Video: I tested SBMM, it's bad, but not because of "skill differences"

@reconzero 

"But at the end of the day I'd would still far rather be matched with squadmates who share my playstyle rather than my skill bracket."

Absolutely the case. I enjoy the games with people who just carelessly eat grenades, can't land a single shot, but have the sense to take cover and move towards the ring when fights drag out.

I prefer those people infinitely more than the sweat lord horizon mains that run off completely on their own, instantly down two people alone, get downed by the third, then immediately ragequit. I would gladly take a teammate that plays well but can't play well over a human aimbot without an ounce of teamwork in their blood.

Updated to meet the impossible standards of proof for criticism.

@Kinesis862 

Even though I maybe hrmm have questions about your scientific methods of your grading system, I agree with you that there doesnt seem to be any special patterns in the matchmaking. I think the matchmaking in pubs seem rather consistently random. People who have a problem with the matchmaking seems to argue that they are punished by "bad teammates" in 9/10 of the games but in the 10th game they get rewarded, by design, to get a good teammate who carries to a win. But patterns like this are much more easily explained by just randomness in a random matchmaking.

Ive also done a similar 30 consecutive games with randoms experiment and I came to the same conclusion. No certain pattern of the skills of my teammates and my overall performance was also very consistence (actually, my win rate and KD over these 30 games was 4/30=13% and 2.6, which both very well matched my accounts overall win rate of 12% and overall K/D of 2.6).

But the only "objections" I have of your conclusion is that the term "tactical sense" should be replaced with "subjective compatibility" or something.  Yes there are ofc cases when players make objectively bad tactical decisions like wanting to rotate into a choke point where you know at least 2 teams are holding position etc etc. But many of these situations when you think your teammates have bad tactical sense just happens because a) your idea how to play the game is just different, b) lack of communication and c) unluck/unfortunate stuff that happens. Just as an example; a random teammate who solo pushes into an enemy squad and dies 1v3 will in retrospect look like a 0 IQ player with no tactical sense. But if he for some reason knew that all of them were low and wanted to push to finish them off quickly and you had followed, he would have looked like a great shotcaller in retrospect =)

@BalladalidilaI tend to be pretty generous with my term tactical sense. To the point even knowing what rotating is makes up the most of that evaluation. For instance I had a game with teammates that still pushed too hard that it got us killed (it was the match where teammates ate grenades and could not aim), but I still gave that match a favorable rating because they were willing to move out of a fight to ring when we were on the low ground.

Most of the teams I give a bad rating to make no effort to rotate and just throw themselves in a direction till they find combat. That or they hot drop and run around like chickens with their head cut off.

@Kinesis862 

Then perhaps the term "seriousness" or "tryhardness" is more accurate for that type of behavior.  Because the majority of players just dont take pubs that serious. Its basically a no-brain, insta/perma-w death match. Thats how I play that mode and this comes from a guy that literally tryharded his pants off to get to master. So even if I have the tactical skills to get to master even though I am more of a diamond player, I just have no incentives to play with a tactical mindset in pubs. After 1000+ wins, winning a match in pubs is literally meaningless. If Respawn want to change this, they have to make changes to the game mode itself because you cant force people to care about something. 

@reconzero 

It isnt ideal by any means but that is the mindset I need to have both in pubs and solo Q ranked (because being matched with a premade duo in 9/10 matches who only care about each other) to have a good time playing this game.  I would love if they re-designed the game, even pubs, to be more meaningful. I dont know exactly how but perhaps some reward for winning/top 3 or adding special "honor" rewards like skins and banners for acting "honorably" even in pubs.