blueprint, right? Besides, we were talking about getting outside our comfort zone.
@@joebob3683 I have never bought anything on a modern cod
There are a lot of statistical errors in their findings which I think are important to note:
1. Activision is assuming that the 14 day trial period of loosening sbmm was 100% the reason for losing lower skill players. However, there are multiple outside factors that could also affect this data, such as a new game coming out that attracts a good amount of your player base, ie- Xdefiant. That other game could steal lower skilled players where higher skilled players who consistently play call of duty are not as likely to switch to a different game.
2. I believe you hit the nail on the head with the team balancing portion spot on. As an iridescent level player, playing pubs solo feels pointless. Even when dominating a lobby over and over, there is rarely a game where I am not forced to try my hardest in order to be competitive in the match, due in large part to my teammates not being on the same skill level as the opposing team. 100% agree with you on that. It feels that I actually have a less than 50% win chance in many of those games and my team will get blown out.
3. Regarding ping in searching, they say that, although slightly, ping actually increases as your skill rating increases. I believe this can be explained for a number of outside reasons. The top reason being, higher level players are more likely to pay for higher level internet capabilities ie- fiber optic. This could explain the differences in ping between the skill levels of players.
Sbmm is a very difficult topic and I understand they are doing their best to keep the player base high. I think it could be a cultural issue where gamers believe they need to be good at a game instantly nowadays. In the past with minimal sbmm, a new player strived to get better and be like the players that dominated, so they played more in order to get to that level… at least in my experience growing up in the cod community. Great video!
Well written and I absolutely agree! I remember when I started COD it was the account of the previous owner of the PS4. He had had 1.4 K/D so first I got absolutely stomped in the lobbies I was put in often getting 0-3 kills. But the game was just so thrilling that I wanted to become like those who killed me over and over. Gradually the game adjusted the lobbies for me and I got better and was starting to get more towards K/D 1. The next ear I bought the next COD and my own K/D was over 1 and I was so proud
I was a loyal fan up until MW2019. In that game the maps were shit and for some reason all the matches felt super super sweaty. I stopped playing bc it was not fun. Needless to say, I've not returned, which is sad even for me. Sometimes I would like to buy and play a COD game but with the current state of SBMM, I just know it wouldn't be any fun like in the past...
Ironically I think the problem of new players wanting to be good instantly might stem from those older players because back then cracked players were an outlier especially in the age of tricks trickshotters but now everyone thinks it's the standard.
One of the most frustrating aspects of it for me is that it is blatantly obvious when they match me with people that are allergic to the objective. It is frustrating, because I ALWAYS play the objective, and there are games (like Dom or Hardpoint) where I am all by myself, almost capturing a Dom point or holding the Hardpoint by myself, suddenly getting killed a few milliseconds from capping or having 3 enemies rushing in at once, from multiple angles, to take the Hardpoint. At that point I look around and scream, "WHERE IS MY TEAM!?!" And while this is not every game, frequently it is that way, that I'm the one having to carry the objective for all of my teammates. The worst is when you see the enemy team is pretty even with objective score, while I'm the only one who was objective during the game. The culprit is how SBMM works: I play the objective frequently, so it matches me with people who don't to balance out the team. However, since no one on my team even goes near the objective, I have to pick up the slack, thus pushing this difference further and further. For the most part, skill between the teams isn't that far out of the ordinary from before 2019: there were plenty of times I would be stomped, would stomp or end up dead even. The only issue for me is that it seems to be far less objective players than before.
Also with ping, the problem isn't that it's connecting me to far away servers, the problem is often the servers themselves. I frequently get under 20 ms of ping, 350 down, 10 up, and yet I still get frequent packet burst, latency variance, extrapolation and even packet loss at times. Most matches have packet burst to an extent, but rarely is it over 20 ping, and only sometimes it freezes at 40 ping (it doesn't change through the match if it hits that level). From everything I've heard, packet burst is a server side issues, so Microsoft really ought to think about investing in some better servers, but at this point I doubt they will do anything like that. Why invest in your highest grossing product to improve player experience when you can get your execs another million dollar bonus, am I right?
I can't speak for everyone but when I feel the same way and played a few games and lose while literally trying to do everything, I'll purposely not cap objectives out of spike because I'm frustrated and I know if I don't try we'll lose and next game I'll be paired with players who actually care. It's out of frustration for me when I don't but if I choose not to and see my team trying I'll usually change my mind and help out.
The game doesn't reward you for playing it. Most people just camp and kill people playing the objective
The "white paper" is quite literally a slap in the face to the COD community
The best thing about XDefiant has been having a non-manipulated matchmaking experience. I know that if I'm going off or not doing well in a match, it has far more to do with my individual performance rather than a system manipulating my experience to keep me playing. If I suck, I'd much rather keep playing to improve than be handed easy games.
Of only the game wasn't such an unpolished turd with the worst net code in a decade and everyone bunnyhopping 24/7.
On top of that it's also a whack ability shooter with dumb powers. And looks worse than MW2019...
I think it's great to play XD *and* COD for that reason. The competition is really high in XD because of no SBMM- like you can sometimes be up against the very best players in your region. It makes you a LOT better even if your numbers are meh. And it has some frustrating hit reg etc- BUT when I go back to COD after a few hours of XD it feels like a cakewalk by comparison. I don't know why it has to be a binary choice, XD is free. It's like being a golfer and only ever playing one course.
Props to you, really
Taking a beating as a lesson is quite noble but that's clearly not how the most of the players think
(And why SBMM was created in the first place)
As an upper skill level player I HATE having teams of useless bots. If there were no killstreaks I could deal with it, but the bot team mates just keep giving the other teams streaks. Doesn't help that they also almost never care about objective either so I'm stuck not only being a slayer but also have to be the only one going for tags or objective points
that doesnt sounds like a upper skill level player
go play tdm if you think they are useless
story of my life, I just play FFA or solo modes because I get tired of it so fast every time.
@RotaryPoweredRX I've been playing MW2 again since they still have shipment 24/7 up
@Redmont_ I have no idea what you're trying to get at but clearly you don't understand how the sbbm system works. Switching modes does nothing for the people I'm paired with after the first couple games. I regularly get 60+ kills in games with team mates that range from the single kills at times to maybe in the 20s if I'm lucky. It honestly blows my mind how it's supposed to be fun for me to be paired with multiple people playing on 2 sensitivity while the other team are sweats like me or at least somewhat competent enough to be useful. I get litteral bots wayyyyy too often to feel like I can stand playing the game to keep trying to carry sacks of potatoes
@@puppetmasterI2 It's difficult to go back to MW2, I loved the TTK in it but operator movement and interaction felt way too slow. I really wanted 100hp for MW3
Had 192 kills with the most captures on my team (Das Haus HQ), lost 170 to 34. Whole team went negative and the number 2 player had 57 kills.... gotta love the team balancing part of sbmm. I lose the majority of my games despite always having top kills and almost always the top caps.
You were probably going against a party and didn’t know because they took away the ability to see if people are in parties in the pre-game lobby.
happens to me too, idk why they can't just fill the lobby with good players instead of putting people into a game they can't even compete in, i had a tdm lobby today where i got over 3kd and the person in 2nd got 0.55
Story of my life, always top scorer/fragger of the match, second of my team scores less than the worst of the opposing team, my W/L ratio was .28 😂
192 kills....sounds like you had a vpn lobby lol
@@iskabin lmao - sounds like my w/l
The issue with SBMM is that the outcome of a match is determined not by player's skill, but rather by how many players in each team decided to play the objective today.
The paper just highlights the same thing people already knew: SBMM keeps lower skilled players from quitting and potentially making the game even harder and more beginner unfriendly. It's unfortunate, but there's not much we can do about it. What needs to be improved, IMO, is team balancing, because I have a 0.93 K/D and I am having to carry people almost every match.
If anything, SBMM makes it more beginner friendly. And even though people knew, the high skill players were still arguing against SBMM, despite SBMM being the standard in every modern PVP game and stats showing that it's factually better for the overall enjoyment for the players.
@@DevlVergil The big problem is this is 1. Hidden in game and 2. Used in the casual, public matches. Systems like this are "Standard" in ranked modes.
@@tonedeaftachankagaming457 no r6siege also has sbmm in casual but no one complained about it in 9 years issue is eomm not sbmm in my opinion
@@doratheexplosion6129r6 is am absolute sweat fest that people are constantly saying they hate.
The notion that sbmm exists in other games and people don't complain is bs. I don't play apex legends, cod, siege, dead by daylight, fortnite etc. because sbmm is unfun. Difference is cod has been around for a very long time and it wasn't always like this. It might be the standard nowadays but there's a lot of players that were enjoying the franchise well before it became normal.
MMR decay is without a doubt a thing. When I go back to MW19 after a year of not playing, my first 5-10 games feel like I'm playing against recruit bots, it's so easy I could play blindfolded, 15+ killstreaks with 0 effort. After that, it goes back to sweat or go negative.
Edit: "stay in lobby" should be on by default with no indication anywhere that it's on, and you should have to go out of your way to press "search for another lobby after game" to leave that lobby. I know that's not coming, because being able to stay in the same lobby means you're not letting the game find "the new optimal lobby based on your recent performance" for you to be in, but instead you stay where you want to be, and that's not allowed.
Edit 2: I don't want any matchmaking at all, I want the only option to be a server browser, like what we had in CoD 4 and WaW on PC.
Yep it will do the same thing if u take a week or 2 off the current game
then get out of here mr champion
I miss those days, now we are forced to choose between 2 usually craptacular maps and are stuck playing against controller slows
They will never show you your SBMM rating because bad players don't know about SBMM. They just assume they are average skill - If they were hard stuck in bronze they would realize they are bad and get discouraged, which would lead some of them to quit (and stop buying skins).
Dude, I got to commend your work ethic. You always impress me with doing these daily videos but now doing videos like this on top of being a new father! We’re about the same age and I have a one month old also, so I understand it’s tough, but man you’re killing it. Good work.
I couldn’t agree more about your 2 points:
- expose player skill ratings
- don’t disband lobbies between games
Hearing that team balance will match bad players onto good players teams at 11:54 is so refreshing. I was having a self identity crisis thinking that I was actually bad at the game, and was being put in low skill lobbies despite CONSTANTLY being top of the leaderboard with kills.
I wonder if some players create a game-breaking hardware hack that will combat Activision’s SBMM instead of hacks that give you aimbot, wall hacks, etc.
Never hacked before but this would make me change that
Doubt its possible though, considering its not possible to hack yourself cod points, and both involve hacking the server itself instead of hacking your client
that would be kinda neat idea tho ^.^ @JonathanMerlinSymmank
I totally think they're manipulating the latency. There are games where I'm basically a laser that never misses. Then I'll have several games where I lose every gunfight. I mean I get melted almost instantly then watch the kill cam and see that I was standing there for like 5 seconds doing nothing
Honestly Ace, I wish you took a stronger stance in this video & challenged the study a bit more. I know you try to be a reasonable voice in the community that cuts through the hype to find facts, but I think your lack of challenging the study at parts took away from that normal perspective I appreciate so much. Without data, many of the claims in this white paper hold no more basis that the salty codfluencers complaining about SBMM.
I just started playing on a 65" TV instead of a dedicated gaming monitor because of house displacement due to injury. MAN playing on a TV sucks sooooo bad. I know it has nothing to do with the video, but i just had to say playing on a Monitor just feels better. Maybe because i havent played on a TV in 10 years or so. Anyway have a nice day 😊
I said this on Blame Truth’s video. Have a 20 level newb only playlist like XDefiant. In addition then have a video play that must be watched showing the difference between Pub and Ranked, matchmaking and how you can leave a lobby that is “too tough” and you have to press X or 🔼 to continue.
It stated through the white paper a few times, that they dont want people to leave games as that usually correlates with a player not having "fun." So any solution that involves leaving is not one that would be considered.
blame mid is someone you shouldnt be watching
xdefiant is the same with 5 loss 2 wins
I agree, the wild swings are the worst part of it. If they made it more based off your overall K/D, it wouldn't swing so wildly.
@@DeathJr96R hmm not sure if overall KDR is the right way to go about it, because then everyone would slowly migrate to a 1.00 KDR as it averaged out over the game’s lifecycle / year
@@PbZeppelin that is whats already happening... before mw2 (where i think they tightened sbmm even more, than with mw2019) i considered myself a pretty good player, around a 2.0kd... after mw2 dropped i dropped down to a 1.05 and finally stopped playing after mw3 season 3 altogether... the average kdr spread has shrunk immensely, back in bo3 or bo4 a 5.0KD player wasnt anything rare (at least EU servers), but now? its almost impossible to see a player with stats in that range. (sorry if something is spelled incorrectly, im just some german fool ^^)
@@PbZeppelin Isn't that already happening? Before MW19 my KD improved every cod by about 0.1 or 0.2. Ever since MW19, my KD has been 1.00 or 1.01 in every single cod. It doesn't matter if I play seriously or just mess around or do challenges, it always stays the same.
@@TheRealKingLeopoldII if it’s already happening then why are you guys all suggesting they base it off your 1.00 KDRs….
@@PbZeppelin I am not suggesting that lol, maybe other people are. Like Ace said, they're clearly basing it of recent performances
I feel like this validates everything I’ve been feeling thank you for being a voice
The issue is one good player in a bot lobby will ruin the game for ALL of the players on the opposing side - so if a good player queues with a bad player, I doubt they actually average the skill, but rather weight it towards the high skill player. That way only one person has a bad experience (your friend) rather than the whole enemy team.
Yes that is right. I play with two friends,me and one of them are 2 kd run and gun the other is 0.8 kd,he can't play,when we play with him yes it is easier for us but for him is unplayable.
The hardest issue with SBMM for me (in casual matches) is that I think that it is genuinely important to have a place for new players (or low skilled players at the same level) to fight it out without being obliterated by some of us sweaty tryhards. BUT that means it'll probably be exploitable and some sweats will find a way to get in there and ruin it for the newbs. Second BUT: apparently it's very, very difficult to get it right... I love having a vast difference in player to player skill level in casual matches. I like stomping one match and then being like ''wtf... is this guy hacki... no wait... he looks legit.... How does he do this?" the next match. If that's possible, while retaining lobbies (or having community servers for this purpose) and implementing a good variety of SBMM for ranked play... well.... that'd be perfect.
3:33 The game after I unlocked Interstellar, was my very first game of SBMM hell. Ever since then, the game has been so tryhardy. I call absolute BS.
The first time I bought blackcell (big mistake) I had the same experience
I'm glad this video was made because this is something I've wanted to see for a while, but sadly I've seen the worst outcome from the loudest (and frankly worst) critiques of COD. One I absolutely disagree with entirely is like Blame Truth. I get the points he tries to make but he lies so often about things and hes done it again with this white paper. I'm glad channels like yours exist to break down things, an honest, transparent, state-it-as-is approach. I just hope the community can show maturity in voicing their critiques instead of blaming variables that can apply to any game.
They’re hoping that if they come clean about SBMM we’ll all just shut up about it and not ask questions about the real issue here which is EOMM.
eomm is either 1. a fancy name to describe what they explain here (maximize players retention and playtime through the described system) 2. maybe you re right and there is another mechanism that also maximize playtime through the win / loss / loss / loss / loss loop that is described in their old eomm patent.
I'm not a huge CoD player, but my 2 cents are that every multiplayer would benefit from persistent lobbies and a robust, majority-kickvote system. Don't let players report others 100 times a game on the fly, but do let them start a vote to remove annoying players.
Everything they mention don’t mean squat if connection is not the number one priority. Because as long as ping is not king their system will fail. At the end of the day nothing will change and everyone just has to accept it.
SBMM wouldn’t be much an issue if the servers were more stable.
I feel like the only reason I get beaten is not because the opponent is better but because he has a better connection
Ace, thank you for the breakdown!Very informative and helpful. Now I can confirm what I’ve suspected, they manipulated my MP experience. I mainly play solo Small Map moshpit (Core & Hardcore) to grind GrandMastery, complete challenges, etc. Majority of the time I’m always the best player on my team and everyone else goes negative or doesn’t play the objective. It’s frustrating to play a game with a goal to improve just to get punished. I’m not even that good currently have a 2.1kd went down from 2.4kd.
I'm not sure I agree with the whole "friendships and rivalries" thing since COD lobbies are still super toxic and worthy of just turning off VC and text chat entirely, but I agree it would help more with consistency, especially ping wise. Would definitely be in favor of lobbies no longer disbanding at the very least.
As a black man "Friendships and rivalries" means I get called the N-Word 20 times a minute the second I open my mouth. I'll have VC on for Warzone and MWZ, but never 6v6.
And? Just because you hate using VC doesn't mean other people do. Were aware of how toxic BO2 lobbies were, yet we still loved them and miss it. Some people are more sensitive than others and have different preferences but that's okay. COD is missing that social element it once had.
@@Hybred That's my point, some people have nostalgic experiences, and that's alright, but I personally never had a good interaction back in the day. I'm just voicing my opinion.
@@Rayuzx but I'm not being nostalgic. I genuinely like the social aspect of COD, it was the main reason I got on to play. With no VC chat I highly doubt I and many others would've played that game for 4 years
@@Hybred I'm not saying that you like it because of nostalgia, I'm just saying that I personally never had any good experiences with "banter"
This is why I play xdefiant. I can actually play with my friends and we can all have a good time again. They aren’t miserable anymore playing in my lobbies
Xdefiant has a huge issue with stacking tho. I mean that a team will win easily. Solo players can't win against a mid team
@@elg7365 both cod and xd could benifit from a no teams mode for tdm and dom at the least.
There is no excuse to disperse lobbies, if i play a game of free for all and you've determined that this lobby is fair and balanced there is no reason why the lobby needs to break up after one match, nobody drastically improved or regressed in skill over the course of this game, they need to look at skill over a longer term and not just over the past couple of games, the fact that this exists in modes like gun game is laughable too.
Ace I’d have to say I disagree about having any real form of skill matching in casual lobbies, at least in terms of establishing a lobby. I think that performance should be strictly merit based and people who want a better experience can earn it like we all had to. There is nothing wrong with improving and even getting gratification from the sense of progression.
I do 100% believe, as a high skill player myself, that team balancing is an absolute necessity. Is it annoying to carry a bad team? Yes. It is much better for everyone overall though and the game doesn’t revolve around me.
I think the numbers are exaggerated in some way when it comes to players backing out and player enjoyment. I played probably 50-100 games of Minefield stretched across the entirety of it being present. And keep in mind there was zero SBMM in that game mode. I never experienced anyone backing out or players having a bad experience, even though there were absolutely players being stomped on. These statistics have to be skewed in a way that fits their narrative because I just did not experience that.
My experience with minefield is the same as yours probably played like 40 -80 games had like a 2.6 KD nobody ever quit It was allowing me to play players im normally not allowed to play in normal Sbmm lobbies
@@CalebMay-bf1ci my KD was similar if not higher.
Eagerly waiting for the 'Input Whitepaper' now... Let's see their metrics: %using each input, %precision for each input, average K/D per input and skill level, AA strength vs player engagement/retention and much more
So their goal is to make sure everyone meets the minimum threshold for enjoyment and no one truly gets to enjoy the game because once you reach that threshold they're going to ruin your experience to boost someone elses
There are also different populations of players.
Some like meta. Some just love off meta.
SBMM doesn't take that into account
I know we’ll probably never get this info, but id be curious on the timeframe which data was taken. Was it mostly SBMM that drove people away or did a new AAA game just get released, was it beginning of a new season, middle, or end, was it over multiple seasons? I think the timeline would be pretty revealing
That was the first thing that came to my mind. And forgive me if I'm wrong, they didn't ever state whether the numbers even stabilized to their baselines or how long it took. Would be pretty important to know as well to know they aren't just spouting out jargon to justify decisions.
Just like any big corp, they'll only ever share data that makes their decisions look like the right ones
I really appreciated how you did this video. As someone who thinks a level of SBMM is necessary to keep relatively even matches (blowouts to me suck and also having super easy matches aren't fun) to make the game fun I like that you aren't overly negative. I see channels like Nerocinema act like it is the end of the world and be so overly negative that it feels ridiculous.
That said Cods SBMM implementation is very frustrating and absolutely should be loosened. Ironically with how fast the sbmm changes it almost feels like there is no sbmm sometimes since it feels like you go from either lobbies being too easy or getting stomped on in recent cods. Which was the problem with really old cod games mp lobbies with not much sbmm at all.
The lag is real man, i been playing a little better this season just because i been using the new weapons and the lobbys been lagging like crazy, thats the worst part in my opinion, THE LAG.
Do you mean lag or do you actually mean game engine optimization? There's been a serious issue with game engine optimization since season 4 reloaded, to the point where I can barely play or I have to reset my game every two matches. Lag will feel very different such as rubber banding, which I do feel occasionally, but right now the biggest issue is game engine optimization which will have game engine stutters, possible audio crackling, and overall the optimization and performance will worsen as you play more games and more time goes on without resetting the game.
I don't play MP Shooters often anymore, but I really enjoy the XDefiant matchmaking. I'm almost constantly third place in every game. The player in first place is always insanely good, second is very good and then there's me who's just above average.
In CoD I get first place in my first two games, and then in the next ones I get completely obliterated.
I have no problem with a game being competitive, but that's why there is a ranked mode
I have no Idea how Activision thinks that SBMM is a good thing, rather then grabbing more money out of less skilled players who are willing to pay for skins
i just went an hour and half of loosing every game in cod and my last game i was given bots on the opposing team. it didnt even feel good.
I feel like a better team balancing tactic would be a kickball style balance. Take the highest skill player, put him in team A. 2nd highest goes to team B, 3rd highest goes to team A and so on and so forth
How does that work if the first second third player in the lobby are partied up?
@@CalebMay-bf1ci You tell your friend to think about the rabbits while you get ready to kill them 😂
That's how the matchmaking worked in cod 4 modern warfare
This explains so much. I'm always changing my load out as I believe it improves my game being versatile. Of course my KD suffers but I've given up worrying about it. Odd though, as soon as I get sweaty initially I'm a machine then suddenly not so. What I suspected but didn't know till now was my ping seemed to get worse too and you have just confirmed this to be so.
I am a above average player I sit at 1.8 to 1.9 . I find the sbm annoying it makes me feel stuck in a loop of playing in stacked lobbies against me or put into matches that are almost done and the team I get put with are being murdered. I am solo player as well
I know I’m late to the party on this video, but you essentially nailed it on the head about persistant lobbies being basically a massive fix for how this SBMM works, and we had this and was proven to work. If they really care about players of all kinds, they will bring this back, because even if SBMM is strict, you can back out and find those lobbies that are easier or just tough enough where you want to stay in those lobbies over multiple matches, but as they mentioned in the paper. They are able to use the disbanding lobbies to get the data a lot more efficiently and accurately because of it. I could be wrong with how I interpreted it but that’s how I saw as to why they kept disbanding lobbies
Revert it to pre-MW-2019 levels and Cod would actually be good again.
You people would bitch MORE if they did that. It's not like taking it out will magically give you matches that are all similar. Old cod swayed wildly from match to match. It's called playing online. Some of you should be more worried about enjoying the game than your K/D and who's responsible for your lack of kills 🤷♂️
@rabidkangar00 you just don't want to start getting smacked again 💀 you're protected by sbmm
@@rabidkangar00Lmao nah xdefiant and crucible in destiny 2 taking out aggressive sbmm in casual playlists all had a net positive effect on player progression and organic matchmaking. It would not be different for cod to make it connection based and keep retaining lobbies based on whoevers around. People can choose to leave and find another match or play against a random group again and again. This dogshit eomm system only exists to milk money from shitters by protecting them and keeping them in their bot lobby elo.
Not really. If you go back to a game like BO4 or something like that, it's an absolute sweat fest, now. So they weren't lying about that feedback loop, at least.
@@rabidkangar00 bro gets easy lobbies but is tryna act good
I might be crazy but I might’ve been part of the testing with the reduced SBMM. For like a week or so, I would get into matches quickly and not feel like I had to sweat just to get 20 kills. I was able to sit back, relax, and finish up the Interstellar camo grind. Then one day, everything went back to the typical super sweat lobbies. I haven’t played a game since Season 5 released because of how horrible the lobbies were (though that’s the usual when a new update drops).
Still no data on the aim assist issues? I can't be the only one whose AA gets cranked up and down on its own. And of course, they refuse to release data that doesn't support what they want to do, typical.
The system doesnt take into account camo grinding, challenge grinding, or anything fun. You have to get railed until you end up in lobbies where completing these things are possible and then you can just put on the meta weapons again and dominate the lobby.
sbmm has to either be toned down a lot or removed if treyarch tries to bring back the "classic cod" experience
SBMM has been in cod since COD 4 it only got toned up in AW then it got turned up again with MW 2019
@@ELIZABETHMARLONE2005 thats what they want you to believe
@@noah_smw no that's the well documented truth
@@noah_smwwho tf is they lmao
@@YoungSigmaGrindset what
@1:40 thank you Ace, this is the EXACT reason I have not bought COD since 2019. It’s not about having ZERO SBMM, but it’s the amount in which they ramped up SBMM for modern titles.
Why did they change the system that we had back in the 2008/2018 days ?
Because everyone is a snowflake that wants safe spaces these days.
@@JFabers new one makes more money and sells more bundles obviously lmao
@@hotch4421 yep, absolutely disgusting. Money ruins everything
They say the new one more successful, and I just find that hard to believe. It just gives them more control
You do realise from 2014 onwards they were using the same system we have now
After Xdefiant premiere I touched MWIII two times and I left after two matches. This shows how real these stats are. If game would be fun I would stay. This is the factor thats the most important to keep ppl playing. Why they are not willing to give us NOSBMM public playlist? Everyone should be happy and did not leave the lobby
Look I have played COD forever. I used to know my skill based on K/D now, that is impossible. As Ace said challenges will destroy your K/D with non-meta guns. I can be top of lobby and lose, and sometimes be at the top and win. Was I the one meant to carry the team when my team lost and all teammates sucked??? So frustrating COD mostly lost me to XDefiant, due to their SBMM.
I actually started playing mw3 again and I’m having fun with it but MAN is the game trying to make me quit lol Currently I’m grinding camos so I’m not always using the best guns but some games are just impossible because of SBMM. Luckily my friends have also gotten back into mw3 so i can piggyback off the fact that they’re not as good as I am and while I’m playing with them, I can actually enjoy the game and have fun while grinding camos.
I just miss the old days when you had to be good at the game to be good at the game. You didn’t have artificial numbers going up and down in the background making you think you’re improving just so you won’t quit the game so you’re more likely to spend money on skins and then battlepass.
Like you, I’m not the best player ever but if I get going I can compete with the best. But, that means my matches are all over the place with SBMM. One match I’m playing Optic 1v6 getting spawn trapped and shot through walls with 6 killstreaks going off all at once, and the next match I’m fighting kids with no thumbs because I went 0-40 against Optic last match lol (clearly exaggerating a little)
Oddly enough, I feel like I have actually improved a lot over the past week. It wasn’t because of anything SBMM did though. I’ve really been focusing on my aim, map knowledge, abusing headglitches, running the best perks/attachments and field upgrades (since I’m grinding random camos), and always being gun up ready to fight. Again, I did that on my own, SBMM didn’t do any of that. I went out on my own in bot lobbies, watched tips and tricks videos and I put that into practice during matches. SBMM as a whole, isn’t helping the community no matter what their stats say.
Very few players are going to TH-cam, Reddit, private matches etc, to learn and improve. Most have a bad match, blame SBMM, and move to the next without looking at themselves anymore. Yes, about 50% of the time it was SBMM putting you into a very high bracket that match, but it’s also equally as possible, based on the stats from this video, that you were the bot for that lobby to be an even match and could’ve learned something from the match to improve on later.
MW2023 was my last cod I will ever buy. I am an above average player and the manipulation is too overwhelming!! The game is not fun at all after three matches it becomes unbearable!!
Devs. Please hear this man and make ajustments. This is as thorough as anyone can put it. Also, exactly the same over here regarding ping.
Lots of people crying in these comments yet not a single one can provide a single valid reason for sbmm not to exsist.
Call of Duty was the one game I’d get on and have such a blast with friends. Now ever since MW19 no one in my friend group wants to play with each other, especially me. They all talk about how well they do in their own matches but when I party up with them, it’s just them raging 90% of the time due to my lobbies. The game where I met most of my online friends is now the game where none of them want to play together.
it's like people on lower skill brackets don't even try to get good at the game. sad to see
Cuz they don’t have to
They do. It's just that once they get good, then why should new players come in just to get stomped? They want players to *keep* coming, and they aren't all gonna be immediately good.
People are allowed to be bad at the game. And some people have to try their ass off just to get a couple of kills
Gaming should've had better gatekeepers. It was all downhill once it became the biggest form of entertainment. No reasonable person would buy skins at these prices. People laughed Bethesda off horse armor almost 2 decades ago. Now for the price of a good indie/couple year old game you can get a skin pack that doesn't carry between games. Is whaling really that much more profitable than $70 to unlock every cosmetic that many more people would be willing to buy?
SBMM keeps me (a very average 1.01 k/d player) from playing streamers and extreme sweats. Keeps me playing a majority of normal players and keeps me away from terrible players. I will always want sbmm because I don’t have time to play constantly and be as great as those who have no lives or do this for a job. I don’t have time to keep up with metas. And I play to have fun and relax. Not have to try just to break even
It's in every multiplayer game, CoD is the only game who's player base bitches about it.
Here’s the thing you’d still be playing average players even in the old matchmaking. Hell you might even make new friends because lobbies stuck together and your connection was consistent
Your part of the problem
If you an average player have that one off game you drop a 3kd you’d still meet streamers that destroy and send you back to an easier lobby….. up and down like that
@@JFabersyou’re* and how so? Because I like playing a game for fun? Not for needing to be better than others? Sounds like it’s your ego that is the problem
I think something that would solve some of the team balancing issues would be to remove playing the objective from your skill rating. This would make it so that the sbmm is only trying to balance out kills between the two teams and allowing strategy and playing the objectives to actually be rewarded
Not disbanding lobbies would make the sbmm pill 100x easier to swallow
Lobbies don't disband in MWIII
One of my biggest issues is how the lowest skilled player(s) in a party are often in over their heads with the matchmaking. I'm much better than most of my friends who only play once every week or two. When we party up, the lobbies are much easier than normal for me, but my friends feel like they are fighting for their lives every match. Makes it hard to just chill with the boys.
Nailed my experience as a solo player. Feels like 75% of lobbies (Domination) I start with only 5 teammates, eventually get a 6th, 2 quit, etc. And feels like it's even worse since the start of S5. Every game is the CDL Finals.
While I'm telling them that I'm having a horrible time, Activision is explaining how I'm actually having a good time.
rapidly changing skill ratings is exactly as you described for me and my experience. I am someone who doesn't want to use the same loadout every single time. I like to swap it up constantly, it keeps it fresh. Doing that always means getting fucking wrecked, getting mad as hell, and quitting.
5:25 I noticed this before this whitepaper came out. If I used meta loadouts, my lobbies would be full of people using the meta loadouts. On the other end, if I used a knife only class, I can be certain that in a few games, there would be a LOT of knife only players in the lobby (as well as shotgunners and snipers, may be a sort of TTK matching?) Great video breaking it down for us, you always put out great work. Hope you and your new family are doing well!
Another thing I noticed is that in lowered skilled lobbies meta does not matter. That makes it so SBMM always bounces good players around so you never feel like you get a fair game.
So lets say you're an above average player doing a weird challenge or trying something off-meta. Your first game you will get crushed since you probably have a really high skill rating from playing meta lobbies. After that, for your next games you will gradually be bumped down into lower and lower skill matches. Once you get to the point meta does not matter, where map awareness and other skills are more valuable, it will not take long for you to start crushing lobbies. After the first game you start to actually do good, SBMM will again punish you and the next game you will get crushed.
This makes it so you never get a stable experience and it is really frustrating as you cannot tell if it's actually the gun you're using that's the issue or maybe you're getting tired and your aim is not on point. It gets to a point where in-game I'm actually thinking to myself maybe I should stop getting kills since I don't want a horrible next game.
I love how they show that high skill players tend to have lower ping, as if they actually get matched to servers nearby. In reality, lower ping creates "high skill" players, or really just well performing players.
Basically they just hoped we'd get the cause and the effect backwards.
Great video as always Ace! I read through the paper myself earlier and felt it only reinforced what we already knew although I did appreciate the clarification on some of the more nuanced sections. I agree with all of the points you made in this video and really hope that they consider bringing back persistent lobbies in the future as unlikely as that may be.
I totally agree with you on breaking up the lobbies. I made a ton of friends in MP in COD WW2. Now, nothin, zippo, none, nada. It removes all the social from MP. I might as well be fighting bots.
I totally agree with you, a moving average of your skill rating would be much more enjoyable. One of the reasons I stopped playing COD was how predictable the SBMM would give me easy or hard lobbies. If I did well I would know I'll get stomped next game. This is very unsatisfying and made me feel that my outcome in a certain game was predetermined by SBMM.
Disbanding lobbies is my biggest issue as well. I don’t mind getting stomped on if I can come back in the next game and learn from it, trying new tactics and weapons. At that point, my goal in the game isn’t to win anymore, it’s to do better than the last game, or finally win a gunfight with that top player. If they brought that back, I’d be interested in coming back to COD as well.
I do think the lower SBMM test period they're talking about was around the time of Cache being in the game. I noticed a significantly easier set of lobbies despite multiple games of 2.5+ KDs with 25+ kills in a mix of solo queue and parties
Man stop believing them! My friend on WZ has the hardest lobbies ever where im struggling to get 3 kills on a respawn gamemode while when its mine I can easily get over 10… these charts don’t prove nothing. How do they know if player2039 didn’t leave due to not liking the map? Had to go? Internet dropped out? Went to play another game? They dont know nothing. They need to make a POLL. A true poll
12:47 as a solo q player, this is my experience every day. Sometimes I end up on the other side of that scoreboard, but more times than not, there’s no winning the match, and if the skill balance is really lopsided against me, I just bail and let that lobby burn.
Once again Ace, great break down and well said. You are honestly our “Union ReP” for the COD community.
This is why we need servers browsers in multiplayer games so we as players have the control over our own experiences in game. I want to play BO6 and it looks good. But I will wait to see how they handle SBMM in BO6 before I devote time to it. The strong SBMM is why I stopped playing COD. I hate that my experience is completely manipulated by an algorithm and it determines my gaming experience. Feel like I’m some fucking rat in a maze being monitored by Activision!
Your loss ill enjoy black ops 6 😉
When I play KC solo, I often have more tags (confirms + denies) than the rest of my team combined. Oh yeah, I usually am the only one with a positive K/D. FUN!!! 🎉🎉🎉
Yeah man it sucks. If I have a few beer I cant play because I get curb stomped lol
I am in my 40s. I play COD with buddies as a casual thing and I only play be cause I always played the franchise. But year over year it’s been less and less. So often we play and just hope we have 1, maybe 2 games where we don’t either run into cheats, squads or just crazy lobbies. If I drop 50 one game it is essentially time to call it a night because we know the next games are going to be frustration. So my performance doesnt even just negatively impact me. It impacts my buddy as well.
At the end of the day between SBMM and cheating the game is fun maybe %10-15 of the time. And there are plenty of night where we just pass on playing because it is just not worth the frustration. Especially knowing it is not that we may just get unlucky one night. It’s that the game itself is dictating the experience. Intentionally. No one likes to feel manipulated and there is no way around that anymore.
So their graphs on people coming back in 14 days see,s irrelevant to me. I’ll be back in 14 days. But instead of my playing 10 times in 14 days… I’ll play 4.
Then even on those occasions i drop 50-70 kills. It isn’t even satisfying because i just feel SBMM threw me an artificial bone.
I didnt play the game for months because i was focusing on my studies. When I came back I had such a good time, my matches actually felt like casual matches. I could chill, didn't need to sweat like crazy, I actually felt relaxed playing cod. I even got my second ever MGB in one match.
However, after that first day I came back, the next days were extremely frustrating. Every lobby I got into was filled with enemies using meta loadouts, sliding and jumping like cracked up rabbits, and they were generally just playing as sweaty as ever. It hasn't gone back since.
Casual CoD should be relaxing, enjoyable, without you having to constantly have to put 10000% into every lobby. With how it is now, you have to play the game like it is ranked just to have a half chance of competing... In causal.