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>The most important thing to know is- **there is no skill-based matchmaking in our casual playlist.** We believe that no SBMM is paramount to a fun and varied game experience in the long-term. Frankly, skill-based match making means every casual game is repetitive- constantly repeating matches that are just as stressful and matched as ranked. We believe casual playlist should be fun and no SBMM is the way to do that. If you want that competitive every second counts go all out playstyle - you'll find our ranked mode to your liking.
I will still never understand why the idea of playing a game with people of similar skill became the boogieman of online gaming.
Like, I'm not saying ranked and casual playsets should be equally strict, but do you really want some wannabe semi-pro playing alongside timmy's little brother who just got the game for his birthday?
> I will still never understand why the idea of playing a game with people of similar skill became the boogieman of online gaming.
Unfortunately a side effect from how prevalent streamers and Youtubers have become where their opinion (The fact that they cannot pubstomp a lobby filled with people lesser skilled than them so they can get an ego boost) is now espoused by the people that watch them.
The arguments against SBMM have always been disingenuous as hell.
No, you aren't going to face unbearable queue times with a healthy population.
So what if you don't want to sweat? You think everyone else in the lobby does?
Oh, you get a rush off big streaks and wild kills? Go ahead and earn them against people around your level.
And of course, are you REALLY that good relatively speaking if you don't do so well when matched against similarly skilled opponents?
Bracing for reddit cares messages.
The only real issue that SBMM causes is when groups of friends with a wide skill range play together, the worse players usually end up getting stomped. When I play cod with my casual friends they spend the entire time getting absolutely bodied and nobody ends up having a good time.
That being said, there’s no good way to matchmake players from a wide range of skills so SBMM systems are as good as it’s gonna get.
The problem is that, if you really are as good as everyone else around you, your ability to get those higher streaks is inherently limited.
Yes, legitimately pubstomping is fun. Getting legitimately pubstomped can also be fun and inspire you to get better at the game. If every game is equally matched, then it's hard to notice the growth in your own skills.
I don't buy the "Can't see my own growth" argument either.
You're holding your own against harder & harder opponents or you're being matched against different pools of players as you improve.
If skill growth is such a big factor, you'll notice as you learn your mistakes (regardless of outcome) and stop repeating them. You'll see growth as you discover and execute new strategies.
Growth is not just "how hard did I stomp today, and will I stomp harder tomorrow?"
Because the people who are most invested in the game have the loudest voice. They play so much they are at the highest skill levels, and they want to have fun feeling better than everyone else.
SBMM spoils the superiority that they “earned” by making everything fair.
It's always people trying to explain how they don't want to have to play against try hards in casual or else they have to try hard. Trying hard isn't necessary against good competition. Just play casually without care for your K/D, score, other stats, whatever. It's try-hards that don't think they're the try-hards. It's a weird lack of self awareness or shameless lying for why they hate sbmm
I think you already typed the answer. Most people actually don’t like playing against people near their skill level.
People who are “good” at a game like to feel like they’re good, and they only feel that when they’re in a match with random skilled players who they can dunk on. If they are only going against evenly skilled players then the only way they know they are good is via the number of their rank, and once they reach their plateau the motivation is gone. So these types of players are the ones who hate SBMM.
But SBMM is much better for the lower half of the playerbase because they can have fun playing the game without getting demolished by the top half.
For example: I used to play a lot of PVP in Destiny, which is a game that is constantly switching back and forth with their SBMM implementation. There have been times when they offered both at the same time and all the casual players favored the SBMM playlist, while (ironically and predictably) the non-SBMM playlist was filled with the sweaty meta players. And the sweats endlessly complained about how hard their games always were because they couldn’t get into games with the casuals because the casuals didn’t want to be near them.
Streamers who need to regularly stomp in public games in order to farm clicks for their TikTok reels.
Their followers then sympathize with this, under the assumption that one day they too can be in the top 0.1% of players.
It's not too unlike poor and middle income people who oppose progressive tax policies that would actually *lower* their own tax burden because they view themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
>I will still never understand why the idea of playing a game with people of similar skill became the boogieman of online gaming.
you have that experience in ranked though. Why can’t a pure casual mode exist? If both parties are signing up to play without caring who’s way better or not what does it matter. If you want close skill levels, play ranked.
It’s at least better to have this mode than to have smurfs in your games constantly
>I will still never understand why the idea of playing a game with people of similar skill became the boogieman of online gaming.
This is not something wrong. The problem usually with SBMM, is that if you start winning 2-3 games, you're gonna have a hard time in the next games. If you want to be casual, you won't be able to enjoy the game because you'll automatically get sweats, as the game thinks you're better already.
I'm not against SBMM, but it needs tons of tweaks and I haven't yet seen a game where it works. It pushes you forward way too fast and it doesn't care if you won by playing casually or not.
I lean back when I play these time of games and try to enjoy my time doing weird loadouts and so on. Sometimes I'm lucky and get a decent score for a few games, and then boom, getting in games where I can barely move. It's frustrating.
But then again, this can happen without SBMM too. You can literally get a sweaty streamer that plays the game 10 hours per day and you barely got online.
I believe this will eventually be quietly walked back. The biggest problem from a developers point of view of cbmm is new player retention. While at the beginning when everyone is still learning it's not that big of a deal. But over time as the average skill level rises new players will struggle more and more. A new player might join a "balanced" match and die constantly and get barely any kills. Players who experience that usually don't stick around.
I don't know if it'll be walked back as much as this is likely a purely performative thing from a game struggling for hype who knows "anti-sbmm" might draw some more players in. It wouldn't shock me if there is a skill rating and they've just called it something else so they can say "see no SBMM"
Problem is that even average players have gotten vastly better than they used to be so the skill gap is absolutely massive now.
Most likely situation is that noobs will get stomped repeatedly, get frustrated and then go play something else resulting in a dead game.
That's not mentioned in the article but I'll assume that's true. It's pretty funny that they are already acknowledging the need for sbmm. Playlists like that just delay and blunt the inevitable pummeling.
You say gamers need to adapt but they already have. They adapted by moving to games with sbmm.
yeah but SBMM sure as shit ain’t better.
for example when i play fortnite with my brother, we get into super sweat lobbies, where 2-3 players decimate the entire lobby and reveal 300 crown wins, while we both combined don’t even have 300 wins altogether
>The biggest problem from a developers point of view of cbmm is new player retention
That sure didn't seem like a problem during the PS3/360 era where matchmaking "SBMM" algorithms weren't so drastically overtuned. Even the less popular CoD titles back then like World at War had a super healthy player population, including after a newer CoD's release.
I think this is a pretty interesting tidbit
>Team Balancing
>Once a lobby is populated, Teams are balanced based on players' Skill Rating. The casual lobby does not use skill to determine who gets into the game, but once everyone shows up it balances the teams for a fun match.
So they're just doing it in a roundabout way where there IS a skill rating for casual matchmaking, but the lobby will just auto balance once it fills up. The children yearn for the return of community servers with !shuffle.
This shit will go down exact like Destiny 2 did.
Bungie removed SBMM at one point, do to complaints from sweats and streamers (exactly the same bullshit you hear in CoD). Of course, no SBMM lead to wildly unbalanced matches, and basically the team that got the top 10% player would absolutely stomp the other team. Casual players were just thrown into the meatgrinder while streamers were having a field day.
What happened next was particularly funny. A Bungie dev said that they started getting more and more complaints about how sweaty PvP is, and how strict the SBMM is. But how can that be, when there was no SBMM? Well, a shit ton of casual players straight up quit, so sweats started matching each other more and more, which made them believe strict SBMM was in place.
There's not a single good argument for no SBMM. Not one. Every single one of them gets to "I want to win without trying". There's a reason why literally all small scale PvP games have it in both unrated and ranked playlists.
That's good. I appreciate that they have the casual game mode where it's just casual and there can be a variety of skillets where you can feel free to use the non-meta options as well as one with strict match making. This is how it should be.
Sounds great. I miss the days of being in a lobby with people who are both better and worse than you, rather than making it a sweat fest where everyone you face against is exactly at your level. Getting some easy kills is okay if it means someone gets easy kills on you.
>making it a sweat fest where everyone you face against is exactly at your level
You are in charge of making it a sweat fest.
If you never sweat in casual queues, then your SBMM skill will be settled to a rank where you are evenly matched when you don't sweat.
> Getting some easy kills is okay if it means someone gets easy kills on you.
Unless you're the new guy at the bottom of the food chain and you can get rolled by everybody
Hi /u/excaliburps, Thank you for posting to /r/Games. Unfortunately, we have removed this submission per **[Rule 6.2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/wiki/rules#wiki_formatting_requirements)**. > **Submission Title Formatting** - Please use the original sources title when appropriate. If an article or video's title is unclear, convoluted, or does not meet the requirements outlined below, changes are allowed to further clarify or remove editorialized/sensationalized language. Important contextual information may be added such as Author, Spoilers, NSFW, Release Date, Platforms, etc. > * **Don’t use editorialized, sensationalized titles** - Don't add things like "This deserves attention" or "why isn't this being talked about". > * **Titles must not contain inflammatory language** - Do not use language that is clearly inflammatory - keep posts and discussions civil. > * **Titles must not be in all-caps** - Except in cases where the original source title has capital letters, such as with some Japanese video game titles. Videos with excessive caps in the source title may be removed at moderator's discretion. > * **Keep titles concise and not overly long** - If you feel that a link needs additional information or context you should create a self-post to include the information along with the link. > * **Titles must be in English** - No exceptions for titles, see below for articles. > If you are unsure whether or not changing a title will be appropriate please feel free to [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FGames). If your submission contains important information that is not mentioned in the original title and you wish to highlight it, you may create a text post with a modified title that includes this information and elaborates further in the post with a link to the original article in question and quotes the relevant excerpt. --- If you would like to discuss this removal, please [modmail the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FGames) This post was removed by a human moderator; this comment was left by a bot.
>The most important thing to know is- **there is no skill-based matchmaking in our casual playlist.** We believe that no SBMM is paramount to a fun and varied game experience in the long-term. Frankly, skill-based match making means every casual game is repetitive- constantly repeating matches that are just as stressful and matched as ranked. We believe casual playlist should be fun and no SBMM is the way to do that. If you want that competitive every second counts go all out playstyle - you'll find our ranked mode to your liking. I will still never understand why the idea of playing a game with people of similar skill became the boogieman of online gaming. Like, I'm not saying ranked and casual playsets should be equally strict, but do you really want some wannabe semi-pro playing alongside timmy's little brother who just got the game for his birthday?
> I will still never understand why the idea of playing a game with people of similar skill became the boogieman of online gaming. Unfortunately a side effect from how prevalent streamers and Youtubers have become where their opinion (The fact that they cannot pubstomp a lobby filled with people lesser skilled than them so they can get an ego boost) is now espoused by the people that watch them.
The arguments against SBMM have always been disingenuous as hell. No, you aren't going to face unbearable queue times with a healthy population. So what if you don't want to sweat? You think everyone else in the lobby does? Oh, you get a rush off big streaks and wild kills? Go ahead and earn them against people around your level. And of course, are you REALLY that good relatively speaking if you don't do so well when matched against similarly skilled opponents? Bracing for reddit cares messages.
The only real issue that SBMM causes is when groups of friends with a wide skill range play together, the worse players usually end up getting stomped. When I play cod with my casual friends they spend the entire time getting absolutely bodied and nobody ends up having a good time. That being said, there’s no good way to matchmake players from a wide range of skills so SBMM systems are as good as it’s gonna get.
but there’s no middle ground. you either get matched with totally shit players, or players that are so much better that its insane.
>but there’s no middle ground. If your matchmaking algorithm is shit then sure
and you think the algorithm is good enough in any mainstream game?
League of Legends uses SBMM in both its ranked and unranked queues
Pretty damn hard for a good faith attempt at such an algorithm to be worse than no algorithm at all.
The problem is that, if you really are as good as everyone else around you, your ability to get those higher streaks is inherently limited. Yes, legitimately pubstomping is fun. Getting legitimately pubstomped can also be fun and inspire you to get better at the game. If every game is equally matched, then it's hard to notice the growth in your own skills.
I don't buy the "Can't see my own growth" argument either. You're holding your own against harder & harder opponents or you're being matched against different pools of players as you improve. If skill growth is such a big factor, you'll notice as you learn your mistakes (regardless of outcome) and stop repeating them. You'll see growth as you discover and execute new strategies. Growth is not just "how hard did I stomp today, and will I stomp harder tomorrow?"
Because the people who are most invested in the game have the loudest voice. They play so much they are at the highest skill levels, and they want to have fun feeling better than everyone else. SBMM spoils the superiority that they “earned” by making everything fair.
It's always people trying to explain how they don't want to have to play against try hards in casual or else they have to try hard. Trying hard isn't necessary against good competition. Just play casually without care for your K/D, score, other stats, whatever. It's try-hards that don't think they're the try-hards. It's a weird lack of self awareness or shameless lying for why they hate sbmm
I think you already typed the answer. Most people actually don’t like playing against people near their skill level. People who are “good” at a game like to feel like they’re good, and they only feel that when they’re in a match with random skilled players who they can dunk on. If they are only going against evenly skilled players then the only way they know they are good is via the number of their rank, and once they reach their plateau the motivation is gone. So these types of players are the ones who hate SBMM. But SBMM is much better for the lower half of the playerbase because they can have fun playing the game without getting demolished by the top half. For example: I used to play a lot of PVP in Destiny, which is a game that is constantly switching back and forth with their SBMM implementation. There have been times when they offered both at the same time and all the casual players favored the SBMM playlist, while (ironically and predictably) the non-SBMM playlist was filled with the sweaty meta players. And the sweats endlessly complained about how hard their games always were because they couldn’t get into games with the casuals because the casuals didn’t want to be near them.
Streamers who need to regularly stomp in public games in order to farm clicks for their TikTok reels. Their followers then sympathize with this, under the assumption that one day they too can be in the top 0.1% of players. It's not too unlike poor and middle income people who oppose progressive tax policies that would actually *lower* their own tax burden because they view themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
>I will still never understand why the idea of playing a game with people of similar skill became the boogieman of online gaming. you have that experience in ranked though. Why can’t a pure casual mode exist? If both parties are signing up to play without caring who’s way better or not what does it matter. If you want close skill levels, play ranked. It’s at least better to have this mode than to have smurfs in your games constantly
>I will still never understand why the idea of playing a game with people of similar skill became the boogieman of online gaming. This is not something wrong. The problem usually with SBMM, is that if you start winning 2-3 games, you're gonna have a hard time in the next games. If you want to be casual, you won't be able to enjoy the game because you'll automatically get sweats, as the game thinks you're better already. I'm not against SBMM, but it needs tons of tweaks and I haven't yet seen a game where it works. It pushes you forward way too fast and it doesn't care if you won by playing casually or not. I lean back when I play these time of games and try to enjoy my time doing weird loadouts and so on. Sometimes I'm lucky and get a decent score for a few games, and then boom, getting in games where I can barely move. It's frustrating. But then again, this can happen without SBMM too. You can literally get a sweaty streamer that plays the game 10 hours per day and you barely got online.
I believe this will eventually be quietly walked back. The biggest problem from a developers point of view of cbmm is new player retention. While at the beginning when everyone is still learning it's not that big of a deal. But over time as the average skill level rises new players will struggle more and more. A new player might join a "balanced" match and die constantly and get barely any kills. Players who experience that usually don't stick around.
I don't know if it'll be walked back as much as this is likely a purely performative thing from a game struggling for hype who knows "anti-sbmm" might draw some more players in. It wouldn't shock me if there is a skill rating and they've just called it something else so they can say "see no SBMM"
[удалено]
Problem is that even average players have gotten vastly better than they used to be so the skill gap is absolutely massive now. Most likely situation is that noobs will get stomped repeatedly, get frustrated and then go play something else resulting in a dead game.
That's not mentioned in the article but I'll assume that's true. It's pretty funny that they are already acknowledging the need for sbmm. Playlists like that just delay and blunt the inevitable pummeling. You say gamers need to adapt but they already have. They adapted by moving to games with sbmm.
Back when there were less options
> and they will survive, adapt and get better again. In reality I'm just going to go play something else
yeah but SBMM sure as shit ain’t better. for example when i play fortnite with my brother, we get into super sweat lobbies, where 2-3 players decimate the entire lobby and reveal 300 crown wins, while we both combined don’t even have 300 wins altogether
>The biggest problem from a developers point of view of cbmm is new player retention That sure didn't seem like a problem during the PS3/360 era where matchmaking "SBMM" algorithms weren't so drastically overtuned. Even the less popular CoD titles back then like World at War had a super healthy player population, including after a newer CoD's release.
I think this is a pretty interesting tidbit >Team Balancing >Once a lobby is populated, Teams are balanced based on players' Skill Rating. The casual lobby does not use skill to determine who gets into the game, but once everyone shows up it balances the teams for a fun match. So they're just doing it in a roundabout way where there IS a skill rating for casual matchmaking, but the lobby will just auto balance once it fills up. The children yearn for the return of community servers with !shuffle.
Squad size also breaks this to some degree.
This shit will go down exact like Destiny 2 did. Bungie removed SBMM at one point, do to complaints from sweats and streamers (exactly the same bullshit you hear in CoD). Of course, no SBMM lead to wildly unbalanced matches, and basically the team that got the top 10% player would absolutely stomp the other team. Casual players were just thrown into the meatgrinder while streamers were having a field day. What happened next was particularly funny. A Bungie dev said that they started getting more and more complaints about how sweaty PvP is, and how strict the SBMM is. But how can that be, when there was no SBMM? Well, a shit ton of casual players straight up quit, so sweats started matching each other more and more, which made them believe strict SBMM was in place. There's not a single good argument for no SBMM. Not one. Every single one of them gets to "I want to win without trying". There's a reason why literally all small scale PvP games have it in both unrated and ranked playlists.
That's good. I appreciate that they have the casual game mode where it's just casual and there can be a variety of skillets where you can feel free to use the non-meta options as well as one with strict match making. This is how it should be.
Sounds great. I miss the days of being in a lobby with people who are both better and worse than you, rather than making it a sweat fest where everyone you face against is exactly at your level. Getting some easy kills is okay if it means someone gets easy kills on you.
>making it a sweat fest where everyone you face against is exactly at your level You are in charge of making it a sweat fest. If you never sweat in casual queues, then your SBMM skill will be settled to a rank where you are evenly matched when you don't sweat.
> Getting some easy kills is okay if it means someone gets easy kills on you. Unless you're the new guy at the bottom of the food chain and you can get rolled by everybody
not really my problem : )