Activision Says Skill-Based Matchmaking In Call Of Duty Is Preferred By All Players

Summary

• The debate over Skill-Based Matchmaking continues to run circles in gaming, with players constantly debating if it's good or bad.
• Recently, Activision revealed that it had run a secret matchmaking method that lessened SBMM, only to find that players were leaving the game.
• In other words, gamers (at least those in CoD) are in favor of SBMM, even if they don't realize it.

Over the past few years, the phrase "SBMM" has quickly entered the lexicon of gaming. It's up there with the likes of "Ray tracing" and "Teraflops" as popular buzzwords among gamers. Except, whereas ray tracing is usually a positive, and more teraflops are always a good thing, SBMM, or Skill-Based Matchmaking, is usually met with negativity.

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That's because a vocal minority of gamers believe that the presence of SBMM is ruining their enjoyment of online video games, particularly sports titles and first-person shooters. At its core, SBMM connects players of a similar skill level together. In years past, games often used a Connection-Based Matchmaking system, which paired players based on the best possible connection. That often led to instances in which players at the higher end of a skill level were in the same grouping as those at a lower end because of their connections. SBMM eliminates that in an effort to make matchmaking as fair as possible.

In other words, the days of stomping newcomers and low-level players in public lobbies are long gone. The debate over its pros and cons has been at the forefront of Call of Duty, but, as it turns out, players actually like SBMM, even if they don't know it's in place.

Activision Experimented With Call Of Duty Lobbies

In an extensive, and I mean extensive, 25-page white paper filled with all sorts of graphs and datapoints, Activision revealed that it had secretly experimented with SBMM in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The end result was that players are actually in favor of the mechanism - they just don't realize it.

To get to the bottom of the SBMM debate, Activision introduced a secret change in matchmaking, where the level of skill used was loosened. It was not removed. That change was applied to 50% of the game's population, and after two weeks of testing, Activision says it found that the returning rate was down for 90% of the group. The other 10% represented players of a higher skill level, who did return.

As a result, Activision believes that a decrease in skill used would lead to fewer and fewer players engaging with the game. "Eventually, a top 10 percent player will become a top 20 percent player, and eventually a top 30 percent player, until only the very best players remain playing the game. Those original top players will become increasingly likely to not return to the game. Ultimately, this will result in a worse experience for all players, as there will be fewer and fewer players available to play with", the company wrote.

And if skill were to be eliminated altogether? Well, Activision believes that the player population will disappear rapidly over the course of a few months. In other words, gamers (or at least Call of Duty players) actually do like SBMM, even if they aren't aware of it being used. It's a fascinating amount of research, particularly as the discourse about SBMM and its merits continues to be a hot topic among players.

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