@Marge010
I have a theory:
Matchmaking gets stricter and more aggressive during the 2 week period leading into a new season. If you are above average, this tends to feel sweaty.
The reason they do this is so that average players experience slightly easier lobbies (overall), thus increasing the total amount of wins this demographic experiences. This is a manipulative but wise move because if this demographic is “happy and satisfied” on the day that a new season launches, they are that much more inclined to spend money on the battlepass/new character.
Sounds like an absolute tin foil hat theory, but I have been playing daily since S0 and I am very interested in patterns and data. Literally every single season (towards the end), my lobbies drastically change and become Master/Pred ranked-type games. Coincidence? Maybe. But after so many seasons of the same observation, I’m willing to bet something actually is happening behind the scenes regarding matchmaking. We’re talking about a BILLION dollar product. If they can take legal steps to ensure they make the most amount of money for the fiscal quarter, they’re going to.
@Axs5626Sxa5001 not only am I in master and predator lobbies of late, they are on my teams. I'm getting mauled none the less, as are they.
My theory is they have done their bit with ranked and are now happily stomping pubs till the end of season to have a holiday so to speak. It's hot drop heaven..... And as mentioned above average player has finished their BP, collected their treasure packs, doing the arena event and seems to be waiting patiently for S10, playing the odd very hard pub game.
It was murder over the last while to get the last tick on my S9 bucket list, to get my Wraith to 300 wins, but I finally got there.
All I know is that SBMM is not actually SBMM, it is just a matchmaking system in place to manipulate the userbase into higher engagement. For example my GF is the epitome of an average player (.8kd). Better than a lot of casuals but not nearly on the level of tryhards that have been playing as long as her (season 0). Lately she has been telling me how much fun she has been having playing both in pubs and ranked. But if she tries to play with me she gets into my lobbies and wants to instantly quit the game forever lol. So unfortunately we never get to play together any longer. I watch her play and it seems so boring, so much less fighting. Maybe finally coming up on a squad, 3rd parties only once in a while in her lobbies. Totally relaxed. When I play it is a completely different game with nonstop fighting and constant 3rd 4th 5th parties. Sometimes I will have a bad set, drop and die a few games in a row and then all of a sudden I go ape on an entire lobby, get double digit kills and around 3k damage. I feel good for a second but then I am like wait a second, was I just playing worse players? I proceed to drop into my next game where the champions, If I am not it, is a 3stack squad of 4k, 20 badges or predators with 10s of thousands of kills. I proceed to get 1 kill in the next game playing my * off lol. And then I have a game where I get 2 kills, same type of lobbies. Then I have 2 games no kills. Suddenly the next game I have 6 kills 2500 damage or so and then back and forth. So I never actually know how good I am at the game vs how much my endorphins are being manipulated by having good games just at the moment I am getting very frustrated. The sbmm in these games is just there to entice engagement and is completely unethical in my opinion.
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