While players have been doing their best to enjoy theCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold Waralpha, many fans have been put off by the skill-based matchmaking in the game. While fans were quick to call out how olderCoDgames did not have the feature, aBlack Ops Cold Wardeveloper has pointed out that they did indeed have SBMM.
WhileBlack Ops Cold Waris differentfrom other games in the franchise in many ways, skill-based matchmaking is apparently not one of them. Treyarch director of technology Martin Donlon replied to a popular tweet from user Astonish Jxck where he lists the originalModern Warfaretrilogy andBlack Ops 2as games that do not have skill-based matchmaking. Donlon’s response was a short but interesting, as he replies “they all had SBMM.”
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The original tweet makes a solid point that ranked play is designed with fair matches in mind, with players wanting the traditional public matches to be more randomized and allow for the occasional easy match.Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold Waris set to get a mode for competitive play, so less skill-based public matches would not be much of an issue. Fans already need to adjust to the12v12 vehicle gameplay of Combined Arms, so playing against equally skilled players constantly can get frustrating.
Fans replied to Donlon saying that, while other games may have had SBMM, it was nowhere near as extreme as the SBMM inModern WarfareorBlack Ops Cold War’s Alpha. Donlon acknowledges the fairness of this argument in another tweet, with a second reply to Astonish Jxck. Within the reply, he states that “SBMM is one of the many many tunable parameters in a matchmaking system” and says “it is funny watching people talk about it like it’s a big switch that can only be turned on or off.”
While Donlon knows the system well and his explanation for the many facets of matchmaking make sense, something is clearly going on with the matchmaking system inBlack Ops Cold War’s alpha. SBMM was trending on Twitter yesterday, with many players asking for change. The matchmaking, while designed to be fair, has caused just as much frustration as the intentionally overpoweredBlack Ops Cold Warsniper rifles and thedurableBlack Ops Cold Wartanks.
While Donlon sharing that allCoDgames have had some form of skill-based matchmaking is interesting, hopefully some changes will be made toBlack Ops Cold War’s system soon. As mentioned by Donlon, there are aspects that can be tweaked, so fans may see changes by the time theBlack Ops Cold Warbeta arrives.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold Warwill be available November 13th on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions will also be available.
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