Do you know the one thing you can always count on with the internet? People arguing about shit they know nothing about. This happens to such a level that people have posted classified government documents about tanks on the World of Tanks forums, three times. Today’s post isn’t anything nearly to that level, but it was a funny factoid that’s somewhat related. Instead I will talk about gamers bitching about Skill Based Matchmaking (SBMM) because they suck ass at games. Yes, I will go over the few valid complaints of SBMM.
What is SBMM? It is a system in online games that puts people of the same skill level near each other. Every game uses different systems. From a pure win rate to accuracy, win rate, time to kill other players, and a lot more stats. I will admit the pure win rate SBMM fucking sucks. The way that works is the more you win then you start going into harder matches. The assumption is that you’re winning so you must be good. There’s lots of factors that go into a match that going off of only wins ignores,so this is the lazy way. You can easily beat this system by losing on purpose and now you’re in lower skilled rankings. One of the best SBMM systems I have seen was in Twisted Metal PS3. Even if you won matches your skill rating could go down. The game measured how long you were in dog fights, how often you had kills, how big of kill streaks you had, amount of damage done each match, and tons more crazy features. You could join any lobby but the game would balance teams based on skill rating. Quick play forced you into matches based on your skill rating.
So the issue is a bad SBMM? No. See lots of people find out they’re the best in their group of friends and then they go online. They still expect to be the best and then get fucking stomped. They have fragile egos to where even when they’re in low ranking lobbies they blame SBMM instead of their lack of skills. As someone who grew up with online games that didn’t have SBMM, just server list browsing and direct IP connections, people would blame their lack of skill on anything from hackers to lag switchers, people who make the game lag on purpose. I’ve seen people blame their losses on them not being host too. Even when you played exactly how they wanted to they would still come up with excuses. SBMM is just the new excuse in town.
The most common complaint against SBMM is, “Now I have to try every match, it’s not fun!” No you don’t. You just don’t have to win. The amount of times I would get on Dead by Daylight with meme builds after SBMM and just fuck around was the same amount of times before. The issue is the psychology of SBMM. People hear there’s a rating and they want to be the best. Then they try hard every match for no other reason than having a high skill ranking, that you can’t see. You simply do not have to try in SBMM games. Just fuck around and goof off. Even if your teammates aren’t fucking off, you still can. When I played Battlefield 4 I would fuck off so much I learned to fly the jets upside down. When I needed to try in a match, this became a very important skill, oddly enough. People cared about their rankings and stats in BF4, a lot. I didn’t. I would use stupid loadouts and fuck around. There was a time in Bad Company 2 where my brother watched me run around in a circle knifing people on a small island and using only C4 if people started to fire at me. He was laughing and said it was like a Benny Hill skit. You can still do this shit with SBMM. SBMM didn’t magically ban dicking around and meme builds. You did.
With that said there are some valid complaints against SBMM. The first is the lazy way of winning = skill up. Some of those are so bad they only track your last 10 games to determine your SBMM placement. You can win due to teammates or by being lucky. I think SBMM should be like the skill rating in Twisted Metal. It was highly detailed and counted for all types of gameplay. To where my friend would play support in Twisted Metal, yes there was a way, and his skill rating was never below 85. The second complaint against SBMM is that it prioritizes skill rating over latency. The number 1 priority of any online game should be latency. I’m not even sure giving the option between ranking and latency is needed. I have no idea who would even choose ranking. The third valid complaint is queue time. When you get too high into skill rating you can wait 15 minutes, or longer, to get into a match. You’ll find most people bitching about SBMM don’t have issues with lag and wait time.
My suggestion to fix it? Let higher ranks play with lower ranks focusing on reducing wait time and lag. “How would you balance this?” Well, remember when I said SBMM shouldn’t just count your wins and losses? That’s how. You compare real skill ratings and try to get players as close as possible as you can. You can then give the team playing against the higher skill ratings either in game XP buff, gameplay buff, or a skill rating boost if you win. If you have an actual SBMM system instead of a win/loss counter then you can balance it and fix the only valid complaints. If you know a player is like a 9/10 on all stats you can put them in teams with lower stats to create a balanced average VS the opposing team. By doing this you no longer have extended wait times for your top players, which helps with streams (free advertising for the devs), and you can still play locally with balanced teams. All that’s left is the people who blame their lack of skill on SBMM and the people who must be the best, even for shit that doesn’t matter.
Some people will argue that SBMM has caused players to leave, in high numbers at that! Well, these are people talking out of their asses. You’ll notice the people who spread this lie are still playing the games with SBMM they claim to hate. I know for a fact that SBMM doesn’t hurt player numbers, but increases them, due to friends who work in the industry. Any dev I know who has implemented SBMM after the fact has reported that while a vocal minority gets louder the rest of the players prefer SBMM. Those who know they aren’t very skilled don’t mind it because every other match isn’t a horrible loss. Players who want to improve also spend more time playing due to SBMM because they’re trying to get better to get more wins. It’s only the people who are at the top 1% that experience the lag and wait time, or the players who think they’re good, that complain about SBMM. Only the people at the top 1% have any right to complain about SBMM. Rest of you numbskulls who think you’re good need to git gud.
“How could someone like losing so much?” Well, here’s the thing. Most players aren’t losing a lot. If you are losing a lot then you suck at the game and need to get in matches on your skill level. What devs, and other players, have told me is with SBMM there’s a coin flip on if you’ll win or lose. Most matches are close and players feel like they’ve contributed to the team, or at the very least felt like they were actually playing a game. Back in the day the amount of times where I would join servers and have the opposing team spawn camping already by the time I joined was really high. It was very annoying and you had to claw your ass out. You don’t know a challenge until you’re playing Tribes and you can’t even leave your base without getting insta killed and then escape to capture their flag only to need to cross enemy lines to bring it back to your base that’s still being camped. A majority of people bitching about SBMM aren’t even the people who would do the spawn camping. They’re the people who started playing games online with the Xbox 360 and think they’re hot shit because they would rage quit every match, like WingsofRedemption. I’ve played games with some of these people who bitch about SBMM but point out their high KD average. The start of every match they’d rage quit to retain their high KD. Y’all wouldn’t even last a second in some of the CS 1.6 and Quake 2 matches I was in. Point is, people aren’t losing so much. Only you ,the people who bitch about SBMM, are because y’all are so boosted due to y’all faking your stats, or relying on better players.
Let’s recap to finish this all off. SBMM isn’t forcing people to leave, especially in droves. Any dev I have talked to has said the opposite. It keeps player retention high. It doesn’t force you to play every game super seriously, your psychology does. SBMM is only an issue if the system is poorly implemented and you’re in the top percentile to where it makes playing the game impossible. Since this is a possibility devs need to work on actual SBMM systems to prevent this from happening, plus it’ll lead to better matches for all. Lastly, if you’re not experiencing the lag and wait time issues then you need to stop getting boosted and play on your level.