Skill Based Matchmaking is Ruining Gaming

competition is one of the most important parts of our society since the dawn of civilization humans have been competing against each other to see who can run the fastest lift the heaviest and to be the very best because there's nothing better than dedicating every ounce of your being to be able to say that you're Superior to someone else and in modern times this desire to compete manifests itself in Competitive Gaming because while I might not win a gold medal at the Olympics I can drop 30 kills on jet and gain 24 RR it's basically the same thing competitive video games historically have been some of the most popular titles going all the way back to the 80s when arcade games will have a leaderboard where you can enter your initials if you achieved a high score even today the best gamers in the world are rewarded with recognition prize money and of course a top spot on internationally recognized leaderboards but as video games have grown in popularity there's been some reduction in the name of fairness over pure competition skill-based matchmaking is a system implemented by some video games in order to keep things fair and fun for players of all levels it's simple right low skill players go against other low skill players and high skill players go against other high skill players because we all know what it's like when that insta-lock jet named I miss her shows up in your bronze Lobby and drops 50 kills running into a player that's significantly better than you in a video game can be a nightmare and ruin your entire experience this has led to nearly every game nowadays implementing some form of skill based matchmaking and in a perfect world everyone will be happy skill-based matchmaking would give all players a competitive experience and feels challenging yet rewarding and over time players will gradually see their skill improve as they got better at defeating opponents of similar skill but if this were a perfect world I would have a hundred thousand subscribers right now and Apex Legends would have audio that actually worked so just like my YouTube channel skill based matchmaking leaves much to be desired but whether you think it's necessary for Competitive Gaming or if you're on the side that thinks it should be removed entirely and its current state skill based matchmaking has turned Competitive Gaming into a boring and unrewarding experience for players of all skill levels [Music] [Applause] thank you one of the most important parts of any competitive game is the presence of a skill gap which defines the difference between a good player and a bad player in some games this is easy to Define for games like Mario Kart rocket league and smash the things that separate the boys from the men are fairly clear you're either dry faster make better plays or you're three stalking some random kid who lives down the hall in your dorm because he told you oh bro I'm nasty with Toon leak I'll wash you and you had to let him know to never speak to a god like that again but for some games the difference in skill between players can be a lot harder to Define this is common in team-based Shooters like valorent OverWatch and Call of Duty because you always seem to have that one insta-locked Reyna on your team who says they're carrying because they're top fragging but we all know it's just because they're baiting their teammates and waiting for trades so while someone with zero experience might not be able to tell the difference between a top 500 Diva and someone who just picked her because he's seen a little too much OverWatch rule 34. the difference in skill between players is most apparent once you actually face someone who's much better than you in the game this is because in these games skill is less about winning as it is about mastering the Unique Mechanics and core objectives of the game itself in valorant that's aim and Crosshair placement in Apex Legends that's movement and positioning in Call of Duty it's figuring out how not to die to cheaters regardless of the game you're playing a skill Gap is an essential part of the Competitive Gaming experience it lets players know where they stand relative to others and it's what makes competitive games fun widening the gap between yourself and lower skilled players and narrowing the gap between you and the pros gives a feeling of accomplishment similar to hitting a new PR in the gym and it makes the ground for improvement worth it and you also get to impress the e-girls when you install lockjet and drop 30 so yeah that's pretty cool too but just like a human being can only Sprint so fast or jump so high there's also a natural limit to how good a player can get at a video game just as every competitive game has a skill Gap there's also a skill ceiling you can only aim so fast you can only tap strafe so much and you can only play the game for so many hours before any meaningful Improvement in your Game Stops after that your individual skill is more of an asset that can be used to help your team win in the biggest skill Gap in gaming is the distance between the skill floor and the skill ceiling and in a properly designed competitive game this should be a fairly large gap I mean I wouldn't expect an iron one Sage main to be able to go Toe to Toe with a radiant jet but the problem with skill based matchmaking is that it's shortening the distance between the skill floor and the skill ceiling making things less rewarding for players committed to grinding the game sbmm not to be confused with ssbm is a system implemented by many video games to keep the game fair by placing players against other players around a similar skill level in theory this is something that should be healthy for video games regularly competing against people around your skill level over time should allow you to gradually improve as you start getting better at defeating people who play like you skill based matchmaking flattens the skill Gap allowing Gamers to only have to play up to the skill of someone only slightly better than you so this keeps games Fair fun and rewarding as players will never experience the feeling of getting absolutely Dunked On by someone far more skilled than them now I want to be clear and say that I'm not 100 against skill based matchmaking I think that in many games it's extremely important to keep lower skilled and high skilled players separate and allow players to progressively work their way up a skill ladder I mean that's kind of the entire point of competitive multiplayer games progression is an important piece in nearly every video game in single player story driven RPGs progression is shown through the unlocking of new abilities and upgrades in the progression of the main story in multiplayer games however progression is shown in your own individual Improvement the more you play the game the better you should get and your reward is being able to enjoy a competitive advantage over lesser skilled players and games like valorent the skill gap between top players and average players is so significant that a couple of radiants could realistically win a match against a full team of silver and for that reason it's important that these players stay in separate lobbies because a 5v5 match of silvers and radiants wouldn't be fun for either team however this skill Gap is much less significant in games like Call of Duty and Apex Legends since team play is much more emphasized over individual gun skills still it's no fun going against three-stack Masters players in Pub lobbies when you're solo queuing on wraith and this breaks me to my first issue with skill based matchmaking skill based matchmaking is ruining the Casual gaming experience since you're constantly being thrown into lobbies with people with similar skill you're always fighting for your life in every single match you play skill best matchmaking makes your games fun and challenging and keeps you from matchmaking but players far better than you sure but how about the times we just want to hop on turn your brain off and just enjoy the game you can see this in games like Apex Legends Call of Duty and sometimes even Valerian you might just want a hot Drop fragment and finally go for that 4K badge You've Won it for so long but a three stack of prep players running Seer Catalyst in Newcastle are sitting on top of a building griefing you with a charger rifle from 300 meters away the Casual gaming experience and a lot of major titles has been ruined by skill based matchmaking because it seems like like the better you get the more you get punished by harder lobbies when you just want to have fun in pubs it's the reason I've been playing Apex Legends a lot less these days because I might have one game where I place top five and for the rest of the night I feel like I'm solo queuing algs I'm not saying that removing skill based matchmaking would instantly make the game fun for casuals again but I think that the Pub's experience will benefit a lot from it being in a system that's designed to keep your gains feeling sweaty and competitive takes that feeling of progression out of the game as you get better at the game your lobbies only get harder so while your skill is improving the game is Just scaling the difficulty to keep that feeling of accomplishment just Out Of Reach it can be discouraging it makes the game feel stale and unrewarding and because of that you create a whole new problem once players start getting frustrated with the matchmaking system smurfing has been an issue in online Competitive Gaming since the very beginning and a lot of times I hear people defending smurfing like I'm well actually you can learn a lot by going against a better player but an immortal jet showing up in your silver Lobby is like a LeBron James showed up at your local gym and started playing a random game of pickup like it was the 2016 finals the only thing I'm learning is how to uninstall the game forever in a Dev block posted on December 20th 2022 valorent developers found that players create Smurf accounts for two main reasons one they're bored of their own lobbies and want to Smurf so they can [ __ ] on easier opponents or two they're boosting their friends regardless of the reason the biggest issue they identified with smurfing is that it creates instability in their matchmaking since the matchmaking algorithm takes time to place someone in their correct rank a high skill player on a new account makes it much more difficult for the Matchmaker to properly identify the skill level that this player actually has on top of that they also found that players on Smart accounts tend to be more toxic which leads to other players having their games thrown or having to deal with abusive behaviors while they're just trying to gain with skill based matchmaking creating stagnation and boredom for players low-level players often suffer with higher level players coming down a Smurf in their lobbies this makes matchmaking frustrating and unfairly punishes honest players who are looking to challenge themselves against those who were similarly skilled the other issue I have with skill based matchmaking is that quite frankly it's redundant any competitive game being made nowadays is implementing some type of rank play and I think this has probably been one of the healthiest additions to gaming since fortnite popularized the battle pass however when you've already created a competitive skill based experience for gamers through ranked play adding skill based matchmaking to public lobbies just feels unnecessary if I'm fighting for my life over 45 RP against pret three stacks on World's Edge it kind of doesn't make sense for me to leave rank just to continue to fight sweaty three stack players in pubs as well I'm not saying that people should just solo queue all the time or that I should just never encounter high-level players I'm just saying it's a problem with my Pub lobbies feel sweatier than my ranked lobbies now you would think skill based matchmaking works against that but when you're constantly being thrown in the lobbies with the best Silvers you've ever seen it makes you feel like you can never just take a break and enjoy the game with your friends a lot of people think that without skill based matchmaking High skill players would just run wild and stomp every single Lobby they're in but that's not really how it works you see in most games skill level works like a bell curve and I'm not really good at math either but basically the vast mode majority of players in any competitive game are remarkably average even in a game like valorent 63 percent of players are between bronze and gold so the likelihood that you encounter a top ranked player even without sbmm is pretty low so it's not like you're gonna cue into an unrated and run into NRG I think the current state of skill based matchmaking has put us in his weird spot where competitive game modes are lowering their skill ceiling in casual game modes are turning into sweatfest so you may be asking what's the solution how do we find this balance between fairness and competition one way is to flatten the curve when it comes to Casual play and I think that fortnite is the best example of this if you haven't learned how to build by now then quite frankly your easy pickings for any 12 year old with an internet connection and a three-day weekend once it became clear that building was the major skill Gap separating high-level players from the casuals many people stopped playing it just wasn't fun to go against a level 100 John Wick building up on your squad at light speed while you could barely throw up a wall to defend yourself and eventually fortnite saw this and introduced zero build and while it was originally a limited time mode it was somewhat insanely be popular that they decided to make it permanent by getting rid of building and introducing new mechanics casuals actually had a fighting chance and were able to enjoy the game again zero bill has been out for over a year now and to this day I still hop on a few times a week with the Bros for some casual fun on fortnite if we want gaming to actually keep being fun we have to revive the Casual experience even in competitive games even in valorent implementing changes that allow high-level players to 5-step with lower level players has actually allowed for more fair matchmaking and since people can actually queue with their lower level friends without hopping on an ALT account there's even been a significant reduction in smurfing as well but while the Casual experience is important it's also important to preserve the competitive Integrity of rank play as well a huge issue today has been the casualization of competitive game modes ideally when you play rank you should get better at the game as you rank up but instead of putting in the time and effort that it takes to get better at a game many people would rather game the system this creates issues like cheaters people getting boosted and of course rank inflation the skill Gap is the core element of a competitive game and at the end of the day if you're a 30 two-year-old father of two who only plays Apex two hours a week yeah man you probably shouldn't be in masters with a streamer who plays it for a living the point of playing ranked game modes is to actually earn your rank because in reality being able to say you hit diamond in a video game means absolutely nothing the real reward is getting better at the game that you enjoy so you can have more fun playing it so when you cheat the system the only person you're really cheating is yourself skill based matchmaking is a simple solution to a problem that's a lot more complex than it seems make it a game that's fun to play competitive and rewarding for players is despite what some Gamers may think pretty damn hard and I think that while devs are the ones paid to figure this stuff out it takes both the community and the engineers to create an experience that we can all enjoy thanks for watching the video If you enjoyed it be sure to leave a like and drop a comment down below if there's something you want to see me talk about next as always don't forget to subscribe and I'll catch you guys in the next one peace Louis [Music]

Channel: suburbanwill archive

Views: 31,765

Keywords: skill based matchmaking, call of duty sbmm, sbmm mw3

Id: _4maTWkSylQ

Length: 12min 50sec (770 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023