But where do we draw the lines? Keep in mind that "skill" is a continuous variable.. How can we design a SBMM that makes ALL players, at ALL skill levels, NOT have to play against someone much better than him? Its not possible unless we have a super narrow SBMM, but that is not practically possible since the queue times would be too long for both the high elo and low elo players since skill distribution is most likely normal distributed.
And I think the current SBMM will sort out the really bad players in a separate queue where new players or just really noobish players are allowed to learn the basics. But when you hit a certain skill level, probably measured in K/D, you will have to fight with the big boys.
I honestly feel that most SBMM complainers want public games to be like ranked games. So a much easier and better solution would be for Respawn to FIX RANKED by making it super hard to smurf in ranked. Then, people who want to play vs players his own skill could do that in ranked, regardless if he is in silver, or master.
I think the problem is that the player skill distribution most likely is normal distributed with a mean surprisingly low and a standard deviation probably also low. I wouldn't be surprised if the mean K/D of active players <1.
So lets say, for the sake of the argument, that they would create public lobbies of all players >2.5 k/d
Here are just some problems of the top of my head:
1) Super long queue times. Last season, only 4.68% of the active ranked players were Diamond or better, and you dont even need to have 2.5 k/d to reach diamond. So from that, maybe we can say that there are actually FAR LESS players than 4.68 of the player base with 2.5 K/D, and creating public matches with less than 4.68 % of players will probably not even be possible in the smaller regions (20 min queue time?). Is our goal to make it impossible for good players to play this game?
2) And even if these "high elo" public lobbies could be created; ALL players in them would drastically drop in K/D. We must remember than skill is relative. Take me for example. I have 2.4 overall k/d now but only 1.63 K/D last season I played ranked (reached D2) and this number is including my silver-platinum games (started in silver that season). My "diamond" k/d was probably far less than <1.
So how would this work in this SBMM you are suggesting? Bottom line is that if we have a narrow SBMM, EVERY player, regardless of skill level, would have a k/d going towards the same value (theoretically, the value would be 1 in super narrow SBMM) because, once again; skill is relative. So after a while, how would this sbmm know what player was good or bad, since good or bad is determined what opponent we are playing against.
But on the subject of ranked, I totally agree. Ranked is a mess and is designed to make people come back and play (ebmm?) , not to provide a competitive game mode. Remove the smurfs, remove or reduce soft reset, enable both demotions between divisions and fast promotions. When someone clearly is playing on a much higher skill level than his corresponding rank, there is nothing wrong with moving him up several ranks. If demotions where enabled, anyone who is moved up too far will eventually be demoted back down to the rank better corresponding to his actual skill.
@BalladalidilaWell the solution would be not to use K/D as a stat to create lobbies, but as a guide. My K/D is well below 1 and so is a lot of players, because anyone who is higher needs someone who is below them for the maths to work. I will offer a suggestion although I am not knowledgeable.
I don't know what the target K/D should be, for arguments sake let's say 1. Make 6 lobbies: Trash, Bad, Average, Intermediate, Good, Beast. Now if you have a lower K/D than 1, bounce one lower, If you have higher, bounce one up. Over time you will find a spot where you sit and if you get better you will advance.
I am not saying I have the answers, I am not the designer of this game, however, this game will die if this does not get solved. Same thing happened to Mordhau, nobody plays it anymore, it had a few issues but the radical difference in player skills made people quit.
* I will also add that the problem is not that there are people better than me or worse in the match, the problem is that there are people so much better than me that it feels like they are cheating with aimbots.
It would be interesting to try out such a "dynamic" SBMM but I honestly think that would be a worse experience for everyone. Having a lobby full of players close to your own skill level would feel super sweaty for everyone, regardless of skill. Everyone would probably go +/- 1-2 K/D every game.
My experience of the current SBMM (even though some wont agree on this) is that the matchmaking try to create lobbies according to a certain template, with only a very few high elo players in each lobby. It isnt perfect but due to all the problems Ive mentioned earlier with a "narrower" SBMM, I think its the overall best option. And yes, most of the time I die post early game, is from a predator death squad but I just think its a little bit ridiculous to demand a SBMM where I never have to have much better players in my lobby. I rather have 2-3 predators in my lobby and play with two mediocre teammates, rather than being in a lobby of 10-20 predators/masters but with better teammates tbh. If I want that, I just play ranked.
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