SBMM or skill based matchmaking has always been a controversial issue in Call of Duty. Sledgehammer Games has now promised to share more insights in how the system works and how they want to include the community.
If you played any Call of Duty game in the past few years, you probably heard of SBMM, which stands for skill based matchmaking. It is a certain system the CoD developers use to decide what players will end up in the same lobby together. Like the name suggests, the individual skill of players is taken into consideration when creating a lobby.
This is necessary, according to the devs, to make sure matches are as balanced as possible and casual players aren’t getting destroyed by pros all the time. However, the downside of this system is that you will always end up in lobbies with players that are at least as good as you, so there is no way to have a couple of chill matches, but you always have to sweat to get a good match, especially if you are a better player.
The CoD community has complained about this system for years, and so far the developers never really revealed how exactly the SBMM works. After Sledgehammer Games did a Q&A on Reddit and ignored a ton of questions about SBMM again, they recently released a statement.
SHG To Share More Insights Into SBMM Soon
After several outcries from the community and more and more players trying to trick the matchmaking system with VPNs or just playing really bad on purpose to get easier lobbies, developer Sledgehammer Games issued the following statement:
“We know there is a lot of interest in the matchmaking experience, especially around how skill contributes to how lobbies and matches are put together. Nothing is more important to us than the experience players have with the game, and matchmaking is a big part of that. We’ve been working on our matchmaking system for well over ten years, and we continue to spend a ton of time and energy on improving the matchmaking process. This involves people working at our Call of Duty studios, our backend services teams at Demonware, and other groups like our Player Insights team.”
“It’s a large effort that we’ve worked on for many years, and our approach combines latency, search time, and skill, along with many other factors, to try to find the best match experience for you. Talking about this topic in detail can be hard, and we haven’t spent the time to pull together all of our work to share with you our insights and improvements over the many years. We’re looking forward to doing that in the coming weeks after Season 1 launches, and we’ll also make it a part of our ongoing discussions with the community.”
In the statement, the devs say that the current system takes into account latency, search time, skill, and other factors to try and deliver the best match experience for each player. They still don’t share the exact process behind SBMM, but at least they admit, that they are still working on it trying to improve matchmaking year after year.
The most important part of the statement is, however, that they promise to share further insights shortly after the launch of Season 1 and want to include the community into the ongoing discussion. Season 1 of Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone started on December 6, so we are expecting an update on this very soon.
What do you think of SBMM in Call of Duty? Is it necessary to keep the more casual players engaged or should it be removed completely? Let us know your opinion in the comments! Until we get an update on the situation, you should check out the best guns in MW3.