It is one thing when theCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold Warplayer community complains about a feature, and an entirely different situation when it’s a popular competitive streamer. Nadeshot, the owner of the 100Thieves, has spoken out aboutCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’suse of skill-based matchmaking.
Skill-based matchmaking, or SBMM, is a common topic amongtheCall of Dutycommunity. The system balances player lobbies and is designed to match players based on in-game metrics that define a user’s skill. While in concept, this would make the game more engaging, in practice, some players feel it makes the casual game experience overly competitive.
RELATED:Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - How Long to Beat
Matthew ‘Nadeshot’ Haag has officially voiced his concerns overthe SBMM system inCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. The formerCall of Dutypro has been feeling the direct effects of SBMM, and is calling for Treyarch to dial back the system. He argues that at the current setting, SBMM will drive big content creators away from the game due to he himself being done with the game after only 9 hours. In other tweets, he elaborates that theCall of Dutydevelopers have created a hardcore True Skill system, which has no upside for the players.
The issue is not playing against players of similar skill, but rather that SBMM shows no value of improvement. Stats will consistently remain the same as the players are paired with their equal match.SBMM inCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold Warcreates a no-win scenario that professional players are feeling the direct impact of.
Nadeshot is not the only pro discovering theproblems withCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’sSBMM system. Doug ‘Censor’ Martin noticed that his in-game leaderboard is filled with professional players that can not rise above a 2.0 kill/death ratio. This is not normal in the competitive scene, and shows why some perceive problems with the game’s current SBMM setting.
Previous comments from Treyarch Director of Technology Martin Donlon explained that SBMM is not a system that can be turned on or off. Rather, the developers tune it for each release. The one thing that many professional and casual players are sure of is thatCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’sSBMM setting is tuned way too highfor it to be any fun for even the most dedicatedCall of Dutyfans, though certainly, not everyone feels that way.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold Waris available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
