This white paper basically just confirmed to us what everyone's been saying for forever. SBMM does indeed increase player retention so it is beneficial for THEM, the people selling the game. As long as this remains true then SBMM will never leave this game.
I get that they are trying to say that SBMM is better for retention but there's a flaw with that. I used to play CoD a lot and as soon as SBMM was made the strongest factor in MM, I quit and never came back because it was simply less fun to play. They are not getting the data from people like me. This does not account for people that left because of SBMM.
So they spent years tailoring their playerbase to SBMM, secretly swapped it on half of them for 2 weeks, and only a tiny amount were upset... Swap it back immediatwly then! I bet a ton more people straight up don't buy the game every year because of SBMM
Bungie also offers the same data with regards to the importance of SBMM for overall game health. They removed SBMM from the casual playlist in Destiny PvP, at the request of the community (probably due to the amplified voices of content creators). The result was the player base eventually collapsed, leaving a bunch of higher skilled players upset that casual felt more difficult than the Competitive playlist. They brought back SBMM to all playlists, and the player base grew started to grow again.
I think you're getting it wrong. I never played destiny 2, but I've watched multiple videos of AzteCross & True Vanguard (Destiny 2 players) speaking about SBMM about a a year ago, when Bungie implemented SBMM all of a sudden into Destiny 2, plus it was trending on twitter multiple times (the hashtag sbmm in destiny). And all these videos told me the contrary of what you said happened: Bungie "detected" their PVP mode in Destiny 2 was dying, so they implemented SBMM all of a sudden & everyone hated it cause players were always matched with the same people & everyone pretty much left matches all the time because teams were unbalanced & everyone used "Meta loadouts". Players hated it so much that Bungie decided to "lose the SBMM" (widening the skill brackets) and the community loved it because now people would match different players, with different loadouts and different skill (randomness). That's the story I could get from those vids, plus my friend who played regularly. Please if you know any video documenting this situation or a channel explaining what you're saying, I would appreciate it so I can watch it.
@@shaggytophas someone who has been playing destiny since day 1 of the xbox beta in 2014, the debate has been between connection bassed and skill based MM. Aztercross and True Vanguard are also heavily biased against SBMM, as most content creators are, and so their takes paint SBMM as something that was destroying PvP, when in all actuality it really wasn't. Bungie has been very open with how they want lobby balance to affect matches since the switch and have announced new improvements to thier system to mitigate quiting, which is the current problem plaguing all skill levels. I think ultimately SBMM is highly dependent on the outcome of each individual studio. Bungie has been very open about how they want to approach lobby balance and a vast majority of the issues in PvP stem from development priorities and sandbox issues as opposed to the quality of lobby skill. Personally I feel that the matchmaking system is the best it's felt in a long time and most of the problems are coming from ability spam and weapon tuning more so than lobby balance outside of maybe Trails lobbies
@@masterrecon22SBMM is trash because it tries to give an artificial experience to players. SBMM creates metas, worsens connection, and it doesn’t show you which tier you are in skill wise, so if you get better over time you don’t notice because you still perform somewhat the same all the time. Anyone who is for SBMM obviously doesn’t play any kind of PVP in any game or lacks the basic ability to grasp just a few of these concepts.
One of the biggest issues I have in this paper where they try to "prove" that SBMM is needed is the graph showing the difference between the control group and the lower SBMM group. If you look at the metrics, it shows that they are measuring how many people don't return in a 2 week period. The difference between the control group and the lowered SBMM group is a totally massive 0.5% gap. That's a 2 week period. There aren't that many 2 week periods between each release, and yet CoD still blows massive numbers sold every year, which means people keep returning. So to sum it up, they created an entirely new division(daemonware) and sent millions upon millions of dollars in research, salaries, and maintaining/updating the matchmaking code. They have made party play worse, games worse for some of their most dedicated players, give an overall worse connection experience, and make things feel artificial. They did all of that to stop like 50k people total from quitting each CoD cycle before coming back.
Thats the annoying part. They take a small portion of the community and alter the way that SBMM functions for a short about of time, based on how they perform in the last few games. This is not a good measurement of how a better SBMM system would function. They barely touched on the “25% of players protected, rest less skill based” which isn’t even exactly how it was suggested. They didn’t even show real data from that group, as if it wasn’t worth the going over in the first place despite the fact that it’s basically the old SBMM that COD had prior to AW. This whole doc seems to give the illusion of transparency as opposed to actually addressing what we wanted.
nah, that's not even the annoying or bad part. The fact that they *change the SBMM* on people who are already expecting the game to play one way as proof that lower SBMM makes players leave instead of starting players with lower/no SBMM is bullshit and invalidates ALL of the data they're using
~0.5% less people returning in just two weeks is devastating and it would only snowball. Sbmm is great for the majority of players, as the papers show. Activision do not care about the top% of players because you are not nearly as valuable as the rest.
@driftor I'd say that 95% of there white paper is based on Flawed information gathered by gaming after action reports. As a player and what I personally see is that when people quit 99% quit/ dashboard is not based on skull level ! It's based on internet. Lagging , and locations of players, some game lobbies the game is based on the hosts unit ( ps5 / ps4 or Xbox ) some lobbies is on a dedicated server. 99% quit NOT because of rage or pup stomping it's the lag. There white paper is not even close to factual. Using a netduna reducing lag gives you a 90% better gaming experience it reduces lag .
not only that, but there's the issue of just swapping how strong the SBMM is on players who already have an expectation of how the game will function isn't anywhere near the same as switching the SBMM to function differently from the start of a game/players experience with it. The data they've collected is flawed from the start and almost any conclusion based on it will be as well
@JohnSmith-kt3yy part of it is when they did the test (halfway threw the life cycle) when all cods start to drop player count and also people have been protected so long they don't like all of a sudden not being protected imagine you have been eating a food for 3 years and all of a sudden it's vastly different you probably wouldn't be eating it as often
I think people don’t really want “no sbmm” as cod always had it. Just take us back to pre-2019 levels where you could actually reap rewards of improvement and lobbies had variety .
@@JaKeIsJCS Something I think is worth mentioning is that the underlying software of a lot of matchmaking systems, Microsoft’s TrueSkill, changed from TrueSkill 1 to TrueSkill 2 around that time. TrueSkill 1 was based on the matchmaking system that engineers and game designers at Bungie developed for Halo 2, which very intentionally gave the average player a variety of matches, where they’d get to play even matches, matches they were likely to lose, and matches they were likely to win. If you were above average you’d get more favored matches and if you were below average you’d get more disfavored matches due to the Gaussian distribution of player skill. There would be more players below you than above you, or vice-versa. A study was done based on Halo 3 that found that even matches were the most engaging and fun. This is intuitive because Halo 3 is a competitively oriented game that gave players a variety of matches. What they missed was that not every game is very competitively oriented and the even matches were fun because they were not the only matches. The data analysts at Microsoft used this as the basis for developing TrueSkill 2. They focused their efforts on creating a system that could very accurately predict the outcome of games and always give players the even matches.
If they tone down SBMM or take the old school CoD approach, I’ll buy future CoD games. Until then, XDefiant has been super fun. Glad us casual players have a FPS game to play now.
@jugger17 I'm sorry, but anyone struggling in XDefiant is probably deserving to be in the extremely protected category in COD. I am not good on PC and I have not had severe issues with tryhards.
@@jugger17 sure dude. CoD only has the CDL, a pretty shitty franchise league with only 12 teams and 4 tournaments per season. CS has a lot more tournaments and even a real league with a lot more games. Apart from that, the number of spectators is also much higher than in CDL.
@@Fluffyguy958 agreed ^ The “career stats” page is currently broken in XD, but I’m guessing I’m around a 1.2 K/D. The matchmaking variety snd variety of gameplay is fun. Every match is different, you don’t know how good or bad your teammates or opponents will be, might run into a full team of spider bots or snipers or cleaners. CoD is the same thing, over and over and over.
I hate how they’re gonna use how people play less with sbmm as evidence it’s good. Play time means nothing. I stop playing most of the time when I had a “good” match because I feel like I’ve got my filling/craving fixed for the day.
They should just show us our hidden skill metric. ElO MMR etc has been public in so many games for long enough what difference would it make to just show us your skill rating is 0.32 and allow us to infer how our experience is going to be rather than being told this is how your experience should be
I still think no persistent lobbies and crossplay have more to do with how strong sbmm feels. Hypothetically there are 3 times the players to match to your skill level than before crossplay.
If I choose to matchmake for 6 game modes and get in a lobby where 1 guy only wants TDM I'm going to get bored real quick only searching for TDM. Disbanding lobbies happens because it has to for the mode selection to work. By allowing mode selection it means the overall playerbase for matchmaking is larger since we're no longer forced to pick 1 game mode and only match against the people who picked that leading to some modes being dead because the wait is too long for people ONLY wanting to play it.
@@aelinstue9431 Then make it like this: If you have only 1 mode selected, DO NOT DISBAND LOBBIES. If you have more than 1 mode selected, then ofc you can disband them. I only play TDM, i just want to have fun while I unlock some camos with music in the background for 1-2 hours a day. With disbanding lobbies and sbmm, that's impossible for me to do.
In my honest opinion Activision should do two things regarding matchmaking: 1) Consider using a MMR-like system to have a wider selection of players across simillar skill levels so the moment anyone goes a little bit beyond their average skill level doesn't end up yeeted to ultra sweaty lobbies 2) This is more of server logistics than matchmaking but since CoD doesn't run super servers like Fortnite or League, Activision should implement some sort of geo lock so people get connected to the 3 or 4 more optimized servers near to their location (something which some routers like netduma does) Also people should deal with the sad truth that CoD is no longer a casual FPS and that it's community no longer finds funny to play with their brains turned off like in the golden era of the franchise. The trend nowdays is to play as toxic and competitive as possible.
Or.. just have a casual mode and a ranked mode.. I know that's unheard of and would be an entirely new idea but.. I think they could make the sacrifice to develop such a complex system.
The thing about a paper like this is that nobody can replicate it. We can't gain access to the CoD matchmaking system and perform the same experiment that they did and analyse the results. So the only thing we can do is just take their word for it on this 1 experiment that supports a system that they want in the game. I do not like SBMM. I don't play games with SBMM and this paper is not going to convince to buy MW3 or whatever the next CoD is. I don't even believe that this system is in place to give players a fair matchmaking system. I believe the system is optimized for player retention and that doesn't neccessarily translate into putting the player in fair lobbies.
I'm concerned about the data being not fully transparent and possibly cherry picked. "When we lowered SBMM, player count for average and low skill players went down and high skill slightly up". They said this test was at start of 2024, but the game was in a terrible state. Most of the average bracket was leaving because season 1 / season 1 reloaded was a terrible buggy mess for both mw3 and warzone. Wouldn't it be possible that the data correlation is skewed from this? They didn't really address that whatsoever
SBMM is the root cause of lower skilled players leaving: Activision claims that less skilled players leave the game when skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) is turned off. However, this scenario actually reveals how SBMM itself is the root cause of this problem. Over years of playing with SBMM in place, these less skilled players have become accustomed to facing easier opponents. SBMM has created a comfort zone for these players, shielding them from the true diversity of skill levels in the game. When SBMM is suddenly removed, these players find themselves thrust into a more challenging environment they're not prepared for. The stark contrast between their SBMM-curated experience and the raw, unfiltered matchmaking can be jarring and frustrating. This abrupt change leads to a decrease in enjoyment and an increase in frustration, ultimately causing these players to quit the game. Ironically, it's the very system that was meant to retain these players that has made them more likely to leave when it's removed. In essence, SBMM has become a crutch, and its removal exposes the artificial environment it created. The system that was designed to keep players engaged has inadvertently made them more vulnerable to leaving when faced with the game's true competitive landscape. Therefore, it's not the absence of SBMM that's causing players to leave, but rather the long-term effects of SBMM itself. The system has created a dependency that, when removed, leaves players ill-equipped to handle the full spectrum of competition in the game.
" Ironically, it's the very system that was meant to retain these players that has made them more likely to leave when it's removed." Imo you nailed it. I think that is exactly their designed core argument for retaining SBMM in general. They created something that they can now point to and say "See?! We told you." Classic data manufacturing to create the narrative you want to back up in the first place. I would presume that is used to entice investors and keep the status quo as well of course
One time some kid wanted a friendly 1v1 after the match so I said yeah sure. He says he never loses against his friends. So I slam him effortlessly and even go for style points and he’s just dumbfounded that I broke his imaginary ceiling of skill. I showed him that there’s a lot to improve on. Sure his context was vs his buddies but he played multiplayer as well and has that context too but was still in shock. Long time ago when SBMM was very mild or non existent, this would never have happened. He would have been exposed to the entire spectrum of skill way way sooner. This happened in MW2019 during the game’s peak btw.
This logic makes no sense in any other sporting context. If a new middle school basketball player matched up against varsity players game after game it’s unlikely that they would keep playing. There’s a reason why baseball has progressively more difficult minor leagues, college football has divisions, and there’s a reason why video games have skill brackets.
It so funny that mostmp focused titles are LESS focused on having strict SB/EOMM. And they are thriving for years, while CoD MUST be released every year. And most of them are F2P.
The most annoying thing about this whole thing is that the sbmm system only works cause it makes bad players think that they are good or atleast average. That is why everybody is screaming cheater to every player better than them. Visible skill bracket rank would remedy this but that will never happen. People would rather be oblivious and think they are something they are not than to be correct
@@deriznohappehquiteBy showing a player their ELO, they now take risk when queuing. They now will see their number increase or decline. Players are less likely to play if they have to take risk. By removing risk, (or the visible part of it) players are more likely to play
"The most annoying thing about this whole thing is that the sbmm system only works cause it makes bad players think that they are good or atleast average." Is that how you percieve it? Jesus Christ, no wonder you anti-sbmm are miserable. The system works because those players have fun. Thats it.
I think this is actually an overall win. Regardless of our opinions on SBMM, we've now seen a good portion of their interior work and can make judgements based on actual information that isn't just speculation or correlative. That said, after listening to this I wonder if the problem with the game isn't SBMM at all, but the evolution CoD has taken since its early days. It's gotten crazier and such as time has gone by and as the "Modern" setting has allowed. I'd be curious on your thoughts regarding the actual gameplay comparisons from way back in Cod4 all the way up to now. I played way too much S&D to have a good read on how the game plays outside of that and TDM, but IMO it started going downhill after hard counters became the norm, classes followed that logical flowchart and movement became even weirder. Regardless, excellent video and I'm glad to see you're getting better. Stay strong bro.
What all of this information proves, imo, is that SBMM is fine, and that the real problem is that SBMM emphasizes issues in game design in the top skill bracket. The top percentage of players exploit bad game design and force actual skilled players to play against meta weapons and cheap strategies.
You can't simply partition the bottom portion of the community without doing the same to the top portion. That's the issue that destroys the game for the average player, whom represent the lionshare. 10%-15% off the top and 10%-15% off the bottom. SBMM shouldn't exist for the middle 70%-80%. The top and bottom players play with each other and sometimes get blended into the nearby non sbmm brackets based on matchmaking availability. They need to be transparent about where we are in this. If a player is a 3/10 skill on the sbmm metric then they have a right to know this.
Agreed, more info is always better. We need legislation on the inner workings of games. Nutritional facts for games. Like how most countries mandate odds of lootboxes and gambling.
If that lead to better player retention, they would do that. Unhappy casuals don’t come back. But also people who are high skill and play it a lot may keep coming back to the game, even though they’re unhappy with how SBMM is matching them. This is the more hardcore group. They’re unhappy but don’t quit, so there’s no reason to change SBMM. They crunch a ton of data to make their statistical models of what works. They have machine learning specialists, data scientists and data analysts on board to comprehend and analyse all this data. There is no problem with their data or their methods - it’s what their goal is with SBMM. 12:06 - a looser matching system has very obvious negative effects on player retention for the bottom 90% of players.
No they don't need full transparency, all that does is lead to people figuring out how to abuse it. Either quit the game and become a meaningful statistic to support your claim that SBMM is bad or sit back and enjoy it like the grand majority who probably also don't understand that it's benefiting them.
You can leave feedback @ the Feeback and bug page for mw3 they never listen to YT comments fill up their inbox with feedback if you really want them to change it.
sadly the top 10% will never be happy unless they are pub stomping low skill players.. They don't seem to want to play against competent opponents that actually stand a chance against them.. Xdefiant see's alot of high skill cod players apparently loving it because of no sbmm.. yet they camp meta an sweat on there.. they always claim they want variety and want to play casually yet they are incapable of playing casually.. They also seem to only care about there enjoyment on the game and not everyone else.. Which is the problem with cod .. the player base is so huge.. how do you create a matchmaking system where EVERYONE enjoys the game.. regardless of skill ..
Some form of SBMM is needed, but connection needs to be a higher priority. I’m tired of playing solo and getting sent to the opposite coast after good games or even another country. Making a challenging game that rewards good play will be a much better experience for most players, especially in the long run. If you have to rig the game based on recent performance fine, but don’t mess with my connection.
This is along the lines of creating a "fair" match outside of the realm of raw skill--in other words, matching lower skilled players with advantage against higher skilled players with disadvantage. This advantage/disadvantage can be related to ping, input method, graphics/framerate, etc. So basically, you could be a top 10% player, but you'll perform like--and match against--a top 15% player when you connect to a server far away and have bad ping.
@@Brisingr73 This is exactly what they’re doing and something I am not ok with. I would much rather deal with longer queue times than be nerfed. Reducing my performance feels horrible given how much time and effort I’ve put into the game. I have noticed higher ping = easier lobbies on a fairly linear scale, but these games on high ping aren’t fun for anyone since I’m dominating but can’t go on long streaks typically. All these handicaps/assists are bad for competitive players that just want a fair environment so they can show off their skills. That’s what I fear we have lost.
Activision coddles and protects timmy no thumbs because they think their game (as well as mtx sales) will die if they don’t. I refuse to believe the “bad players will leave” rhetoric. Why? I can get on any older cod title and there will be fresh rank players in the lobbies. The same goes for other franchises like battlefield and star wars battlefront. There is no shortage of bad players and a game as big as cod will never see a shortage of bad players. Miss me with that nonsense.
The new movement bs is what kills this game for me, season 5 of mw23 with the weird test they did just killed multiplayer for me because all I get are slide cancelling and b hopping on top of the old classic dropshotting which I was used to already
@conradjones3448 tbh they do need to nerf the rpk aftermarket but I’d rather be outplayed by a guy with better aim then be whooped by a guy playing ADVANCED WARFARE IN A MODERN WARFARE GAME
I just want to play cod with friends. My friends won’t play with me because of my SBMM lobbies. They barely get a kill in my lobbies and it’s frustrating to play a video game where it use to be fun having full stack team of friends. Also it forces me to play a smaller pool of players and forces me to play in regions besides mine to match with similar sbmm….
Huh, so it turns out that the players that get fragged over and over again isn’t an endless supply of cannon fodder and they can quit the unfun job of being an extra in someone elses action movie. This is truely ground breaking stuff.
If they wanted to be the star in this hypothetical movie, maybe they should put in some effort. Not everyone is capable of being the best, regardless of time invested. Most people can realistically become a "supporting actor" given enough time and consistency. If they've truly got a problem with playing the game, getting "destroyed", and not seeking to improve, they should just find a new hobby and leave the game (Which daddy Microsoft/Activision don't wanna let happen).
@@lekmannen9990 The skill ceiling doesn't rise as long as there's a steady influx of new players. That's really what they should be focusing on, attracting new players, not manipulating low-skill players that probably don't even like COD all that much into keep playing.
@@casserCOM guarantee you also don't want to play a game with a dwindling player base. Once enough of the lower skilled players leave, all that's left are the sweats. That and a drop in revenue that signals to the developers to slow down the release of new content, if not stop it altogether.
@@Briggsian This argument that you're making doesn't necessarily pertain to my entire view of the situation. You're right, I wouldn't want to play a game with a "dwindling playerbase". As if there aren't tens if not hundreds of thousands of CoD players spread across all platforms. CoD is in no threat of dying, ever. Regardless of how terrible the games might be. However, if it did eventually "die", it would be entirely deserved. How many many CoD games following such a strict formula can we stomach? Besides this, I'm sure you've heard this argument plenty of times, but I'm going to bring it up again. How is it that older generation CoD games, particularly in the 360 era, had active playerbases spanning for years after initial release? Within the last decade, each and every new installment of CoD dies within a year. Here are some examples of CoD games lasting more than a year, with playerbases exceeding 50,000+ within a 3 year timeframe. 50,000 is a lot btw, considering many of these games had been stuck on last-gen consoles and did not feature cross-platform play. CoD4: peaked in years 1-4 Mw2: peaked in years 1-5 Mw3: peaked in years 1-3 Bo1: peaked in years 1-4 Bo2: peaked in years 1-5 Bo3: peaked in years 1-3 No CoD game past Bo3 has seen such long-term success besides MAYBE MW19, due to Warzone specifically. All of those games listed had very loose SBMM in public matches. All of those games had non-disbanding lobbies unless all players left. All of these games remained successful far into the future, with less updates. You can make the argument that players have gotten better. Sure. But wouldn't that extend to the players who are performing poorly? I'm assuming the overwhelming majority of modern day CoD players are repeat buyers of the francize and have had plenty of time to acclimate themselves with the shooter genre. The hidden key to all of this IMO is non-disbanding lobbies. I quit Mw3 2023 within weeks. I had a 1.6 K.D, every match was the same. It was boring. It was sterile. Nobody talked. I never got to play against the same people twice. Everyone was equally as proficient at the game as me (where's my fun at?). In old CoD, if I was getting destroyed with no hope of winning, I left the lobby. I could immediately find a new one that was 80% likely to be better than the last. It was easy. Lobbies would last between 30 minutes to 2 hours on average with the same 16-24 players swapping teams intermittently to rebalance. This worked PERFECTLY. Bad players knew who the other bad players were and would seek to do better than them. Good players knew who the other good players were and did the same. In modern CoD, this doesn't happen. You don't know who's "good" and who isn't because everyone's doing mediocre. They're all using the same weapons. You see them once. They're gone. You'll never learn anything. Onto the next experience. Wait another full-minute, sometimes up to 3, doing absolutely nothing. Might as well go check out the store while you wait. Buy some worthless garbage. Repeat the cycle. Uninstall. Next game.
Xdefiant has done such a fantastic job that Activision literally made multiple statements about sbmm AND that they are "considering" adding another playlist with NO sbmm. Someone, some manager, boss, someone at Activision is afraid. Or share holders asked questions.
xDefiant has a significantly smaller playerbase that it's not even within the top 50 most played games on PlayStation and Xbox. It hasn't done *shiet* to Call of Duty, hell it hardly even moved the needle to other Ubisoft games that are within the top 50.
@@Nazrat84XDefiant is the top profit generating title under Ubisoft currently, matchmaking times average about 4-5 seconds, the most concurrently played game under the Ubisoft umbrella, etc. Of course it’s not going touch CoD in terms of player counts and profit generation. But XDefiant is not dead, it won’t be dead anytime soon(unless Ubisoft decides to kill it), and I think it will actually gain players as they tweak things. But XDefiant definitely created this whole SBMM discussion and CoD having to “defend itself” on why it uses such aggressive SBMM.
It looks like they had decent intentions with the math here, but it seems like it "punishes" the most vocal and dedicated portion of CoD's player base, which also seems to be the highest performing players in the game. The OTHER problem seems to be that it ONLY punishes that group, while literally everyone else is having fun. That explains why CoD is making so much more money with so many more complaints.
The 10% players that are above and beyond the the shitty 90% simply just need to reverse boost with another account and session join and beat down those happy 90% every chance they get to make them feel what the 10% feel 😂
I think its very simple to explain what SBMM essentially does...it artificially tries to create 1.0KD lobbies based on your (Activision defined) skill. What this means is you and I could BOTH be 1.0KD players, but Im playing in the top 10% lobbies and you are playing in the bottom 10%. We may have similar K/D, but we are not equal players.
And since they're trying to artificially balance it, that means you or the game really have no idea how good you actually are because they're trying to stack the deck.
What's most irritating is that good players can get the impression they aren't that good because their MMR is hidden and they're playing against other sweats. I'm assuming this is done because lower skilled players may also play less if they realize how low they are (and some toxic high-skilled players would probably berate them, too)
I've seen a lot of people getting conspiratorial saying that these stats are fake, but when they have the confidence to admit "this makes us a lot of money" there's not one single circumstance where they're going to be incentivized to change anything.
@@bannedmann4469 The report is how about how they won't change anything because they have every single reason under the sun not to. How much more clear does it have to be?
@@Nazrat84 If that’s all they wanted to do, they could’ve just shown revenue and growth. They didn’t need all this to say they simply weren’t going to change. It isn’t that simple, they’re doing this because it’s a concern. Probably to their shareholders..
@@bannedmann4469 they have been doing that for years though. They show how the game has grown in retention and revenue. People still complain about SBMM. They say that their data shows that SBMM is responsible for retention and growth so we won't remove it. Everyone calls them liars and gives their pet theories on why they don't know their own data How many years do they need to keep doing that before it sinks in. This time they decided to show the data on why they make those claims and now have people saying "if it's just because of retention and revenue you could just say that" like they haven't said it before.
Glad to see Driftor still got it. Best video on the subject by far. Best of health. To all guys doing physiotheraphy: remember every push counts. Also, there is no spoon.
This genuinely hurts the majority of the player base, sbmm makes it so every match feels equally competitive so you never feel like you are improving, camo and challenge grinds become unbearable, there becomes little to no build/gun diversity and so many more issues. IF YOU HAVE A RANKED PLAYLIST WHY HAVE SBMM IN CASUAL
If the game is called MODERN warfare, why are we able to bounce around everywhere and fly across the screen by sliding like we had in ADVANCED WARFARE? I can make the same kinda argument, remove movement bs, we can then remove the EOMM
@@chrisupton6190 i don't understand youre argument basis here. The movement can be a lot, but there lies an ability to improve at it, just like with any game mechanic. With sbmm, however, you won't feel any of that improvement because you will always face others with the same skillset which is discouraging. Sbmm in my eyes is the core issue between most multiplayer games not being as fun
Why have this in pubs? If you're getting stomped on and need sbmm to save you then have a playlist that should have this... and maybe called it 'ranked' for example
This is a huge problem for me as well. I'm only slightly above average but most my friends aren't regular FPS players. They play a couple games with me, sit at the bottom of the scoreboard and quit.
@@spenceringram8784Same for my Dad and me. He hates playing with me. When he does he can only ever get maybe 5 kills or so and tons of deaths. And I’m always on top or second. When he plays by himself he usually gets 20 or so kills. It’s a big difference and it sucks all the fun away.
17:39 makes sense why my lobbies never got sweaty when i que'd up with 2 of my alt accounts that had .01 k/d and .01 w/l. I love learning more about the SBMM algo because the more it gets expanded on, the more it opens up for manipulation.
So basically if they are to loosen sbmm in tdm then their unpredictable lobby balancer breaking up anb balance teams the way that one of the team is literally stomping the other, so thats why it's bad for everyone if devs will loose sbmm. Ok, got it. Good job, devs.
Multiplayer now a days has to have this. It can’t be the Wild West like it used to be for all those years when COD was in its early years. If general casual playlists had true randomness, more players will leave because they could not play well against godly players if they came across them. A big difference is the player base has shifted since then as well.
@@rickfowler273 You can see how that plays out with XDefiant. It's an inferior experience overall (not only due to unbalanced games, but due to people being frustrating and leaving). People always bring the "back in the day" argument, but the playerbase has shifted so much that having this kind of SBMM is simply necessary.
@@andreidmny😂😂 games catering to trash players so they will spend more money is 100% NOT NECESSARY 😂😂 tf you talking about??? You kids still don't get it.
Because ranked is a joke and only allows you to use 1% of the games content. What we need is a return of the mercinary playlist where only solo players are allowed.
as someone who quit call of duty all together in 2019 i can tell you SBMM was not the reason. it was the absurd amount of hackers in every warzone lobby.
this is why I hate data scientists more than any other profession. they gather data and proclaim expertise on a subject. the errors usually pop up when they name the data points - the name usually brings heavy implications that aren't always true. now when they go to optimize this named data point, they think they're making something happen which often is far from the full picture. when it comes to this paper, they operate under the false assumption that everyone should have fun the same way. this is utterly ridiculous. imagine a smart ™ piano that knows your skill level. imagine if beginners can mash the keys and reproduce beethoven. then imagine them competing in a piano playing competition. and make sure nobody knows who is using the smart ™ piano. Activision has suffered severe brain drain and are incapable of making quality call of duty games. I bet they're marketing team has grown exponentially 🤢
What are you talking about? The piano metaphor does not make any sense. SBMM does not give players any advantage other than getting to play against other people in the same skill-bracket.
@@JohnSmith-kt3yy have to disagree. modern cod has so many factors assisting the lower end of the bell curve. spawn logic, lobby composition, weapon mechanics(read: more randomness and slower), ammo count (less downtime due to higher mag sizes), aim assist and other factors all trying to boost lower players. I have to ask you, do you think players on the lower skill end of the skill curve aren't being assisted like my piano analogy points out?
@@fpsDREDD I do not think they are assisted in any other way than the rest of the players. They all get assisted by the same mechanics, at least I am pretty sure. I dont play cod to be honest with you.
Would you tell your younger self this if you could time travel? It's exactly this mentality that is slowly killing XDefiant right now. By telling people who are just trying a genre for the first time that they should quit, you will eventually end up with a game that is either just hardcore/sweaty people or no game at all because the project is no longer profitable.
When I first played cod, it was at my friends bday party playing cod4 for the first time. They completely destroyed me on local deathmatches and I didn’t want to play cod anymore. I wasn’t mad at becoming target practice for them, I was mad nobody told me the full mechanics. But I did grab world at war next year because I loved ww2 games and got tired of Medal of Honor. Played the campaign and then tried multiplayer and still got destroyed. But I was determined to improve. Some matches I came out on top and some I came dead last. It wasn’t stale. I’ve been playing cod ever since. Xdefiant has brought a fresh breath of air because you have to play against all types of players. Even being new to the game I have to relearn the mechanics. You have to put in the effort to get better. Some matches you destroy, and some matches you get destroyed. Just like in older cod games. So you improve to be better. All SBMM does is take the shortcut into making low tier players into believing that they’re playing a better game by beating essentially their own skill level. But they’re not actually progressing overall, just in their low tier. So it also actually hinders their real progress as a shooter in cod as well. I don’t even play sweaty but the sense of pride of knowing you’re progressing your skills overall is a satisfying feeling that cod has taken away. low tier players will only ever get to play against low tier players and never see a genuine satisfaction of progression. Instead of playing games where you dominate you constantly have to sweat against people against your own skill. No matches are random to have close ones and complete dominance in others. Which is draining to any average player. Just to make sure lower tiers enjoy playing against other lower tiers. So would I be telling my younger self that? Absolutely 😂 Xdefiant isn’t going anywhere because there is still a generation of players who are tired of SBMM making every game become a sweat fest. They play cod because they still don’t quit over one match. They play xdefiant because they don’t quit over one dominant match. They play to have fun and SBMM has completely taken that fun factor out. So I would absolutely tell myself that. If I’m going to be a quitter because I didn’t have SBMM to save me and place me in other games against noobs every year, then yeah, I shouldn’t be playing shooter games either. I’ve turned out how many other people on cod have become because of minimal SBMM if that. Because I didn’t quit over a match that could’ve saved me from dominance. It made me along with many other players want to constantly keep getting better. And have fun while doing so.
@@DaKrazyKidd The culture around gaming as whole has shifted dramatically since COD4/WAW were released. The barrier for entry for newer FPS games is colossal compared to how it was "back in the day" because a lot of us have at least a decades worth of experience that we didn't have back in the mid to late 2000s. Then there are the people wanting to turn gaming into their career so they try hard at every opportunity to get those gameplay clips. It's not an insignificant amount of people either, you'll regularly bump into people with "TTV" or "YT" in their name trying to promote their channel. Back in the day, we didn't really know what the "meta" was because information travelled so much slower. Now people seem to have it all figured out maybe a week after release, if not before. Is SBMM too strong in COD? Perhaps, I think it adjusting after every single match is too much but I'd strongly argue that if you want a game to grow and survive long-term, you're going to have to accept that it's necessary. Also re. XDefiant, I've found that since season 1 (where the game dropped ~90% of its playerbase) the game has become increasingly sweaty. Maybe I'll try the game again once they've got ranked figured out but for now, alongside all the technical issues, the game just isn't fun for me.
I found a few botted accounts first day of the current season. The one I remember went used the name "NM". Would get no kills and continued a running animation even though they were hitting a wall. I hope these accounts weren't used in measuring data.
@@Honeneko. they would be at the bottom 25% of the skill ranking. Also not that many of them compared to the overall user base. You’d need 5-10% of players to be bots for them to affect a massive dataset of millions of people. Activision does ban waves, it’s not hard to exclude banned bots from a dataset. Also they might not be bots. They could be children, people with developmental disabilities etc.
Thanks for the breakdown of this paper. At least now I understand why I loathe playing call of duty with friends anymore and why the vast majority don’t play cod anymore much appreciated.
What we really should talk about is the desire of many developers to eradicate me and any other mouse and keyboard playet due to the atrocious aim assist that gives the last controller potato the illusion of skill while i cant win 98% of my closeish fights. They fix the controller crowd so they get addicted to the aimbot and lose any feeling for real aim so they only play the games with the massive assistance, just like a drug dealer.
My bigger issue with CoD nowadays is not SBMM but the fast that input-based matchmaking is NOT respected. I hate playing against different input devices: it makes the game more random because you cannot craft tactics with reliable outcomes.
The irony of the feedback loop is that me and also some friends of me left, because we constantly played against sweaty players. I think that this is true for a lot of people. And this is exactly what sbmm wanted to prevent.
in australia where its very low pop and a lot of fps players are giga sweaty, if you are anywhere near halfway decent at cod you get thrown in with wolves and its a miserable experience. maybe they should alter the algorithm for lower pop areas to be a bit looser?
I love how they say “its been in COD since Cod4”. But it wasnt until the latter 2010s where the sweat factor went thru the roof. Im not saying i need to go 40+-
Theres many other factors as what would turn off players from the game outside of matchmaking. If the servers are plagued with horrible stuttering and packet loss/burst issues, I find no enjoyment in the game and I won't play it
One of my friends just flexed with his nukes he got… I never did a nuke in the newer entries… When I joined his lobby I went 127-5 and he got absolutely smoked to death. That’s how strong match making is. Even the worst players can outperform very good players (while in their safe space). One time I played a match with my sweaty friend. We (no joke) played 2 v 10 in a 6 v 6 game mode what broke the lobby 2 minutes after.
Hey you’re not correctly describing the graph for player return rate. Each colour represents the percentile category and the left axis is the percent effect size. Since Activision never published any methodology references, I have to take the left column at face value (these kinds of papers often have scaling in the axis if values are standardized). The finding would then suggest rather small behaviour changes across all skill percentiles.
That graph is not saying 90% of the players are less likely to return. It is saying that in every percentile range, there were only about a 2% or less drop in retention. So a a relatively decline for a game
have you ever considered making your bedsheets green and then doing a green screen? i think it would look very normal and could do cool stuff with camera placement on the screen
no way, he wants to show it off, so ppl feel sry for him and keep subbing liking the poor youtube act. If this situation of his was true, he wouldnt show it, maybe 1 or 2 times to explain it, but certainly theres nothing to gain visualy from showing urself playing on a bed except for pitty points, kudus to him, he found something "unique" to stand off from the crowd, its kinda smart in a way, but at the same time, if you point it out like im doing, u risk getting linched by his followers, but if u ask me, i dont believe his situation, he has a history of mental health and dilusional states/health issues that dont exist.
I mean as the video showed the inverse of this happened, on their A/B test, they damn near removed SBMM the quit rate skyrocketed because the low skilled players kept getting stomped on. Then on their other test where they pushed SBMM to its max, the low skilled players stayed and the quit rate decreased by ALOT for all skill levels except for the top 10% of players with high skill. These guys at Activision are basically faced with 2 choices, remove SBMM, lose a large chunk of their playerbase and therefore money, or keep SBMM, retain a large chunk of their playerbase, get alot of money, at the cost of average to high skill level players having to get into the sweatiest games, basically playing against mirrors of themselves. Dammed if you do damned if you don't lol.
@@SmoovyNovaFan It's still an incredibly short-sighted strategy as they're alienating their core audience to appease a new, temporary audience that will quit as soon as they become the new top 10%. A strong core audience is incredibly important for any franchise to survive long term.
@@CerealKiller2 thing is new players will always be there to try out the game, and in the unlikely event that the "temporary audience" does become the new top 10% (which their matchmaking system prevents from ever happening) the lesser skilled players still get protected from them
all this justification and overexplaining by activision cause they want more players, i would love to see a look on a devs face when he gets asked, "sooo where does rewarding the high skill players come in?" They act like skill is just a natural thing like race or ethnicity that were born with?? These high skill players that theyre so set on pushing to the side are their biggest fans, their grinders, their CoD Points buyers. Do they really not understand this?
Sbmm is nothing compared to the ghost bullets, phasing threw the enemy when YOU KNOW YOU GOT THEM. Sbmm is second to the trash hit markers on new COD games
The more I read this the more that SBMM makes sense, nobody should have to spend $70 on a game to then not have fun on it. CoD has always been a "casual" gaming experience to a certain extent.
What makes me quit out of matches the most is when I have to carry both low SPM players and low KDR players in the same domination match. It's so aggravating capturing the B flag only for it to fall to the enemy instantly and now I have to deal with streaks. If the score is ~45-100, I quit out 🤷
5:55 this is always my counter argument against no sbmm and no one believes itll be a thing. This why im glad xdefiant doesn't have ssbm now we can watch this happen in real time
I'm still baffled they haven't figured out the magic formula: no SBMM and every map is shipment! I jest a little, but Shipment [although a little extreme] shows density is COD's actual problem. Too much of the maps are empty during play, so the noobs easily get flanked and the pros always get 1 on 1's that they easily win (plus they can oush crazy fast). Some of my favorite times have been when they do 10v10 on the 6v6 maps; the density is usually a lot better.
Obviously they have the data and that shows playerbase groth since mw 19 especially compared to loose sbmm before. Once Data changes, it will be Updated of course
They should add a no SBMM mode that's just rotated throughout different modes. Then the resllly good players can only have that mode selected and it'll swap through all the other playlist modes then you'll probably still have sweaty games but less so because casual players will be swapped into those too
I think the biggest issue with cod and SBMM compared to every other game is that cod is one of the (IMO) few games in which the player base at large intentionally does not play the majority of modes the way you are “intended” to. In CoD, TDM is played like TDM, hard point is played like TDM, domination is played like TDM, headquarters is played like TDM, etc, at least for the top 10-20%. This makes it difficult for the developer to make a fair matchmaking system for all modes because there are so many different ways to be considered good or bad. Is the dude with the most caps actually the good player? The dude with the most objective time? The one with the most kills? The one with the best KDR? Most kills per minute? It’s all so convoluted that it makes finding effectively balanced objective games a royal pain. Note: I’m heavily in favor of true SBMM
You're doing a fantastic job! Could you help me with something unrelated: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How should I go about transferring them to Binance?
What would be an awesome test for them to run, is an ANNOUNCED test. Half my discord server would redownload the game just to play during the “disabled SBMM” test, then uninstall after the test is done. Lmao
The part where they showed people playing less when they turned off SBMM, it could be because they're used to SBMM & if it was never there, the play levels would be roughly the same. Also it's EOMM, not SBMM, so they're playing with you mentally to play more. That doesn't necessarily mean you're enjoying the game more, just that you're being physiologically tricked to play more. I had some other thoughts & I haven't worded this well but I hope you get the jist.
Just let players choose whether they want it or not, that's why we have ranked. Heck, make ranked the default. And advertise it as something that is much more friendly to noobs to learn the ropes.
That's a dope shirt! I don't necessarily mind SBMM. I don't mind the sweaty gameplay. To echo alot of the communication around this topic. Lobbies ending just sucks. No adapting to the sweats that you are sweating with? SO LAME. I don't think quick play is adding enough to the game to warrant the loss of persistent lobbies. There are already (IMHO) too many modes. They should just bucket the lobbies into 3 pools. 1. TDM 2. Objective (with maybe 20% landing on TDM as well) and 3. SND. Each of these should have persistent lobbies. If you are a rush sniper at the first peak in search who throws nade sets and you're against a similar player. The single round of search is not enough time to adapt to eachothers playstyle and openings.
See I just don't get it, when I first started cod I was getting slapped around by everyone, every match. Just made me want to get better. Why is everyone so against that nowadays? We shouldn't need SBMM
You were probably a kid back then. A kid with no responsibilities and nearly unlimited time to play cod. Most people dont want to be good at cod, they want to have fun
Nowdays you don't play CoD, CoD plays you !
Nowadays my friend won’t play with me he gets destroyed in my lobby’s .. thanks SBMM
@@jasonbaren3595 It’s so bad I will not play at all anymore. Haven’t for years.
In Soviet Russia CoD plays you
This white paper basically just confirmed to us what everyone's been saying for forever. SBMM does indeed increase player retention so it is beneficial for THEM, the people selling the game. As long as this remains true then SBMM will never leave this game.
Yeah we're all part of an experiment You might as well call us Lab rats
Babe wake up, drift0rs talking about sbmm again
Crazy hey
Need a Jgod, Ace and Drift0r roundtable discussion on this. In fact that should be a regular podcast
I don't think Ace and Jgod want to get in bed with driftor
First guest should be TrueGameData ha
Even if the game has “always had sbmm”, we used to be able to stay in a lobby and keep playing with the same people and it was way more fun that way
I get that they are trying to say that SBMM is better for retention but there's a flaw with that.
I used to play CoD a lot and as soon as SBMM was made the strongest factor in MM, I quit and never came back because it was simply less fun to play.
They are not getting the data from people like me. This does not account for people that left because of SBMM.
So they spent years tailoring their playerbase to SBMM, secretly swapped it on half of them for 2 weeks, and only a tiny amount were upset... Swap it back immediatwly then! I bet a ton more people straight up don't buy the game every year because of SBMM
That would be me, in fact any game. If it has SBMM, I'm not playing.
Bungie also offers the same data with regards to the importance of SBMM for overall game health. They removed SBMM from the casual playlist in Destiny PvP, at the request of the community (probably due to the amplified voices of content creators). The result was the player base eventually collapsed, leaving a bunch of higher skilled players upset that casual felt more difficult than the Competitive playlist. They brought back SBMM to all playlists, and the player base grew started to grow again.
I think you're getting it wrong. I never played destiny 2, but I've watched multiple videos of AzteCross & True Vanguard (Destiny 2 players) speaking about SBMM about a a year ago, when Bungie implemented SBMM all of a sudden into Destiny 2, plus it was trending on twitter multiple times (the hashtag sbmm in destiny). And all these videos told me the contrary of what you said happened: Bungie "detected" their PVP mode in Destiny 2 was dying, so they implemented SBMM all of a sudden & everyone hated it cause players were always matched with the same people & everyone pretty much left matches all the time because teams were unbalanced & everyone used "Meta loadouts". Players hated it so much that Bungie decided to "lose the SBMM" (widening the skill brackets) and the community loved it because now people would match different players, with different loadouts and different skill (randomness). That's the story I could get from those vids, plus my friend who played regularly. Please if you know any video documenting this situation or a channel explaining what you're saying, I would appreciate it so I can watch it.
@@shaggytophas someone who has been playing destiny since day 1 of the xbox beta in 2014, the debate has been between connection bassed and skill based MM. Aztercross and True Vanguard are also heavily biased against SBMM, as most content creators are, and so their takes paint SBMM as something that was destroying PvP, when in all actuality it really wasn't. Bungie has been very open with how they want lobby balance to affect matches since the switch and have announced new improvements to thier system to mitigate quiting, which is the current problem plaguing all skill levels.
I think ultimately SBMM is highly dependent on the outcome of each individual studio. Bungie has been very open about how they want to approach lobby balance and a vast majority of the issues in PvP stem from development priorities and sandbox issues as opposed to the quality of lobby skill.
Personally I feel that the matchmaking system is the best it's felt in a long time and most of the problems are coming from ability spam and weapon tuning more so than lobby balance outside of maybe Trails lobbies
@@masterrecon22 cry harder about streamers lmao
@@masterrecon22SBMM is trash because it tries to give an artificial experience to players. SBMM creates metas, worsens connection, and it doesn’t show you which tier you are in skill wise, so if you get better over time you don’t notice because you still perform somewhat the same all the time.
Anyone who is for SBMM obviously doesn’t play any kind of PVP in any game or lacks the basic ability to grasp just a few of these concepts.
SBMM in Destiny 2 made me quit that game entirely.
One of the biggest issues I have in this paper where they try to "prove" that SBMM is needed is the graph showing the difference between the control group and the lower SBMM group. If you look at the metrics, it shows that they are measuring how many people don't return in a 2 week period. The difference between the control group and the lowered SBMM group is a totally massive 0.5% gap. That's a 2 week period. There aren't that many 2 week periods between each release, and yet CoD still blows massive numbers sold every year, which means people keep returning.
So to sum it up, they created an entirely new division(daemonware) and sent millions upon millions of dollars in research, salaries, and maintaining/updating the matchmaking code. They have made party play worse, games worse for some of their most dedicated players, give an overall worse connection experience, and make things feel artificial. They did all of that to stop like 50k people total from quitting each CoD cycle before coming back.
Thats the annoying part. They take a small portion of the community and alter the way that SBMM functions for a short about of time, based on how they perform in the last few games. This is not a good measurement of how a better SBMM system would function. They barely touched on the “25% of players protected, rest less skill based” which isn’t even exactly how it was suggested. They didn’t even show real data from that group, as if it wasn’t worth the going over in the first place despite the fact that it’s basically the old SBMM that COD had prior to AW.
This whole doc seems to give the illusion of transparency as opposed to actually addressing what we wanted.
Well stated.
nah, that's not even the annoying or bad part. The fact that they *change the SBMM* on people who are already expecting the game to play one way as proof that lower SBMM makes players leave instead of starting players with lower/no SBMM is bullshit and invalidates ALL of the data they're using
It is all about the micro-transactions. If those players spend money in-game, they want to keep them playing.
~0.5% less people returning in just two weeks is devastating and it would only snowball. Sbmm is great for the majority of players, as the papers show. Activision do not care about the top% of players because you are not nearly as valuable as the rest.
@driftor I'd say that 95% of there white paper is based on Flawed information gathered by gaming after action reports. As a player and what I personally see is that when people quit 99% quit/ dashboard is not based on skull level ! It's based on internet. Lagging , and locations of players, some game lobbies the game is based on the hosts unit ( ps5 / ps4 or Xbox ) some lobbies is on a dedicated server. 99% quit NOT because of rage or pup stomping it's the lag. There white paper is not even close to factual. Using a netduna reducing lag gives you a 90% better gaming experience it reduces lag .
not only that, but there's the issue of just swapping how strong the SBMM is on players who already have an expectation of how the game will function isn't anywhere near the same as switching the SBMM to function differently from the start of a game/players experience with it. The data they've collected is flawed from the start and almost any conclusion based on it will be as well
How do you explain the significant decrease in people returning to the game? Is that also because of lag?
@JohnSmith-kt3yy part of it is when they did the test (halfway threw the life cycle) when all cods start to drop player count and also people have been protected so long they don't like all of a sudden not being protected imagine you have been eating a food for 3 years and all of a sudden it's vastly different you probably wouldn't be eating it as often
No skill base matchmaker could be annoying, but strong skill based matchmaking is super annoying lol
At least if you get better over time you feel you earned it. Rather than the algorithm giving you an easy lobby.
@@SeeingSebastian the whitepaper litteraly said that lol
It would only be annoying for bots.. same as bots don’t like defiant.
I think people don’t really want “no sbmm” as cod always had it. Just take us back to pre-2019 levels where you could actually reap rewards of improvement and lobbies had variety .
@@JaKeIsJCS Something I think is worth mentioning is that the underlying software of a lot of matchmaking systems, Microsoft’s TrueSkill, changed from TrueSkill 1 to TrueSkill 2 around that time.
TrueSkill 1 was based on the matchmaking system that engineers and game designers at Bungie developed for Halo 2, which very intentionally gave the average player a variety of matches, where they’d get to play even matches, matches they were likely to lose, and matches they were likely to win. If you were above average you’d get more favored matches and if you were below average you’d get more disfavored matches due to the Gaussian distribution of player skill. There would be more players below you than above you, or vice-versa.
A study was done based on Halo 3 that found that even matches were the most engaging and fun. This is intuitive because Halo 3 is a competitively oriented game that gave players a variety of matches. What they missed was that not every game is very competitively oriented and the even matches were fun because they were not the only matches.
The data analysts at Microsoft used this as the basis for developing TrueSkill 2. They focused their efforts on creating a system that could very accurately predict the outcome of games and always give players the even matches.
If they tone down SBMM or take the old school CoD approach, I’ll buy future CoD games. Until then, XDefiant has been super fun. Glad us casual players have a FPS game to play now.
@@MrMcReeties > XDefiant
> Casual
Sure dude and CoD esports have surpassed CS2 as the King of Comp FPS and the CDL is making millions
@jugger17 I'm sorry, but anyone struggling in XDefiant is probably deserving to be in the extremely protected category in COD. I am not good on PC and I have not had severe issues with tryhards.
@@jugger17 sure dude. CoD only has the CDL, a pretty shitty franchise league with only 12 teams and 4 tournaments per season.
CS has a lot more tournaments and even a real league with a lot more games. Apart from that, the number of spectators is also much higher than in CDL.
@@marvin4233 the last line was sarcasm lmao just like saying XDefiant was made for casuals
@@Fluffyguy958 agreed ^
The “career stats” page is currently broken in XD, but I’m guessing I’m around a 1.2 K/D. The matchmaking variety snd variety of gameplay is fun. Every match is different, you don’t know how good or bad your teammates or opponents will be, might run into a full team of spider bots or snipers or cleaners. CoD is the same thing, over and over and over.
The amount of scientific research, development and funding of this, instead of just... You know, making a good game to keep players playing
That is scary af...
If your game needs SBMM to retain players, know that your game is utter garbage
This is why cod needs a fun ranked mode for high skill players to get them out of regular lobbies
Mfers will literally type up the sequel to the Bible before removing SBMM 😭😂😂😂😭
They double and triple down. Just wait till they file for bankruptcy
Destiny 2 tried removing SBMM and it was a giant failure. SBMM is better for 90% of the players.
@@deriznohappehquite xdefiant says otherwise
@@solomonterrell3051 Eh... xDefiant ain't doing too well in the charts for a F2P arcade shooter.
@@TheCyborgBananait’s almost like free to play games that are empty without content to earn (not buy) aren’t fun games to play
“There’s lies, damned lies, and then there’s statistics” - Mark Twain
I hate how they’re gonna use how people play less with sbmm as evidence it’s good. Play time means nothing. I stop playing most of the time when I had a “good” match because I feel like I’ve got my filling/craving fixed for the day.
Glad to see you sitting upright, hope you're doing better.
They should just show us our hidden skill metric. ElO MMR etc has been public in so many games for long enough what difference would it make to just show us your skill rating is 0.32 and allow us to infer how our experience is going to be rather than being told this is how your experience should be
I still think no persistent lobbies and crossplay have more to do with how strong sbmm feels. Hypothetically there are 3 times the players to match to your skill level than before crossplay.
If I choose to matchmake for 6 game modes and get in a lobby where 1 guy only wants TDM I'm going to get bored real quick only searching for TDM.
Disbanding lobbies happens because it has to for the mode selection to work. By allowing mode selection it means the overall playerbase for matchmaking is larger since we're no longer forced to pick 1 game mode and only match against the people who picked that leading to some modes being dead because the wait is too long for people ONLY wanting to play it.
Matches are just as sweaty with crossplay off
@@aelinstue9431 Then make it like this: If you have only 1 mode selected, DO NOT DISBAND LOBBIES. If you have more than 1 mode selected, then ofc you can disband them. I only play TDM, i just want to have fun while I unlock some camos with music in the background for 1-2 hours a day. With disbanding lobbies and sbmm, that's impossible for me to do.
Whatever they did with BO2 felt the best compared to others.
BO4 and BO3 matching was pretty good as well
In my honest opinion Activision should do two things regarding matchmaking:
1) Consider using a MMR-like system to have a wider selection of players across simillar skill levels so the moment anyone goes a little bit beyond their average skill level doesn't end up yeeted to ultra sweaty lobbies
2) This is more of server logistics than matchmaking but since CoD doesn't run super servers like Fortnite or League, Activision should implement some sort of geo lock so people get connected to the 3 or 4 more optimized servers near to their location (something which some routers like netduma does)
Also people should deal with the sad truth that CoD is no longer a casual FPS and that it's community no longer finds funny to play with their brains turned off like in the golden era of the franchise. The trend nowdays is to play as toxic and competitive as possible.
It’s as toxic as possible BECAUSE of things like SBMM.
@@bannedmann4469 It's not. It's all because of streamers and content creators.
@@jugger17 Also now everyone is a wannabe competitive player who thinks they're next up.
Or.. just have a casual mode and a ranked mode.. I know that's unheard of and would be an entirely new idea but.. I think they could make the sacrifice to develop such a complex system.
@@jugger17 Nah, I mean they don’t help. But nah.
The thing about a paper like this is that nobody can replicate it. We can't gain access to the CoD matchmaking system and perform the same experiment that they did and analyse the results.
So the only thing we can do is just take their word for it on this 1 experiment that supports a system that they want in the game.
I do not like SBMM. I don't play games with SBMM and this paper is not going to convince to buy MW3 or whatever the next CoD is. I don't even believe that this system is in place to give players a fair matchmaking system. I believe the system is optimized for player retention and that doesn't neccessarily translate into putting the player in fair lobbies.
I'm concerned about the data being not fully transparent and possibly cherry picked. "When we lowered SBMM, player count for average and low skill players went down and high skill slightly up". They said this test was at start of 2024, but the game was in a terrible state. Most of the average bracket was leaving because season 1 / season 1 reloaded was a terrible buggy mess for both mw3 and warzone. Wouldn't it be possible that the data correlation is skewed from this? They didn't really address that whatsoever
It was compared to a control group, not as standalone data.
After watching this video I’m not even really sure how they could cherry pick this?
This study has been done multiple times over the years with these same results. The data is good, the stats are good. SBMM is a good thing.
@@Fireclaws10 I'm starting to believe that everyone complaining about this are just entitled crybabies.
@@Fireclaws10for bots
SBMM is the root cause of lower skilled players leaving:
Activision claims that less skilled players leave the game when skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) is turned off. However, this scenario actually reveals how SBMM itself is the root cause of this problem. Over years of playing with SBMM in place, these less skilled players have become accustomed to facing easier opponents.
SBMM has created a comfort zone for these players, shielding them from the true diversity of skill levels in the game. When SBMM is suddenly removed, these players find themselves thrust into a more challenging environment they're not prepared for. The stark contrast between their SBMM-curated experience and the raw, unfiltered matchmaking can be jarring and frustrating.
This abrupt change leads to a decrease in enjoyment and an increase in frustration, ultimately causing these players to quit the game. Ironically, it's the very system that was meant to retain these players that has made them more likely to leave when it's removed.
In essence, SBMM has become a crutch, and its removal exposes the artificial environment it created. The system that was designed to keep players engaged has inadvertently made them more vulnerable to leaving when faced with the game's true competitive landscape.
Therefore, it's not the absence of SBMM that's causing players to leave, but rather the long-term effects of SBMM itself. The system has created a dependency that, when removed, leaves players ill-equipped to handle the full spectrum of competition in the game.
" Ironically, it's the very system that was meant to retain these players that has made them more likely to leave when it's removed."
Imo you nailed it. I think that is exactly their designed core argument for retaining SBMM in general. They created something that they can now point to and say "See?! We told you." Classic data manufacturing to create the narrative you want to back up in the first place. I would presume that is used to entice investors and keep the status quo as well of course
You said all that just to be wrong lol
One time some kid wanted a friendly 1v1 after the match so I said yeah sure. He says he never loses against his friends. So I slam him effortlessly and even go for style points and he’s just dumbfounded that I broke his imaginary ceiling of skill. I showed him that there’s a lot to improve on.
Sure his context was vs his buddies but he played multiplayer as well and has that context too but was still in shock.
Long time ago when SBMM was very mild or non existent, this would never have happened. He would have been exposed to the entire spectrum of skill way way sooner. This happened in MW2019 during the game’s peak btw.
This logic makes no sense in any other sporting context. If a new middle school basketball player matched up against varsity players game after game it’s unlikely that they would keep playing.
There’s a reason why baseball has progressively more difficult minor leagues, college football has divisions, and there’s a reason why video games have skill brackets.
It so funny that mostmp focused titles are LESS focused on having strict SB/EOMM. And they are thriving for years, while CoD MUST be released every year. And most of them are F2P.
The most annoying thing about this whole thing is that the sbmm system only works cause it makes bad players think that they are good or atleast average. That is why everybody is screaming cheater to every player better than them. Visible skill bracket rank would remedy this but that will never happen. People would rather be oblivious and think they are something they are not than to be correct
@@PureArmageddon92 I personally prefer to see my Elo.
@@deriznohappehquite as do I but according to activisions data overwhelming majority doesn't
@@deriznohappehquiteBy showing a player their ELO, they now take risk when queuing. They now will see their number increase or decline. Players are less likely to play if they have to take risk. By removing risk, (or the visible part of it) players are more likely to play
"The most annoying thing about this whole thing is that the sbmm system only works cause it makes bad players think that they are good or atleast average." Is that how you percieve it? Jesus Christ, no wonder you anti-sbmm are miserable. The system works because those players have fun. Thats it.
I think this is actually an overall win. Regardless of our opinions on SBMM, we've now seen a good portion of their interior work and can make judgements based on actual information that isn't just speculation or correlative. That said, after listening to this I wonder if the problem with the game isn't SBMM at all, but the evolution CoD has taken since its early days. It's gotten crazier and such as time has gone by and as the "Modern" setting has allowed.
I'd be curious on your thoughts regarding the actual gameplay comparisons from way back in Cod4 all the way up to now. I played way too much S&D to have a good read on how the game plays outside of that and TDM, but IMO it started going downhill after hard counters became the norm, classes followed that logical flowchart and movement became even weirder. Regardless, excellent video and I'm glad to see you're getting better. Stay strong bro.
What all of this information proves, imo, is that SBMM is fine, and that the real problem is that SBMM emphasizes issues in game design in the top skill bracket.
The top percentage of players exploit bad game design and force actual skilled players to play against meta weapons and cheap strategies.
the way they went about collecting that data is dogshit and their conclusions based on it aren't anything better than speculation
@@roar104 Explain your statement. Why is the data dagshit?
You can't simply partition the bottom portion of the community without doing the same to the top portion. That's the issue that destroys the game for the average player, whom represent the lionshare. 10%-15% off the top and 10%-15% off the bottom. SBMM shouldn't exist for the middle 70%-80%. The top and bottom players play with each other and sometimes get blended into the nearby non sbmm brackets based on matchmaking availability.
They need to be transparent about where we are in this. If a player is a 3/10 skill on the sbmm metric then they have a right to know this.
Agreed, more info is always better. We need legislation on the inner workings of games. Nutritional facts for games. Like how most countries mandate odds of lootboxes and gambling.
If that lead to better player retention, they would do that. Unhappy casuals don’t come back. But also people who are high skill and play it a lot may keep coming back to the game, even though they’re unhappy with how SBMM is matching them. This is the more hardcore group. They’re unhappy but don’t quit, so there’s no reason to change SBMM.
They crunch a ton of data to make their statistical models of what works. They have machine learning specialists, data scientists and data analysts on board to comprehend and analyse all this data.
There is no problem with their data or their methods - it’s what their goal is with SBMM. 12:06 - a looser matching system has very obvious negative effects on player retention for the bottom 90% of players.
No they don't need full transparency, all that does is lead to people figuring out how to abuse it.
Either quit the game and become a meaningful statistic to support your claim that SBMM is bad or sit back and enjoy it like the grand majority who probably also don't understand that it's benefiting them.
You can leave feedback @ the Feeback and bug page for mw3 they never listen to YT comments fill up their inbox with feedback if you really want them to change it.
sadly the top 10% will never be happy unless they are pub stomping low skill players.. They don't seem to want to play against competent opponents that actually stand a chance against them.. Xdefiant see's alot of high skill cod players apparently loving it because of no sbmm.. yet they camp meta an sweat on there.. they always claim they want variety and want to play casually yet they are incapable of playing casually.. They also seem to only care about there enjoyment on the game and not everyone else.. Which is the problem with cod .. the player base is so huge.. how do you create a matchmaking system where EVERYONE enjoys the game.. regardless of skill ..
Some form of SBMM is needed, but connection needs to be a higher priority. I’m tired of playing solo and getting sent to the opposite coast after good games or even another country. Making a challenging game that rewards good play will be a much better experience for most players, especially in the long run. If you have to rig the game based on recent performance fine, but don’t mess with my connection.
This is along the lines of creating a "fair" match outside of the realm of raw skill--in other words, matching lower skilled players with advantage against higher skilled players with disadvantage.
This advantage/disadvantage can be related to ping, input method, graphics/framerate, etc.
So basically, you could be a top 10% player, but you'll perform like--and match against--a top 15% player when you connect to a server far away and have bad ping.
@@Brisingr73 This is exactly what they’re doing and something I am not ok with. I would much rather deal with longer queue times than be nerfed. Reducing my performance feels horrible given how much time and effort I’ve put into the game. I have noticed higher ping = easier lobbies on a fairly linear scale, but these games on high ping aren’t fun for anyone since I’m dominating but can’t go on long streaks typically. All these handicaps/assists are bad for competitive players that just want a fair environment so they can show off their skills. That’s what I fear we have lost.
Activision coddles and protects timmy no thumbs because they think their game (as well as mtx sales) will die if they don’t. I refuse to believe the “bad players will leave” rhetoric. Why? I can get on any older cod title and there will be fresh rank players in the lobbies. The same goes for other franchises like battlefield and star wars battlefront. There is no shortage of bad players and a game as big as cod will never see a shortage of bad players. Miss me with that nonsense.
The new movement bs is what kills this game for me, season 5 of mw23 with the weird test they did just killed multiplayer for me because all I get are slide cancelling and b hopping on top of the old classic dropshotting which I was used to already
@conradjones3448 tbh they do need to nerf the rpk aftermarket but I’d rather be outplayed by a guy with better aim then be whooped by a guy playing ADVANCED WARFARE IN A MODERN WARFARE GAME
I just want to play cod with friends. My friends won’t play with me because of my SBMM lobbies. They barely get a kill in my lobbies and it’s frustrating to play a video game where it use to be fun having full stack team of friends. Also it forces me to play a smaller pool of players and forces me to play in regions besides mine to match with similar sbmm….
Huh, so it turns out that the players that get fragged over and over again isn’t an endless supply of cannon fodder and they can quit the unfun job of being an extra in someone elses action movie. This is truely ground breaking stuff.
If they wanted to be the star in this hypothetical movie, maybe they should put in some effort. Not everyone is capable of being the best, regardless of time invested. Most people can realistically become a "supporting actor" given enough time and consistency.
If they've truly got a problem with playing the game, getting "destroyed", and not seeking to improve, they should just find a new hobby and leave the game (Which daddy Microsoft/Activision don't wanna let happen).
@@casserCOMI agree. The outcome for the remaining player base is the same either way tho, the skill floor rises.
@@lekmannen9990 The skill ceiling doesn't rise as long as there's a steady influx of new players. That's really what they should be focusing on, attracting new players, not manipulating low-skill players that probably don't even like COD all that much into keep playing.
@@casserCOM guarantee you also don't want to play a game with a dwindling player base. Once enough of the lower skilled players leave, all that's left are the sweats. That and a drop in revenue that signals to the developers to slow down the release of new content, if not stop it altogether.
@@Briggsian This argument that you're making doesn't necessarily pertain to my entire view of the situation.
You're right, I wouldn't want to play a game with a "dwindling playerbase". As if there aren't tens if not hundreds of thousands of CoD players spread across all platforms.
CoD is in no threat of dying, ever. Regardless of how terrible the games might be. However, if it did eventually "die", it would be entirely deserved.
How many many CoD games following such a strict formula can we stomach?
Besides this, I'm sure you've heard this argument plenty of times, but I'm going to bring it up again.
How is it that older generation CoD games, particularly in the 360 era, had active playerbases spanning for years after initial release?
Within the last decade, each and every new installment of CoD dies within a year.
Here are some examples of CoD games lasting more than a year, with playerbases exceeding 50,000+ within a 3 year timeframe. 50,000 is a lot btw, considering many of these games had been stuck on last-gen consoles and did not feature cross-platform play.
CoD4: peaked in years 1-4
Mw2: peaked in years 1-5
Mw3: peaked in years 1-3
Bo1: peaked in years 1-4
Bo2: peaked in years 1-5
Bo3: peaked in years 1-3
No CoD game past Bo3 has seen such long-term success besides MAYBE MW19, due to Warzone specifically.
All of those games listed had very loose SBMM in public matches. All of those games had non-disbanding lobbies unless all players left. All of these games remained successful far into the future, with less updates.
You can make the argument that players have gotten better. Sure. But wouldn't that extend to the players who are performing poorly? I'm assuming the overwhelming majority of modern day CoD players are repeat buyers of the francize and have had plenty of time to acclimate themselves with the shooter genre.
The hidden key to all of this IMO is non-disbanding lobbies. I quit Mw3 2023 within weeks. I had a 1.6 K.D, every match was the same. It was boring. It was sterile. Nobody talked. I never got to play against the same people twice. Everyone was equally as proficient at the game as me (where's my fun at?).
In old CoD, if I was getting destroyed with no hope of winning, I left the lobby. I could immediately find a new one that was 80% likely to be better than the last. It was easy.
Lobbies would last between 30 minutes to 2 hours on average with the same 16-24 players swapping teams intermittently to rebalance. This worked PERFECTLY. Bad players knew who the other bad players were and would seek to do better than them. Good players knew who the other good players were and did the same.
In modern CoD, this doesn't happen. You don't know who's "good" and who isn't because everyone's doing mediocre. They're all using the same weapons. You see them once. They're gone. You'll never learn anything. Onto the next experience. Wait another full-minute, sometimes up to 3, doing absolutely nothing. Might as well go check out the store while you wait. Buy some worthless garbage. Repeat the cycle. Uninstall. Next game.
Xdefiant has done such a fantastic job that Activision literally made multiple statements about sbmm AND that they are "considering" adding another playlist with NO sbmm. Someone, some manager, boss, someone at Activision is afraid. Or share holders asked questions.
Xdefiant is dead. I guess people didn't care as much about no sbmm as people claimed.
It's not dead TF you on about?@@bray2079
@@bray2079it’s not dead
xDefiant has a significantly smaller playerbase that it's not even within the top 50 most played games on PlayStation and Xbox. It hasn't done *shiet* to Call of Duty, hell it hardly even moved the needle to other Ubisoft games that are within the top 50.
@@Nazrat84XDefiant is the top profit generating title under Ubisoft currently, matchmaking times average about 4-5 seconds, the most concurrently played game under the Ubisoft umbrella, etc.
Of course it’s not going touch CoD in terms of player counts and profit generation. But XDefiant is not dead, it won’t be dead anytime soon(unless Ubisoft decides to kill it), and I think it will actually gain players as they tweak things. But XDefiant definitely created this whole SBMM discussion and CoD having to “defend itself” on why it uses such aggressive SBMM.
It looks like they had decent intentions with the math here, but it seems like it "punishes" the most vocal and dedicated portion of CoD's player base, which also seems to be the highest performing players in the game. The OTHER problem seems to be that it ONLY punishes that group, while literally everyone else is having fun. That explains why CoD is making so much more money with so many more complaints.
Oh no, it doesn't benefit the Karen's. That's exactly what this world needs less of.
@@aelinstue9431 The karens...don't play CoD....what're you talking about...?
The 10% players that are above and beyond the the shitty 90% simply just need to reverse boost with another account and session join and beat down those happy 90% every chance they get to make them feel what the 10% feel 😂
@@CapnBreezeagreed, if they manipulate our experience we need to do the same in response
@@CapnBreeze then the 90% all start quitting the game.. then its only the top 10% left playing each other..
Love SBMM because tanking my record guarantees me easy matchups in 2k and Madden
I think its very simple to explain what SBMM essentially does...it artificially tries to create 1.0KD lobbies based on your (Activision defined) skill. What this means is you and I could BOTH be 1.0KD players, but Im playing in the top 10% lobbies and you are playing in the bottom 10%. We may have similar K/D, but we are not equal players.
And since they're trying to artificially balance it, that means you or the game really have no idea how good you actually are because they're trying to stack the deck.
What's most irritating is that good players can get the impression they aren't that good because their MMR is hidden and they're playing against other sweats.
I'm assuming this is done because lower skilled players may also play less if they realize how low they are (and some toxic high-skilled players would probably berate them, too)
Y’all mad the data doesn’t agree with you. Cope more.
@@Morhpocelionate I don't see anyone here being mad about the data
@@Morhpocelionate Lol no one has an issue with the data, just talking about how muddy it makes things.
Hi drtift0r. Hope you are doing well. Been watching since bo2 in depth. Like the video thank you for the breakdown
I've seen a lot of people getting conspiratorial saying that these stats are fake, but when they have the confidence to admit "this makes us a lot of money" there's not one single circumstance where they're going to be incentivized to change anything.
They do at least seem to be incentivized to do this report..
@@bannedmann4469 The report is how about how they won't change anything because they have every single reason under the sun not to. How much more clear does it have to be?
@@Nazrat84 If that’s all they wanted to do, they could’ve just shown revenue and growth. They didn’t need all this to say they simply weren’t going to change. It isn’t that simple, they’re doing this because it’s a concern. Probably to their shareholders..
@@bannedmann4469 What do you think "retention" is? Do you think that doesn't have a significant pull on their revenue and growth?
@@bannedmann4469 they have been doing that for years though.
They show how the game has grown in retention and revenue.
People still complain about SBMM.
They say that their data shows that SBMM is responsible for retention and growth so we won't remove it.
Everyone calls them liars and gives their pet theories on why they don't know their own data
How many years do they need to keep doing that before it sinks in. This time they decided to show the data on why they make those claims and now have people saying "if it's just because of retention and revenue you could just say that" like they haven't said it before.
Remember yall, COD is playing you. Youre not playing COD.
Did they filter out people leaving matches because of blatant cheating and not higher skill?
That or the triple digit ping and lag.
Glad to see Driftor still got it. Best video on the subject by far. Best of health. To all guys doing physiotheraphy: remember every push counts. Also, there is no spoon.
This genuinely hurts the majority of the player base, sbmm makes it so every match feels equally competitive so you never feel like you are improving, camo and challenge grinds become unbearable, there becomes little to no build/gun diversity and so many more issues. IF YOU HAVE A RANKED PLAYLIST WHY HAVE SBMM IN CASUAL
If the game is called MODERN warfare, why are we able to bounce around everywhere and fly across the screen by sliding like we had in ADVANCED WARFARE? I can make the same kinda argument, remove movement bs, we can then remove the EOMM
@@chrisupton6190 i don't understand youre argument basis here. The movement can be a lot, but there lies an ability to improve at it, just like with any game mechanic. With sbmm, however, you won't feel any of that improvement because you will always face others with the same skillset which is discouraging. Sbmm in my eyes is the core issue between most multiplayer games not being as fun
Why have this in pubs? If you're getting stomped on and need sbmm to save you then have a playlist that should have this... and maybe called it 'ranked' for example
My friend doesn’t like to play cod with me because he gets destroyed in my lobby’s thanks SBMM
This is a huge problem for me as well. I'm only slightly above average but most my friends aren't regular FPS players. They play a couple games with me, sit at the bottom of the scoreboard and quit.
@@spenceringram8784Same for my Dad and me. He hates playing with me. When he does he can only ever get maybe 5 kills or so and tons of deaths. And I’m always on top or second. When he plays by himself he usually gets 20 or so kills. It’s a big difference and it sucks all the fun away.
I had to hear your take you always have a reasonable take on things
17:39 makes sense why my lobbies never got sweaty when i que'd up with 2 of my alt accounts that had .01 k/d and .01 w/l. I love learning more about the SBMM algo because the more it gets expanded on, the more it opens up for manipulation.
So basically if they are to loosen sbmm in tdm then their unpredictable lobby balancer breaking up anb balance teams the way that one of the team is literally stomping the other, so thats why it's bad for everyone if devs will loose sbmm.
Ok, got it.
Good job, devs.
I don’t understand why you can’t just have SBMM in ranked multiplayer and absolutely none in Casual multiplayer
Because the only people that is casual for is the top 10%.
Multiplayer now a days has to have this. It can’t be the Wild West like it used to be for all those years when COD was in its early years. If general casual playlists had true randomness, more players will leave because they could not play well against godly players if they came across them. A big difference is the player base has shifted since then as well.
@@rickfowler273 You can see how that plays out with XDefiant. It's an inferior experience overall (not only due to unbalanced games, but due to people being frustrating and leaving). People always bring the "back in the day" argument, but the playerbase has shifted so much that having this kind of SBMM is simply necessary.
@@andreidmny😂😂 games catering to trash players so they will spend more money is 100% NOT NECESSARY 😂😂 tf you talking about???
You kids still don't get it.
Because ranked is a joke and only allows you to use 1% of the games content. What we need is a return of the mercinary playlist where only solo players are allowed.
as someone who quit call of duty all together in 2019 i can tell you SBMM was not the reason. it was the absurd amount of hackers in every warzone lobby.
this is why I hate data scientists more than any other profession. they gather data and proclaim expertise on a subject. the errors usually pop up when they name the data points - the name usually brings heavy implications that aren't always true. now when they go to optimize this named data point, they think they're making something happen which often is far from the full picture.
when it comes to this paper, they operate under the false assumption that everyone should have fun the same way. this is utterly ridiculous. imagine a smart ™ piano that knows your skill level. imagine if beginners can mash the keys and reproduce beethoven. then imagine them competing in a piano playing competition. and make sure nobody knows who is using the smart ™ piano.
Activision has suffered severe brain drain and are incapable of making quality call of duty games. I bet they're marketing team has grown exponentially 🤢
What are you talking about? The piano metaphor does not make any sense. SBMM does not give players any advantage other than getting to play against other people in the same skill-bracket.
@@JohnSmith-kt3yy have to disagree. modern cod has so many factors assisting the lower end of the bell curve. spawn logic, lobby composition, weapon mechanics(read: more randomness and slower), ammo count (less downtime due to higher mag sizes), aim assist and other factors all trying to boost lower players. I have to ask you, do you think players on the lower skill end of the skill curve aren't being assisted like my piano analogy points out?
@@fpsDREDD I do not think they are assisted in any other way than the rest of the players. They all get assisted by the same mechanics, at least I am pretty sure. I dont play cod to be honest with you.
@@JohnSmith-kt3yy ah you don't play CoD... your comments make sense now.
@@fpsDREDD Yeah, but do newbs actually get a mechanical advantage in the game or what?
Sounds to me if they quit altogether cause of getting whooped from no SBMM, then maybe shooter games aren’t for them in the first place…
Would you tell your younger self this if you could time travel?
It's exactly this mentality that is slowly killing XDefiant right now. By telling people who are just trying a genre for the first time that they should quit, you will eventually end up with a game that is either just hardcore/sweaty people or no game at all because the project is no longer profitable.
When I first played cod, it was at my friends bday party playing cod4 for the first time. They completely destroyed me on local deathmatches and I didn’t want to play cod anymore. I wasn’t mad at becoming target practice for them, I was mad nobody told me the full mechanics. But I did grab world at war next year because I loved ww2 games and got tired of Medal of Honor. Played the campaign and then tried multiplayer and still got destroyed. But I was determined to improve. Some matches I came out on top and some I came dead last. It wasn’t stale. I’ve been playing cod ever since. Xdefiant has brought a fresh breath of air because you have to play against all types of players. Even being new to the game I have to relearn the mechanics. You have to put in the effort to get better. Some matches you destroy, and some matches you get destroyed. Just like in older cod games. So you improve to be better. All SBMM does is take the shortcut into making low tier players into believing that they’re playing a better game by beating essentially their own skill level. But they’re not actually progressing overall, just in their low tier. So it also actually hinders their real progress as a shooter in cod as well. I don’t even play sweaty but the sense of pride of knowing you’re progressing your skills overall is a satisfying feeling that cod has taken away. low tier players will only ever get to play against low tier players and never see a genuine satisfaction of progression. Instead of playing games where you dominate you constantly have to sweat against people against your own skill. No matches are random to have close ones and complete dominance in others. Which is draining to any average player. Just to make sure lower tiers enjoy playing against other lower tiers.
So would I be telling my younger self that? Absolutely 😂 Xdefiant isn’t going anywhere because there is still a generation of players who are tired of SBMM making every game become a sweat fest. They play cod because they still don’t quit over one match. They play xdefiant because they don’t quit over one dominant match. They play to have fun and SBMM has completely taken that fun factor out.
So I would absolutely tell myself that. If I’m going to be a quitter because I didn’t have SBMM to save me and place me in other games against noobs every year, then yeah, I shouldn’t be playing shooter games either. I’ve turned out how many other people on cod have become because of minimal SBMM if that. Because I didn’t quit over a match that could’ve saved me from dominance. It made me along with many other players want to constantly keep getting better. And have fun while doing so.
@@DaKrazyKidd The culture around gaming as whole has shifted dramatically since COD4/WAW were released. The barrier for entry for newer FPS games is colossal compared to how it was "back in the day" because a lot of us have at least a decades worth of experience that we didn't have back in the mid to late 2000s.
Then there are the people wanting to turn gaming into their career so they try hard at every opportunity to get those gameplay clips. It's not an insignificant amount of people either, you'll regularly bump into people with "TTV" or "YT" in their name trying to promote their channel.
Back in the day, we didn't really know what the "meta" was because information travelled so much slower. Now people seem to have it all figured out maybe a week after release, if not before.
Is SBMM too strong in COD? Perhaps, I think it adjusting after every single match is too much but I'd strongly argue that if you want a game to grow and survive long-term, you're going to have to accept that it's necessary.
Also re. XDefiant, I've found that since season 1 (where the game dropped ~90% of its playerbase) the game has become increasingly sweaty. Maybe I'll try the game again once they've got ranked figured out but for now, alongside all the technical issues, the game just isn't fun for me.
@@CrowXCVIIII fear for the future of the world with this generation of snowflakes
I found a few botted accounts first day of the current season. The one I remember went used the name "NM". Would get no kills and continued a running animation even though they were hitting a wall. I hope these accounts weren't used in measuring data.
Even if they could separate data like that, would they go through the effort?
They would be statistically insignificant
@@bannedmann4469 not if it "benefits" low skilled players and their argument.
@@Fireclaws10 how so?
@@Honeneko. they would be at the bottom 25% of the skill ranking. Also not that many of them compared to the overall user base. You’d need 5-10% of players to be bots for them to affect a massive dataset of millions of people. Activision does ban waves, it’s not hard to exclude banned bots from a dataset.
Also they might not be bots. They could be children, people with developmental disabilities etc.
Thanks for the breakdown of this paper. At least now I understand why I loathe playing call of duty with friends anymore and why the vast majority don’t play cod anymore much appreciated.
What we really should talk about is the desire of many developers to eradicate me and any other mouse and keyboard playet due to the atrocious aim assist that gives the last controller potato the illusion of skill while i cant win 98% of my closeish fights. They fix the controller crowd so they get addicted to the aimbot and lose any feeling for real aim so they only play the games with the massive assistance, just like a drug dealer.
Always good to see an excellent analysis of facts and clear data. Superb video. 👍
My bigger issue with CoD nowadays is not SBMM but the fast that input-based matchmaking is NOT respected. I hate playing against different input devices: it makes the game more random because you cannot craft tactics with reliable outcomes.
More players quit because of cheaters but they won’t do anything about that lol
The irony of the feedback loop is that me and also some friends of me left, because we constantly played against sweaty players. I think that this is true for a lot of people. And this is exactly what sbmm wanted to prevent.
in australia where its very low pop and a lot of fps players are giga sweaty, if you are anywhere near halfway decent at cod you get thrown in with wolves and its a miserable experience. maybe they should alter the algorithm for lower pop areas to be a bit looser?
Dude you look so much healthier and better than I have seen in years and years.
Great video, really well explained!
That shirt, man. lol.
So basically, it's morally wrong but it makes money. So it's just like stealing.
I love how they say “its been in COD since Cod4”. But it wasnt until the latter 2010s where the sweat factor went thru the roof. Im not saying i need to go 40+-
Theres many other factors as what would turn off players from the game outside of matchmaking. If the servers are plagued with horrible stuttering and packet loss/burst issues, I find no enjoyment in the game and I won't play it
One of my friends just flexed with his nukes he got… I never did a nuke in the newer entries…
When I joined his lobby I went 127-5 and he got absolutely smoked to death.
That’s how strong match making is. Even the worst players can outperform very good players (while in their safe space).
One time I played a match with my sweaty friend. We (no joke) played 2 v 10 in a 6 v 6 game mode what broke the lobby 2 minutes after.
Hey you’re not correctly describing the graph for player return rate. Each colour represents the percentile category and the left axis is the percent effect size. Since Activision never published any methodology references, I have to take the left column at face value (these kinds of papers often have scaling in the axis if values are standardized). The finding would then suggest rather small behaviour changes across all skill percentiles.
That graph is not saying 90% of the players are less likely to return. It is saying that in every percentile range, there were only about a 2% or less drop in retention. So a a relatively decline for a game
And this is why I reverse boost
Love that tshirt, thanks for the video
All my friends with low kds left the game with the way current sbmm is now
have you ever considered making your bedsheets green and then doing a green screen? i think it would look very normal and could do cool stuff with camera placement on the screen
no way, he wants to show it off, so ppl feel sry for him and keep subbing liking the poor youtube act. If this situation of his was true, he wouldnt show it, maybe 1 or 2 times to explain it, but certainly theres nothing to gain visualy from showing urself playing on a bed except for pitty points, kudus to him, he found something "unique" to stand off from the crowd, its kinda smart in a way, but at the same time, if you point it out like im doing, u risk getting linched by his followers, but if u ask me, i dont believe his situation, he has a history of mental health and dilusional states/health issues that dont exist.
You should get sponsored by a horizontal desk setup company. You're basically JP from grandmas boy at this point.
Bro had to lay in bed for this lol
In my experience backfill definitely increase skill disparity. Almost 100% of the time.
They manipulated the experience without telling us they were to compile their data and say I told you so. It’s like an abusive relationship.
if they spent 1% of what they do on EOMM and skins we'd have a decent game that we dont WANT to quit.
I mean as the video showed the inverse of this happened, on their A/B test, they damn near removed SBMM the quit rate skyrocketed because the low skilled players kept getting stomped on. Then on their other test where they pushed SBMM to its max, the low skilled players stayed and the quit rate decreased by ALOT for all skill levels except for the top 10% of players with high skill. These guys at Activision are basically faced with 2 choices, remove SBMM, lose a large chunk of their playerbase and therefore money, or keep SBMM, retain a large chunk of their playerbase, get alot of money, at the cost of average to high skill level players having to get into the sweatiest games, basically playing against mirrors of themselves. Dammed if you do damned if you don't lol.
@@SmoovyNovaFan It's still an incredibly short-sighted strategy as they're alienating their core audience to appease a new, temporary audience that will quit as soon as they become the new top 10%. A strong core audience is incredibly important for any franchise to survive long term.
@@CerealKiller2 thing is new players will always be there to try out the game, and in the unlikely event that the "temporary audience" does become the new top 10% (which their matchmaking system prevents from ever happening) the lesser skilled players still get protected from them
@@CerealKiller2 The "core audience" you speak of is not nearly large enough, profitable enough, to care about.
how heavy is group composition weighted in the calculation? feels really bad when a teammate quits
all this justification and overexplaining by activision cause they want more players, i would love to see a look on a devs face when he gets asked, "sooo where does rewarding the high skill players come in?" They act like skill is just a natural thing like race or ethnicity that were born with?? These high skill players that theyre so set on pushing to the side are their biggest fans, their grinders, their CoD Points buyers. Do they really not understand this?
Sbmm is nothing compared to the ghost bullets, phasing threw the enemy when YOU KNOW YOU GOT THEM. Sbmm is second to the trash hit markers on new COD games
The more I read this the more that SBMM makes sense, nobody should have to spend $70 on a game to then not have fun on it. CoD has always been a "casual" gaming experience to a certain extent.
I just want the lag from the season 4 update to go away lol
What makes me quit out of matches the most is when I have to carry both low SPM players and low KDR players in the same domination match. It's so aggravating capturing the B flag only for it to fall to the enemy instantly and now I have to deal with streaks. If the score is ~45-100, I quit out 🤷
5:55 this is always my counter argument against no sbmm and no one believes itll be a thing. This why im glad xdefiant doesn't have ssbm now we can watch this happen in real time
This game's own software cheats its players
I'm still baffled they haven't figured out the magic formula: no SBMM and every map is shipment! I jest a little, but Shipment [although a little extreme] shows density is COD's actual problem. Too much of the maps are empty during play, so the noobs easily get flanked and the pros always get 1 on 1's that they easily win (plus they can oush crazy fast). Some of my favorite times have been when they do 10v10 on the 6v6 maps; the density is usually a lot better.
i prefer activation corrects the spawn system which is more difficult than SBMM
Obviously they have the data and that shows playerbase groth since mw 19 especially compared to loose sbmm before.
Once Data changes, it will be Updated of course
They should add a no SBMM mode that's just rotated throughout different modes. Then the resllly good players can only have that mode selected and it'll swap through all the other playlist modes then you'll probably still have sweaty games but less so because casual players will be swapped into those too
I think the biggest issue with cod and SBMM compared to every other game is that cod is one of the (IMO) few games in which the player base at large intentionally does not play the majority of modes the way you are “intended” to. In CoD, TDM is played like TDM, hard point is played like TDM, domination is played like TDM, headquarters is played like TDM, etc, at least for the top 10-20%.
This makes it difficult for the developer to make a fair matchmaking system for all modes because there are so many different ways to be considered good or bad. Is the dude with the most caps actually the good player? The dude with the most objective time? The one with the most kills? The one with the best KDR? Most kills per minute?
It’s all so convoluted that it makes finding effectively balanced objective games a royal pain.
Note: I’m heavily in favor of true SBMM
Also I find it odd how activision has all these metrics but won’t give us access to the metrics on our combat record.
You're doing a fantastic job! Could you help me with something unrelated: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How should I go about transferring them to Binance?
What would be an awesome test for them to run, is an ANNOUNCED test.
Half my discord server would redownload the game just to play during the “disabled SBMM” test, then uninstall after the test is done. Lmao
The part where they showed people playing less when they turned off SBMM, it could be because they're used to SBMM & if it was never there, the play levels would be roughly the same. Also it's EOMM, not SBMM, so they're playing with you mentally to play more. That doesn't necessarily mean you're enjoying the game more, just that you're being physiologically tricked to play more.
I had some other thoughts & I haven't worded this well but I hope you get the jist.
Just let players choose whether they want it or not, that's why we have ranked. Heck, make ranked the default. And advertise it as something that is much more friendly to noobs to learn the ropes.
They should do reward streaks just like black ops cold war in all cod games
Yeah. But notice that they only "loosened" SBMM. They didn't try just turning it off.
Only way cod drops sbmm is if it drops streaks, and then it won’t even be worth playing
That's a dope shirt! I don't necessarily mind SBMM. I don't mind the sweaty gameplay. To echo alot of the communication around this topic. Lobbies ending just sucks. No adapting to the sweats that you are sweating with? SO LAME. I don't think quick play is adding enough to the game to warrant the loss of persistent lobbies. There are already (IMHO) too many modes. They should just bucket the lobbies into 3 pools. 1. TDM 2. Objective (with maybe 20% landing on TDM as well) and 3. SND. Each of these should have persistent lobbies.
If you are a rush sniper at the first peak in search who throws nade sets and you're against a similar player. The single round of search is not enough time to adapt to eachothers playstyle and openings.
COD should give people weekly report cards.
See I just don't get it, when I first started cod I was getting slapped around by everyone, every match. Just made me want to get better. Why is everyone so against that nowadays? We shouldn't need SBMM
You were probably a kid back then. A kid with no responsibilities and nearly unlimited time to play cod. Most people dont want to be good at cod, they want to have fun
@@JohnSmith-kt3yy sounds like an excuse to not get better. You don't have to play all day to be good at something
@@thetaintpainter5443 Bro, doing something a lot is how you usually get better. That's how it works.
@@JohnSmith-kt3yy again, doesn't mean you have to do it all day to be good at it. You dyslexic or something?