Players Ragequit Without Skill-Based Matching, According To Activision White Papers With A/B Testing

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Players Ragequit Without Skill-Based Matching, According To Activision White Papers With A/B Testing | MMORPG.com

According to a newly-published white paper and blog, players are more likely to play worse in, and even outright abandon, Call of Duty when SBMM is loosened.

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namcost

The problem with activision's skill based matchmaking system isn't the idea of pairing people of equal skill.... because it doesn't.

The patent by activision has a system where if you are skilled in a shitty player lobby, they will NERF your bullet damage and hit reg while boosting the shitty players damage and hit reg.

PROOF that it exists? I am a high skilled player. I wont say im the best or top 1% but I am damn good. In CS2 right now I am top 10% of players according to the leaderboard.... so my skills aren't dogshit like most 90% of gamers.... anyway, there are times when I will absolutely SHRED an enemy player, I am talking crosshair on chest/head the entire time, landing every shot, emptying and entire clip, but magically the enemy doesn't die, but I do.... and watching the instant kill cam feed? They are AIMING AT MY FUCKING LEGS!!!! Everyone knows that LIMB damage is less than body which is less than headshots.... you can even train on the target dummies. Shooting the legs takes significantly more bullets to kill than shooting the chest/head.... so why are people aiming at my legs killing me when I am aiming center chest+headshots.... it doesn't make sense, until you remember that their SBMM includes a system to nerf good players when shitty players in put into your lobby and vice versa.

Playing oldschool games like quake3arena or wolfenstein (rtcw+wolf:et) you would have random lobbies, and after a single game, the next map the teams were auto balanced. so even if you got rick-rolled that round, the next round would be more fair.... granted then also came the issue of map knowledge. someone who shit on everyone on map X might be absolute trash at map Y.... it happens. We all have our favorite maps because of this metric.... but you still had a very decent and fun game. You hardly ever had to play against a team who would win map after map after map. You always had a balance effect in place. Which would mean "skill based matchmaking" the proper way.

Instead, Activision buffs dogshit gamers and nerfs skilled ones.... so, fuck um. I don't play call of duty games. Not worth my time.

Herithius

I imagine in a game played by millions of players if nerfing bullet damage existed it would become pretty obvious pretty fast. After all these are the people who break down gun damage to a science with every new gun/mod addition.

That discussion aside, the findings about SBMM make sense. It's probably what most reasonable people would expect but being validated by the industry's #1 shooter helps give it credibility. Winning or losing a game by a landslide can be either fun or horrible but rarely will anyone describe either as exciting. That only comes with the close matches that SBMM brings.

ShinyFlygon

Wait wait wait ... you're telling me a bunch of blowhard YouTubers and Tiktokers were absolutely wrong about something? That they were just blowing hot air to stir up unnecessary controversy in an attempt to draw more views?

You can't see me, but I am clutching my pearls so hard my knuckles are white.

ValdemarJ

lol what a joke. I think this site just regurgitates anything it reads on social media anymore. Up next we'll see GameRant style articles on Reddit threads.

The "do you not have phones" company did their own "research" to determine that people really do like the shitty system they shove down our throats to make their e-sports "pros" happy. Well, who'd have thought that?

The people who love SBBM are the sweaties and top tier players. Removal of SBBM doesn't feed them the easy wins of players doing well on a streak.

I don't know anyone who likes to be matched against and gold or platinum tier team after a few win streaks, which is exactly what happens to SBBM teams. There isn't a fix to this while Activision tries to make COD into a serious e-sports. This is exactly why people who used to play COD have flocked to games like Helldivers 2 and XDefiant. They just want to play a good action-arcade shooter instead of trying to compete against sweaty e-sports chuds.

Wargfoot

ValdemarJ said:
 They just want to play a good action-arcade shooter instead of trying to compete against sweaty e-sports chuds.

*snort*

Thanks for that, perfect.

riningear

Herithius said:

That discussion aside, the findings about SBMM make sense. It's probably what most reasonable people would expect but being validated by the industry's #1 shooter helps give it credibility. Winning or losing a game by a landslide can be either fun or horrible but rarely will anyone describe either as exciting. That only comes with the close matches that SBMM brings.

Honestly yeah, in my old Dota 2 days, on the rare occasion I got matched with someone like 1200+ MMR higher than me I would genuinely consider just abandoning because that shit isn't fun. I don't think people actually know how bad it is to have a disparity until they're being told they're getting stomped by it, and then they hold their tongues on complaining because it validates... well, everything that Activision is now trying to tell people here. Again, they're upset that they're not the ones with the higher skill because everyone who wants something to prove wants to be a n00b stomper at the end of the day.

G2Wolf

ValdemarJ said:

lol what a joke. I think this site just regurgitates anything it reads on social media anymore. Up next we'll see GameRant style articles on Reddit threads.

The "do you not have phones" company did their own "research" to determine that people really do like the shitty system they shove down our throats to make their e-sports "pros" happy. Well, who'd have thought that?

The people who love SBBM are the sweaties and top tier players. Removal of SBBM doesn't feed them the easy wins of players doing well on a streak.

I don't know anyone who likes to be matched against and gold or platinum tier team after a few win streaks, which is exactly what happens to SBBM teams. There isn't a fix to this while Activision tries to make COD into a serious e-sports. This is exactly why people who used to play COD have flocked to games like Helldivers 2 and XDefiant. They just want to play a good action-arcade shooter instead of trying to compete against sweaty e-sports chuds.

Dude.... what are you even talking about? The people that were calling for SBMM to be removed WERE top players, because it lets them have easy games to make content from. Removing SBMM would give them those easy wins.... You have it completely backwards.

FrodoFragins

G2Wolf said:

ValdemarJ said:

lol what a joke. I think this site just regurgitates anything it reads on social media anymore. Up next we'll see GameRant style articles on Reddit threads.

The "do you not have phones" company did their own "research" to determine that people really do like the shitty system they shove down our throats to make their e-sports "pros" happy. Well, who'd have thought that?

The people who love SBBM are the sweaties and top tier players. Removal of SBBM doesn't feed them the easy wins of players doing well on a streak.

I don't know anyone who likes to be matched against and gold or platinum tier team after a few win streaks, which is exactly what happens to SBBM teams. There isn't a fix to this while Activision tries to make COD into a serious e-sports. This is exactly why people who used to play COD have flocked to games like Helldivers 2 and XDefiant. They just want to play a good action-arcade shooter instead of trying to compete against sweaty e-sports chuds.

Dude.... what are you even talking about? The people that were calling for SBMM to be removed WERE top players, because it lets them have easy games to make content from. Removing SBMM would give them those easy wins.... You have it completely backwards.

I don't play these games but what you say certainly seems more reasonable.  Although if the MM uses recent win streaks to raise the bar for who you match against, well that's a mistake.  It should be based on net rating over a much longer period of time.

ValdemarJ

G2Wolf said:

ValdemarJ said:

lol what a joke. I think this site just regurgitates anything it reads on social media anymore. Up next we'll see GameRant style articles on Reddit threads.

The "do you not have phones" company did their own "research" to determine that people really do like the shitty system they shove down our throats to make their e-sports "pros" happy. Well, who'd have thought that?

The people who love SBBM are the sweaties and top tier players. Removal of SBBM doesn't feed them the easy wins of players doing well on a streak.

I don't know anyone who likes to be matched against and gold or platinum tier team after a few win streaks, which is exactly what happens to SBBM teams. There isn't a fix to this while Activision tries to make COD into a serious e-sports. This is exactly why people who used to play COD have flocked to games like Helldivers 2 and XDefiant. They just want to play a good action-arcade shooter instead of trying to compete against sweaty e-sports chuds.

Dude.... what are you even talking about? The people that were calling for SBMM to be removed WERE top players, because it lets them have easy games to make content from. Removing SBMM would give them those easy wins.... You have it completely backwards.

The idea behind SBMM is good, but the execution is horrible. There are a lot of smaller problems, but the biggest is that it punishes success streaks. Instead of progressively pairing like skilled people together and then pushing them a little, it rewards poor play and punishes success. If k/d ratio improves and there are win streaks, then it puts those players and teams in matches way over their heads.

SBMM makes sure the top tier players are always fed with people who can't compete.

Other games like XDefiant don't use SBMM. They're doing fine.

Another part of the problem is that Activision has or is trying to push COD from a casual arcade shooter to something more esports serious. SBMM isn't doing well matching people in that framework. It's either the dregs or sweaty tryhards and not much in between.

ValdemarJ

FrodoFragins said:

G2Wolf said:

ValdemarJ said:

lol what a joke. I think this site just regurgitates anything it reads on social media anymore. Up next we'll see GameRant style articles on Reddit threads.

The "do you not have phones" company did their own "research" to determine that people really do like the shitty system they shove down our throats to make their e-sports "pros" happy. Well, who'd have thought that?

The people who love SBBM are the sweaties and top tier players. Removal of SBBM doesn't feed them the easy wins of players doing well on a streak.

I don't know anyone who likes to be matched against and gold or platinum tier team after a few win streaks, which is exactly what happens to SBBM teams. There isn't a fix to this while Activision tries to make COD into a serious e-sports. This is exactly why people who used to play COD have flocked to games like Helldivers 2 and XDefiant. They just want to play a good action-arcade shooter instead of trying to compete against sweaty e-sports chuds.

Dude.... what are you even talking about? The people that were calling for SBMM to be removed WERE top players, because it lets them have easy games to make content from. Removing SBMM would give them those easy wins.... You have it completely backwards.

I don't play these games but what you say certainly seems more reasonable.  Although if the MM uses recent win streaks to raise the bar for who you match against, well that's a mistake.  It should be based on net rating over a much longer period of time.

This feels like you nailed it on the head. It isn't really doing that. They can't just remove it and call it good. They need to restructure, in some way, how people get together.