Long time no see.... No more Sh*t post videos, I swear. The plan is to have monthly uploads of decently high quality rather than weekly uploads of "meh" quality. If you liked this video please share it around, and of course I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
I don’t get the “casual”argument. Why can’t you play casually and let SBMM match you against people who play at your casual level? Does that mean losing a few games against people who are tryharding? Probably. But if the complaint is that you’re not topping the score board, even when you’re not trying? That seems like a bigger argument FOR SBMM.
What about time based matchmaking? Wouldn’t that just put the newer players into one bracket while the vets into an other? This would also eliminate absolutely sweaty lobbies for vets because u do have players like Wallah, but also like Rick kackis.
@@Solkard Because it's a waste of time, think of it this way, if you wanted to test a new loadout that you aren't comfortable with, would you want to lose 10-15 games in a row so you have an environment you can play in properly? The system works off averages (Kills to death ratios, etc.) so you would have to go out of your way to lower your scores for a lot of games, its easier to have a ranked playlist and a casual playlist, at least for the players who are already good. (and yes I know why people want skill based matchmaking, I wasn't that great at the game (D2) until they introduced sbmm and I had a chance to hone my skills against similarly skilled players.)
My problem is I can't even tell the difference between lag switching and hacks and real extreme players because of lag due to sbmm, I'm top 4 percent in crucible and it's a NIGHTMARE, there is allot of cheating and allot of insanely good players just lagging
this shouldn't be an issue, if people at least go better rewards for objectively better performances in these games you would see new people who want to get better MORE than these smurf accounts, but here we are.
I think a large factor is the use of the term "casual". Some games like Destiny 2 are more casual than other games on the market, but i can still feel like i have to work my ass off and constantly get kills to have "fun". In other games like Team Fortress 2, I can be bottom-scoring on the losing team and still have the time of my life because I don't feel like I'm trying to be better than everyone else. If your game is truly casual, then connection based matchmaking shouldn't cause huge skill-gap issues.
This actually might be *the* fundamental flaw with D2 PvP (and some of the other games mentioned here). Unfortunately I have no idea what the solution is.
The worst part is we've had the best of both worlds before, from Bungie. The Bungie Halo games had the social Playlist, which had all of the maps and modes avaliable and the whole purpose was to chill out and be able to play with your less skilled friends. You could always switch to the comp Playlist when you were ready to grind ranks. It's very frustrating how many basic features have been taken away from us for seemingly no good reason.
The thing about those social playlists is that they inherently worked like party games. Either the player count was so high sbmm wouldn’t work or the items available or frequency of the availability of those items didn’t cause a massive skill gap between players. The biggest issue lies in that design slowly being removed. A lot of games in general are moving away from that trend of causal games with competitive on the side and creating games around the competitive scene, which of course causes problems as it’s hard to make a casual playlist if your game is built for and around competition.
@@Johnnjlee But that's the problem. These games aren't competitive anymore. There's discussion amongst the COD community about a system that's supposedly in the background that alters ttk, accuracy, hit box sizes, etc in real time. If that's true then there's no way that game has any competitive integrity. This is without mentioning the cheating with these advanced cheat programs that allow people to dial back their cheats to be slightly less obvious.
This may be an unpopular opinion but I prefer having games be close, win or lose. I take the point about the super laggy connection, but I'm not all the way convinced with the rest of your thought process. As long as SBMM is updated to match how you're currently playing I feel like you can just lose a few matches while trying something out and then be equally matched with less skilled players while you are not doing your hardest or most optimal play style. I don't really feel like anyone is entitled to keep winning when being silly or trying something new, you try out new things or just mess around because there's temporarily something more important to you than winning. Plus as long as you keep certain parts of a game locked behind a certain amount or percentage of PVP wins or kills (such as Trials in Destiny 2) then CBMM means that people who don't have time to play more than maybe a couple times a week probably aren't going to ever get those things and if you want to talk about games stopping being fun, being stomped into the ground repeatedly after you get the kids to bed is definitely one of the fastest ways to stop having fun. But I like your idea of switching back and forth between the two modes every so often.
"Experimentation is silliness...with a point". Just as you said point, I said "Purpose" out loud lol. And there is truth to that. I play Destiny 2 (been following the TDT page since it was like 900 subscribers) and so many times, I want to try something different, other than using my Insidious + Burden of Guilt loadout. Maybe I want to use my 360 RPM auto rifle, maybe I want to run around with Peregrine grieves and air-shoulder charge everything. But constantly coming up against 6 hunters all using DMT and Matador 64 puts a dampener on that. I have a full time 9-5 office job - sometimes I just wanna chill in a CASUAL game mode.
I guess my question based on your comment would be: Do you need to win to have fun? Why can't you still do the silly/experimental things in your sbmm quick play? You may not win but if you had fun/learned something isn't that more valuable?
it depends. Some new loadouts and such might be fine but have a learning curve that you might not get to realistically climb because your lobbies are "at your difficulty" or whatever the whole time
@@TylorHuebner Win? No. But you wont just lose doing that. You'll get stomped. So you can't kill anyone and you die constantly. Thats not a good time no matter what.
Usually the solution to this problem is either let people choose the matchmaking preferences (Halo 3 and Reach) or have a casual and ranked gamemode that only differ by their matchmaking types (Overwatch 1/2). For the latter, divisions and ranking needs to be the focus for bragging rights, otherwise you'll find that the SBMM will be avoided by the majority of the player population.
i agree but as one of those people who play solo a lot a SBMM pvp mode is great when i want to be paired with randoms who know how to play even if they dont talk, which is most players. man i hope they add a ping system to destiny soon.
I have to disagree with your point about experimental playstyles in sbmm. If I'm enjoying the playstyle, I should either be able to make it work at my skill, or I'm crutching on the meta to get to my sbmm ranking. It's how quickly your sbmm adapts that's important. Losing a few games should drop you to a level where your fun/out there loadouts work. This also requires a healthy game population though which can be rare in any game with a high skill ceiling, compounding the experience issues for high ranked sbmm issues. But I really appreciate your suggestion for alternating with a few hours of sbmm at the start to give everyone what they want because you're right, it's an almost perfect 50/50 split
imma be real: all of this would be great if we had some guarantee the sweat meta doesn't prevail in the casual games too. if everyone is hopping in just to blast each other for some fun, then its fun for everyone. but once a sweat gets involved and wipes the floor with the enemy team its suddenly not that fun, and they're encouraged to either sod off or get with the meta, in a casual game where everyone just wanted to blast each other and have fun.
What's killing casual lobbies is not SBMM, but players who are not playing "casually". There are many people sweating and try harding in casual lobbies despite competitive game modes existing for one reason or another. This creates a rather unfun experience for the people *not* doing that and getting stomped. SBMM is created in response and that just doubles down on people treating casual like it's competitive. This is coupled with people just getting better at games as time goes on - I don't really think there's a good solution to this barring the ability to host your own server with its own rules and stipulations etc or just hosting private lobbies with friends. CBMM, SBMM, w/e it doesn't really matter someone's having a bad time
Honestly I hate the false dichotomy of "Do you want lag" or "do you want a fun match that isn't one-sided?" are an either-or choice. Quite simply just wait until you find a good game with both SBMM and good connections. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive. The big problem with no SBMM "casual games" is this is only a good environment for noob stompers. Yeah, the hardcore players get to screw around beat a bunch of newbies one-handed and then bragging about how they went 50-0 while teabagging their opposition. But being on the other side of that ass-kicking sucks. And if this gets bad enough, the "casual" mode totally falls apart because all the real casuals leave and it's just a group of sweaty try-hards looking for easy prey. So you've taken away the home for real casuals and now they either quit the game entirely or get forced into competitive looking for a fair match, and this in turn screws with the competitive scene because now the competitive scene has a bunch of people that aren't really interested in winning and are just playing for fun. So now competitive players are unhappy. Not having SBMM is just a death sentence for PvP in the modern era. There's a reason so many games have turned to it. The way forward is finding ways to implement SBMM better than its current incarnation, not trying to remove it altogether.
So I agree that competitive game modes should have SBMM. As you get better, you should go up against better players, eventually finding your home with similarly skilled players. I also agree that SBMM is not a "Casual" experience for high-skill players. But on the flip side, CBMM is not a "Casual" experience for low-skill players. If the casual playlist uses CBMM, then low-skill players are better off playing competitive where the SBMM is. I do agree with the sentiment that low-skill and/or new players should have a kiddie pool to play in until they are ready for the big(ish) leagues, but having a 5-hour SBMM grace period doesn't really give a lot of time to accomplish that. Some players (especially those coming from other FPS games) may be able to get the hang of things in that time frame, but many players are going to need to get their (figurative) 10,000 hours in before they're really ready. How this can be handled is a good question. I've seen some ideas in games, and have some ideas of my own. The (what I believe to be) objective part of this is over, so feel free to ignore, bash on, or if you're Bungie, use the following if you like: -Bots. The tried and true method many games use to teach newbies how to play. Great for players who don't know how to use a controller or don't know what WASD is. Start off with just bots, then move to co-op vs bots so you can learn how toxic the community really is, before eventually moving on to the real PvP. -Beginner Mode. I can't remember exactly what game it was (I'm thinking Heroes of the Storm?), but there was a PvP mode that was only available until you hit a certain level. Once you hit that level, you weren't allowed to queue into it anymore. Now imagine that, but if instead of account level, it was skill-based. This would be the real kiddie pool. You can play in it until you hit the skill level equivalent of puberty, and now it would be awkward to let you play with the kids, so you're being promoted to the adults' table. -Revving up. This is solely my idea, and likely not actually viable in real use, but imagine if every day you logged on, you started off with a Skill Rank of 0. For every match that you win, your Skill Rank (SR for short) goes up by 1, and you're matched with people whose SR is close to yours. The higher your SR, the higher the drop chance. Your SR is locked to a specific game mode. So if you're feeling like having a casual day, you can hop around between game modes. When they're all starting to get sweaty, call it a day. On the other hand, if you're really wanting to sweat, just focus your favorite game mode and try to get those juicy rare drops.
@@thegreatoffendo4532 it's still very much alive if you use the Northstar Mod Client on PC. Crazy that the community fixed the hacking problem that Respawn Entertainment could not.
Nah just got a PS 5, so no go for me. The player count is mad low I thought. I could be wrong though. That games mechanics were just too fun once you learned the flow of everything.
As someone who hated pvp in D2 because I was always the bug under the foot, it did feel rewarding to go into pvp after sbmm and actually feel like I was contributing to the wins. Is it perfect? Definitely not I get the argument for more casual matches. But I also get the argument for not being an easy target also. I’d like to see a pure CBMM casual mode where frankly it doesn’t contribute to too much loot etc, and. SBMM mode where like you say the rewards are sweeter. Make it a player choice like freelance or something. Also not a game designer so what do I know. Glad to see you here again! And thanks for all the pvp tips!
Chibirobo a youtuber actually has a good point on this. Bungie should make more fun modes instead of sbmm. Basically adding wacky fun non competitive modes for the lesser skilled without destroying the flow of crucible.
@@lapisgaming6093 definitely an interesting idea. I also thought it would be cool to have a cbmm that the player can choose to go into. If they pick the tougher option they get better rewards. That way the onus is on the player. Think your good? Here ya go. Than have a separate mode for sbmm if that’s what they want. Again, I have no idea what I’m talking about to be very clear hah.
@@jeremy7383 or just do the overwatch route with costume game modes. Bungie should just aim to limit sbmm since in the end destiny is not a esport game and therefore shouldn't be treated as so. It's a loadout/ slash ability game for the most part. Sbmm should be in modes like comp where it matters more.
Playing Destiny makes me hate SBMM more than most other games purely bc I like to screw around with buildcrafting, and you can't really do that in control anymore, so that silliness point speaks to me a lot
This idea that you can just play sub-optimal load-outs for fun in casual playlists only exists if you're better than the average player. If you aren't, then if you try to just play around you will get stomped more often than not, and never know if what you're experimenting with was any good or had any potential for fun. In fact the only people I've ever really heard say anything negative about SBMM, when applied properly, is high skilled players.
Respect for the video! I think there’s an inverse experience for the different skill levels. For lower skilled players CBMM is the opposite of casual. And the reverse is true for skilled players. I think that you’re argument reflects that you lean more toward the more skilled player. The issues that you introduced with SBMM just don’t tend to be much of a problem for lower skilled players.
As whole he is right with sbmm u are gonna end up on a 50/50 but that doesn't give any satisfaction i remember in bo2 going negative 6/7 out of 10 games to not going negative ever to getting kill streaks u get a sense of progretion
i have a 3.2 kd in destiny rn and playing casual feels like getting stomped in the face and i don’t enjoy it so now i just play comp and am debating lowering my kd i wanna just wanna chill and not have to use my brain every second of gaming
issue 1: also true of CBMM, where lobby balancing or random teams and the like could and regularly did result in stomps. Notably, Destiny 2 data shared by developers show that predetermined outcomes are _down_ and that this is less of an issue than pure CBMM. issue 2: SBMM doesn't require you to play at your best all the time. (In fact, since player performances vary day-to-day, that's impossible.) For example, in a 1v1 card game with more traditional Elo, I still find it fun to play a meme combo, even if I'm likely to lose Elo. And if the match is so unbalanced as to be unfun, why not pull out your favourite meme build mid-match to salvage some fun out of it? Also, if things are feeling so strict and sweaty all the time, accept some losses with some jank you're playing and your MMR may fall some, but you might actually enjoy the game more, even if you're not winning so much. (And getting that silly build to work against a similarly skilled player is way more satisfying than someone who installed yesterday.) Consider MTG's archetypal players: Timmy/Tammy, Johnny/Jenny, and Spike. Spike is most motivated by winning. Jenny likes winning on her own terms, often with unusual win conditions or combos. Jenny understands, however, that may mean she doesn't have the winrate of Spike. Many Jennys/Johnnys out there are happy if they play ten games, lose 9, but get their oddball strategy to work once. Sure, team dynamics can make this complicated, but nobody really expects a lot out of matchmade teammates to begin with. Issue 3 doesn't show a fourth option: attempt to match with both high-skill and low-skill players, especially ones similarly grouped up. While, yes, high-skill players will still mow down low-skill players, the newer players can still go against each other and have fun that way, and so can the high-skill players. It doesn't have to be high/average/low, it can be a mixture. Issue 4 is muddied and doesn't come across clearly to me, but also I'm the sort of player who's fine with random crits in Team Fortress 2, which a considerable part of the community is vocally against. Issue 5: Personal anecdote: I haven't seen a meaningful difference in loadout construction between SBMM and CBMM. It hasn't changed the way I build loadouts, either. I saw lots of meta builds before, and I see lots of meta builds after.
I....disagree on the experimentation and silly part. Even when CBMM was in place in D2 the only person I ever saw doing something offmeta was me! And that's not even for experimentation I'm just a contrarian. Like, when I see the top dogs raising their fists and chanting "we wanna experiment!" I'm thinking: "Experiment with what!? A sliiiightly worse roll on your favorite hand cannon?"
let me ask you this... how can you tell the difference between having a great build or just against bad players in connection based match making? A while back people were jumping off cliffs in trials because they got tired of people who had gone flawless and mopping the floor with them. Why? because they got tired of getting stomped by people who were not even remotely close to their skill. there is a point in games where the "enjoyability" comes from beating something but just barely. to each person this is different, but if you get stomped you learn nothing and had no fun. if you're going against people who are inferior to you all the time... your skills become dull and when you face someone with skill you are mauled by them. The problem isn't CBMM or SBMM, but when people take the most sweaty builds into CBMM. the minute that happens... you as the opposition have to counter that with your own sweat build. There was a reason why you saw DMT in almost every quickplay game... because it was good, fun to use, and there was almost always someone on each side running it. after the 3rd or 4th game... you got sick of getting two tapped by it from half way across the map. so what do you do? do you go to comp then? you'd have the same problem there. When things become meta. they are seen everywhere... quickplay, trials, etc. i have an idea for a compromise, they need to make it so that each week there is a "forced" loadout. like one week you have handcannon and sidearm. the next a shotgun and scout. kind of how they did with the old leviathan raids in the legendary mode. this way... while you might have meta options out there form time to time... they might be avoided and force people to use things other then Ace, DMT, etc. maybe force players to use nothing but legendary and lower weapons and armor? things in which skill isn't just about how well you can click on heads, but how your build is. As i tell people, skill is like an edge of a knife. to sharpen it you have to use finer and finer sharpening stones. you wouldn't use a course stone on something that already has a really fine edge as it would damage the edge and you wouldn't use a fine stone... on a dull edge because it would take forever to get a decent edge. if you are a highly skilled player going against beginners. you're gonna get a 50 kill montage and look like an end boss from Dark Souls. if you're sub par and you go against people who are super skilled... well how long do you think they are gonna play?
In my opinion the problem stems from the Players, even in cbmm lobbies most people play like it's "MLG competitive" wich is not fun for the majority of Players so devs implement sbmm which exasperates the problem further it's a vicious spiral.
Everyone else: adding relevant and thought-provoking thoughts/analyses to the main argument of the video Me: I can’t get over the fact that Mesome went with Spongebob font 😂
I really like SBMM in Destiny 2. I never had so much fun and so little frustration in the Cruicible ever and never played so much of it in the history of the game. Buuuuut I can totally see your points. I espacially can relate to issue number 2: no experimentation possible, because I lived it. Thats how every game was for me in CBMM. And now I can experiment which is great, for me at least. And it totally sucks for the higher skilled players. Which is also bad for the game, as you pointed out. I don't know what to think about the whole '5 hours SBMM then CBMM'-thing. From my perspective the time could be even lower. I seldomly play more then 3 hours per session. But why dont make SBMM just a toggle? People who want it can activate it, those who dont just leave it. I would have no problem with higher queue times for more fair games and for you to have more fun. What I really apreciate about this video, is the fact that you dont try to covince me that 'actually SBMM is bad for casual players too, because *checks notes* with CBMM your K/D/A could be much higher (in the one outlier game, which happens every 20 games or so, where you are in the lobby full of noobs, and you are the highest ranked player in the game and can pop of, instead of being the other way around, like it usually is the case lol)' Keep up the good word with the channels. Cheers. :)
If I ever make a game with matchmaking, I'm just going to divide it into 'Shitpost, Casual, Sweaty, Ranked'. Shitpost? Pure CBMM. Casual? CBMM with a little SBMM that pulls from a wide pool. Sweaty? Almost entirely raw SBMM. Ranked? SBMM but with more consideration to connection, since prestige is on the line.
This video needs a lot more views. When people push against systems like this, changes actually come to happen, from Loot boxes dissappearing from non Mobile games and limitations to gameplay on some games. It has proven to be effective.
4:41 - This is where you lost me, a casual player. Here's the rough divide you're not going to like, and I say this with respect: The casual player - fundamentally, does not play like you do. They're nearly always not playing the meta pick. Instead, they're playing their favorites and hoping to do okay enough to remain entertained. You, who have played enough that you understand and moreover can play to surpass the meta - habitually play to win. Therefore, SBMM, objectively, will never favor you. But it is wrong, objectively, to press the argument that the game forces you to play your absolute best in SBMM. It doesn't. It forces you to play your average win/loss level. You, who have more control over your playstyle and effectiveness, have to make that choice. Therefore, if you play casually, you'll stay in casual areas relative to your skill, until you begin to crutch on things that net you more wins. Then you're forced to make a playstyle changing choice. While it's fun to win, the line of how far you're willing to go to win is what defines you as a casual versus a more hardcore player. *The difference between ranked and unranked is that line - Ranked is where you would expect to constantly put in that extra effort. Non ranked is when you would sacrifice some of your wins against your meta-crutching peers to try to have more 'fun' and be experimental.* The one who has chosen their playstyle based on the desire to consistently win, and base their enjoyment on said wins - will feel punished for the fact that their non-meta pics will be beaten more consistently due to their playing meta peers. But if they keep consistent with their choices, their average skill will drop, and the more free form playstyle will cease to be as frequently punished. SBMM is a harsh mirror looking back at you judgmentally. Hardcore or heavily 'dedicated' players will forever be punished by this method, and it will always be objectively wrong - to the hardcore player. Because wins matter above flexibility of enjoyment. A consistently casual player, who truly plays casually, will not care as much, and will enjoy despite the coin toss. This kills your entire premise for this video, and plays to a specific audience that agrees with you. The decision you need to make here is playstyle. Casual play is only dead, because you killed it for yourself. CBMM in casual playlists, kills it for others because the high skill players WILL enforce the high dedication and meta picks against more casual, lower skill players regardless of loadouts. This is the defining argument against CBMM. It's” get good, get crushed, or leave”. Most casual players will eventually choose the last option - causing players to bleed out. My critique for Destiny 2 (and other similar games) is that they don't adequately separate your Skill Scores based off of what playlist you're in. (Some games accomplish this better than others, but that's where 'smurfs' come in.) Your skill rating in the casual playlist, and your skill rating in your ranked playlist should remain wholly separate - this will solve your primary focal issues beyond the simple CBMM jank that needs to be resolved with dedicated servers. Everything else boils down to you define yourself and your limits (Be they skill, choice, or both.) and the game making sure their code doesn't suck (And we know how difficult that is for D2). As far as playing with your friends - we go right back to your beginning statements. Back in the days when connection based matchmaking meant walking down to your friends house. That is to say, private lobbies exist - and they will never be topped by any system managed by automation. I think you already acknowledge this - with your custom built game modes to have a bit of extra fun with the games themselves. For a game to survive long term, it must appeal to both its casual and it's hardcore players. SBMM forces the player to acknowledge what they've been doing and to choose what their goals are. Worse, it punishes straying from that. That , I think, is its biggest flaw. As a constructive feedback for playing more casually in higher skill brackets- more community tools to enable players who like to play regardless of skill pairing to group together for fun-focused scessions would be the best forward option - rather than continue this pitted fight between CBMM and SBMM. I don't expect SBMM to go away, even under protest - but that doesn't mean the idea of skilled players enjoying themselves more casually should be ignored. I just firmly beleive their solutions lay elsewhere than where their focused arguments have been.
ii remember back in the day having fights with people wanting to have radar on for CoD while playing in the same room like they werent just going to screen peak anyways. god i miss couch co-op and PVP lol.
For me, it's like the others have pointed out. We need dedicated casual playlists like the good ol' days of Halo. The reason for this, imho, is because then you can get enough players who are playing 'casually', and a player dense version of that would allow not very skilled players to have fun, while also allowing more skilled players a casual experience. If you only have a single 'casual' playlist (looking at you Destiny 2), then you run into an issue where the (somewhat rare) players who want to just crush their opponents (without the sweat) can easily do that to a lack of player density. As a server IT person, I do realize that it costs the company more money to do that, but there is a reason why anytime my friends want to play Halo, I'm always down, even if it's not totally just friends only. It's because we can, most of the time, pick what level of 'how hard do we want to go today' and it works relatively well. I want that for more games. I want players to have more fun in more games. I want the stories of old, where absolutely silly stuff like dropping a banshee on someone is the stuff you talk about long after the game is over, rather than either having to always perform at the best, or getting absolutely crushed. Games have had this in the past, and we really need to return to those *more* options (and rewards for the ranked top players).
Let's not pretend CBMM is perfect either So here's 5 reasons CBMM is objectively bad for casual gaming (BTW I agree with every point you made, but I also believe that both SBMM and CBMM are garbage) 1. Lack if consistency, you can go from having the best game of your life to the worst, meaning that if I'm just wanting to sit down and play I'm leaving my enjoyment up to God to decide 2. Discourages playing with friends who don't live right next door, maybe I'm alone on this but I personally like the fact the internet allows us to connect world wide, but with CBMM your punished if you don't have good connection, and when me and my friends are all across the globe we will always have bad connections and CBMM will always fail to find a good match for us 3. Just like SBMM, CBMM for 90% of players pushes you to use the meta, unless your good enough at the game to where you can use whatever you want, the minute you vs a top 10% player (which statistically will happen every match assuming it's 6v6) you have to throw on the meta picks if you want to even have a chance to be on the same level as them 4. Makes winning feel worse, in CBMM winning and losing isn't about skill, it's about getting lucky with who you vs, being better increases that chance, but whenever a game uses CBMM I always find myself thinking "I'm glad I got lucky with matchmaking" maybe I'm just pessimistic, but in a CBMM environment I never feel like it was my skill that made me win, I always feel like it's my luck that did 5. Punishes the less fortunate, not everyone is lucky enough to have good internet, wether that's due to not being able to afford it or just not living in an area with good internet, many people still have shit internet, hell if this wasn't the case one of the biggest downsides to SBMM wouldn't exsit, that being connections, with CBMM if you have bad internet you will be put with other people with bad internet, I speak from experience here as I only in the past few years was able to get good internet, hell for the longest time my dad lived in a place where my only option was a phone hotspot with lower the 1 mbs download and upload so low that the speed test would often fail to show it SBMM sucks, but so does CBMM, so it's better if we all just shut up and stop arguing Games arnt casual anymore not because if matchmaking system, COD has always used SBMM, this has been confirmed by infinity ward, COD 4 used SBMM The reason games arnt casual anymore is because people, people have stopped playing for fun and now play to win, to win at any cost, and I'm over it, it's why my most played PvP game is team fortress 2, it's one of the last of a dying breed of games, a game fun if you win or if you lose
One of the biggest issues with sbmm is connection. It gets so annoying getting 120 ms lobbies just to balance out and the hit delay from it ruins the experience. I remember getting stomped in Cod4 then when mw2 came around I was dropping nukes with the wa2000. Getting stomped made me want to be better and it pushed me forward. Sbmm stifles people from wanting to get better because they're always in a comfortable lobby where there's no real threat since everyone is equal. Cod did it best back in the old days. Light skill matchmaking focused more on connection first with each team being separated to average out the skill of whose in the lobby
Wouldn't allowing players to choose matchmaking type just end up being SBMM anyway? I don't know much about anything, so bear with me here. Top players will most likely choose connection & casuals will almost always go with skill. So if there are little to no casuals in the connection pool, it seems like it would become a kind of self-imposed skill pool. You could put better loot in the connection pool to entice casuals, but that creates a "rich get richer" situation where the best guns are in the hands of only your best players, widening the skill gap further. Casuals will just get farmed by better players using stronger guns they can only hope to get by a lucky drop. Top 10%-ers will say, "Just practice, work on your game, you'll get better." Maybe, but by definition, we can't all be top 10%. I'm a 39 y/o mom, I love Destiny, I have over 5k hours logged & I'm around a 0.9-1.0. I could improve incrementally, but I'll never be a 2.0 player no matter how much I practice. That's just the reality of the situation that I & probably MOST other players are in. We've never had the luxury of using silly experimental loadouts. We've always been dependent on the meta. At least with SBMM, we can have a little room to breathe without fear of getting curb stomped.
I will say as a game developer we aren’t totally 100% free to make every call, going back to the skill based vs connection based argument and how it’s a decisive topic, a big part of actually making a game is who you target. In the case of player versus player games your main target is going to be competitive players, and contrary to what people believe we rarely actually build the game we want to, it’s built for the players we want to play the game game wouldn’t sell and make money if we all built what we want, people in these games strongly ask for that kind of thing. Really there is nothing inherently wrong with skill based matchmaking outside of the nothing you can do about it occasional goof ups or the human element of having an off day.the real core of the issue that I’m seeing is people feel pressured by calling it skill based into always playing at their best. In a casual play mode it could still use the same matchmaking just there would be mo consequences for a loss. It really just boils down to dev teams need to offer options to people who don’t want to play at their best at all times and have the mode not affect their stats and whatever metric they use the determine the skill level of the player.
I like the idea of swapping between SBMM and CBMM, however, I think that since games naturally tell what a player's "skill" is that people on the extremes end will should have a smaller difference between the number of SB and CM matches; the more average the the less SCMM, the less average the more SCMM.
Overwatch 2 has a good sbmm for quick play but in comp it sucks. If you have gm tanks with diamond healers it makes nearly impossible for the tank to do his job at his normal speed. They have to slow down. Ow2 match match is try to mirror skill of both teams but skill gaps between one rank is too much to handle. Atleast it better than ow1 comp matching
The point about telling ur friend that the game u love is great, but when she tries it out she dies more than lives, is so fucking true. I have a fiancé and she is the definition of casual, she understands that I sweat every game because that’s how it’s fun to me when I play solo, but she isn’t like me. And I like that. I asked her to try destiny 2 so we could play together but ended up constantly matching 6 stack sweats with last words and dmts (when it was meta and freelance wasn’t a thing).
Such a hard thing to balance, but great video! I really like the suggestion of a "break in" period of SBMM then a shift into CBMM... As a generally competitive player I see the utmost need for CBMM for optimized general gameplay and specifically ranked or competitive playlists but enjoy the shenanigans of social queues and recognize a need to be inclusive of the population. Performance based rewards solve the issue of performance incentive which in itself could almost also aid in the skill gap if developers shifted more towards a CBMM preference in social playlist. Divisive topic for sure, but as always, you tackled the issue with hilarious tact. Looking forward to more vids and the new channel. Bless!
Forsaken era was perfect for this imo , u had the casul playlist just doing silly stuff or regular play and then u had comp with people sweating their balls off for luna's howl and not forgotten. Having both but giving incentives to the higher skill player to play ranked as they can get rewards is great and add rewards at lower tiers for others to start with
“Casual gaming is dead” Considering the number of complaints I’ve heard about casual gaming “destroying” the gaming space (particularly from the FromSoft Souls-Born crowd) I’m calling BS, but will hear you out
@@TDTwo2 “SBMM damages casual play” would be a more accurate, albeit less click baity title As for the vid itself… Most of your points have merit But I still believe it’s no fun to spend most of the waiting to respawn because you have a no-life pro carrying the opposing team, and it’s also hard to get better when you got the same thing going on To me, casual is a place to get good with low or no stakes so you can take those skills to the competitive playlist Or a place to warm up And I’ll admit that it’s hard to just goof off at times, it really does feel like this entire debate puts the devs in a catch 22
I feel like for casual modes CBMM (with very slight elements of SBMM for those on the extreme ends of the skill curve) fits perfectly as the goal of a casual mode is to just relax and play the game. On the other hand without rewards that people actually care about, a competitive mode with SBMM wouldn't be worth playing for higher skilled players unless they specifically want tough games. For the companies making and profiting from the games I can see how SBMM (or even including bots in the case of Fortnite) would drive up profits by protecting newer players which is why I expect more and more games to include it. I would love for games to include multiple options for matchmaking so that both groups can have a good time. I wouldn't even be opposed to the default queue option being the one with SBMM and having an option to select a CBMM version of that same mode. I don't see many companies putting in the effort to do that but it's just something I would like to see.
CBMM is only casual and relaxing for people that are in the upper levels of skill. For the newbies they're stomping, it's basically like getting matchmade against the Doomslayer every match and watching helplessly as he effortlessly crushes you. And of course eventually the newbies figure out that the SBMM mode is the casual mode because it gives them a fair chance, so they abandon the hellscape of CBMM casual entirely.
@@taragnor As someone who has played on both sides of the scenario that you presented I can see how some players get frustrated. The problem with SBMM is that every match feels like a competitive match with everyone trying as hard as they possibly can and using similar load outs/play styles. On top of that for extremely high skill or low skill matches the connection quality worse and matchmaking takes a lot longer. The problems I have with CBMM are the exact issues you just mentioned. The issue is that you have to balance connection quality and team balance which is a challenge for developers to get right. Both modes have their flaws which is why I think that, if I had to choose one for a casual playlist, using CBMM with elements of SBMM to keep the extremely good and extremely bad players from matching would be a good choice. I'm open to hearing your ideal matchmaking method so I can see more of your perspective on the issue.
@@mrsterbund5996 I think that you get enough variance with most SBMM systems since they're not always perfect. Having played a bunch of Overwatch, a game often said to have pretty strict SBMM, I've had some games that my team got crushed, other games where I've dominated and others that are close games. I don't really have that feel of every game feeling super difficult. Of course in a 1v1 game like Starcraft 2, I definitely do experience the sensation of every game being a challenge. Though honestly I'm not sure how much can be done to avoid that, since beyond just SBMM giving regular fluctuations I don't agree with just tossing a newbie to the wolves now and then to let some pro shred him to give him a soft game. That's just not very fun for the victims. To solve the same loadout thing, I'd say maybe have a casual playlist where all the popular meta weapons get banned/nerfed and force people to use some other things. It can even be a good testbed for new patch changes, where the designers do crazy stuff that they change every couple weeks to throw the meta into total disarray and get people experimenting with unused weapons or characters. I think that'd do a good job of preventing the "Everyone just plays meta" feel at the higher skill levels since every two weeks the developers could be tossing in a bunch of chaos to shake things up so you never really let that mode settle into a consistent meta, any weapon or character that gets picked too much gets some heavy nerfs in the next couple weeks. That'd give even experienced players the chance to try out new weapons and take everyone out of their comfort zone, while not requiring a blood offering of newbies. So you'd basically have quickplay (the unranked), ranked play (competitive) and experimental mode (the crazy one).
@@taragnor Personally I've been playing a lot of Destiny 2 and the SBMM in that specific game may be a bit too strict as most people run the current couple of meta weapons and armor. That may be skewing my perspective on the issue a bit. I have seen the same variance in my games where one team destroys the other team occasionally with some close games as well. Most of the games I've played in tend to go to the time limit though with one team 30-40 points ahead of the other. The issues I experience may just be due to destiny being the game it is. I definitely don't like the idea of throwing new players to the wolves which is why I liked the idea for casual matchmaking that was given in the video. Having mandatory SBMM for the first however many games and then switching between the two would probably work to keep both new and old players interested. Of course the number of mandatory games and the frequency of each type afterwards would be up for debate but it's more the principle that matters. The crazy mode you suggested seems great for games like Overwatch or League of Legends but in games like Destiny I don't think players would like it as you have to work for all of your weapons. A game that I've seen do something similar is Super Auto Pets with their weekly pack system where the pool of units is smaller with a general theme to them. While I don't play it that much when I do it's pretty fun. The issue that comes up is that new mini metas develop in those but since they change so fast and there's other modes to play so it normally isn't an issue. I think there's probably a good middle ground of both skill and connection based match making that most people can agree on. I don't know what it is personally but I think giving players more choice in how they queue in games is a good thing so would like to see a game try something where you can set the range of players you would like to match with relative to your own skill. You of course couldn't set the range so that you only matched with players under you. Maybe have it so if you want to be able to match with more lower skill players you also have to be able to match with the same range of higher skill players. And of course in each match everyone's selected ranges would have to overlap. I just came up with this so there's probably a loophole that could easily be exploited.
@@mrsterbund5996 Yeah, Destiny is admittedly a very tricky game to handle, because it has way more complexity than the vast majority of games out there with the builds and weapons with different perks. Since any changes to the meta aren't as easy as just replacing a weapon, since you have people that'd have to now look through their vault of weapons and dig out old ones. I don't feel that qualified saying much about competitive Destiny since I'm pretty terrible at it. The lack of objective modes in favor of standard Deathmatch style is just not something I have a good instinct for. But the looter shooter aspect definitely makes it trickier to handle than a game like Overwatch or Call of Duty or something where you can tweak a few meta guns and call it a day. As far as my experience with Destiny PvP, it was one of those games that was really only fun for me when I was playing against weaker opponents, so I can see the reason why the better players want to get rid of SBMM, but the experience becomes utterly hellish when you play against people that are better than you.
You are speaking straight out of the bottom of my heart. Sweats everywhere im every game in every casual mode is so very unfun and frustrating. I like not trying my hardest every qp game. Like every fucking casual hero doing run outs or drop shots ir whatever in r6, or every stupid titan main maining his shotgun after they married. Or not even havin funny of meta teams in pokemon. What is the point of playing when the fun is destroyed
In terms of Bungie's whole matchmaking scheme, I think they need to mix the two for casual playlists, but also make it very loose on the "skill" side. For example, let's look at the actual competitive playlist, where you have a bunch of different tiers. Copper, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Adept, Ascendant. Let's say your skill level is that of a Silver player, even if you haven't entered the competitive playlist. Let the game match you with anyone from Copper to Platinum, favoring connection quality overall. If anyone's 200 ping behind you, they shouldn't be in your lobby, regardless of their skill level. On the high end, let's say you've gone and reached Ascendant immediately after the season started. In casual playlists, let the game put you with anyone from Platinum to Ascendant. 2 above, 2 below your skill level, unless you're at the top or bottom. That also encompasses the 3 ranks in between each tier, which can have a lot of variance on the high end. This would allow high skill players to still have fun in a less serious mode, new players to not get stomped into the ground as often, and also not have people winning only because they're teleporting across the map for everyone else in the lobby. Let the game take the overall average of players joining a lobby, and look for players ±2 that average to fill in the remaining spots. This way you could have an even higher variance, if the average is right in between tiers, without going completely overboard and putting brand new players against the sweatiest Ascendant+Flawless*92+L+Ratio+git gud types of players. Additionally, lobby balancing should be pushed to the max. If there are 4 Platinum players, 4 Adept players, 2 Silver players, 1 Gold player and 1 Ascendant player, both Silvers and the Gold player should not be put all on the same team against that Ascendant player. They also shouldn't all be on the same team. I get that it's probably really tough to balance all of that, but I've seen it so often that you get all the low-end players on one team and all the high-end players on the other, leading to a stomp fest. Might be fun for the high-end players, definitely not fun for the low-end. Lobby balancing has always been my biggest issue with CBMM. I'm admittedly not very good at PVP, yet the game seems to think I am because almost every time I play Crucible I get the level 1, fresh-off-the-ground players on my team, with curb-stomping sweatlords on the other team. Not like "we'll give you 1 or 2 of these good players and put 5 on the other team" but instead going full "here's a 6-stack of Flawless players, deal with it" while my team runs around like chickens with their heads cut off. Fix the damn lobby balancing, Bungie. SBMM or CBMM isn't always the biggest issue.
Interesting video and premise, I'm only about 2 minutes in, but let's discuss the early staged of this first with Halo 2 and Halo 3. During the era of Halo 2, it utilized your skill-based rank (The rank provided permitted upon the amount of wins you had by a specified margin of elo, or exp), to match you based within a 1 - 15% ratio of your skill rank. For example, if you were a 35, you could look between 30 - 40 for matches. If you were a 20, you could look between 17 - 23 for matches. These "ranks" were a 1-50 base implementation that provided players with a direct relation from winning to progression, upon which the player would automatically be progressing if they win, and regressing if they lost. By equal comparison, in absolutely zero way, shape or form can someone who is level 35 match a level 10, and someone who is a level 10 could never match a 35. Instead, they'll permit a "looser" interpretation of this if you join a wide array of players in a lobby, such as a 10, 15, 25 and 40. It'll try to pick the most balanced "team" applicable within a safe range, say 20 - 35. By complete and utter contrast, Call of Duty had originally a CBMM style matchmaking, where you would match "as fast as possible" against anyone. The person who would be the "best in the world" could easily match a person on their first game. Now translate this back to "SBMM"; Modern implementations aren't entirely how strict Halo 2 and Halo 3 were, in fact, most modern implementations of SBMM are designed around permitting the lesser skilled player is carried to a victory by permitted better players, allowing a "team balance" dynamic. Something, may I remind you, not done in Halo 2 nor Halo 3. Consider a modern "SBMM" concept like a gym with 24 students, 12 of which are handicap. Instead of putting all 12 average players in their own game, and the other 12 handicap players in their own game, they instead separate it out by 1/2. Half the players on each team are handicap, the other half are average. If you want to play 3rds here, and lump in "Well above average", you can. Same principle applies, 1/3rd the players categorize each aspect, thus allowing the "Kid who has a peg leg" play Football with the 300 pound linebacker and the 6'0 150 average guy who can throw and catch. "Is this fair?" Depends who you ask. It's fair for the handicap player, who now has the ability to "win" and feel "less handicap", however the average player, and especially above average player, now have to carry this player to victory. In addition, it also permits that every team is "in this scenario", which then creates gameplay that feels far more forced, and creates scenarios that makes it feel "Impossible to win". Now translate this all toward any game, you'll see the inherent problem. It's not specifically that it's "Matching with skill", it's that it's attempting to put Timmy & Jimmy from South Park on The Lions or Eagles and telling the players on those teams that "It's balanced". Realistically, it's where Call of Duty was verses where Halo 2 and Halo 3 were. Instead of "Matching on skill", they utilize this principle to help the lesser fortunate players win some matches so they can play the game for longer. This, my friend, is called "Engagement" based, and it's a theory, not a practice. In order to appropriately increase engagement upon the players who, otherwise, would rage quit offline, uninstall and go back to their single player game -- you provide them with free wins, free victories, free rewards, and give them the feeling of "satisfaction" when they usually wouldn't do good. And herein lies the problem with modern games. That subfaction usually calls themselves "casuals", despite them likely playing "more" than most "competitive" players in the bunch.
The rest of the video after this point you proved, in specific, why "This isn't really "skill" based matchmaking, and instead it's the notion that they provided team balancing to permit the argument that its matching based off skill, when in actuality, they're not matching you based on balance -- they're matching you to provide a sample engagement algorithm for general below-average players". The solution to a lot of this is to revert games back to the original formula, and forego the belief that "People who are bad just need their hands held". They don't. In fact, if someone is bad at a video game, absolutely zero person should enforce them, or enhance their play style to provide them free wins. They shouldn't be awarded a carry if, indeed, they are underperforming. However, team balancing, and in particular modern SBMM, is perfectly designed to do exactly this. Consequently, games that did not do this were considered "ultra competitive", whilst games that "Do this" are considered "Casual"; Unironically, players who ask for the outright removal of "skill" based matchmaking are also the same who do not want a hand out -- but want to feel like God's at all times. The removal of SBMM entirely is why Call of Duty had 1/10th the players as Halo 2 and Halo 3. The inclusion of "Team balancing" in SBMM exponentially increased player counts to Call of Duty, which in turn lead to the heavy influence of "non-competitive fps games" upon the industry, which I'd argue destroyed Halo. The modern day premise combines both aspects, but in particular, focuses on trying to keep the engagement of the underperforming player by providing them equal or net sum wins to losses, which would give them incentive to return and keep playing. The alternative, which is better, is to match based purely on skill, and within a small percentage of skill window and not team balance the teams. Thus, pressuring your own individual skill to "step up to the plate" and not have a computer depict that "2 people in the lobby will carry one team, 2 will carry the other". If the team becomes imbalanced, it's due to the players who are under-performing are not in the appropriate rank. Thus, they should be losing ranking, whilst the ones performing remain their rank, and it'll equal itself out. Ultimately; SBMM isn't bad. Team Balancing is. SBMM isn't bad. Providing free wins for under-performing players is. SBMM isn't bad. Engagement oriented wins/losses are. SBMM isn't bad. Matching upon the entire skill spectrum to provide "Equal matches for under-performing players" is. SBMM needs to revert to the original design of it. How Halo 2 and Halo 3 created and developed this. Not Call of Duty.
I would honestly prefer outlier protection than raw sbmm. So that little Timmy who just got [Insert FPS game here] for Christmas doesn't match up against the highest rung of players, and promptly gets rolled and discouraged from ever touching the game again.
As a top 1% player, the crucible is almost unplayable for me. I can’t queue with any of my friends because they just get pub stomped the whole time. And I’m having to try my absolute ass off every game just to do well. Not fun whatsoever and I’ve taken a major break from pvp
Im a above average player in D2 (like 2.0+kd or smth) and I've essentially quit. Its just too difficult, stressful, and frustrating to tryhard EVERY GAME. its sad to say this bc im a House of Wolves veteran, but the game is just not fun or interesting anymore
Game devs need to start hiring data scientists to analyze complex sets of data and use it to build a fun version of SBMM. There isn’t one number that will be a good predictor of your success. There are likely 20 different metrics. First company to do this will be on top for a long time
Companies aren't here for u to have fun they are here for money and the skilled player who has been playing for 2 years + is less likely to drop the game than the noob so cater to the noob simple as that
I think the best case scenario is also a issue in it of itself. My personal bets solution would alienate the playerbases but for the right reasons. Competitive should ALWAYS be about SBMM and CBMM mixed, whilst Quickplay / Casual playlists should have a very minor amount of SBMM that really just has players of similar K/D's going against each other, not necessarily all the importance of various statistics. Just if you have a 5,0 K/D you ain't facing anyone worse than a 3.0 K/D or anyone that's a 7 K/D+. So competitive it's more closer refined, quickplay it's less involved overall and the various "for fun" playlists that are just very quick matches of party games like Mayhem from D2 literally have no SBMM but still retain CBMM to a lesser extent.
Improving in a game with SBMM is like upgrading your armor in Minecraft. But whenever you do; the monsters also get stronger. So what's the point? There's no sense of improvement. You're not rewarded differently for doing so. It's a terrible design. If I'm bad at something I want to know that I'm bad at it so I can improve. If I'm good at something I want to feel rewarded for the effort I've put into the game, not punished by it. Crazy how games are willing to implement SBMM as their core MM system just so they can make more new players stick with the game.
I don't understand why BOTH aren't implemented? Why not? Satisfy both sides, get more players attracted to your game so they won't have to settle with what ever matchmaking system is in place.
One of issues about SBMM not always working properly is Trials of Osiris. My kd is 1.3 and I always seem to encounter people with 2 or 3 that just demolish the match.
SBMM has removed having casual fun with my clan mates because they’re pve players I have over 2,000 hours in pvp. They cant just have fun with me anymore because everytime im in the lobby with them we play the saywallahbruh of console and they get discouraged. The fact that quickpkay has SBMM drives this point home because the only modes that aren’t matchmaking on indication of skill is crucible labs and weekly rotater. This weekend trials was out so there were no crucible labs and the rotater was mayhem. My clan mates wanted to do matches with me to unlock trials and get better at crucible be everytime we did quickpkay, trials(I had gone flawless)or comp there was absolutely no compromise in skill level between me and my clan mates. SBMM was matching us with people of my skill level. Guess what, they don’t want to do pvp anymore and I they can’t enjoy it with me. Thanks bungo
first off Issue #3 that right there is my issue thank you for describing it. literally my friends avoid each other because its unfun to play together outside of private lobbies. Second destiny should really try FBMM by itself to fix issue #3. not saying it will work but i think that its a better start then SBMM. PS FBMM is Fireteam Base Match Making.
It shouldn't be one single fix, that's kind of how we landed in this disaster in the first place. I think it should be an even split down the middle if you're queueing solo. Else, the comp of your fireteam should take over.
@@spaxxor Sorry for the confusion. i didnt mean to use FBMM as the one and only solution. but like how SBMM and CBMM have the first priority being their focus then the other such as Skill first then connection. I think FBMM should be used when grouped with a fireteam then look for skill.
This is exactly WHY my opinion on SBMM in destiny from even before bungie started putting it into the game recently was very simple. Gamemodes like trials or competitive should have some degree of SBMM. Gamemodes like 6v6 casual control should be CBMM. Casual gamemodes favor connections, competitive gamemodes favor skill. Above all else, it should use the skill based matchmaking systems to balance teams as best as possible with the players available AFTER choosing what players are in a match. More often than not with CBMM, it runs into problems where teams are very lopsided. With SBMM, it still happens far too often to convince me that it is actually in place whatsover. In reference to destiny specifically, of course. Simply put, for a CASUAL gamemode, i don't care if there's players 10x better or worse than me in the lobby, so long as there isn't like 5 players of that skill level on one team and zero on the other. For a COMPETITIVE gamemode, i want games that really pressure me to play my best and show off my skill, and that requires properly balanced teams - not forcing me to fight uphill battles at a clear disadvantage, to the unfair detriment of me and my teammates, causing frustration for all of us which often ends up targeting each other in the heat of the moment. And remember: Rank-based matchmaking in a proper competitive ranking system is in itself a form of SBMM, meaning the extra layer is less necessary. edit2: For clarification on my experience, I've found the game more fun and in a better state of matchmaking post-SBMM. However, I still feel it didn't solve many problems, and simply replaced most of them with new problems, as well as really not having as big of an affect on the biggest problem of all (in my experience) - the one I really felt needed fixed - as it really should have. In my experience, post-SBMM, lobbies are mostly more well balanced, meaning that when teams are imbalanced in one side's favor (which still happens just as frequently as before) it is not by so huge of a margin so the game is actually still playable and entertaining despite it being a free victory handed to one side courtesy of whatever algorithm(s) decided to slap us in a lobby together. However, in exchange, it is frequent that 1-3 players per team on average will have noticeably bad connections, some to an absurd degree which can make them almost uncontestable at times and makes every fight with them feel like RNG. For context on this, I mostly play solo queue, and at most play with a fireteam of 3 players. In a 6v6 setting, I should not consistently, this often, be in lobbies where I'm either on a team of people clearly better than the majority of the enemy team, or in lobbies where I'm the only player able to compete with any of the enemy team in literally any gunfight. CBMM or SBMM, this should not be happening as much as it is, and yet it has been a consistent problem with both, not even solved by SBMM as you'd expect. That is the one problem I had with CBMM before, and for that reason I never necessarily wanted SBMM in casual playlists, I just wanted skill-based team balance. And don't try to tell me that was already in place, or already is in place, because you can not feel it and you could never feel it. If it's in place, it's a poor execution and always has been. If it's got enough players to fill a team of 6 with people mostly of a higher skill level and the enemy team mostly of a lower skill level, then it has enough players to split it evenly between the teams, no matter how big the gap between them. Fireteams make this more difficult, but it's often enough that neither team has a 6 stack that it should not be this bad. I thank SBMM for making those matches not completely brainless wins or losses decided by luck and luck alone, but at the end of the day it is not the solution to the problem. If the problem were solved, CBMM would just be better for control / clash 6v6 casual.
Not just SBMM, but these Cronus and XIM users are also a troubling factor as well, mainly in Destiny as far as I've been playing Destiny 2 for. Before Bungie implemented SBMM, every player throughout my lifetime would struggle hitting any snipes (Headshots), either missing or landing a body shot and randomly, these same players magically can land any shots possible, no matter how good your movement is or flinching your enemy, they can 90% hit any shots, I've seen 1.2s never miss a snipe shot, heck,, even players below a 1.0 can still compete against a really good sniper main player nowadays in Destiny which is underwhelming at times. I can guarantee you that 40% of the Destiny community who plays trials either XIMs or use a Cronus man. Some people with XIMs can land any snipe shot or never miss, same goes for Cronus users. Games just unenjoyable, got a play a comp game in quickplay and usually get the worst teammates possible lmao
A problem that you didn’t mention (as it is very specific to Destiny 2) is the fact that the game feels awful at a high level. You can only really play aggressively when you’re far better than your opponent, if not you have to respect the fact they could punish you so passive play is encouraged. Look at the top teams and players matching each other over the past 2 years, it’s all bastion barricades, getting a pick, 3 peeking etc. Hell I’m an aggressive player I’ll happily split up death balls in control and take on 4 v 1’s I average a 1.8kd I played passive in Iron banner using meta and I averaged a 4.3 with 80% win rate but it felt so boring
I think there should be brackets inside of SBMM so that good players are matched against good players but with a wider range of what that "good" is, but you can do competitive which affects stats like kd, or you can do casual that doesn't affect it. That'll leave space open to experiment or try different things without risk of losing anything. To put a high skill player against a low skill player, even if the high skill player is using a meme build, they'll still most likely win. I understand high skill players want to have fun, but so do low skill players and to constantly lose for the sake of high skill players' enjoyment is not a good system to retain new players imo.
In destiny I swear in some games I get teammates cracked out of their minds and in others I get teammates named Timmy who lack 5 chromosomes in sbmm and I’m above average kd with 1.27-1.3 consistently in d2
Mesome this is a video that should be shown in colleges and universities too new game designers what gamers want and need to play a game for fun. It's not all about that million dollars for winning every game. Some of us just want to join up with friends and have a laugh and enjoy yourselves not getting stomped and leaving because the fun has gone out of the game you once loved. Might be a bit off but what the hell.
game I used to play have 2 servers, one for lvl 1 to lvl 20 and the other for the rest of the community, it takes like 1 day or 2 to get out of that server without much grind but is enough time to get used to the game mechanics and gunplay, then there will be no more sbmm for casual playlist and if you want, there is always a ranked playlist. The game is warface, it WAS a really good game until it gone p2w
I'm on the older side of millennial so casual gaming to me is picking up Mega man X for an hour or so, then onto Destiny for a few hours then onto something new to try. I might play every day, or once a month but, it's always for fun first and foremost. That opening, it away gives me goosebumps to see the best at their best.
@@TDTwo2 Oh the rabbit hole... first I looked up the Kitten Cannon game, it's "horror" for the cat right? But I was unsure since there are several smack sounds as it hits the ground. Hm.. Indie "horror" game... well, better watch clips of Untitled Goose game, that bird is a menace! no luck. Last stop was Among Us but I just searched "Among Us sound effect" and landed on the site myinstants wich is a soundbar page, searched slap and eventually got to "Baldi ruler slap" Is it Baldi's Basics Mesome?!
this is why we play tf2 and look how well they're doing, a video game from 2007 is consistently in the top 10 most played games on steam. clearly they are doing something right
The # of crucible matches I’ve played this week where I loose because people leave in the first 2 min is making me hate sbmm, why should I have to try 100% of the time, and don’t get me started on dmt and high impact pulse rifles, sorry for ranting
The only reason i'd advocate for SBMM is that Bungie can't balance an already matched game for the life of them, matching the three plat level players against a gold and two bronze
What if the game had both active at once? Hear me out, say the game selects all the players it needs using cbmm, and then it creates the teams with sbmm. I know it wouldn't work everytime, but it would still allow for a more chaotic experiance, while still being somewhat balanced in terms of team overall skill.
What exactly is forcing you to play at your very best in sbmm? Just the fact that you'll probably lose otherwise? I think it's important to be able to enjoy games without being the one clapping cheeks.
It's just not very fun dying over and over... I play a shooter to get kills otherwise I could be playing Minecraft, Terraria or some other game. With SBMM I get put into lobbies with people exactly as good as me (ideally), therefore to beat them I am forced to play above my average, not necessarily my very best, but definitely very sweaty. Idk I'm not an excellent player and I haven't been enjoying SBMM in the games I play. (Check for urself I upload thx :)
basically this. I am a high elo player so any time I am not playing near my peak I spend most of my time on the respawn screen. Also certain games just arent fun played optimally ALL the time, most shooters are in this category I would argue
If everything aside from the meta means getting trashed to that degree against people of similar skill, it's more of a game balance issue at that point.
My problem is that high skill is my casual so naturally I'm really good at fps games, it's just getting too grind, apex, I quickly and easily hit platinum, it lost its fun because it becomes a grind, crucible I'm top 4 percent and it's insanely sweaty but thats my casual because its just senseless "unliving" enemy players and ots becoming a grind due to sbmm, mcdinalds wifi player's or cheats. I'm an off meta player because that's what I enjoy and it's getting difficult to enjoy using things that are fun even if not viable (nightwatch) GL and bombardiers are fun but not worth using if it can't outperform even with my skill
Here's my take: SBMM CAN work in casual games. It's just more often than not implemented so aggressively and so poorly in modern games that it's become as big an issue it is. Think Halo 2 & 3's Trueskill system: it's SBMM, but specifically designed to cater towards the AVERAGE player and tends to favor close matches, with small deviances depending on your actual skill. Why more games don't take notes on this system, especially Bungie since they were the ones who invented it, I don't know.
I've always advocated for wide ass bubbles. If you're shit you're in the lower bubble, if you're god, you're in the upper bubble. Everybody else falls in between them with a hard cut separating the two somewhere in the middle
If bungie just made a separate cbmm control playlist we as a community could stop screaming at each other over this topic. Just let both sides of the argument have what they want.
Long time no see.... No more Sh*t post videos, I swear.
The plan is to have monthly uploads of decently high quality rather than weekly uploads of "meh" quality. If you liked this video please share it around, and of course I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
No more shit videos
LIES
Great opinions, great explanation, great format. Sick video
I don’t get the “casual”argument. Why can’t you play casually and let SBMM match you against people who play at your casual level? Does that mean losing a few games against people who are tryharding? Probably. But if the complaint is that you’re not topping the score board, even when you’re not trying? That seems like a bigger argument FOR SBMM.
What about time based matchmaking? Wouldn’t that just put the newer players into one bracket while the vets into an other? This would also eliminate absolutely sweaty lobbies for vets because u do have players like Wallah, but also like Rick kackis.
@@Solkard Because it's a waste of time, think of it this way, if you wanted to test a new loadout that you aren't comfortable with, would you want to lose 10-15 games in a row so you have an environment you can play in properly? The system works off averages (Kills to death ratios, etc.) so you would have to go out of your way to lower your scores for a lot of games, its easier to have a ranked playlist and a casual playlist, at least for the players who are already good.
(and yes I know why people want skill based matchmaking, I wasn't that great at the game (D2) until they introduced sbmm and I had a chance to hone my skills against similarly skilled players.)
Another of the biggest issues with SBMM is that it can't tell the difference between a pro player starting over just for fun, and a new player
How is it supposed to?
@@OSTATEboi419 yea lol
My problem is I can't even tell the difference between lag switching and hacks and real extreme players because of lag due to sbmm, I'm top 4 percent in crucible and it's a NIGHTMARE, there is allot of cheating and allot of insanely good players just lagging
this shouldn't be an issue, if people at least go better rewards for objectively better performances in these games you would see new people who want to get better MORE than these smurf accounts, but here we are.
@@nonnononnononno
being good is not trolling
I think a large factor is the use of the term "casual". Some games like Destiny 2 are more casual than other games on the market, but i can still feel like i have to work my ass off and constantly get kills to have "fun". In other games like Team Fortress 2, I can be bottom-scoring on the losing team and still have the time of my life because I don't feel like I'm trying to be better than everyone else. If your game is truly casual, then connection based matchmaking shouldn't cause huge skill-gap issues.
Thats actually a really good point
@Austin Sanguins I *think* you have a point, but its really hard to tell since you said everything in one sentence.
This actually might be *the* fundamental flaw with D2 PvP (and some of the other games mentioned here). Unfortunately I have no idea what the solution is.
The worst part is we've had the best of both worlds before, from Bungie. The Bungie Halo games had the social Playlist, which had all of the maps and modes avaliable and the whole purpose was to chill out and be able to play with your less skilled friends. You could always switch to the comp Playlist when you were ready to grind ranks. It's very frustrating how many basic features have been taken away from us for seemingly no good reason.
The thing about those social playlists is that they inherently worked like party games. Either the player count was so high sbmm wouldn’t work or the items available or frequency of the availability of those items didn’t cause a massive skill gap between players.
The biggest issue lies in that design slowly being removed. A lot of games in general are moving away from that trend of causal games with competitive on the side and creating games around the competitive scene, which of course causes problems as it’s hard to make a casual playlist if your game is built for and around competition.
@@Johnnjlee But that's the problem. These games aren't competitive anymore. There's discussion amongst the COD community about a system that's supposedly in the background that alters ttk, accuracy, hit box sizes, etc in real time.
If that's true then there's no way that game has any competitive integrity. This is without mentioning the cheating with these advanced cheat programs that allow people to dial back their cheats to be slightly less obvious.
I love this guy's voice
😂
Hands up
I was about to say I fell like I've heard this somewhere before 😂
Is that why you are ok with him being a transphobic?
SBMM wouldn't even be necessary *in a certain Space Game* if lobby balancing was a thing and the company had sprung for dedicated servers.
This may be an unpopular opinion but I prefer having games be close, win or lose. I take the point about the super laggy connection, but I'm not all the way convinced with the rest of your thought process. As long as SBMM is updated to match how you're currently playing I feel like you can just lose a few matches while trying something out and then be equally matched with less skilled players while you are not doing your hardest or most optimal play style. I don't really feel like anyone is entitled to keep winning when being silly or trying something new, you try out new things or just mess around because there's temporarily something more important to you than winning. Plus as long as you keep certain parts of a game locked behind a certain amount or percentage of PVP wins or kills (such as Trials in Destiny 2) then CBMM means that people who don't have time to play more than maybe a couple times a week probably aren't going to ever get those things and if you want to talk about games stopping being fun, being stomped into the ground repeatedly after you get the kids to bed is definitely one of the fastest ways to stop having fun. But I like your idea of switching back and forth between the two modes every so often.
"Experimentation is silliness...with a point". Just as you said point, I said "Purpose" out loud lol.
And there is truth to that. I play Destiny 2 (been following the TDT page since it was like 900 subscribers) and so many times, I want to try something different, other than using my Insidious + Burden of Guilt loadout. Maybe I want to use my 360 RPM auto rifle, maybe I want to run around with Peregrine grieves and air-shoulder charge everything. But constantly coming up against 6 hunters all using DMT and Matador 64 puts a dampener on that.
I have a full time 9-5 office job - sometimes I just wanna chill in a CASUAL game mode.
I guess my question based on your comment would be: Do you need to win to have fun? Why can't you still do the silly/experimental things in your sbmm quick play? You may not win but if you had fun/learned something isn't that more valuable?
@@TylorHuebner because I can't have fun if I don't get a chance to play because I'm looking at the death screen more than I am playing
it depends. Some new loadouts and such might be fine but have a learning curve that you might not get to realistically climb because your lobbies are "at your difficulty" or whatever the whole time
@@TylorHuebner Win? No. But you wont just lose doing that. You'll get stomped. So you can't kill anyone and you die constantly. Thats not a good time no matter what.
@@hood999111 I think that was a lot of peoples arguments FOR sbmm. They weren't getting to play the game because they were getting constantly stomped.
Usually the solution to this problem is either let people choose the matchmaking preferences (Halo 3 and Reach) or have a casual and ranked gamemode that only differ by their matchmaking types (Overwatch 1/2). For the latter, divisions and ranking needs to be the focus for bragging rights, otherwise you'll find that the SBMM will be avoided by the majority of the player population.
i agree but as one of those people who play solo a lot a SBMM pvp mode is great when i want to be paired with randoms who know how to play even if they dont talk, which is most players. man i hope they add a ping system to destiny soon.
I have to disagree with your point about experimental playstyles in sbmm. If I'm enjoying the playstyle, I should either be able to make it work at my skill, or I'm crutching on the meta to get to my sbmm ranking. It's how quickly your sbmm adapts that's important. Losing a few games should drop you to a level where your fun/out there loadouts work. This also requires a healthy game population though which can be rare in any game with a high skill ceiling, compounding the experience issues for high ranked sbmm issues. But I really appreciate your suggestion for alternating with a few hours of sbmm at the start to give everyone what they want because you're right, it's an almost perfect 50/50 split
imma be real: all of this would be great if we had some guarantee the sweat meta doesn't prevail in the casual games too. if everyone is hopping in just to blast each other for some fun, then its fun for everyone. but once a sweat gets involved and wipes the floor with the enemy team its suddenly not that fun, and they're encouraged to either sod off or get with the meta, in a casual game where everyone just wanted to blast each other and have fun.
The SCP reference made me choke on a piece of candy.
Well played sir!
Content be getting better and better!
What's killing casual lobbies is not SBMM, but players who are not playing "casually". There are many people sweating and try harding in casual lobbies despite competitive game modes existing for one reason or another. This creates a rather unfun experience for the people *not* doing that and getting stomped. SBMM is created in response and that just doubles down on people treating casual like it's competitive. This is coupled with people just getting better at games as time goes on - I don't really think there's a good solution to this barring the ability to host your own server with its own rules and stipulations etc or just hosting private lobbies with friends. CBMM, SBMM, w/e it doesn't really matter someone's having a bad time
Honestly I hate the false dichotomy of "Do you want lag" or "do you want a fun match that isn't one-sided?" are an either-or choice. Quite simply just wait until you find a good game with both SBMM and good connections. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive.
The big problem with no SBMM "casual games" is this is only a good environment for noob stompers. Yeah, the hardcore players get to screw around beat a bunch of newbies one-handed and then bragging about how they went 50-0 while teabagging their opposition. But being on the other side of that ass-kicking sucks. And if this gets bad enough, the "casual" mode totally falls apart because all the real casuals leave and it's just a group of sweaty try-hards looking for easy prey. So you've taken away the home for real casuals and now they either quit the game entirely or get forced into competitive looking for a fair match, and this in turn screws with the competitive scene because now the competitive scene has a bunch of people that aren't really interested in winning and are just playing for fun. So now competitive players are unhappy.
Not having SBMM is just a death sentence for PvP in the modern era. There's a reason so many games have turned to it. The way forward is finding ways to implement SBMM better than its current incarnation, not trying to remove it altogether.
So I agree that competitive game modes should have SBMM. As you get better, you should go up against better players, eventually finding your home with similarly skilled players.
I also agree that SBMM is not a "Casual" experience for high-skill players. But on the flip side, CBMM is not a "Casual" experience for low-skill players. If the casual playlist uses CBMM, then low-skill players are better off playing competitive where the SBMM is.
I do agree with the sentiment that low-skill and/or new players should have a kiddie pool to play in until they are ready for the big(ish) leagues, but having a 5-hour SBMM grace period doesn't really give a lot of time to accomplish that. Some players (especially those coming from other FPS games) may be able to get the hang of things in that time frame, but many players are going to need to get their (figurative) 10,000 hours in before they're really ready. How this can be handled is a good question. I've seen some ideas in games, and have some ideas of my own.
The (what I believe to be) objective part of this is over, so feel free to ignore, bash on, or if you're Bungie, use the following if you like:
-Bots. The tried and true method many games use to teach newbies how to play. Great for players who don't know how to use a controller or don't know what WASD is. Start off with just bots, then move to co-op vs bots so you can learn how toxic the community really is, before eventually moving on to the real PvP.
-Beginner Mode. I can't remember exactly what game it was (I'm thinking Heroes of the Storm?), but there was a PvP mode that was only available until you hit a certain level. Once you hit that level, you weren't allowed to queue into it anymore. Now imagine that, but if instead of account level, it was skill-based. This would be the real kiddie pool. You can play in it until you hit the skill level equivalent of puberty, and now it would be awkward to let you play with the kids, so you're being promoted to the adults' table.
-Revving up. This is solely my idea, and likely not actually viable in real use, but imagine if every day you logged on, you started off with a Skill Rank of 0. For every match that you win, your Skill Rank (SR for short) goes up by 1, and you're matched with people whose SR is close to yours. The higher your SR, the higher the drop chance. Your SR is locked to a specific game mode. So if you're feeling like having a casual day, you can hop around between game modes. When they're all starting to get sweaty, call it a day. On the other hand, if you're really wanting to sweat, just focus your favorite game mode and try to get those juicy rare drops.
Titanfall 2 is indeed both TF2 and THE perfect game.
I miss titanfall2 pvp. Playing at its height was pure brilliance. So many great memories.
@@thegreatoffendo4532 it's still very much alive if you use the Northstar Mod Client on PC. Crazy that the community fixed the hacking problem that Respawn Entertainment could not.
Nah just got a PS 5, so no go for me. The player count is mad low I thought. I could be wrong though. That games mechanics were just too fun once you learned the flow of everything.
As someone who hated pvp in D2 because I was always the bug under the foot, it did feel rewarding to go into pvp after sbmm and actually feel like I was contributing to the wins. Is it perfect? Definitely not I get the argument for more casual matches. But I also get the argument for not being an easy target also. I’d like to see a pure CBMM casual mode where frankly it doesn’t contribute to too much loot etc, and. SBMM mode where like you say the rewards are sweeter. Make it a player choice like freelance or something. Also not a game designer so what do I know.
Glad to see you here again! And thanks for all the pvp tips!
Chibirobo a youtuber actually has a good point on this. Bungie should make more fun modes instead of sbmm. Basically adding wacky fun non competitive modes for the lesser skilled without destroying the flow of crucible.
@@lapisgaming6093 definitely an interesting idea. I also thought it would be cool to have a cbmm that the player can choose to go into. If they pick the tougher option they get better rewards. That way the onus is on the player. Think your good? Here ya go. Than have a separate mode for sbmm if that’s what they want.
Again, I have no idea what I’m talking about to be very clear hah.
@@jeremy7383 or just do the overwatch route with costume game modes. Bungie should just aim to limit sbmm since in the end destiny is not a esport game and therefore shouldn't be treated as so. It's a loadout/ slash ability game for the most part. Sbmm should be in modes like comp where it matters more.
As a true rank system tho like if your good but in gold but are going up against adept is a bit silly.
Playing Destiny makes me hate SBMM more than most other games purely bc I like to screw around with buildcrafting, and you can't really do that in control anymore, so that silliness point speaks to me a lot
720 YY Ladder Stall no scope hit some serious nostalgia vibes.
How i feel. 100% how i feel about fps games right now. Thank you for articulating my thoughts and feels.
This idea that you can just play sub-optimal load-outs for fun in casual playlists only exists if you're better than the average player. If you aren't, then if you try to just play around you will get stomped more often than not, and never know if what you're experimenting with was any good or had any potential for fun. In fact the only people I've ever really heard say anything negative about SBMM, when applied properly, is high skilled players.
Respect for the video! I think there’s an inverse experience for the different skill levels. For lower skilled players CBMM is the opposite of casual. And the reverse is true for skilled players.
I think that you’re argument reflects that you lean more toward the more skilled player. The issues that you introduced with SBMM just don’t tend to be much of a problem for lower skilled players.
As whole he is right with sbmm u are gonna end up on a 50/50 but that doesn't give any satisfaction i remember in bo2 going negative 6/7 out of 10 games to not going negative ever to getting kill streaks u get a sense of progretion
i have a 3.2 kd in destiny rn and playing casual feels like getting stomped in the face and i don’t enjoy it
so now i just play comp and am debating lowering my kd i wanna just wanna chill and not have to use my brain every second of gaming
issue 1: also true of CBMM, where lobby balancing or random teams and the like could and regularly did result in stomps. Notably, Destiny 2 data shared by developers show that predetermined outcomes are _down_ and that this is less of an issue than pure CBMM.
issue 2: SBMM doesn't require you to play at your best all the time. (In fact, since player performances vary day-to-day, that's impossible.) For example, in a 1v1 card game with more traditional Elo, I still find it fun to play a meme combo, even if I'm likely to lose Elo. And if the match is so unbalanced as to be unfun, why not pull out your favourite meme build mid-match to salvage some fun out of it? Also, if things are feeling so strict and sweaty all the time, accept some losses with some jank you're playing and your MMR may fall some, but you might actually enjoy the game more, even if you're not winning so much.
(And getting that silly build to work against a similarly skilled player is way more satisfying than someone who installed yesterday.)
Consider MTG's archetypal players: Timmy/Tammy, Johnny/Jenny, and Spike. Spike is most motivated by winning. Jenny likes winning on her own terms, often with unusual win conditions or combos. Jenny understands, however, that may mean she doesn't have the winrate of Spike. Many Jennys/Johnnys out there are happy if they play ten games, lose 9, but get their oddball strategy to work once. Sure, team dynamics can make this complicated, but nobody really expects a lot out of matchmade teammates to begin with.
Issue 3 doesn't show a fourth option: attempt to match with both high-skill and low-skill players, especially ones similarly grouped up. While, yes, high-skill players will still mow down low-skill players, the newer players can still go against each other and have fun that way, and so can the high-skill players. It doesn't have to be high/average/low, it can be a mixture.
Issue 4 is muddied and doesn't come across clearly to me, but also I'm the sort of player who's fine with random crits in Team Fortress 2, which a considerable part of the community is vocally against.
Issue 5: Personal anecdote: I haven't seen a meaningful difference in loadout construction between SBMM and CBMM. It hasn't changed the way I build loadouts, either. I saw lots of meta builds before, and I see lots of meta builds after.
I....disagree on the experimentation and silly part. Even when CBMM was in place in D2 the only person I ever saw doing something offmeta was me! And that's not even for experimentation I'm just a contrarian.
Like, when I see the top dogs raising their fists and chanting "we wanna experiment!" I'm thinking: "Experiment with what!? A sliiiightly worse roll on your favorite hand cannon?"
let me ask you this... how can you tell the difference between having a great build or just against bad players in connection based match making? A while back people were jumping off cliffs in trials because they got tired of people who had gone flawless and mopping the floor with them. Why? because they got tired of getting stomped by people who were not even remotely close to their skill. there is a point in games where the "enjoyability" comes from beating something but just barely. to each person this is different, but if you get stomped you learn nothing and had no fun. if you're going against people who are inferior to you all the time... your skills become dull and when you face someone with skill you are mauled by them. The problem isn't CBMM or SBMM, but when people take the most sweaty builds into CBMM. the minute that happens... you as the opposition have to counter that with your own sweat build. There was a reason why you saw DMT in almost every quickplay game... because it was good, fun to use, and there was almost always someone on each side running it. after the 3rd or 4th game... you got sick of getting two tapped by it from half way across the map. so what do you do? do you go to comp then? you'd have the same problem there. When things become meta. they are seen everywhere... quickplay, trials, etc.
i have an idea for a compromise, they need to make it so that each week there is a "forced" loadout. like one week you have handcannon and sidearm. the next a shotgun and scout. kind of how they did with the old leviathan raids in the legendary mode. this way... while you might have meta options out there form time to time... they might be avoided and force people to use things other then Ace, DMT, etc. maybe force players to use nothing but legendary and lower weapons and armor? things in which skill isn't just about how well you can click on heads, but how your build is.
As i tell people, skill is like an edge of a knife. to sharpen it you have to use finer and finer sharpening stones. you wouldn't use a course stone on something that already has a really fine edge as it would damage the edge and you wouldn't use a fine stone... on a dull edge because it would take forever to get a decent edge. if you are a highly skilled player going against beginners. you're gonna get a 50 kill montage and look like an end boss from Dark Souls. if you're sub par and you go against people who are super skilled... well how long do you think they are gonna play?
7:23 now that was just uncalled for but true
In my opinion the problem stems from the Players, even in cbmm lobbies most people play like it's "MLG competitive" wich is not fun for the majority of Players so devs implement sbmm which exasperates the problem further it's a vicious spiral.
I love hearing these thoughts videos, breaking up the schedule every once in a while to say something you feel is important
Everyone else: adding relevant and thought-provoking thoughts/analyses to the main argument of the video
Me: I can’t get over the fact that Mesome went with Spongebob font 😂
I really like SBMM in Destiny 2. I never had so much fun and so little frustration in the Cruicible ever and never played so much of it in the history of the game.
Buuuuut I can totally see your points. I espacially can relate to issue number 2: no experimentation possible, because I lived it. Thats how every game was for me in CBMM. And now I can experiment which is great, for me at least. And it totally sucks for the higher skilled players. Which is also bad for the game, as you pointed out.
I don't know what to think about the whole '5 hours SBMM then CBMM'-thing. From my perspective the time could be even lower. I seldomly play more then 3 hours per session. But why dont make SBMM just a toggle? People who want it can activate it, those who dont just leave it. I would have no problem with higher queue times for more fair games and for you to have more fun.
What I really apreciate about this video, is the fact that you dont try to covince me that 'actually SBMM is bad for casual players too, because *checks notes* with CBMM your K/D/A could be much higher (in the one outlier game, which happens every 20 games or so, where you are in the lobby full of noobs, and you are the highest ranked player in the game and can pop of, instead of being the other way around, like it usually is the case lol)'
Keep up the good word with the channels. Cheers. :)
If I ever make a game with matchmaking, I'm just going to divide it into 'Shitpost, Casual, Sweaty, Ranked'.
Shitpost? Pure CBMM. Casual? CBMM with a little SBMM that pulls from a wide pool. Sweaty? Almost entirely raw SBMM. Ranked? SBMM but with more consideration to connection, since prestige is on the line.
7:26 I'm out of breath from laughing so hard dude. Deep down it still hurts though, Master Chief deserves better lol.
This video needs a lot more views. When people push against systems like this, changes actually come to happen, from Loot boxes dissappearing from non Mobile games and limitations to gameplay on some games.
It has proven to be effective.
4:41 - This is where you lost me, a casual player.
Here's the rough divide you're not going to like, and I say this with respect: The casual player - fundamentally, does not play like you do. They're nearly always not playing the meta pick. Instead, they're playing their favorites and hoping to do okay enough to remain entertained. You, who have played enough that you understand and moreover can play to surpass the meta - habitually play to win. Therefore, SBMM, objectively, will never favor you. But it is wrong, objectively, to press the argument that the game forces you to play your absolute best in SBMM. It doesn't. It forces you to play your average win/loss level. You, who have more control over your playstyle and effectiveness, have to make that choice.
Therefore, if you play casually, you'll stay in casual areas relative to your skill, until you begin to crutch on things that net you more wins. Then you're forced to make a playstyle changing choice. While it's fun to win, the line of how far you're willing to go to win is what defines you as a casual versus a more hardcore player. *The difference between ranked and unranked is that line - Ranked is where you would expect to constantly put in that extra effort. Non ranked is when you would sacrifice some of your wins against your meta-crutching peers to try to have more 'fun' and be experimental.*
The one who has chosen their playstyle based on the desire to consistently win, and base their enjoyment on said wins - will feel punished for the fact that their non-meta pics will be beaten more consistently due to their playing meta peers. But if they keep consistent with their choices, their average skill will drop, and the more free form playstyle will cease to be as frequently punished.
SBMM is a harsh mirror looking back at you judgmentally. Hardcore or heavily 'dedicated' players will forever be punished by this method, and it will always be objectively wrong - to the hardcore player. Because wins matter above flexibility of enjoyment.
A consistently casual player, who truly plays casually, will not care as much, and will enjoy despite the coin toss. This kills your entire premise for this video, and plays to a specific audience that agrees with you. The decision you need to make here is playstyle. Casual play is only dead, because you killed it for yourself. CBMM in casual playlists, kills it for others because the high skill players WILL enforce the high dedication and meta picks against more casual, lower skill players regardless of loadouts. This is the defining argument against CBMM. It's” get good, get crushed, or leave”. Most casual players will eventually choose the last option - causing players to bleed out.
My critique for Destiny 2 (and other similar games) is that they don't adequately separate your Skill Scores based off of what playlist you're in. (Some games accomplish this better than others, but that's where 'smurfs' come in.) Your skill rating in the casual playlist, and your skill rating in your ranked playlist should remain wholly separate - this will solve your primary focal issues beyond the simple CBMM jank that needs to be resolved with dedicated servers. Everything else boils down to you define yourself and your limits (Be they skill, choice, or both.) and the game making sure their code doesn't suck (And we know how difficult that is for D2).
As far as playing with your friends - we go right back to your beginning statements. Back in the days when connection based matchmaking meant walking down to your friends house. That is to say, private lobbies exist - and they will never be topped by any system managed by automation. I think you already acknowledge this - with your custom built game modes to have a bit of extra fun with the games themselves. For a game to survive long term, it must appeal to both its casual and it's hardcore players. SBMM forces the player to acknowledge what they've been doing and to choose what their goals are. Worse, it punishes straying from that. That , I think, is its biggest flaw.
As a constructive feedback for playing more casually in higher skill brackets- more community tools to enable players who like to play regardless of skill pairing to group together for fun-focused scessions would be the best forward option - rather than continue this pitted fight between CBMM and SBMM. I don't expect SBMM to go away, even under protest - but that doesn't mean the idea of skilled players enjoying themselves more casually should be ignored. I just firmly beleive their solutions lay elsewhere than where their focused arguments have been.
great video and wow you actually enlightened me, i now disagree with SBMM in casual playlists!
ii remember back in the day having fights with people wanting to have radar on for CoD while playing in the same room like they werent just going to screen peak anyways. god i miss couch co-op and PVP lol.
For me, it's like the others have pointed out. We need dedicated casual playlists like the good ol' days of Halo. The reason for this, imho, is because then you can get enough players who are playing 'casually', and a player dense version of that would allow not very skilled players to have fun, while also allowing more skilled players a casual experience. If you only have a single 'casual' playlist (looking at you Destiny 2), then you run into an issue where the (somewhat rare) players who want to just crush their opponents (without the sweat) can easily do that to a lack of player density.
As a server IT person, I do realize that it costs the company more money to do that, but there is a reason why anytime my friends want to play Halo, I'm always down, even if it's not totally just friends only. It's because we can, most of the time, pick what level of 'how hard do we want to go today' and it works relatively well. I want that for more games. I want players to have more fun in more games. I want the stories of old, where absolutely silly stuff like dropping a banshee on someone is the stuff you talk about long after the game is over, rather than either having to always perform at the best, or getting absolutely crushed.
Games have had this in the past, and we really need to return to those *more* options (and rewards for the ranked top players).
Let's not pretend CBMM is perfect either
So here's 5 reasons CBMM is objectively bad for casual gaming (BTW I agree with every point you made, but I also believe that both SBMM and CBMM are garbage)
1. Lack if consistency, you can go from having the best game of your life to the worst, meaning that if I'm just wanting to sit down and play I'm leaving my enjoyment up to God to decide
2. Discourages playing with friends who don't live right next door, maybe I'm alone on this but I personally like the fact the internet allows us to connect world wide, but with CBMM your punished if you don't have good connection, and when me and my friends are all across the globe we will always have bad connections and CBMM will always fail to find a good match for us
3. Just like SBMM, CBMM for 90% of players pushes you to use the meta, unless your good enough at the game to where you can use whatever you want, the minute you vs a top 10% player (which statistically will happen every match assuming it's 6v6) you have to throw on the meta picks if you want to even have a chance to be on the same level as them
4. Makes winning feel worse, in CBMM winning and losing isn't about skill, it's about getting lucky with who you vs, being better increases that chance, but whenever a game uses CBMM I always find myself thinking "I'm glad I got lucky with matchmaking" maybe I'm just pessimistic, but in a CBMM environment I never feel like it was my skill that made me win, I always feel like it's my luck that did
5. Punishes the less fortunate, not everyone is lucky enough to have good internet, wether that's due to not being able to afford it or just not living in an area with good internet, many people still have shit internet, hell if this wasn't the case one of the biggest downsides to SBMM wouldn't exsit, that being connections, with CBMM if you have bad internet you will be put with other people with bad internet, I speak from experience here as I only in the past few years was able to get good internet, hell for the longest time my dad lived in a place where my only option was a phone hotspot with lower the 1 mbs download and upload so low that the speed test would often fail to show it
SBMM sucks, but so does CBMM, so it's better if we all just shut up and stop arguing
Games arnt casual anymore not because if matchmaking system, COD has always used SBMM, this has been confirmed by infinity ward, COD 4 used SBMM
The reason games arnt casual anymore is because people, people have stopped playing for fun and now play to win, to win at any cost, and I'm over it, it's why my most played PvP game is team fortress 2, it's one of the last of a dying breed of games, a game fun if you win or if you lose
One of the biggest issues with sbmm is connection. It gets so annoying getting 120 ms lobbies just to balance out and the hit delay from it ruins the experience.
I remember getting stomped in Cod4 then when mw2 came around I was dropping nukes with the wa2000. Getting stomped made me want to be better and it pushed me forward. Sbmm stifles people from wanting to get better because they're always in a comfortable lobby where there's no real threat since everyone is equal.
Cod did it best back in the old days. Light skill matchmaking focused more on connection first with each team being separated to average out the skill of whose in the lobby
Wouldn't allowing players to choose matchmaking type just end up being SBMM anyway? I don't know much about anything, so bear with me here. Top players will most likely choose connection & casuals will almost always go with skill. So if there are little to no casuals in the connection pool, it seems like it would become a kind of self-imposed skill pool. You could put better loot in the connection pool to entice casuals, but that creates a "rich get richer" situation where the best guns are in the hands of only your best players, widening the skill gap further. Casuals will just get farmed by better players using stronger guns they can only hope to get by a lucky drop.
Top 10%-ers will say, "Just practice, work on your game, you'll get better." Maybe, but by definition, we can't all be top 10%. I'm a 39 y/o mom, I love Destiny, I have over 5k hours logged & I'm around a 0.9-1.0. I could improve incrementally, but I'll never be a 2.0 player no matter how much I practice. That's just the reality of the situation that I & probably MOST other players are in. We've never had the luxury of using silly experimental loadouts. We've always been dependent on the meta. At least with SBMM, we can have a little room to breathe without fear of getting curb stomped.
I will say as a game developer we aren’t totally 100% free to make every call, going back to the skill based vs connection based argument and how it’s a decisive topic, a big part of actually making a game is who you target. In the case of player versus player games your main target is going to be competitive players, and contrary to what people believe we rarely actually build the game we want to, it’s built for the players we want to play the game game wouldn’t sell and make money if we all built what we want, people in these games strongly ask for that kind of thing. Really there is nothing inherently wrong with skill based matchmaking outside of the nothing you can do about it occasional goof ups or the human element of having an off day.the real core of the issue that I’m seeing is people feel pressured by calling it skill based into always playing at their best. In a casual play mode it could still use the same matchmaking just there would be mo consequences for a loss. It really just boils down to dev teams need to offer options to people who don’t want to play at their best at all times and have the mode not affect their stats and whatever metric they use the determine the skill level of the player.
I like the idea of swapping between SBMM and CBMM, however, I think that since games naturally tell what a player's "skill" is that people on the extremes end will should have a smaller difference between the number of SB and CM matches; the more average the the less SCMM, the less average the more SCMM.
Overwatch 2 has a good sbmm for quick play but in comp it sucks. If you have gm tanks with diamond healers it makes nearly impossible for the tank to do his job at his normal speed. They have to slow down. Ow2 match match is try to mirror skill of both teams but skill gaps between one rank is too much to handle. Atleast it better than ow1 comp matching
The point about telling ur friend that the game u love is great, but when she tries it out she dies more than lives, is so fucking true. I have a fiancé and she is the definition of casual, she understands that I sweat every game because that’s how it’s fun to me when I play solo, but she isn’t like me. And I like that. I asked her to try destiny 2 so we could play together but ended up constantly matching 6 stack sweats with last words and dmts (when it was meta and freelance wasn’t a thing).
Plain and simple have a ranked/SBMM mode and have one with none I don’t get how it’s that hard.
kinda the point I tried to get at towards the very end
8:50 i do love the fact that the 2 definitive best video games of all time share an acronym
Such a hard thing to balance, but great video! I really like the suggestion of a "break in" period of SBMM then a shift into CBMM... As a generally competitive player I see the utmost need for CBMM for optimized general gameplay and specifically ranked or competitive playlists but enjoy the shenanigans of social queues and recognize a need to be inclusive of the population. Performance based rewards solve the issue of performance incentive which in itself could almost also aid in the skill gap if developers shifted more towards a CBMM preference in social playlist. Divisive topic for sure, but as always, you tackled the issue with hilarious tact. Looking forward to more vids and the new channel. Bless!
Forsaken era was perfect for this imo , u had the casul playlist just doing silly stuff or regular play and then u had comp with people sweating their balls off for luna's howl and not forgotten. Having both but giving incentives to the higher skill player to play ranked as they can get rewards is great and add rewards at lower tiers for others to start with
Convincing a friend to start playing destiny is like mutualy assured destruction
“Casual gaming is dead”
Considering the number of complaints I’ve heard about casual gaming “destroying” the gaming space (particularly from the FromSoft Souls-Born crowd) I’m calling BS, but will hear you out
Legitimately if you can think of a better title I am all ears. Also let me know what you thought of the vid, having now seen what I was trying to say.
@@TDTwo2 “SBMM damages casual play” would be a more accurate, albeit less click baity title
As for the vid itself…
Most of your points have merit
But I still believe it’s no fun to spend most of the waiting to respawn because you have a no-life pro carrying the opposing team, and it’s also hard to get better when you got the same thing going on
To me, casual is a place to get good with low or no stakes so you can take those skills to the competitive playlist
Or a place to warm up
And I’ll admit that it’s hard to just goof off at times, it really does feel like this entire debate puts the devs in a catch 22
I feel like for casual modes CBMM (with very slight elements of SBMM for those on the extreme ends of the skill curve) fits perfectly as the goal of a casual mode is to just relax and play the game. On the other hand without rewards that people actually care about, a competitive mode with SBMM wouldn't be worth playing for higher skilled players unless they specifically want tough games.
For the companies making and profiting from the games I can see how SBMM (or even including bots in the case of Fortnite) would drive up profits by protecting newer players which is why I expect more and more games to include it. I would love for games to include multiple options for matchmaking so that both groups can have a good time. I wouldn't even be opposed to the default queue option being the one with SBMM and having an option to select a CBMM version of that same mode. I don't see many companies putting in the effort to do that but it's just something I would like to see.
CBMM is only casual and relaxing for people that are in the upper levels of skill. For the newbies they're stomping, it's basically like getting matchmade against the Doomslayer every match and watching helplessly as he effortlessly crushes you. And of course eventually the newbies figure out that the SBMM mode is the casual mode because it gives them a fair chance, so they abandon the hellscape of CBMM casual entirely.
@@taragnor As someone who has played on both sides of the scenario that you presented I can see how some players get frustrated. The problem with SBMM is that every match feels like a competitive match with everyone trying as hard as they possibly can and using similar load outs/play styles. On top of that for extremely high skill or low skill matches the connection quality worse and matchmaking takes a lot longer. The problems I have with CBMM are the exact issues you just mentioned.
The issue is that you have to balance connection quality and team balance which is a challenge for developers to get right. Both modes have their flaws which is why I think that, if I had to choose one for a casual playlist, using CBMM with elements of SBMM to keep the extremely good and extremely bad players from matching would be a good choice. I'm open to hearing your ideal matchmaking method so I can see more of your perspective on the issue.
@@mrsterbund5996 I think that you get enough variance with most SBMM systems since they're not always perfect. Having played a bunch of Overwatch, a game often said to have pretty strict SBMM, I've had some games that my team got crushed, other games where I've dominated and others that are close games. I don't really have that feel of every game feeling super difficult. Of course in a 1v1 game like Starcraft 2, I definitely do experience the sensation of every game being a challenge. Though honestly I'm not sure how much can be done to avoid that, since beyond just SBMM giving regular fluctuations I don't agree with just tossing a newbie to the wolves now and then to let some pro shred him to give him a soft game. That's just not very fun for the victims.
To solve the same loadout thing, I'd say maybe have a casual playlist where all the popular meta weapons get banned/nerfed and force people to use some other things. It can even be a good testbed for new patch changes, where the designers do crazy stuff that they change every couple weeks to throw the meta into total disarray and get people experimenting with unused weapons or characters. I think that'd do a good job of preventing the "Everyone just plays meta" feel at the higher skill levels since every two weeks the developers could be tossing in a bunch of chaos to shake things up so you never really let that mode settle into a consistent meta, any weapon or character that gets picked too much gets some heavy nerfs in the next couple weeks. That'd give even experienced players the chance to try out new weapons and take everyone out of their comfort zone, while not requiring a blood offering of newbies. So you'd basically have quickplay (the unranked), ranked play (competitive) and experimental mode (the crazy one).
@@taragnor Personally I've been playing a lot of Destiny 2 and the SBMM in that specific game may be a bit too strict as most people run the current couple of meta weapons and armor. That may be skewing my perspective on the issue a bit. I have seen the same variance in my games where one team destroys the other team occasionally with some close games as well. Most of the games I've played in tend to go to the time limit though with one team 30-40 points ahead of the other. The issues I experience may just be due to destiny being the game it is.
I definitely don't like the idea of throwing new players to the wolves which is why I liked the idea for casual matchmaking that was given in the video. Having mandatory SBMM for the first however many games and then switching between the two would probably work to keep both new and old players interested. Of course the number of mandatory games and the frequency of each type afterwards would be up for debate but it's more the principle that matters.
The crazy mode you suggested seems great for games like Overwatch or League of Legends but in games like Destiny I don't think players would like it as you have to work for all of your weapons. A game that I've seen do something similar is Super Auto Pets with their weekly pack system where the pool of units is smaller with a general theme to them. While I don't play it that much when I do it's pretty fun. The issue that comes up is that new mini metas develop in those but since they change so fast and there's other modes to play so it normally isn't an issue.
I think there's probably a good middle ground of both skill and connection based match making that most people can agree on. I don't know what it is personally but I think giving players more choice in how they queue in games is a good thing so would like to see a game try something where you can set the range of players you would like to match with relative to your own skill. You of course couldn't set the range so that you only matched with players under you. Maybe have it so if you want to be able to match with more lower skill players you also have to be able to match with the same range of higher skill players. And of course in each match everyone's selected ranges would have to overlap. I just came up with this so there's probably a loophole that could easily be exploited.
@@mrsterbund5996 Yeah, Destiny is admittedly a very tricky game to handle, because it has way more complexity than the vast majority of games out there with the builds and weapons with different perks. Since any changes to the meta aren't as easy as just replacing a weapon, since you have people that'd have to now look through their vault of weapons and dig out old ones. I don't feel that qualified saying much about competitive Destiny since I'm pretty terrible at it. The lack of objective modes in favor of standard Deathmatch style is just not something I have a good instinct for. But the looter shooter aspect definitely makes it trickier to handle than a game like Overwatch or Call of Duty or something where you can tweak a few meta guns and call it a day.
As far as my experience with Destiny PvP, it was one of those games that was really only fun for me when I was playing against weaker opponents, so I can see the reason why the better players want to get rid of SBMM, but the experience becomes utterly hellish when you play against people that are better than you.
You are speaking straight out of the bottom of my heart.
Sweats everywhere im every game in every casual mode is so very unfun and frustrating.
I like not trying my hardest every qp game. Like every fucking casual hero doing run outs or drop shots ir whatever in r6, or every stupid titan main maining his shotgun after they married. Or not even havin funny of meta teams in pokemon.
What is the point of playing when the fun is destroyed
Starting Evo moment 37
Yeah this is gonna be a good one
In terms of Bungie's whole matchmaking scheme, I think they need to mix the two for casual playlists, but also make it very loose on the "skill" side. For example, let's look at the actual competitive playlist, where you have a bunch of different tiers. Copper, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Adept, Ascendant. Let's say your skill level is that of a Silver player, even if you haven't entered the competitive playlist. Let the game match you with anyone from Copper to Platinum, favoring connection quality overall. If anyone's 200 ping behind you, they shouldn't be in your lobby, regardless of their skill level.
On the high end, let's say you've gone and reached Ascendant immediately after the season started. In casual playlists, let the game put you with anyone from Platinum to Ascendant. 2 above, 2 below your skill level, unless you're at the top or bottom. That also encompasses the 3 ranks in between each tier, which can have a lot of variance on the high end. This would allow high skill players to still have fun in a less serious mode, new players to not get stomped into the ground as often, and also not have people winning only because they're teleporting across the map for everyone else in the lobby.
Let the game take the overall average of players joining a lobby, and look for players ±2 that average to fill in the remaining spots. This way you could have an even higher variance, if the average is right in between tiers, without going completely overboard and putting brand new players against the sweatiest Ascendant+Flawless*92+L+Ratio+git gud types of players. Additionally, lobby balancing should be pushed to the max. If there are 4 Platinum players, 4 Adept players, 2 Silver players, 1 Gold player and 1 Ascendant player, both Silvers and the Gold player should not be put all on the same team against that Ascendant player. They also shouldn't all be on the same team. I get that it's probably really tough to balance all of that, but I've seen it so often that you get all the low-end players on one team and all the high-end players on the other, leading to a stomp fest. Might be fun for the high-end players, definitely not fun for the low-end.
Lobby balancing has always been my biggest issue with CBMM. I'm admittedly not very good at PVP, yet the game seems to think I am because almost every time I play Crucible I get the level 1, fresh-off-the-ground players on my team, with curb-stomping sweatlords on the other team. Not like "we'll give you 1 or 2 of these good players and put 5 on the other team" but instead going full "here's a 6-stack of Flawless players, deal with it" while my team runs around like chickens with their heads cut off. Fix the damn lobby balancing, Bungie. SBMM or CBMM isn't always the biggest issue.
Interesting video and premise, I'm only about 2 minutes in, but let's discuss the early staged of this first with Halo 2 and Halo 3.
During the era of Halo 2, it utilized your skill-based rank (The rank provided permitted upon the amount of wins you had by a specified margin of elo, or exp), to match you based within a 1 - 15% ratio of your skill rank. For example, if you were a 35, you could look between 30 - 40 for matches. If you were a 20, you could look between 17 - 23 for matches. These "ranks" were a 1-50 base implementation that provided players with a direct relation from winning to progression, upon which the player would automatically be progressing if they win, and regressing if they lost.
By equal comparison, in absolutely zero way, shape or form can someone who is level 35 match a level 10, and someone who is a level 10 could never match a 35. Instead, they'll permit a "looser" interpretation of this if you join a wide array of players in a lobby, such as a 10, 15, 25 and 40. It'll try to pick the most balanced "team" applicable within a safe range, say 20 - 35.
By complete and utter contrast, Call of Duty had originally a CBMM style matchmaking, where you would match "as fast as possible" against anyone. The person who would be the "best in the world" could easily match a person on their first game.
Now translate this back to "SBMM"; Modern implementations aren't entirely how strict Halo 2 and Halo 3 were, in fact, most modern implementations of SBMM are designed around permitting the lesser skilled player is carried to a victory by permitted better players, allowing a "team balance" dynamic. Something, may I remind you, not done in Halo 2 nor Halo 3.
Consider a modern "SBMM" concept like a gym with 24 students, 12 of which are handicap. Instead of putting all 12 average players in their own game, and the other 12 handicap players in their own game, they instead separate it out by 1/2. Half the players on each team are handicap, the other half are average.
If you want to play 3rds here, and lump in "Well above average", you can. Same principle applies, 1/3rd the players categorize each aspect, thus allowing the "Kid who has a peg leg" play Football with the 300 pound linebacker and the 6'0 150 average guy who can throw and catch.
"Is this fair?"
Depends who you ask. It's fair for the handicap player, who now has the ability to "win" and feel "less handicap", however the average player, and especially above average player, now have to carry this player to victory. In addition, it also permits that every team is "in this scenario", which then creates gameplay that feels far more forced, and creates scenarios that makes it feel "Impossible to win".
Now translate this all toward any game, you'll see the inherent problem. It's not specifically that it's "Matching with skill", it's that it's attempting to put Timmy & Jimmy from South Park on The Lions or Eagles and telling the players on those teams that "It's balanced". Realistically, it's where Call of Duty was verses where Halo 2 and Halo 3 were. Instead of "Matching on skill", they utilize this principle to help the lesser fortunate players win some matches so they can play the game for longer.
This, my friend, is called "Engagement" based, and it's a theory, not a practice. In order to appropriately increase engagement upon the players who, otherwise, would rage quit offline, uninstall and go back to their single player game -- you provide them with free wins, free victories, free rewards, and give them the feeling of "satisfaction" when they usually wouldn't do good.
And herein lies the problem with modern games. That subfaction usually calls themselves "casuals", despite them likely playing "more" than most "competitive" players in the bunch.
The rest of the video after this point you proved, in specific, why "This isn't really "skill" based matchmaking, and instead it's the notion that they provided team balancing to permit the argument that its matching based off skill, when in actuality, they're not matching you based on balance -- they're matching you to provide a sample engagement algorithm for general below-average players".
The solution to a lot of this is to revert games back to the original formula, and forego the belief that "People who are bad just need their hands held". They don't. In fact, if someone is bad at a video game, absolutely zero person should enforce them, or enhance their play style to provide them free wins. They shouldn't be awarded a carry if, indeed, they are underperforming. However, team balancing, and in particular modern SBMM, is perfectly designed to do exactly this.
Consequently, games that did not do this were considered "ultra competitive", whilst games that "Do this" are considered "Casual"; Unironically, players who ask for the outright removal of "skill" based matchmaking are also the same who do not want a hand out -- but want to feel like God's at all times.
The removal of SBMM entirely is why Call of Duty had 1/10th the players as Halo 2 and Halo 3. The inclusion of "Team balancing" in SBMM exponentially increased player counts to Call of Duty, which in turn lead to the heavy influence of "non-competitive fps games" upon the industry, which I'd argue destroyed Halo.
The modern day premise combines both aspects, but in particular, focuses on trying to keep the engagement of the underperforming player by providing them equal or net sum wins to losses, which would give them incentive to return and keep playing.
The alternative, which is better, is to match based purely on skill, and within a small percentage of skill window and not team balance the teams. Thus, pressuring your own individual skill to "step up to the plate" and not have a computer depict that "2 people in the lobby will carry one team, 2 will carry the other". If the team becomes imbalanced, it's due to the players who are under-performing are not in the appropriate rank. Thus, they should be losing ranking, whilst the ones performing remain their rank, and it'll equal itself out.
Ultimately;
SBMM isn't bad. Team Balancing is.
SBMM isn't bad. Providing free wins for under-performing players is.
SBMM isn't bad. Engagement oriented wins/losses are.
SBMM isn't bad. Matching upon the entire skill spectrum to provide "Equal matches for under-performing players" is.
SBMM needs to revert to the original design of it. How Halo 2 and Halo 3 created and developed this.
Not Call of Duty.
I would honestly prefer outlier protection than raw sbmm. So that little Timmy who just got [Insert FPS game here] for Christmas doesn't match up against the highest rung of players, and promptly gets rolled and discouraged from ever touching the game again.
As a top 1% player, the crucible is almost unplayable for me. I can’t queue with any of my friends because they just get pub stomped the whole time. And I’m having to try my absolute ass off every game just to do well. Not fun whatsoever and I’ve taken a major break from pvp
Every match, I only see pros with meta stuff.
Im a above average player in D2 (like 2.0+kd or smth) and I've essentially quit. Its just too difficult, stressful, and frustrating to tryhard EVERY GAME. its sad to say this bc im a House of Wolves veteran, but the game is just not fun or interesting anymore
Was absolutely not expecting an SCP reference. Well done!
Game devs need to start hiring data scientists to analyze complex sets of data and use it to build a fun version of SBMM. There isn’t one number that will be a good predictor of your success. There are likely 20 different metrics. First company to do this will be on top for a long time
Companies aren't here for u to have fun they are here for money and the skilled player who has been playing for 2 years + is less likely to drop the game than the noob so cater to the noob simple as that
I think the best case scenario is also a issue in it of itself. My personal bets solution would alienate the playerbases but for the right reasons. Competitive should ALWAYS be about SBMM and CBMM mixed, whilst Quickplay / Casual playlists should have a very minor amount of SBMM that really just has players of similar K/D's going against each other, not necessarily all the importance of various statistics. Just if you have a 5,0 K/D you ain't facing anyone worse than a 3.0 K/D or anyone that's a 7 K/D+.
So competitive it's more closer refined, quickplay it's less involved overall and the various "for fun" playlists that are just very quick matches of party games like Mayhem from D2 literally have no SBMM but still retain CBMM to a lesser extent.
I'd rather look up to the guy dookying on everyone in the lobby, than looking down on a player with bad connection
I saw, I came, I stay.
Keeping people playing the game became more important than making the game worth playing.
It feels worse for casual players to either get stomped or stomp with no in between, which is what happens when you dont have SBMM
I remember the first time I played comp with my girlfriend.
It was so bad that I got a we ran. In Comp.
Improving in a game with SBMM is like upgrading your armor in Minecraft. But whenever you do; the monsters also get stronger. So what's the point? There's no sense of improvement. You're not rewarded differently for doing so. It's a terrible design. If I'm bad at something I want to know that I'm bad at it so I can improve. If I'm good at something I want to feel rewarded for the effort I've put into the game, not punished by it. Crazy how games are willing to implement SBMM as their core MM system just so they can make more new players stick with the game.
I don't understand why BOTH aren't implemented? Why not? Satisfy both sides, get more players attracted to your game so they won't have to settle with what ever matchmaking system is in place.
10:20: "...ten minutes and twenty-five seconds..."
What did you do with my other 5 seconds?!
that potshot at halo infinite was diabolical lol.
One of issues about SBMM not always working properly is Trials of Osiris. My kd is 1.3 and I always seem to encounter people with 2 or 3 that just demolish the match.
SBMM has removed having casual fun with my clan mates because they’re pve players I have over 2,000 hours in pvp. They cant just have fun with me anymore because everytime im in the lobby with them we play the saywallahbruh of console and they get discouraged. The fact that quickpkay has SBMM drives this point home because the only modes that aren’t matchmaking on indication of skill is crucible labs and weekly rotater. This weekend trials was out so there were no crucible labs and the rotater was mayhem. My clan mates wanted to do matches with me to unlock trials and get better at crucible be everytime we did quickpkay, trials(I had gone flawless)or comp there was absolutely no compromise in skill level between me and my clan mates. SBMM was matching us with people of my skill level. Guess what, they don’t want to do pvp anymore and I they can’t enjoy it with me. Thanks bungo
first off Issue #3 that right there is my issue thank you for describing it. literally my friends avoid each other because its unfun to play together outside of private lobbies. Second destiny should really try FBMM by itself to fix issue #3. not saying it will work but i think that its a better start then SBMM. PS FBMM is Fireteam Base Match Making.
It shouldn't be one single fix, that's kind of how we landed in this disaster in the first place. I think it should be an even split down the middle if you're queueing solo. Else, the comp of your fireteam should take over.
@@spaxxor Sorry for the confusion. i didnt mean to use FBMM as the one and only solution. but like how SBMM and CBMM have the first priority being their focus then the other such as Skill first then connection. I think FBMM should be used when grouped with a fireteam then look for skill.
This is exactly WHY my opinion on SBMM in destiny from even before bungie started putting it into the game recently was very simple.
Gamemodes like trials or competitive should have some degree of SBMM. Gamemodes like 6v6 casual control should be CBMM.
Casual gamemodes favor connections, competitive gamemodes favor skill.
Above all else, it should use the skill based matchmaking systems to balance teams as best as possible with the players available AFTER choosing what players are in a match.
More often than not with CBMM, it runs into problems where teams are very lopsided. With SBMM, it still happens far too often to convince me that it is actually in place whatsover. In reference to destiny specifically, of course.
Simply put, for a CASUAL gamemode, i don't care if there's players 10x better or worse than me in the lobby, so long as there isn't like 5 players of that skill level on one team and zero on the other. For a COMPETITIVE gamemode, i want games that really pressure me to play my best and show off my skill, and that requires properly balanced teams - not forcing me to fight uphill battles at a clear disadvantage, to the unfair detriment of me and my teammates, causing frustration for all of us which often ends up targeting each other in the heat of the moment.
And remember: Rank-based matchmaking in a proper competitive ranking system is in itself a form of SBMM, meaning the extra layer is less necessary.
edit2:
For clarification on my experience, I've found the game more fun and in a better state of matchmaking post-SBMM. However, I still feel it didn't solve many problems, and simply replaced most of them with new problems, as well as really not having as big of an affect on the biggest problem of all (in my experience) - the one I really felt needed fixed - as it really should have.
In my experience, post-SBMM, lobbies are mostly more well balanced, meaning that when teams are imbalanced in one side's favor (which still happens just as frequently as before) it is not by so huge of a margin so the game is actually still playable and entertaining despite it being a free victory handed to one side courtesy of whatever algorithm(s) decided to slap us in a lobby together.
However, in exchange, it is frequent that 1-3 players per team on average will have noticeably bad connections, some to an absurd degree which can make them almost uncontestable at times and makes every fight with them feel like RNG.
For context on this, I mostly play solo queue, and at most play with a fireteam of 3 players. In a 6v6 setting, I should not consistently, this often, be in lobbies where I'm either on a team of people clearly better than the majority of the enemy team, or in lobbies where I'm the only player able to compete with any of the enemy team in literally any gunfight. CBMM or SBMM, this should not be happening as much as it is, and yet it has been a consistent problem with both, not even solved by SBMM as you'd expect.
That is the one problem I had with CBMM before, and for that reason I never necessarily wanted SBMM in casual playlists, I just wanted skill-based team balance.
And don't try to tell me that was already in place, or already is in place, because you can not feel it and you could never feel it. If it's in place, it's a poor execution and always has been.
If it's got enough players to fill a team of 6 with people mostly of a higher skill level and the enemy team mostly of a lower skill level, then it has enough players to split it evenly between the teams, no matter how big the gap between them. Fireteams make this more difficult, but it's often enough that neither team has a 6 stack that it should not be this bad.
I thank SBMM for making those matches not completely brainless wins or losses decided by luck and luck alone, but at the end of the day it is not the solution to the problem. If the problem were solved, CBMM would just be better for control / clash 6v6 casual.
Not just SBMM, but these Cronus and XIM users are also a troubling factor as well, mainly in Destiny as far as I've been playing Destiny 2 for. Before Bungie implemented SBMM, every player throughout my lifetime would struggle hitting any snipes (Headshots), either missing or landing a body shot and randomly, these same players magically can land any shots possible, no matter how good your movement is or flinching your enemy, they can 90% hit any shots, I've seen 1.2s never miss a snipe shot, heck,, even players below a 1.0 can still compete against a really good sniper main player nowadays in Destiny which is underwhelming at times. I can guarantee you that 40% of the Destiny community who plays trials either XIMs or use a Cronus man. Some people with XIMs can land any snipe shot or never miss, same goes for Cronus users. Games just unenjoyable, got a play a comp game in quickplay and usually get the worst teammates possible lmao
As a d2 player I can say I gave up on pvp because the "casual" Playlist is sweatier then trials, gms, and flawless raids combined
Came from the Tower, stayed for FGC rep and subbed for the content. Good stuff.
A problem that you didn’t mention (as it is very specific to Destiny 2) is the fact that the game feels awful at a high level. You can only really play aggressively when you’re far better than your opponent, if not you have to respect the fact they could punish you so passive play is encouraged. Look at the top teams and players matching each other over the past 2 years, it’s all bastion barricades, getting a pick, 3 peeking etc. Hell I’m an aggressive player I’ll happily split up death balls in control and take on 4 v 1’s I average a 1.8kd I played passive in Iron banner using meta and I averaged a 4.3 with 80% win rate but it felt so boring
I think there should be brackets inside of SBMM so that good players are matched against good players but with a wider range of what that "good" is, but you can do competitive which affects stats like kd, or you can do casual that doesn't affect it. That'll leave space open to experiment or try different things without risk of losing anything. To put a high skill player against a low skill player, even if the high skill player is using a meme build, they'll still most likely win. I understand high skill players want to have fun, but so do low skill players and to constantly lose for the sake of high skill players' enjoyment is not a good system to retain new players imo.
In destiny I swear in some games I get teammates cracked out of their minds and in others I get teammates named Timmy who lack 5 chromosomes in sbmm and I’m above average kd with 1.27-1.3 consistently in d2
Mesome this is a video that should be shown in colleges and universities too new game designers what gamers want and need to play a game for fun. It's not all about that million dollars for winning every game. Some of us just want to join up with friends and have a laugh and enjoy yourselves not getting stomped and leaving because the fun has gone out of the game you once loved. Might be a bit off but what the hell.
They already know it but the people making the calls are the ones wearing suits that haven't played a single game in their lives
game I used to play have 2 servers, one for lvl 1 to lvl 20 and the other for the rest of the community, it takes like 1 day or 2 to get out of that server without much grind but is enough time to get used to the game mechanics and gunplay, then there will be no more sbmm for casual playlist and if you want, there is always a ranked playlist. The game is warface, it WAS a really good game until it gone p2w
I'm on the older side of millennial so casual gaming to me is picking up Mega man X for an hour or so, then onto Destiny for a few hours then onto something new to try. I might play every day, or once a month but, it's always for fun first and foremost. That opening, it away gives me goosebumps to see the best at their best.
I liked the smack sound from the ruler-ghost, no shitpost here! also the video was good, more fun in games bo-yah!
its from a very unusual indie "horror" game. Good luck figuring it out!
@@TDTwo2 Oh the rabbit hole... first I looked up the Kitten Cannon game, it's "horror" for the cat right? But I was unsure since there are several smack sounds as it hits the ground. Hm.. Indie "horror" game... well, better watch clips of Untitled Goose game, that bird is a menace! no luck. Last stop was Among Us but I just searched "Among Us sound effect" and landed on the site myinstants wich is a soundbar page, searched slap and eventually got to "Baldi ruler slap" Is it Baldi's Basics Mesome?!
This video was actually so good keep it man.
this is why we play tf2 and look how well they're doing, a video game from 2007 is consistently in the top 10 most played games on steam. clearly they are doing something right
yeaaa... i guees
wish we have better supp from Valve but the foundation for a great game IS there, but theyre more interested in doing something else i suppose...
The # of crucible matches I’ve played this week where I loose because people leave in the first 2 min is making me hate sbmm, why should I have to try 100% of the time, and don’t get me started on dmt and high impact pulse rifles, sorry for ranting
The only reason i'd advocate for SBMM is that Bungie can't balance an already matched game for the life of them, matching the three plat level players against a gold and two bronze
What if the game had both active at once? Hear me out, say the game selects all the players it needs using cbmm, and then it creates the teams with sbmm. I know it wouldn't work everytime, but it would still allow for a more chaotic experiance, while still being somewhat balanced in terms of team overall skill.
Good stuff!
Looking forward to what’s coming
What exactly is forcing you to play at your very best in sbmm? Just the fact that you'll probably lose otherwise? I think it's important to be able to enjoy games without being the one clapping cheeks.
It's just not very fun dying over and over... I play a shooter to get kills otherwise I could be playing Minecraft, Terraria or some other game. With SBMM I get put into lobbies with people exactly as good as me (ideally), therefore to beat them I am forced to play above my average, not necessarily my very best, but definitely very sweaty. Idk I'm not an excellent player and I haven't been enjoying SBMM in the games I play. (Check for urself I upload thx :)
basically this. I am a high elo player so any time I am not playing near my peak I spend most of my time on the respawn screen. Also certain games just arent fun played optimally ALL the time, most shooters are in this category I would argue
If everything aside from the meta means getting trashed to that degree against people of similar skill, it's more of a game balance issue at that point.
@@glb0768 but those sane people at that level are most of the time using the smae meta
My problem is that high skill is my casual so naturally I'm really good at fps games, it's just getting too grind, apex, I quickly and easily hit platinum, it lost its fun because it becomes a grind, crucible I'm top 4 percent and it's insanely sweaty but thats my casual because its just senseless "unliving" enemy players and ots becoming a grind due to sbmm, mcdinalds wifi player's or cheats. I'm an off meta player because that's what I enjoy and it's getting difficult to enjoy using things that are fun even if not viable (nightwatch) GL and bombardiers are fun but not worth using if it can't outperform even with my skill
Listing d2 with others in the "big multiplayer games" screens made me giggle
Hope this reaches outside the d2 community
everytime i try to do crucible bounties I end up wanting to end my life
Here's my take: SBMM CAN work in casual games. It's just more often than not implemented so aggressively and so poorly in modern games that it's become as big an issue it is. Think Halo 2 & 3's Trueskill system: it's SBMM, but specifically designed to cater towards the AVERAGE player and tends to favor close matches, with small deviances depending on your actual skill. Why more games don't take notes on this system, especially Bungie since they were the ones who invented it, I don't know.
I've always advocated for wide ass bubbles. If you're shit you're in the lower bubble, if you're god, you're in the upper bubble. Everybody else falls in between them with a hard cut separating the two somewhere in the middle
when ever I start winning to much I just lose on purpose
my KD goes down
and im happy again
Very well thought out
If bungie just made a separate cbmm control playlist we as a community could stop screaming at each other over this topic. Just let both sides of the argument have what they want.