Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's Skill-Based Matchmaking Needs Improvement
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was easily one of the most popular games of 2019, but there is even more to expect out of Modern Warfare in 2020. With some of the most refined and addictive gunplay in any FPS on the market, excellent weapon progression, and constant support from the developers, the game's longevity will continue for a good while yet. Despite its winning formula, Modern Warfare has had quite a few issues that players have brought to notice.
From broken spawns to maps that encourage camping, issues with the design of Modern Warfare have plagued players since launch in one way or another. However, issues like this aren't unusual for even the most successful multiplayer games, and in most cases, the developers have made strides to improve Modern Warfare through updates, patches, and various nerfs. Some issues like camping will take a lot of time and deliberate design choices to remedy, but the current problems with skill based matchmaking are hard to pin down.
Skill based matchmaking has been a major complaint in Modern Warfare and plenty of other competitive games, but as other major player grievances get attention, skill based matchmaking has seen disturbingly little developer concern. Part of the issue is that the problems with SBMM are hard to quantify, as the exact way that the game places players in lobbies together is a mystery known only by the development team. However, now that the game has been out long enough some of the mysteries of matchmaking have become more clear, and solutions can be considered.
Skill based matchmaking is a system that attempts to gauge individual players' skill and place them in matches with other players at the same competitive level. SBMM systems in various forms have existed for years in all sorts of multiplayer games, and finely tuned SBMM systems are part of what made Call of Duty online multiplayer successful in the first place. A perfect SBMM system would ensure that every match would always have each player on each team at the same skill level. This would, in theory, make for a perfect, intense match every time. If a player started to learn how to improve their performance, they would win more matches and soon enough be placed in a higher skill tier where they would be evenly matched again.
A system like that is practically impossible, however, so good SBMM systems typically look a bit different. When SBMM is working correctly, most teams will have a couple top-notch players racking up kills, some decent players going about one-for-one, and a few stragglers rounding out the bottom of the leaderboard. In a typical night of gaming, a player and their friends will have a few matches that they dominate, a few bad ones where they occupy the bottom of the board, and a few where they fight tooth and nail to take home either a hard-fought victory or a close defeat. Unfortunately, the SBMM has been changed since previous Call of Duty games made it work, and this Modern Warfare has suffered from many of the potential downfalls of an SBMM system.
Skill based matchmaking seems like the best solution to keep everyone enjoying the game at their own level, but it has a lot of potential complications that often sour the idyllic goals of SBMM. For one, if the system is too heavy-handed, players will find themselves rocketing rapidly between getting mercilessly crushed and playing boring easy-mode matches. In team-based modes, it is often more important that a player's teammates are on their skill level than that their opponents provide a fair competition. There are few things more frustrating than constantly being matched with poor teammates while the enemy team always seems to be carried by some unassailable master of the game.
Another issue arises when friends play together. It is rare that everyone in a group will be at the same level. One friend might only hop on during the weekend, while another might spend considerable time each day grinding for damascus skins. It isn't fun to be a casual player dragged into high-skill matches by a teammate, and it is frustrating to constantly carry the team match after match while the rest of the squad gets miserably stomped. With a much looser matchmaking system, or a system not based on player skill, more randomized lobbies result in a wider variety of matches and a better overall feeling.
A system as predictable as SBMM can easily be abused too. Players can throw enough matches to ensure that they will be placed in a lower skill bracket, then proceed to enjoy games against far less experienced players. Meanwhile, a player who just wants to run around and use some of the more fun but less powerful guns will constantly find themselves on the wrong end of overpowered weapons and meta strategies.
In competitive, team-based games with ranking systems, very tight skill based matchmaking is a good thing. It keeps competition alive while giving players a visual indicator of their rank. However, in a game like Modern Warfare that has nothing but casual lobbies and no ranking system, such strict matchmaking only causes frustration. In order to rise in rank, players must rely on their teammates to consistently win matches, while most of Modern Warfare's gameplay encourages individual efforts. Without a concrete way to see their rank, players are left in a loop of matches that are either too difficult or too easy, forced to rely on the same meta weapons if they want to win at all. Killstreaks require players to dominate the enemy team, but if SBMM is working correctly they will have a hard time getting a K/D ratio of more than one-to-one no matter how skilled they are.
The fastest and easiest ways to fix SBMM are all relatively simple. Creating a separate competitive playlist that uses strong SBMM would help competitive players by giving them a specific place to grind out ranks. Meanwhile, a more relaxed system in casual gamemodes without ranking would allow people who just want to hop on for some light multiplayer fun to see more variety in skill levels, gun usage, and strategies.
Another option is to use connection based matchmaking rather than skill based. This would prioritize putting players in games with low lag, rather than games with evenly skilled opponents. This system also has its downsides, but a hybrid between a looser skill based system and a connection based system would be a lot closer to the matchmaking that worked so well in previous Call of Duty games.
Unlike many of the other complaints that the development team has heard about, skill based matchmaking is not likely to be changed any time soon. This is, paradoxically, because the developers care so much about improving it. Matchmaking is the core of a good online experience, and it is always in the developers interest to have the best matchmaking system possible to keep players playing and buying cosmetics. While it is impossible to know exactly what is different about the matchmaking in Modern Warfare, some information suggests that the developers are using the system to gather data not just about player skill, but also about player enjoyment and retention.
This sort of data collection is vital to improving matchmaking down the line, so removing the current system would hamstring efforts to continue the development of better matchmaking systems. Right now, the system seems too heavy-handed and overcomplicated, resulting in a monotonous cycle of crushingly difficult matches, overly easy ones, and poor teammates. However, players will likely have to deal with this system for some time as the developers gather the information they need to fine-tune it down the line. Unlike glitches and exploits that get fixed quickly, this less than ideal system is part of the developer's plan for better gameplay. In the future, the SBMM system will undoubtedly be fine tuned for maximum enjoyment at every skill level, if only because that is the best way for a multiplayer game to maintain players. Until that day however, gamers are unlikely to see a rollback of SBMM.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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