Activision explains why skill-based matchmaking remains in Call of Duty 

Activision have released a detailed paper explaining how Call of Duty’s controversial skill-based matchmaking system works. This blog is the first major update on the system since their first statement back in November, promising more ‘transparency.’

The company said that “team balancing” is a key factor in allowing Call of Duty to form “games where players can have fun and enjoy competitive matches.” 

Skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) has been in Call of Duty since 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and the system was updated with more capabilities starting with 2019’s Modern Warfare. 

The blog’s FAQ revealed that Activision explored adding a playlist where skill factor is removed from matchmaking, but their current concern is that it would lead to only high-skilled players being in the matchmaking pool as low- and mid-skilled players would not join.

Activision noted that both unranked and Ranked playlists have a skill factor in matchmaking because new players may not participate in Ranked. “It’s important they can contribute meaningfully to their team and their own personal in-game achievements,” they said.

Activision

The Call of Duty team looks at calculating skill in MP based exclusively on match performance, and “player progression or total time spent playing the game are not factored into skill.” The skill factor rating of each player changes over time, and the skill rating is compared to every player in a match. 

Activision keep skill factor in matchmaking despite the negative feedback because “when skill is utilized in matchmaking, 80-90% of players experience better end-of-match placement, stick with the game longer, and quit matches less frequently.”

The paper explains that while the top 10-20% may experience some negative effects, completely removing skill from the system would result in two issues: low- and mid-skilled players would quit faster, leading to a matchmaking pool mainly composed of higher-skilled players. This would result in consistently more competitive matches for all players instead of a better team balance. 

Activision

The white paper revealed that Activision have run tests in Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer where skill factor was reduced in matchmaking for a portion of the player base. According to the paper, 50% of North American MW3 players were part of a multiplayer test that reduced skill factor earlier this year.

“The test showed that players with a wider skill gap were more likely to quit matches in progress and did not return to the game at a higher rate than players with unchanged matchmaking,” said Activision. 

The paper reveals that player retention amongst those in lower and mid-skilled brackets reduced by over 1% point. “With deprioritized skill, returning player rate was down significantly for 90% of players.”

And, the paper states that although higher-skill player retention may have increased during this test, the lower- and mid-skilled players drop off over time, the higher-skill player base takes over matchmaking. The company claims that “we would expect to see the player population erode rapidly in the span of a few months, resulting in a negative outcome for all our players.”

They also conducted a test where skill was tightened in matchmaking for a portion of the player base, and the inverse effect happened. Higher-skill players quit matches more often, and many of those players did not return to the game. 

Activision

In this paper, Activision explained that reducing skill factor would represent a ‘marginal performance increase’ for the highly skilled players, but would be “only a short-term gain.”  

“The highest-skilled players are likely to get more matches where they could blow out the competition in the short term, but when that occurs the competition tends to play less, and the result is that the player pool shrinks overall.”

And, the company claimed that when low and mid-skill players exit “the core multiplayer pool, high-skill players are more likely to encounter other high-skill players in matchmaking by default.” 

The white paper also revealed that ping remains even across the different skill pools in matchmaking, reiterating several times that ping remains the most important factor in Call of Duty’s matchmaking process. However, there may be slight deviations in ping in skill groups based on the availability of players during a certain matchmaking time. 

Activision said “a healthy player population is good for everyone in the community” and promised to release another white paper on how skill factors into Ranked Play’s matchmaking system later this summer.