The buzzword of the year for Call of Duty is clearly set on SBMM: in many people's eyes, it's set too strongly and you sometimes feel like you're playing 11 clones of yourself. This is Skill Based Matchmaking, the word that has sparked up many debates and arguments over a couple of months, but no action is actually done.
For this blog, I will explain what's causing SBMM to be so strong and how to control it to a decent level. I will also discuss problems that arose from SBMM.
First of all, all Matchmaking games are determined by 3 key factors: ping, connection quality, and SBMM. All of these have a different priority over the other: it goes SBMM -> Ping -> Connection quality in this game. SBMM being of the highest priority is very unnecessary. This also kills the reason to play league Play, as that's just glorified MatchMaking without any real difference besides some fancy leaderboards and restrictions. I'd say that the priority needs to be changed for regular matchmaking. Put SBMM last, because you could be playing people from across continents with how it's currently set up. Connection quality being dead last priority leads to shittier games in trade of players with similar skill levels to the host.
And that's a problem right there: the host. I cannot tell you how many times players get a party, make what's considered the "worst" of the players to be the host and get into lobbies with people strongly inferior to the whole party (barring the host). This causes a massive flaw in the system, as now you have at least 1 other person who is out of line with the average skill level of the lobby. It's a widespread thing to do if you play with friends in order for everyone to have an at least decent game: the host will be on par with the other players, while the friends of the host will be largely superior to everyone else, ruining the game's skill balance.
What's really causing all of this outrage, however, is the strength and presence of SBMM compared to past CoD's. Black Ops II had a problem with it on release, but that was fixed rather quickly. But Advanced Warfare? It takes that problem and makes it so big that you can't miss it. With how high the priority is set, you're almost always being placed into lobbies no matter where people are: simply because they're similar to your skill.
With connection quality being last and SBMM being first, the game will search for hosts EVERYWHERE: in Canada, Brazil, China, Australia, you name it. Another problem arises with communication in-game: how are you going to be able to communicate with your teammate that speaks a different language than you? There's no guaranteed way to communicate unless you're multi-lingual, and you're just better off not having a mic to begin with. Hell, you can be the only American in the lobby sometimes.
A problem that arises a lot with SBMM is this: say if there was a lobby that you didn't want to be in because they were treating you like assholes or whatever. You leave the game and re-start the search for a different game. The problem? Since they have similar skill to you, you're likely to be re-paired with those people. It's always been a problem with past CoD's, but this CoD has made it much worse due to the priorities.
Don't get me wrong, SBMM keeps things in check with the other players: they're not playing against people who don't know how to shoot, nor are they playing against someone that can drop a DNA Bomb every 10 games. But it's severely affecting the game quality in such a way that it's being viewed in a terrible regard. Sledgehammer, change your priority for searches ASAP. Not only is it being misused, but it's hurting game quality, AND doesn't work in the way it's supposed to. If it was changed, these dumb host strategies and invite to game strategies would completely disappear, and the overall quality of the game will improve with SBMM being less of a priority.
I do want to know your opinion on SBMM; and possibly, what would you do to fix it up?