Call of Duty will finally let console players turn off crossplay to dodge PC cheaters, which is potentially terrible news for all the legit PC players
Call of Duty will finally let console players turn off crossplay to dodge PC cheaters, which is potentially terrible news for all the legit PC players
Now remove skill-based matchmaking too.
Make only ranked skill based
Have unranked be a free for all
This would kill the fun for everyone but the best. SBMM is there to protect casuals and new players, aka 90% of players.
Well yeah, naturally, how it always was. SBMM and the addition of bots completely killed many online shooters.
What's the reasoning for this? Why wouldn't you want to pit players against other players of a similar level? Genuine question.
In my personal opinion people who complain about this are mid level players. Noobs like it because it means they get to win some, experience players like it because it means they get non trivial matches. But these people want to pwn noobs and are frustrated because they're getting owned half of the time. There's no reason to be against skill level matchmaking other than "I want to play against people who are worse than me so I can look good".
Play ranked for SBMM, casual mode lobbies should be random and diverse.
Strongly disagree, I'm a weak player, this means that I wouldn't be able to enjoy the game as I would get destroyed on all my matches.
Not true, unless you are in the absolute bottom 1%. We all enjoyed games before SBMM, it only became a real thing in like the last 6 years, don't know why everyone is suddenly scared to have a challenge every few games.
First of all SBMM has been going in for WAY longer than that, at least going back to 2007 on CoD according to google. If it wasn't a problem before, it shouldn't be now, it's just that now you're aware so you're salty about it. And may I ask, what's the problem with it? You don't like playing with people you might lose to? What's the reasoning behind not liking it?
Also you're assuming a uniform distribution of skill level, which doesn't make sense, i.e. for every person who's playing CoD for the first time there are multiple people with at least some experience, and the more experienced the more the person plays so the more likely they'll be put in a match. This means that for people in the bottom, probably closer to bottom 10% they're likely to be the only bottom player in the whole match, so the game for them would be spawn, die, wait over and over, which will be frustrating and so they'll quit, and now the same will happen to the next bottom 10%, so on and so forth until no one else is left playing.
Random matchmaking is not a thing, it hasn't been a thing for a LONG time, any match that you found online and had fun had SBMM. Small games can get away with it because the distribution is more even, but in huge titles with millions of people it's not feasible. You know why this began to annoy you 6 years ago? Because 6 years ago you became good enough to jump from the bottom to the midrange level, and now you're matched with people you can't so easily beat all of the time.
I do think games should allow you to do fully random matchmaking, although I have a strong suspicion it would be lots of work to set up for a feature that almost no one will use, because you think you want that, but if you got it you will always be the worst player in the match, and if you aren't people who're worse than you will eventually get frustrated and quit until you're the bottom player and get frustrated and leave.
SBMM has existed yes, but it was essentially random because the priority was always low queue times over anything else. It wasn't until the later cods like Advanced Warfare where they started prioritising it more and then MW2019 really killed the matchmaking experience by relying on skill as a factor way too much (this by the way, is the issue we are talking about now when we refer to SBMM, not ancient systems like TrueSkill that didn't have much sway, except for stopping the best of the best matching with the worst of the worst, which I would agree with being fine).
Call of Duty until ~2014 always prioritised queue times, same with the emergence of Battle Royales when they took over the online space for a while in 2017-2020. Fortnite had the quick queues with little SBMM, if any, because queue times were the most important thing. Now you wait a bit longer get against half players similar skill to yourself and the rest of the lobby is filled with bots to speed up matchmaking times, it's terrible and unfun.
That's the issue we are talking about and it's not an unpopular opinion. It's nothing to do with my own skill, infact I have gotten worse at shooters in the last few years if anything as I have gotten older and I still don't want SBMM. Back when I played Cod everyday on console I was pretty average, but slowly got better until I quit consoles in 2014. On PC I mainly played CS, which I became very good at yes. I was a bit better than average on Fortnite/PUBG and would win like 1 in 10 with a decent amount of kills. Now I can win like every game because it's all bots. It's boring. I can beat anyone now because I'm not matched with or against people who are better than me, I don't learn anything.
I want to jump into a game and have fun, I want to lose some, I want to win some, I want to try in some, I want to goof around in others. The strictness of SBMM today prevents that from happening. I can't join a lobby of people, lose to them and then try to beat them in the next game, because they reset the lobby after every match. Cod is also a lot less social because of this, you can't make friends or enemies across matches anymore. These big multiplayer games have dropped fun, instead they want people to win win win so they keep playing and buy skins. That's why people don't improve anymore, there's no challenge, every game is the same thing, same strategy required.
I played some mainstream games recently and they put you against bots and stuff for like 10 of your first games, I end up quitting because I just want to play versus players, every game wants this heavily curated experience and it sucks. Let players have fun again, if people want to play against bots, give them a mode to. If they want "fair" games against players, they can play ranked. Just give us our casual lobbies back.
I can beat anyone now because I'm not matched with or against people who are better than me, I don't learn anything.
I call bullshit on that. If that were the case your skill would be considered higher and you would be matched against ever higher skilled players until you're not able to win that much. If you can beat anyone in a SBMM system, you would absolutely obliterate every single match in a non-SBMM. You might think you're bad at those games, but this is what's happening to you: https://xkcd.com/2501/ i.e. You think the average player is winning most matches, but the truth is that the average player wins around 50% of the mathes. If you win significantly more than 50% of the games you're placed in then you're among the top players and just aren't enough skilled people online to match up with you, which means that if you were to be put in a non-SBMM lobby you would be MVP 99.999% of times and win the match solo. Think about it this way, imagine there are 1000 people searching for matches in your area, and for ease let's also asume their number also represents their skill level compared to the other, i.e. 1 is a total noob, 1000 is a pro, in this scenario on a SBMM you're likely in the top 995 so you get paired with the top 10 and according to you you still win that match, on a non-SBMM your average enemy would be 400 skill levels below your current enemies.
I want to jump into a game and have fun, I want to lose some, I want to win some, I want to try in some, I want to goof around in others.
I'm sorry, but that will never happen, you're just too good at the game, you win most matches when paired against people of your relative skills, which means there aren't people with your skill around, pairing you with random people will just result in even more frustrating matches for you. You're like a martial artist who goes on dojos fighting the black belts and winning and think that it would be more fun if you were allowed to fight a random belt color.
I can't join a lobby of people, lose to them and then try to beat them in the next game, because they reset the lobby after every match.
According to a quick Google search that has nothing to do with SBMM but it's because different maps and different modes have different number of players. Not to mention that just thinking about it real quick I realized that probably lots of people just play a match and leave, so your lobby would get smaller and smaller unless you allowed it to be refilled after every round. Not that any of this matters, because that scenario won't happen to you, because you don't lose matches, remember?
Cod is also a lot less social because of this, you can't make friends or enemies across matches anymore.
That's a bummer, but seems related to the topic of lobby reset, not SBMM.
These big multiplayer games have dropped fun, instead they want people to win win win so they keep playing and buy skins. That's why people don't improve anymore, there's no challenge, every game is the same thing, same strategy required.
Have you considered that maybe you're so good at these games that YOU keep winning but that the same is not true for 90% of people? These are multiplayer games, it's literally impossible for everyone to win all the time, it's a zero sum game, for someone to win, someone has to lose, and if you're winning more than 50% of the time it means you're an above average player.
I played some mainstream games recently and they put you against bots and stuff for like 10 of your first games
That sounds ridiculous, but with the amount of people playing CoD I don't think they need bots. At least for me every time I play I get matched against people, but realistically I don't play that much.
If they want "fair" games against players, they can play ranked. Just give us our casual lobbies back.
You are looking for a mystical fun of being able to play against people more skilled than you, that won't happen, because casual players are in general terms much worse than you, you're like a pro NBA basketball player wanting to go back to play in the yard against kids, you have good memories of that time, but your skill level would make those matches extremely boring for you and unfair for others.
You can take all claims against me and direct them at yourself. You are stuck at such a low elo you have no idea what happens higher up. Just crazy takes...
You fall under the category of players who cant tell the difference between bots and real players. So perhaps low elo should just be placed against bots and let other players have real matches.
You are delusional if you think I want to stomp every match. I want to have fun in every match, if I am against worst players, I can fuck around with random weapons, if I am against better players I have to try harder than usual if I want to win. Match diversity! If I am against the same skill every match, then I have to sweat every match and thats fucking boring.
Maybe once you get better at games, you will understand more, but you dont seem to want to improve though. So you should just play versus bots every game, you wont even know if they are players anyway and you can avoid the scary world of players who are better than you.
Last 6 years? SBMM has been around for going on 20 years now lol.
casual mode lobbies should be random and diverse.
Why? Like that person said - so you can stomp on low level players because you're sick of getting stomped by people better than you.
Always the same dismissive take. Bring a new argument. Nobody wants to stomp noobs. We want diverse games with different skill levels, giving a more unpredictable experience. Which is better for having fun and ultimately learning to improve.
You don’t improve from “diverse games with different skill levels” lol. You don’t improve by stomping people leagues below you. You improve by playing people around your skill level because your mistakes have repercussions and you can learn what you did wrong (or right). You learn nothing from winning 300-25.
Because the modes are casual, I should be able to have a bit of fun, some games will be easy, some games will be harder. I can experiment with different styles, loadouts whatever. SBMM in casual modes ruins this, because every game turns into a sweaty slog.
You also dont improve at games past a certain point by killing bots and players just as bad as yourself. I got better by playing against and with the better players, the lobbies were more diverse which was more fun and better for learning.
I feel like you don't understand how SBMM works based on your last paragraph. The point of it is that you will always be at or close to your skill level, and as your skills get better you'll be matched with people of the same skill level. It's actually good for your own skill and improvement because you don't just get annihilated or do the annihilating every match since you got matched with plebs or gods.
Now rub your brain cells together and think how that might hinder improvement instead of replying to every single message of mine in the thread with the same poor take. Ranked mode exists for what you are describing, but with a visible gauge of progress.
It doesn’t hinder improvement at all lol. How do you think it does? Ranked mode is a separate beast, usually with different modes and rules, and often even with different mechanics.
IMO people act like it's training wheels so they can get better, but it's more like turning the game to easy and not having to face any challenging hurdles. When people go into a game on easier difficulties and then try to play it on a higher difficulty, they actually generally have a harder time than if they just played the game on the harder difficulty to begin with (with some exceptions). Players should be getting better by experience not algorithmically making them feel better by pitting them against other poor players. It worked just fine for a long time before the invention of SBMM, and servers used to do a lot of the filtering for us before that stopped being common (for absolutely no good reasons).
This is honestly why the average player is worse now than they used to be.
This misses the players who are always low elo for their whole lives - its not fun for them to get stomped every game forever...
They are low elo forever because they only play low elo games. There are way more low elo players than not, so without SBMM they wont get stomped all the time, it was never like that before so I dont get why we are pretending it will be now.
SBMM matches bad players with other bad players. Why are you pretending like the bad players wouldn't get stomped all the time if SBMM was removed?
Well that kind of gets to my second point of servers disappearing. Used to be you could find or create your own servers for your more casual players but most games these days have no such options.
SBMM does in fact help you get better though, as when you get better and perform better it will match you with better players, rinse and repeat.
That's the same logic as the Bible is real because it says so in the Bible.
Not at all the same, not even sure how you got to that conclusion tbh.
The whole point of SBMM is to match you with people around your skill, both higher and lower. When you start consistently beating ones that are higher than you, your skill number increases. Consistently lose and it decreases. Rinse and repeat.
In COD it works exceptionally well. Most games are an arm wrestle, with the occasional blowout - usually when there’s a clan involved.
If you think that SBMM doesn’t give you any challenges, your skill level must be so low that you’re stuck playing 6 year olds.
STFU
Honestly, games need some form of SBMM. Otherwise you just get pub-stompers every lobby that make the game unfun for everyone but the best players.
Before SBMM you stomped some and got stomped in some, no matter your skill level, because you sometimes had worse players and sometimes some better players. It made the big wins more exciting and forced you to try new things to win vs better players. It's incredibly bland playing against the same skill level, every game is predictable and you will never improve as a player.
You fundamentally don't understand how SBMM works. SBMM by nature matches you against players you should win against and players you should lose against at a relatively even rate. It does this to better understand your skill level.
Why, low skill level?
