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DankToliet's avatar
DankToliet
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago

Is Roller Coaster SBMM better than just playing w/similarly skilled?

An ex Dev once said on stream that sbmm is like a Rollercoaster where it gives you easy matches then hard matches then easy/hard, etc for player retention. Is that really better than just always being matched up with players your skill level? I'd personally would like the latter, eventually it would take a second to balance out bur eventually matches for would more consistent in terms of being fun and engaging. 

12 Replies

  • @DankToliet

    Honestly, I'm not paying any attention at all to the quality of my enemies. I'm paying attention to the quality of my squadmates, which is almost univerally a fatal combination of ineptitude and aggression.

    One more time: I would much rather this game matched based on playstyle than on skill.

  • @DankTolietVariance is actually a good thing. A matchmaking system that offers variance (in non-ranked) is good. “Rollercoaster sbmm” does offer variance.


    The problem I have is that rollercoaster/variance doesn’t exist for some accounts that have lots of “data” (games played, kills, damage, etc).

    This is can be easily tested. My main account has 33.6k games played. This is the account I have all of accolades on. The matchmaking treats this account way way differently than my other accounts that were created to test matchmaking.

    The biggest issue is the speed with which my main account traverses the “matchmaking ladder”. Other accounts typically get easy lobbies after 4-7 games with 0 kills and 0 damage. But on high data accounts, that number can be between 20 and 30. That’s A LOT of games with no damage and poor placement. This is exactly why some people are locked into a “valley” of consistent losses, because these people are stuck exclusively playing the top 1% of players. My pubs right now are still all Diamond, Master, and Preds.

    No one should be above average in skill and consistently experiencing outcomes lower than people who are far lower in overall skill. Preds are going to win regardless, so thats no shock. But there are plenty of Diamond and even Masters (myself) that are just getting crapped on constantly because the algorithm is exclusively pitting them in the hardest lobbies. This is like taxing successful people to the point where they’re actually bringing home less than people At the median income (not that this happens, but the idea is ridiculous).

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