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(Image credit: Activision)
Sounds like a win-win for all involved, but there’s a legitimate argument against a matchmaker that only cares about high competition. A faction of Call of Duty players argue that it’s not fun to always have to “sweat” so hard in an FPS that most people play casually, and believe a random matching system could accommodate a wider range of experiences—matches where sometimes you’re way better than your opponents, and sometimes you get totally destroyed. Notably, the free-to-play CoD alternative XDefiant has no SBMM.
Activisionhas historically stayed on the sidelines during these debates, but that changed earlier this year when the publisherfinally lifted the veilon how matchmaking works in every modern Call of Duty game, and explaining its reasoning for choosing SBMM. Building on that, today the company published the second in a series of white papers diving deep (and I meanterminology tablesandmulti-format graphsdeep) on matchmaking.
The new paper,a 25-page documenttitled “The Role of Skill In Matchmaking,” is as impressive as it is jarring. On one hand, it’s a little funny that Activision is treating the topic with tact and seriousness, posing such questions as “What is Skill?” and mapping “kills per minute” and “skill buckets” on graphs, when we all know that naysayers will probably just say “SBMM still trash lmao” and move on. But it’s also a wild document for a videogame: I don’t think we’ve ever seen a major studio go this in-depth on the intricate criteria and details that its algorithm uses to judge us.
Some of this ground has been covered before. We finally learned for sure back in April that Call of Duty’s matchmaker, above all else, values finding matches quickly over ensuring it’s perfectly balanced. What players might find most interesting is the discovery that Activision ran a secret test to see what CoD would be like withlessSBMM (but not none). Those sneaky devils.
The experiment ran in Modern Warfare 3 in early 2024. Discreetly, Activision toned down the “skill” in skill-based matchmaking for 50% of the North American MW3 population.
The results? Over 90% of players with toned down SBMM played less Call of Duty after the change, with the top 10% of skilled players not as affected. The paper goes on to confirm what has, to me, always been the most obvious reason to have SBMM: random matchmaking primarily benefits really good players, and disproportionately sucks for average-skilled players.
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An illustration from the white paper depicting an average player “feedback loop."(Image credit: Activision)
Skill issues
Also illuminating is Activision spelling out exactly which factors affect your skill assessment at the end of a match. You probably correctly assumed what most of them are:
Your “score” apparently isn’t a factor. The game isn’t taking specific support actions, like healing teammates or capturing objectives, into account directly.
According to Activision, the biggest reason to use SBMM is to prevent blowouts, “which we know are not fun for players on the losing end,” the paper continues. It’s not just vibes guiding CoD’s SBMM—Activision says it has the numbers to back it up.
(Image credit: Activision)
“We have found that balancing skill against other matchmaking factors quantifiably increases the extent to which most players play and enjoy Call of Duty,” the paper reads. “When skill is utilized in matchmaking, 80-90% of players experience better end-of-match placement, stick with the game longer and quit matches less frequently.”
The paper goes on (andon and on) to explain in excruciating detail how Call of Duty balances its skill considerations with matchmaking time, which if we all remember from the beginning of class, is ultimately more important for Activision. The gist I’m getting is that the matchmaker strikes as good of a balance as Activision expects, but you can read that section in detail if you’d like to pick it apart.
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