The pain when you know you’re about to lose from the outset but still play

SBMM is one thing. RBMM (Retention/Revenue based Match Making) is a whole different can of worms. Which i suspect will become a point of contention even more in the future. Where the game not only takes into account your skill to match your up "fairly" but also play and spending patterns to keep you engaged and spending more money. There are suspicions in the community that Apex uses Retention based match making. Hypothetically: It throws you an easy lobby which you win as the first match of the day to get you hooked. And then shifts the difficulty of lobbies to keep you in the sweet spot between frustrated and rewarded. Which results in longer play sessions. Than just giving you easy lobbies. And activision filed some patents for revenue based matchmaking. Where it would throw you into the lobby with players that had stronger weapon variants then you to get you to spend money on loot boxes.

SBMM wasn’t particularly an issue with call of duty until the decision was made to break up lobbies after every match. Before that change, after match a few people would leave and people of similar skill could join to replace them. You could play for a while with the same lobby until someone had to leave. Regardless of if you had a particularly good or bad game you could choose to stick in the lobby or leave to find another. This meant that adjustment to the level of ELO players the game would put into your lobbies would slowly adjust better or worse as players shuffled in and out and would much more closely resemble a players skill as the grand majority of players would remain in the same lobby if they felt it was a close game. However if you get forced into a new lobby every match you lose that adjustment period, and if you happen to have a particularly good game, suddenly you’ll be facing off against extremely high skill players and getting absolutely swept. The other half of the problem is that the designers of that system foresaw people intentionally losing matches so to try and pub stomp and as a result they made it much harder to lose ELO and go to a lower SBMM level where you might be more comfortable. This ended up making the game feel like it was punishing you for doing well. I honestly believe that shifting back to consistent game lobbies would drastically improve CoD players reaction to SBMM

One guy (who I remember being formally affiliated with Activision) once said that newer players would be placed into lobbies with players who had recently bought bundles. This way, when a newer player gets killed, they will see the killcam of the player using a specific weapon variant, convincing them that buying the weapon variant/bundle will imporve their gameplay based on their placement in these specific lobbies. After purchasing such cosmerics, the player is said to be placed into newer-player lobbies, resulting in the "bot-lobby" experience and giving them the illusion that purchasing the cosmetic drastically improved their gameplay when, in reality, it was all RBMM (don't know if this is just lingo or an actuall term, but I'll give credit to MokeySniper).

One of the biggest issues with skill based matchmaking is when the game cant find a match to put you in because there arent enough players at your skill level in your region so it just puts you in high ping lobbies.

My experience with Call of Duty's SBMM in recent years has just been "oh, I'm doing really well in this match, I can probably look forward to getting absolutely destroyed in the next few games because I just went up several levels in the SBMM" and then of course the SBMM taking precedent over the quality of the connection and landing me in many 100+ ping lobbies.

The primary contention (for me at least) about how over tuned SBMM in current COD seems to be is not strictly getting matched against really sweaty players but in how rapidly you will ping pong between skill brackets. You start out playing much less skilled players and so dominate, rocket up whatever skill ladder exists getting some good game along the way, and then get matched against people who are going to demolish you and then send you down to the lower bracket starting the whole thing over again. It doesn't feel like you are naturally settling into a skill level but rather the game says every player gets a certain amount of guaranteed wins per hour so blowouts feel more common than in previous years as you are either being given a win or it's your turn to be someone else's.

Actually, matchmaking shouldn't be "random" for public matches in CoD, it should be based upon connection. Then settle the lobby via team balancing. SBMM should only be used in ranked matches. Connection should be most important.

Something you didn't address about team size (battlefield/apex), it isn't that the bellcurve averages out by some mystic natural occurance when the team size is large. The reason it generally works is because by having open ended map design, and lots of players, better players have a larger disadvantage (worse players are more likely to flank from behind, or catch them in an asymmetric postion via vehicles or cover/height). So for something like apex, the idea is you might not win against another team mechanically but you can wait for another team to weaken/pick them off, play defensively and bait the stronger team into a disadvantageous position, or initiate on them in a way that gives you a numbers advantage. Later in a game's life, average/good players figure out the meta which counteracts that stuff, which is when skill mm is needed. With a lack of skillbased matchmaking, it's often one team will only have bad/average players with one or two experienced outliers, while another team might have no great/awful players but a large amount of average/middle curve players. Those are the scenarios where team balance/matchmaking are most necessary, imo

I think it's nice to have both options. Not 100% sure how halo infinite works but I find in casual its a good mix of people who've had halo 3 in their hands when they were born and people who just picked it up. Where as Ranked is usually accurate to skill level and is a bit of a sweat fest.

The thing about Call of Duty is that the cost of the SBMM in the past 3 titles (MW2019, BO:CW, Vanguard) has been persistent lobbies in multiplayer, and a large degradation in connection consistency and quality. CoD has always had very simple SBMM in the past, and it allowed you to meet people with a large diversity in skill, and to make rivalries, friendships, and funny moments, which is what made CoD a staple for me growing up. The new SBMM/EOMM (Engagement Optimized Match Making) model completely removes the "community" aspect of CoD, as another youtuber, XclusiveAce, has put it in the past, and this is without even mentioning the strength of the matchmaking creating the feeling of every match being pre-decided and predictable.

My Take on SBMM: In the old MW2 days I would find myself playing against people of an obviously higher skill tier and after so many games with and against them I found myself catching up to that skill by figuring out a way to counter or match their play style which would make it a highlight with these "gotcha" moments; sometimes friends were made with this rivalry. When all lobbies are randomized people who are the same then there is no special experience, there is nothing that stands out, there is no social aspect of this multiplayer game, you might as well play against similarly skilled bots. You likely wouldn't even know if they were bots unless you had an intimate knowledge of how those bots behaved and could identify them as such.

I have no issues with skill based matchmaking in games like Overwatch, CSGO, and Valorant. Those games are genuinely fun to play competitively. Call of Duty however has been completely ruined by skill based matchmaking. I used to go to all the midnight releases and now I haven't even bought the last few games due to SBMM. Call of Duty is more fun when it's ENTIRELY RANDOM. Some games are competitive, some you get stomped, some you get to own everyone. Call of Duty was designed around being able to actually get killstreaks which is completely backwards when you have SBMM trying to keep everyone at a 1KD. Call of Duty as of recent has become particularly egregious with "retention based matchmaking" where they will periodically throw you into a noob lobby so you don't stop playing the game. The whole thing just feels fake and you know you're being gamed. I just want entirely random matchmaking based off purely connection. There's zero reward in actually getting better at Call of Duty because you can't even feel it. You just get put into harder lobbies. Literal pro players are below a 2 KD a lot of the time. I feel bad for anyone who never got to feel the old school skill progression in Call of Duty. I remember being a complete noob looking at the AC-130 and thinking "there's no way I'll get that many kills without dying" then slowly progressing and getting to where I had the confidence to run it....then getting my first nuke. God that personal skill progression was fantastic. Now every match of Call of Duty FEELS THE EXACT SAME! Zero variety, zero reason to get better, no visible ranks. Everything about it is utter dogshit. It's a real shame.

My distaste for SBMM comes from how it changes the game for my friends. Especially on call of duty. I have always been a bit of a sweat at COD, but I have many friends who are pretty average. When we team up it's a great gaming experience for me because the games are easier than what I am used to. The opposite is true for my friends. They tend to get frustrated because they are only going up against people well above their skill level. After they realize I am the cause of the problem, they game with me less and less, and eventually not at all. And playing solo in high skill sweat fests every day when all you want to do is unlock weapon camos is the absolute worst. For me this whole dilemma ruined the experience. I don't plan to play any more CODs, or invest much time in games with high SBMM.

My problem with sbmm especially in cod, is that you don't see the results for getting better at the game. This wasn't a problem with random lobbies, because you could see your stats slowly get better and better. Sbmm has eliminated that feeling, to the point where I don't even care about how well I do and just end up messing around doing random stuff

So most of my experience with sbmm is with CoD. I noticed it because there's a pretty considerable skill gap between me and my brother. Whenever we played together I would absolutely stomp on the lobby while my brother struggled against the sweats. I just think strict sbmm should be reserved for competitive ranked play where you can actually see and track your skill level. Pubs should be random matchmaking with as little sbmm as possble. Does this mean that in pubs I could get absolutely stomped on by a sweat? Yes. But it's also likely that the opposite could happen the next game and imo it feels more fair. The problem with sbmm is it feels like I'm being punished for spending tons of hours learning the mechanics and getting good at the game instead of being rewarded for my effort.

I feel like a good deal of the hate for it comes from people around my age that grew up with games that didn't have sbmm, and we had to go through the slog of getting our assess handed to us and get better, before finally we could be the ones consistently doing well. But now with sbmm we are always doing consistently average. Also I think part of the issue with apex, is that I'm pretty sure the game takes into account survival time and what end position your team ends up in to determine "skill" when really what this leads to is players avoiding conflict out of fear of getting stomped on until they are forced into conflict as one of the four last teams and sbmm sees that and goes "oh man they lasted a while, better bump them up a tier" while completely ignoring the fact that nobody on the team got a kill, or even broke anyone's shields

I think the skill based matchmaking should be transparent. You should always know your rank, your team member's rank and the rank of the enemies

The SBMM in Halo 2 and Halo 3 felt really damn good. I never matched into a game where I felt like I was sweating too hard. They didn't lack competition, and some matches were breakneck, but the balance lent itself to a more casual experience where both teams were playing at a similar skill level and more importantly at a similar attitude. That's something folks seem to really forget about gaming, the intention behind it. SBMM in those games worked in such a way where I felt like I could just dork around a little, take more risks in my gameplay, and experiment with the map and sandbox available. The modern implementation of SBMM in Halo Infinite and modern COD feels far more strict which limits my ability to experiment because using anything non-meta virtually guarantees a lose. The games are evenly skilled, just like before, but now the attitude of players has shifted to be more competitive and fierce, where before you might be matched with people just trying to have a good time. From all my research it appears like SBMM is good, but it become beneficial to the overall experience when it lends itself to a more social/casual experience vs a competitive one. Now, my head-canon on why this shift has occurred is because e-sports has grown quite a lot in recent years, therefore devs are designing games to be competitive to appeal to the e-sport audience in hopes of driving revenue. Now, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, at least not intrinsically, but the loss of focus on the common gamer (a demographic that every day grows, and is primarily older therefore more time restricted) has evolved gaming in a way where games don't seem to be designed for fun, rather they're designed to be competitive. That shift in philosophy has made modern shooters less fun. I think a return to the older SBMM systems would be very beneficial to the health of gaming as a whole, but that's just my view on things.

There was always some kind of SBMM in cod, but mw19 introduced a much different one. Previous sbmm systems appeared to be closer to ‘random’ matchmaking, while from mw19 and forward sbmm gives the impression of a much ‘stronger’ one.

I feel like it's a good concept, but is really hard to execute in practice. When I used to play Call of Duty, I would be put into a lobby with people who are very new for a few games, which would be easy for me to do good in. But then the game decides to put me into a game where people play so well I cant do anything. It put me in a cycle that took part in me quitting the game entirely.

I like the way games like rocket league seems to do it. Casual is kinda close to your skill and ranked is much closer. So in casual you get to play with a wider range of skills.

One of the main issues is the tolerance level for skill, they’ve been tightening restrictions on skill levels per match and thats a lot of why people find ever game to be a sweat fest. In older games with SBMM like halo 2 and 3 the SBMM had tolerance levels that would allow for some skill based matching with average players in the game as well, which made games more fun and less sweaty, games weren’t about the scoreboard and perfect balance back then, it was all about having as much fun as possible each game

The third option is server browser with local servers, server mods, etc. The big benefit, besides lower latency, is that you can end up with more of a community, since you are playing with and against the same people.

I've been playing casual team fortress 2 for over a decade now, a game that predates sbmm, and the sense of casual camaraderie is unmatched in modern titles. In casual, you're allowed to do stupid stuff, you're allowed to go off meta or use meme loadouts because none of it matters. Being in the sane lobby as someone who just installed the game and a veteran player like me creates a sense of community, new players can learn from veterans, veterans van goof off with new players. I play video games in my spare time ro relax. If you want a challenge play competitive. It's good to play a game where you can just chill.

SBMM shouldn’t be “sensitive” (one game can entirely change the players you’re against) and instead be slowly changing. (Because there is always a learning curve). or you could have different modes, one with sbmm and one without

I wish we had the option in games like CoD where we had two gamemodes: one using SBMM and one using random. And then we can see which is better, how it feels to play this and that, and which is more popular

Playing destiny 2 has given me an apreciation for sbmm. The "casual" playlists have very little room to have fun because there is always that one player with over 1000 hours ruining it. Competetive playlists are often more casual because the do have sbmm. (For those of you who play d2, I'm refering to the elemination playlist in particular as one with sbmm)

I feel like SBMM brings about a huge issue that im surprised you haven't mentioned - Smurfing In random matchmaking the chances of a high skill player getting to dominate a lobby full of low skill players is...well, random, and not particularly high. In SBMM, high skill players can use the system against itself and get like a new account or purposefully derank so they can consistently terrorise new players. This is especially bad in free games like CS:GO.

At this point in the gaming industry, we need skill-based game developers to collaborate to actually make a game worth competing in.

The real problem with sbmm specifically in the new cods, it’s more of a performance based matchmaking. If you play decently well for 2 matches, you immediately get shoved into a pro lobby with people of a kd of 4. In IW I had a kd of 1,5, and I got matched with people with a KD between 0,8-2. In mw2019 I had a kd of 0,7 and I regularly got matched with people with a KD over 4! Thats the biggest problem with new cod sbmm, getting matched with people that are just way better than you.

My understanding is that the SBMM in pre-MW19 CoD games was not as strict--there was usually a protected bracket of the players at the bottom that didn't get queued with the general population, and then everyone else mingled to some degree. Obviously this is not so much the case in the post-MW19 era, where the game is constantly reevaluating your skill level after each match and (seemingly) bumping you into sweatier/harder lobbies after a few wins, and rewarding you with easier ones after a few losses, perhaps in order to hook the player into chasing the next high/win. I think the reasonable, obvious solution is just to go back to the pre-MW19 compromise of having the protected bracket for some percentage of players on the lower end, and then everyone else plays in the main pool. Obviously this is preferable for the slightly above average to great CoD players, but more importantly: variety is the spice of life in casual matchmaking. It is not just that sweating in casual matchmaking is obnoxious--and it really is, don't get me wrong, casual MM in most games should have very soft, elastic skill-based MM. But also that it is horribly boring. Very high tier players and content creators do like pubstomping, but there's certainly a sizable chunk of average and above average players like myself that simply appreciate the variety that a softer SBMM brings--lower skilled players play the game differently, play maps differently, use different weapons. --if I queue into a match of Cold War w/sweaty players, I can match their meta loadouts, pull out my tec9 or something else to counter the quickscoping meta, but it's very boring and predictable. Having a larger playerbase with more variance in skill level makes the game more interesting by being less predictable i.e. more fun. I don't recall his name, but the creator of Halo 2's ELO system for its matchmaking has some great commentary/tweets on this subject. Being very boring and predictable isn't so bad in games that are more strictly tests of skill, like CSGO--though NA MM is not particularly healthy atm/filled with smurfs at most ranks, also boring. --But being boring and predictable in a fun, silly arcade shooter like CoD is a death knell for the game's health as casual, approachable fun for most people.

When I played MW my problem was how the game measured skill. Accuracy was a big one. So if you used low rate-of-fire weapons like Marksman rifle, it would send you straight to the top of the skill level. I wouldn't even get 2 kills in a TDM game, it was a sweatfest disaster. I would have to intentionally hipfire a lot to lower my skill rank down again. Also the final straw was the horrible 100+ ping I always had, which some people have said that when the game can't find a high enough skill game for you, it dumps you in with the highest ping game instead. I was rubber banding and getting killed 3 seconds into the future most of the time, watching the killcams and comparing what I saw with what they saw. I completely quit the game, I couldn't take it anymore.

My issue with very strict sbmm is that you never feel like you’re improving, or at least not as much as you should considering the time. Because your win rate has to be as close to 50% as possible you never get that feeling of just destroying the enemy team. In seige for example you may be legions better than you were a year ago, but your K/D remains the same and it feels like you plateaued when in reality you’re much better

I played a VR game called Onward. It is a 5v5 and the most popular game mode is basically search and destroy but with only one objective instead of 2. When you join a lobby you are not assigned a team. There are 2 helmets on the table. You choose one and put it on your head to join a team. Between each round you have the option to leave your team and choose a helmet again. This leaves it up to the players to balance the teams if they choose. Say if everyone on one team leaves they can redistribute the players. Or if some mad lad wants to prove his skills they can do a 1v5. It's interesting seeing that some people don't care about evenly distributing the skills of each player. Sometimes you get people trying to evenly distributed the skill. Some stay loyal to a team for as long as they are in that lobby. Some will switch teams every time the map changes. Sometimes you get a lobby that feels very evenly distributed and people will say that they want to keep the same teams each time for that reason. I will say the games that feel evenly matched are super fun. Every time you kill someone or die it feels like a crucial moment in whether you teams loses or wins the round.

I’d be interested in what a random matchmaking based on sbmm looks like, at least for casual play. What I mean by this is a system that basically simulates that curve you get from higher player count matches, and artificially puts teams together out of everyone queued up. It probably wouldn’t work very well, but I’d still be interested in exploring that further.

I personally prefer being able to simply pick from a server list, especially when there are different rulesets in some of them because you can choose for yourself what kind of lobby you want to play in and find micro-communities around gametypes that you like. it's not the most convenient option, but the sense of agency is a big help in enjoying a multiplayer game for me.

Random matchmaking isn't "the other alternative". Server browsers are above all. No matchmaker needed. (I'm not saying matchmaking is useless in all cases, just that a plain old server browser is a very good [if not the best] option that has to be brought up for discussion and not simply forgotten about. It should be the 'default' in my opinion.)

This is a mw2019 game sequence used to go for me: -play a couple or maybe even 3 games with a week weapon or a goofy build -actually do good with said weapon and have fun -next few games have to play hard to at least saty positive -switch to a m4 or mp5 and play more relaxed -then again the following matches become an absolut swetty hell

1:31 I really love your content bro it makes my day better

At higher levels, this encourages players to maintain their skill and continue practicing, thereby naturally encouraging players to improve to keep up with their peers. This works especially well in properly balanced competitive settings and ranked modes. Players naturally become a motivator for each other, be it a positive or negative force. At mid-to-lower levels (the VAST majority of players), good SBMM only ever matches players with others who are just as ignorant as you are. People who refuse to learn, who refuse to improve, and those who spread a lot of fake nonsense amongst others who don't know any better who then take that elsewhere as "knowledge". And then when these players do well in one or a few games, they think that they've already done as well as they can and believe they deserve to keep winning. They enter the next skill bracket and start losing and think it's unfair or some kind of cheating. It is not their fault they believe this. If your skill is low enough, you'll find yourself in rooms where people will outright acknowledge a lack of interest in improving, basically making every match a tossup if a team has one of these players. SBMM is an issue in modern video games because it brings into question why skill should even matter amongst the casual audience. As we know as game designers and enthusiasts in general, the actual competitive playerbase is dwarfed by the sheer number of casual players. Those players keep games alive. It also brings into question the value of winning as opposed to improving, since the only tangible reward comes from winning your games despite your personal performance. I don't understand why everyone these days is so fixated on skill when casual players are not even part of the equation, and I do think it's the prevalence of SBMM in places it doesn't need to be. Games like TF2 and many other shooters of old didn't rely on solely matchmade games, letting players decide where they wanted to go and who they wanted to play with- whether it be with better/worse/evenly matched players. It was your choice. I do strongly believe it's one excuse (of many) for companies to avoid producing a good lobby browser and allowing players to make their own custom games that are easy to join and enjoy as well. Random matchmaking would be completely useless, I don't even know why it's a question. The issue is matchmaking in general. Basically, players should be allowed to play with whoever they want, when they want, without feeling penalized for it. Custom games in a lot of modern shooters or games in general are frowned upon with lowered rewards or no post-game rewards to speak of. Players should be allowed to jump in the deep end if they want to, and being allowed to play with players of higher skill often gives players a goal to work toward or perspective on their own skill. And sometimes you just don't want to sweat, maybe you want to help some slightly lower skilled folks out who don't mind your presence. Maybe you do want to find a game of your level, you probably can. At the end of the day, it's everyone's choice to play with the people they're with, but most games these days don't even give us this choice. On top of all this, good matchmaking is just hard to make. If your playerbase starts to dwindle, who draws the line between being able to play with similar skilled players or find a match at all?

So I play BO2 on the Plutonium PC client where you only join games via a server browser, so there is absolutely 100% no SBMM (except for team balancing, which some servers don't even do). Here's my experience with it (it being 'no SBMM'): It's of course still pretty sweaty, since anybody of any skill level can join, and especially since only seasoned COD pros would go back and play such an old game. But since they are community-run servers, the lobbies persist and you can even rejoin the same exact server like months later and still find the exact same people playing. It gives you a chance to improve against people and become skilled like they are. With SBMM in COD, you never improve, because you just go back and forth between these super difficult lobbies and then these super easy lobbies. Another thing with non-SBMM games is the sense of community; you can play with the same people for literally hours, and with regards to Plutonium specifically, like I said before, you can often find the exact same people playing on the same servers every day, so you'll almost always run into the same people, which allows you to easily build friendships on the servers! Getting a sweaty lobby destroyer in BO2 plutonium makes me want to stay and learn from the guy; sweaty lobby destroyers in SBMM games just makes me want to leave, since I know the game is just manipulating me and is going to throw me into an easier lobby later. Overall I prefer COD without SBMM any day of the week, even if I'm getting easier lobbies from SBMM. It feels like the game is cheesing me and just trying to keep me playing.

I used to play a game with no SBMM, the name was Phantom Forces (On Roblox anyways). In that game each player needed to learn to play the hard way, and because TTK is really short in that game, every gun is easy to use and provides enough to kill high rank players, so its a different case than with COD franchise but i honestly prefer a game without SBMM, because the learning curve is hard, but it provides a great advantage once you're on the average, you can dominate almost every lobby since the average ranks you'll find there are from 50-100 and only have tough fights against smurfs (people who start on new accounts) and higher ranks (100+) i managed to get to rank 164 before dropping the game because it felt too slow compared to COD and other games, but i still cheerish the memories i created in it as part of my gamer soul core.

Personally I really like Overwatch's take on it with having somewhat stricter SBMM in competitive modes but then having it to a lesser level in casual, it keeps the competitive integrity in ranked modes but also means that people who aren't as good still don't get stomped by a random top 500 player when they just want to relax

No body likes to get continously steam rolled, and everyone wants to feel like a pro player. I know that this would be difficult to work out, but I would live to see a system that enables a player to play in easy - hard lobby and offer incentives to play in the harder lobbies. That way, you could either have a more casual experience, or gain the incentives for playing against harder players. I think k that would be ideal if set up correctly.

Im glad you did a video on this... I think that skill based match making is great, but it needs to be a wide-ish range to (as you said) prevent the "sweat" of a lobby to go up- but it can't be too random... I think a really good example of what not to do is rainbow six siege, while I'm not sure how the matchmaking works~ it seems far too random, it also matches squaded up teams with randoms far too frequently, leading to very little balance in casual matches. Though that may not be relevant.

I had the opposite example of what you're asking for, I played Destiny 2 before they removed SBMM entirely and it's basically unplayable now. New and lower-medium skill players are little more than cannon fodder for the high skill players to farm and matches are now just 1-2 people on each team racing to farm piss easy kills, it's basically a first person MOBA at this point.

imo, sbmm is more of a benefit to low-level players than mid-high level ones: if you have new players it's very important to make sure they aren't getting destroyed immediately regardless of their skill level to retain them bots are also very common for this and are generally used alongside sbmm I believe

i have always loved the team specific skill ranges in Battlefield 3 & Battlefield 4 lobbies. Each team has its own belle curve. Maybe one or two top fraggers are top, then the good players, and then some of the bad players. So you get the best of both worlds: sweating your balls off in some firefights, owning a couple noobs in the next one. Perfect balance.

For siege specifically, ranked playlist and unranked should be heavily influenced by sbmm. However casual should be less influenced by it as it makes quickplay less enjoyable when you're going again very highly skilled players and even teams when trying to play casual in quick match

random match making, for me, as a cod player, is the REAL experience. that curve you showed in 0:37 is why. it explains so much. you always start as a noob, someone who is not good at all. through experience, insistence and determination you achieve the impossible, you don't suck anymore. great. now you have a new goal: absolutely dominate. few people get there and that's why it's so special and rewarding when you do. this narrative -like experience, which is a long term experience, almost completely dies once skill based matchmaking is on and trying to do what it's supposed to (even if that's rare, and i'll explain why in a bit). when this moronic system was implemented, the organic random way in which people organized themselves became curated by an intrusive algorithm. it takes control out of the player. it makes the experience less rewarding and less fun. my other point is that, even when the skill based match making thing is working, the distribution of skill still follows tha same rules and proportions, but in a smaller scale. almost every match ends with two or three people out of twelve who completely destroyed everyone else. that's not just cod dude, that's life. a small amount of people dominate at sports, business, relationsihps, everything. special people are special because they push themselves through a limit most wouldn't. this always happends, and it's not "unfair". fairness has nothing to do with it, in my opinion. unfair is trying to socially engineer your players into acting in a certain matter and completely ignoring what makes playing the game in comunity (online) is all about. is about helping other people get better, showing off your cool stuff, making things that other players can't do and rising above the rest in a way or the other. i, for instance, was the editor of some sniper clans back in the day, i wan't even good at the game (not as much as my fellow sniper friends atleast), but i rose in my way, being good at what i'm good at being good (if that makes any sene) while still being part of a comunity. the randomness makes you see what can be done by people with actuall skill. if you get trickshotted at the end of a game by a much more skilled player than you, you'll most probably be embarassed, but also admired. that's what i think.

Random matchmaking would kill reverse boosting that happens with sbmm, also if there’s a ranked mode in a game why would matchmaking during casual be the same. I think there should be a mix depending on which mode you’re playing and your level of competitiveness. Missing the days of “get good”

I think this is one of the cases where asking the players for feedback can backfire very quickly. Because of the nature of the bell curve you described it's almost impossible to get even feedback from players. Even if the medium skilled players make up the biggest part of any community, the very skilled players tend to be the most vocal about the state of a game. Mostly because they spent a lot of time playing and practising the game and are therefore most likely to engage in discussion about said game. Meanwhile low skill players will rarely give feedback because they don't feel like they can or should contribute to the discussion. TLDR: Even if the perception of a game turns for the better after getting rid of sbmm that might just be because the ones suffering from the effect are those who wouldn't spread their concerns

one good balance some games can have for skill based matchmaking is to have 2 separated modes, if example you are in random and the lobby contains few skilled players. You will be awarded less xp if you are a skilled one but vias versa if the lobby has more skilled players. But if its skillmatch you tend to get a constant xp amount although this will maybe take much more time

I’m constantly put in games where a lot of players have double or triple my KD, and majority of the time theyre on PC

The game I have experienced the most with SBMM is Dead by Daylight. SBMM was added about a year ago so the comparison between it not being implemented and it being introduced is still fresh. It has changed the game for the worst. The asymmetric style game is of course a whole different can of worms than your basic FPS but the affects are still the same. The majority of the matches you play ended up being almost identical. With over 90 survivor perks and 70 killer perks, you rarely see more than 7 or 8 different perks being played. Now to be clear, yes before SBMM was implemented, once you reached the "high ranks" of the old system the games would fall into the same pattern of only the strongest perks being used. Once SBMM was put in place, people started having harder times winning which would push people to the META perks faster just so they could have a chance at winning, no matter the skill level. This also had an aftershock affect of making the already more stressful side of "killer" being pushed to a whole new level of stress. It stopped being fun playing as a killer when a single mistake would mean the difference between a satisfactory conclusion to just being out right defeated. This has lead to more and more people abandoning the killer side of the game and making the survivor queue times far longer than they use to be. With a lower number of killers the search of a suitable opponent has become harsh.

This is an interesting debate. Thank you, for bringing this up.

Cod used to have a team Ballance prior to match.. it did find 12 people according to ping and then the team ballance went on and game started.. it was way more fun and way more casual and less stressed as it started to be with mw19 where the heavy SBMM came into play

My problem was in COD as I got to a level were everyone was using SMGs or ARs and any deviation from that strategy almost always ended me at the bottom of the team for five to ten rounds until sbmm kicked in and I was back at the top with a sniper until I pulled an SMG or AR back out and instantly made the sniper impossible to get kills with again locking me into one way to play or suffer for an hour any time I wanted change.

I think there should be a reward for playing in higher skilled lobbies. Its very discouraging to always have the same chance of winning because of sbmm even tho I am improving. As a rewars a badge would be suitable that multiplies your xp or currency u are getting. The different badges would also be a good indicator of improvement.

One game I think that does sbmm well is rocket league, I find it crucial to have the two variations of gamemodes where there is ranked that has (and focuses on) sbmm while the unranked version does not need to have the rankings. While rocket league casual does still have sbmm it is not as strict as comp. is and makes it enjoyable, a gamemode where you are not totally sweating every match and can relax, while also giving ample opportunity to try and learn from playing opponents that are better.

“Money!” - Mr. Krabs

I feel like another angle that's interconnected with Skill-based matchmaking is team based matchmaking. Do you try to match groups of similar sizes against each other? How do you determine the group's position in skill-based matchmaking? At first I thought that the video had missed an important factor in SBMM, but after thinking about it this concept and how it relates to SBMM is probably worth its own short(or long) video.

You can have a secondary self-moderating system, by releasing server-hosting tools, and equip your game with a server browser. This allows communities to create identities for themselves, that lets players themselves chose how sweaty of an environment they want. Of course, since it takes time to find a community you like, new players should be funneled into a matchmaking system, before they decide to try to find something for themselves.

In the CoD Community, an issue that has now been present with its matchmaking since MW2019 is that the matchmaking was changed so that it disbands player lobbies once the game ends. This is an issue, not just because it means you're going to get a new group of players, but that by doing such a thing, you're taking that choice away from players to leave the lobby. You don't get to have multiple games against anyone, its always one game and then you never see them again. It would be like if a fighting game never let you rematch people after the first match. Something like that would see major complaints with players in a fighting game. By having lobbies disband, you can never rematch a better player to learn more about how to fight against their playstyle, and you can never see that teammate that was super helpful to you again. Sure you could send a friend request and perhaps party up, but with previous SBMM, that wasn't necessary. And furthermore, its been proven that with the change to have lobbies disband, connection stability is sometimes sacrificed to get you in a more skill-matched lobby.

I've played online multiplayer games since Half-Life, TFC, and CS beta 1.1 Back then we had to find different servers based on the best connection. By the time MW2 was around, it was connection based lobbies. In current year, it seems we are sacrificing connection speed for SBMM. When you had a regular server or a lobby that doesn't get disbanded after every match, it helps you make friends with the regulars, get competitive, talk trash, and just have a better time. If the server sucked or had hackers, you could leave. Also lots of servers had votekick options when admins weren't there, so you could kick hackers and trouble makers by popular vote

I think the way it's implemented has a way bigger effect than its inherent good or badness. The only downside for me with skill-based match-making is that you almost don't feel like you are getting better even if you are because you are always going up against people who are close to or as good as you.

It really just depends on how good the SBM is. Constantly losing a luck draw and having bad players on your team, (or being a bad player put against high level teams) is always going to feel bad. To talk about CSGO for a sec, in early CS days, there was no SBM, just random people put up against each other with the highest skill player on each team essentially 1 v 5ing the whole match. With a bad SBM, its very similar, people who are *supposed* to be the same skill level turn out to be smurfs and people literally having no hours of experience, so the same 1 v 5ing happens again. A good SBM would allow the lower level players to actually have fun, while the higher level players could continually improve (as its much more difficult to improve when you are playing against low skill opponents). Quick aside to talk about non-shooter games with SBM. Smash Bros Ultimate has a SBM and I really love it, not because its particularly good, but because of the design of the game. Outplaying your opponent isnt a mechanical skill that would need hours of out of match practice to improve, but instead, just how well you understand your opponent and how well you can counteract them, inside the match. Meaning, even when you're matched up with someone slightly better than you, you can still pull over the win if you actually put your mind to it.

My biggest gripe with SBMM having such a heavy influence on matchmaking in games like Battle Royales is that its so easily exploited by simply making a new account and making it so that the system does not have enough info about that player to determine where they lie in the skill curve and will lean more towards the lower end allowing that person to stomp on the lobby making everyone elses experience worse and driving them away

Split it into two genres. Random and ranked, that way if you want to play casually you can still find a lobby that isn't sucking the fun out of you. And if you want to get better you can go to the ranked area where there is a much smaller curve and improve that way

SBMM does help me enjoy a game at my skill level as I’m generally a more casual player, but I don’t like how it is at the expense of higher skilled players. I would like to see more discussions on how SBMM can improve to fix this issue, or how a new system could be implemented. Maybe part of it is how close to your skill level it puts you with. Maybe still having SBMM, but loosening it up, so it puts you in lobbies that is kind of close to your skill, and not forcing you to be in a lobby with everyone right at your skill level.

I remember when I started playing COD 4. I forced myself to not punch my screen because I was obliterated almost everywhere. The ratio of good and bad players was really random and when you joined the private servers, the people there were usually playing at the server every day and the skill ceiling was over the roof. Yet, I was persistent and joined the same 3 or 4 places every day spending a fuckton of time there. I grinded, and I grinded, and I grinded... Until I was good enough to compete with the top 5 of those servers. The skills I acquired (mouse placement and movement, in-game movement, and usage of cover, etc.) translated to other fast-paced multiplayer games which I play until today. I felt real satisfaction from playing. No one (or almost no one) complained about the top guys shredding noobs like me to pieces, we just continued to play and acquire a new set of skills, often watching the most skilled ones to pick up techniques and little things that helped to upgrade your own playstyle. I do understand that nowadays when a game is being developed, the companies are aiming at accessibility and reach of those games so that they hit as many recipients as possible. I also understand that there are people that are genuinely playing for fun and they want to relax while playing. My point is, back then, in times when SBMM wasn't a thing (or it wasn't as visible as it is right now) people just tried their best to improve themselves at the game of their choice. I remember those times as the times I improved as a player the most. Maybe it isn't so good to put players into categories and gratify them or punish them for being good or bad at the game? I'm no specialist when it comes to marketing, game design or sales management, I am just a simple gamer who enjoys both the joy of winning and the lessons given by losing. I am sorry for my terrible English. Also, if you disagree with anything I've written here feel free to comment and put your perspective of how you see the issue, I didn't want to offend anyone. Have a great day.

The reason SBMM exsists is because in older cod games a large majority of lesser skilled players would quit within a few months of the new game because they were constantly getting destroyed. Considering lesser skilled players are a majority in any game, companies realized keeping them playing the game as long as possible will increase sales of MTX’s ..

If I’m good at a game, I should FEEL like I’m good at the game. That’s the problem with SBMM…You never know how good you are now matter how good you actually are.

SBMM is a gift that comes with a curse

I guess SBMM comes from a desire to better control or "design" what kind of experience the players will get. With random matchmaking it's up in the air whatever or not everyone is going to have fun, because ultimately every player plays the game differently for different reasons and exert different amounts of effort. When you want your game to be about personal achievement and skill, it makes sense why you would gravitate towards implementing SBMM. In theory it makes the games more fair. Except, it's dynamic difficulty from Resident Evil 4 put into a multiplayer game and when people are aware of its existence, it opens up a lot of ways for exploitation. People already do it with things like AFKing and smurfing to get the desired rank. I wonder what would happen if we flipped SBMM on its head. What would happen if in a team game it wasn't about each team's average player skill levels, but rather about each team's individual players? Current systems have some kind of "average skill level" for every team and SBMM tries to match them as closely as possible. This means stuff like 6 people with rank 4 going against 1 player with rank 1 and 5 players with rank 5-6. Balanced game? Only by the average. What I think could be more interesting is having three average and three pro players go against another team of three average and three pro players. I don't know how many games employ this, but it's worth a shot. Of course if your game has no ambitions for competitive fairness just make it random or design the game so no matter how skilled you are there's still a chance you can win (Mario Kart FPS anyone?). Also worth noting is that SBMM makes very little sense for indie games, since they require large player numbers for it to work. If your game is 1v1 it's a bit better, but for indies it's better if they stick with random matchmaking or even community servers. Imagine if there was a game where you could combine the two and have some kind of system like TF2's Quickplay where it just picks a random community server with players on it. Oh wait.

I would like an offset option, where if I wanna improve I can choose to sbmm with slightly higher skilled players and slightly lower if I wanna take it easy

Not only SBMM but once you get into a lobby the team balancing is so strict. I have very decent stats and because of that I can manage to lose games where I absolutely dumpster the enemy team, but my team mates are so bad compared to the enemies that I end up losing or wining by a margin of 1-2 points. This is very frustrating because it makes every match feel like it's pre determined. I noticed for some reason game modes lke drop zone and what objective seem to have no or very little SBMM/team balancing in them. I can consistently play with random non meta guns and drop 50:(4-8). While If I go and queue in hardpoint I can drop 70 kils with 2 mins on the point and still lose. Combining all my team together doesn't match half of my contribution. On the long run, it made me stop playing alone. I only play when I have 2-4 good team mates I know I can party with, other wise I just can't with this bs.

i've never really liked sbmm, the way i feel is that there should always be a ranked mode with sbmm and a casual mode without sbmm. adding a newcomer mode can also be useful, but then you can run into issues like smurfing.

I can imagine a system where as well as the game estimating your skill level, you can also choose your "desired opponent skill level" at will. Then the servers could match pro players who want to take it easy with newer players that want to be challenged, as well as allowing for serious pro players to compete together in high level matches or casual low skill players to find each other.

I think it comes down to 2 things. 1. Gamers shaming good players. 2. Unrealistic expectations. 10 years ago, it was cool being good at a game. Now being good at a game makes you the scum of the earth simply because you're either naturally skilled or are able to put the time into a game which makes it hard for the average Joe to chill after work. Some people are also conditioned that they can only have fun when they're doing well dropping 1.5KDs without even trying. Because of this trend, SBMM is cranked up to stupidly high levels to cater to people that can't accept that they're not as good as they think they are, and now no one gets to chill.

Every single gamer who has played shooters before 2020 played before skill based matchmaking and got fell in love with shooters wile being the awful guy on the team. I remember slowly getting better at bo2 when I was 10 and I loved to try new things and see my improvement. It was awesome and I miss it a lot.

I'm torn on the whole SBMM thing tbh I think it mostly depends on the game like competitive shooters should probably have it in some form or another at least in the competitive modes. But at the very least should probably have some sort of beginner friendly mode for new players to learn the game. Although that wouldn't really work in some of the more hardcore games like EFT which uses the uncertainty of who your going to come across as a major part of it's charm. I also heavily agree with the issues of SBMM as it can either be not very accurate or make every match a sweat fest if it's too accurate. But at the same time I remember a few years back I tried to play TF2 and that's a game with no SBMM at all, having never really gotten into it in the past. I could only really participate in the PVE modes as everyone in all the lobbies were so much better than me having hundreds or thousands of hours in the game I didn't stand a chance and pretty quickly moved on to something else instead. Also you briefly mentioned auto team balancing and I don't think it should be used to shuffle the players on existing teams as it can suddenly make you on the opposite team as your friends who you were trying to play with (looking at you again TF2)

Fair, sure, but casual? heck no

I’ve noticed that in apex there’s RBMM which is meant to keep you playing instead of keep you going against fair opponents. I’m mid gold every season I play but I’ve noticed in casual games the first game of the day the jump trails have zero masters or predator players with a few diamond trails. Then, after me and my friends win one, the game generally begins to put us in full masters/pred lobbies as three players who peaked in plat 4. The game is very fun when we play against opponents who are our skill level, but it has actually gotten so bad that I only play ranked nowadays because the opposition is easier.

i mainly play destiny 2 and when i started playing pvp it was mainly in connection based matchmaking. most games would boil down to one or two god level players fighting each other for 1st place, a couple low level weenies that were new to pvp, and everyone else. sometimes you would match in such a way that a mid tier player could be the top player in a lobby and feel great about it. bungie switched matchmaking to skill based a year or two ago and what happened is that for every single game you face people of the exact same skill level, with the rare golden god joining to fill the lobby, and then the team balancing just drops the ball. most games feel like one team has a clear advantage either in connection or skill or both, and end with a massive gap between the scores or just end early because of a mercy rule. or every single person in the lobby is so incompetent that the game runs out the clock connection based multiplayer at least had the chance to give mid tier players a chance to shine against other mid to low tier players

one of the problems of sbmm is that when you increase your level of play, you don't really feel it, because the better you play, more skillful the enemies

SBMM is overall a good thing, but I feel as though the algorithms we use to calculate skill are too simple. Their just digging up K/D data most of the time, not including how people play on average, how METAs shift, and how players do on average on casual or competitive fields. I feel like big companies should probably start putting some research and development into perfecting how SBMM should work. Obviously it shouldn't be their main concern, but making their algorithms smarter would probably make SBMM less of a pain for us players and make gathering data for devs easier.

I'd like to add that as a R6 Siege player, I'm against SBMM. Situationally. What I mean is, we have a ranked and unranked game mode for people to sweat in, and then we have casual. Why bring it to casual? My casual mmr tends to be higher than my ranked mmr, where my ranked mmr is low-mid plat, my casual lobbies tend to be filled with diamonds, champions, and the very occasional e-sports player/team. That isn't even the only problem. I've grown so used to seeing the same names in my lobbies, I've even come to know what operators they would pick, and they vice versa to me. SBMM makes casual feel like a competition, with casual games being ironically far far sweatier than ranked.

Would be interesting to give players the option to queue sbmm and no sbmm and see how the matches play out on both

Every game should have a casual mode without sbmm and a competitive mode with sbmm, so players looking for a more relaxed experience and players who want to compete both get what they want

Should be a separate ranked mode. Sometimes I just want to chill and sometimes I want to play for a rank.

I think the idea of why people are against it is that even though you will get matches with way better people who will destroy you in most cases you will also get more layed back games as well, the only people who really would suffer in these cases would be the worst of the worst players, it sucks for them but the idea I've heard people explain would be the skill levels would be all over the place but the team balance would be skill based, I was an airsoft referee pre pandemic and found that some of the best ways to balence teams was to try and evenly split the really good, the intermediate and the green players as close as possible down the middle, asymmetric balancing is possible as well but at least manually it takes more time, with an algorithm it would be faster but overall asymptomatic team balancing is overall harder to do as there are more variables IE: you have 2 teams of 6, one has a really good player and 5 green ones and the other has 2 intermediate players and 4 green ones, if by chance that one skilled player gets clapped early on it's going to be a very tough match for that team, again there are way too many variables to exactly get it down to a science, I used to say it's half art, half science and even with 10 years under my belt I'd still be surprised in some matches and admit at times when there was a crunch and in a rush to get people ready for the match you might not have teams perfect, that's just kind of how it is though, most people would rather play a slightly or even heavenly unbalanced match then wait for people screwing around to get ready to play

Garbaj is one of the best UKpostsrs now a days, a real teacher about topics that you wouldn’t think need teaching, and engages his audience quite well. Keep up the good work and content

the only people i saw whining about sbmm were cod youtubers that could no longer stomp 11 year olds

I’ve largely shifted away from games with heavily tuned SBMM (and also crossplay but that’s off topic). I would prefer completely random matchmaking because as it stands now, I feel like the outcome is decided before the match starts in games like COD and Overwatch. A few minutes into a match and 99% of the time I’ll know the outcome which just takes the fun out of it I don’t feel like I won when I win and losing feels like it’s even more out of my hands than in the old days when I’d get bad teammates because now I’m assigned bad teammates. Matches are no longer drastically different and makes games feel more repetitive To me

Consider the accessibility aspect

Coming from a fighting game background... Well, in 1v1 games it is entirely standard to match by skill, and not to do so would be weird, but... Specifically in fighting games, I like to have "barely skill-sorted" matchmaking. What I find more important than matching by skill, is getting to play a long set against a given player. There's a very broad range of player skills where it's worthwhile to face them, and I'll learn important things by facing them. The games don't have to be very close. But the average "casual" online fighting gamer probably has a totally different perspective, and wants close/winnable games all the time. For me though, online play is practice, and offline tournaments are the "real" game. So if a certain netplay structure helps me get better at the game, then it's doing its job.

The new name of the game is player engagement and player retention. EOMM. (Engagement Optimized Matchmaking) EOMM attempts to keep players playing longer and is based on short-term performance/skill. This often can create the "roller coaster effect" on winning and losing, that is heavily noticed. EOMM is a profit driven system.

I feel like an important thing to mention about SBMM is that each game does it differently, so, one game of CS will be matched differently then say Overwatch with varying degrees of effectiveness. Another perspective is how long the game has been "alive" (or how long the game has had this style of SBMM), age determines a lot I think (unless it has seasons like Overwatch, it's less weighted). If you are playing a game that's been out for say 15 years you will probably have a much harder time getting ranked either by being matched with pro's or people who have no clue what they are doing. In SBMM there can also be greifers, who throw games on purpose, or smurfs who just want to have easier games, and of course there can be cheaters who get sick of MM. All are terrible aspects of SBMM, but I feel like you are hard pressed to not encounter one of them in any skill based game. I feel like SBMM is a good thing, but there are numerous problems with how some games handle their ranking, and/or how they queue players (and cheat detection). But, overall I think it is a good thing to have in games, it encourages people to want to get better and work towards something, and it gives players a challenge when it works well. When it works, it works really well.