Nadeshot wants SBMM to change in Black Ops Cold War
Skill-based matchmaking has divided the Call of Duty fanbase like nothing else. 100 Thieves CEO and Call Of Duty player Matthew ‘Nadeshot’ Haag got particularly irritated by this system while playing Black Ops Cold War on his stream.
Call of Duty fans have had their fair share of problems with the franchise over the years, and one of the things that has divided the fanbase greatly is skill-based matchmaking. This is a system that is meant to pair players with similar skillsets against each other. This has lead to a lot of problems for players.
Now that Black Ops Cold War is out, many fans have been venting their frustrations about the multiplayer mode having SBMM. It makes the game so hectic that people find it impossible to play casual matches.
Streamers especially hate this as it makes the game less fun for them too. Matthew Haag, also known as Nadeshot, is a Call of Duty player and the 100 Thieves CEO. He took the opportunity to touch upon this issue during his stream on December 1 while playing Nuketown ’84.
IntelligentPopularMelonHotPokket“It’s time to lower the skill-based matchmaking,” he said, “This is not fun. I know we want the kids that have never played Call of Duty to be in a safe space, but please stop alienating the people that have been playing your game for over a decade.”
He further elaborated that SBMM makes completing challenges unnecessarily tedious and difficult. The system actively works against players who want to improve their skills. He drew light on this when he said, “everyone’s got a scorestreak because it’s participation and not skill.”
Many other Call of Duty fans share this sentiment as well and you can see this in the twitch comments. While it’s admirable that Treyarch wants new players to progress through the game at their own pace, it comes at the cost of making the difficulty so hard that it stops being fun for high level players.
The system has also been known to cause problems for low level players in the past. Many newcomers to the franchise found themselves competing against players that were significantly higher ranked than them. This is why this one of the most frequently complained about aspects of the Call of Duty franchise.
Despite these complaints, Activision and Treyarch haven’t announced any plans to change or get rid of the SBMM system from the games. Hopefully they’ll find way to make it more balanced at the very least, otherwise discontent will continue to grow among the fanbase.