Have you ever turned off Call of Duty in frustration because you were furious about a multiplayer game? If so, this may well be the cause.
If you ever play Call of Duty multiplayer, you will occasionally get frustrated. Sometimes it’s due to your own failures that get you killed off, but it could just as easily be due to the game itself. Activision did a sweeping test recently.
To be precise, the skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) in Call of Duty had been tweaked a number of times. This lets you play online against players who are roughly the same level of skill. As an experiment, Activision has now removed it.
Angry Call of Duty players due to sweeping test
The outcry surrounding Call of Duty has arisen following a 25-page paper published by Activision. It shows that the company disabled SBMM in 2023 as an experiment. This resulted in players stopping playing earlier and returning much less frequently.
The SBMM is actually supposed to make online gaming more fun. It ensures that when you play Call of Duty online, you meet players who are about as good as you are. Which is nice, because you don’t want to get completely slaughtered if you want to play a game every now and then just to relax.
(Image: Activision Blizzard)
The SBMM in Call of Duty is based on several factors. For this, Activision looks at the quality of the connection, as well as the platform you play on, which modes you play often and perhaps one of the most important things: how good you are. The latter is determined in part by your kill/death ratio, that is, how many opponents you take out before you yourself die in the game.
This is exactly what Activision has done to Call of Duty’s multiplayer
To see if it works, developer Activision disabled the skill factor in North America for two months. So worse players could end up competing against good players. And a graph shows that people were pretty pissed off because of that.
Ninety percent of Call of Duty players cranked the game less. Only the ten percent best players actually started playing more. But this in turn makes them less of a top player. Sounds strange, but it is precisely the worse players who will leave the game. As they get worse, they will also leave the game again, so the number of players will continue to decrease. Eventually there will be fewer and fewer players left to play pots, which will increase waiting times.
In addition, Activision has also done the opposite. Instead of completely abandoning skills in matchmaking, it actually made skills a more important factor in the Call of Duty matchmaking system. What was noticed is that this caused better players to play less (because they lost more often against equal opponents), but worse players to play more often (more wins). So again, this is not good for the overall gaming experience.
Fewer players per level. Only the top 10 percent were going to play more. (Image: Activision Blizzard)
How to proceed?
Activision’s research is causing skepticism among several players. They think Activision should change the algorithm. They think the number of win/loss pots in Call of Duty would be better than the numerical system made up of many factors.
Still, that seems difficult, because actually one thing is clear from the research: winning creates more pots and losing causes people to play less. So finding the right balance is most important. Not only for players’ enjoyment of the game, but also because of revenue, because with less gameplay, fewer Call of Duty copies fly over the counter. Or to Xbox Game Pass, as you read below.
