It is one thing when the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War player 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 about Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s use of skill-based matchmaking.
Skill-based matchmaking, or SBMM, is a common topic among the Call of Duty community. 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.
Matthew ‘Nadeshot’ Haag has officially voiced his concerns over the SBMM system in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. The former Call of Duty pro 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 the Call of Duty developers 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 in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War creates a no-win scenario that professional players are feeling the direct impact of.
Nadeshot is not the only pro discovering the problems with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s SBMM 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 that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s SBMM setting is tuned way too high for it to be any fun for even the most dedicated Call of Duty fans, though certainly, not everyone feels that way.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
