Ok, so here is the real question.
Do you think SMBB is necessary in fps pvp games? I do no think it is. PVP is competitive, there is only sweat, no casual mode. You want to win, get better. SBMM means the guy who spent 500 ho...
Forum Discussion
@LaughingSharko Not really no. While I do believe that better players should simply be more successful what I'm getting at is that why should better players be punished by a system that's designed essentially make everyone the same? Why even try then if the normal outcomes will always be ~5% win rates and 1kds for almost everyone? It's a system designed to ensure no one rises above another player regardless of skill. So basically it boils down to "you don't need any type of skill to play Apex, you just need to play. The game will ensure you're doing just as well as players better than you." That, to me, is not on.
@hayhor The odds are increasingly against you even as you get better at the game. It's a bot system for sure. No other way to explain it.
@KyldenarThe reason why Destiny is failing and has failed at their pvp is because they have a drought of new content. All content is just recycled from one source or another. It's repetitive and boring. And their pvp can't be balanced for many reasons, one of them simply being one player having better weapons or builds or gear than others. It's a doomed system by default and they only have maybe 1mil players compared to Apex who has 10x that. And even then only about ~20% of Destiny players play pvp so there's not enough variance in lobbies anyway. I refuse to believe that a player with a ~5% win rate with sbmm can't improve on that! You are losing 95% of the time! You are not that bad, I refuse to believe that 🙂 You should give yourself a bit more credit in your ability to be able to do ok without sbmm. I believe in you 🙂 And yeah I agree, the current system is actually driving me away.
(CM: Posts shared in a row have been merged. Check out this post for tips on how to edit and add more to a post.)
@Unitee01
Look, it sounds as if you're asking me to pity the rich because it's so hard having it all. Poor people just have no idea. If I'm spinning this wrong then I will definitely listen to another side of it.
Look, it sounds as if you're asking me to pity the rich because it's so hard having it all. Poor people just have no idea. If I'm spinning this wrong then I will definitely listen to another side of it.
- @Unitee01
"Seems everyone would rather play the same lobby over and over while being given a false sense of achievement"
If this is the result that Apex sbmm is producing for you then I would say that you are definitely an outlier. I doubt very much that there are five people in this game who would say, "Apex mostly gives me fair and balanced matches. My squadmates are usually at my skill level and so are my enemies." SBMM is so poorly implemented in this game that it either won't bother to match players of similar skill, or the skill range in this game is so incredibly wide that even players who are near-adjacent on the rank ladder have big differences in ability. I tend to believe the latter, although again, I think people vastly underestimate the role of luck in this game. And a guy who gets really lucky can certainly give the appearance of a guy who is a predator/streamer.
On the subject of games that do without sbmm Destiny 2 comes immediately to mind as a game that went without and went without and went without... right up until it didn't. And Call of Duty has used sbmm since 2007. If the trend over time is to adopt it rather than reject it, then I would call that proof-of-concept.
I'm not trying to paint a picture of sunshine and unicorns here. SBMM is an ugly, twisted, convoluted, opaque, and annoying feature of games which are intentionally designed to be incredibly difficult to play well. I would rather have games be less difficult, have shallower skill curves. But that will never happen, and that's why even the worst sbmm is a necessity, imo.
@reconzero wrote:
@Unitee01
"Seems everyone would rather play the same lobby over and over while being given a false sense of achievement"
If this is the result that Apex sbmm is producing for you then I would say that you are definitely an outlier. I doubt very much that there are five people in this game who would say, "Apex mostly gives me fair and balanced matches. My squadmates are usually at my skill level and so are my enemies." SBMM is so poorly implemented in this game that it either won't bother to match players of similar skill, or the skill range in this game is so incredibly wide that even players who are near-adjacent on the rank ladder have big differences in ability. I tend to believe the latter, although again, I think people vastly underestimate the role of luck in this game. And a guy who gets really lucky can certainly give the appearance of a guy who is a predator/streamer.
On the subject of games that do without sbmm Destiny 2 comes immediately to mind as a game that went without and went without and went without... right up until it didn't. And Call of Duty has used sbmm since 2007. If the trend over time is to adopt it rather than reject it, then I would call that proof-of-concept.
I'm not trying to paint a picture of sunshine and unicorns here. SBMM is an ugly, twisted, convoluted, opaque, and annoying feature of games which are intentionally designed to be incredibly difficult to play well. I would rather have games be less difficult, have shallower skill curves. But that will never happen, and that's why even the worst sbmm is a necessity, imo.Again my brother,
AMEN!
No online only game survives driving off the casual part of their player base.
The problem is, usually, they are the least vocal. You don't know they are unhappy, just one day they are gone and then the lack of population makes everything less for those that remain, and the slow bleed begins.
@KyldenarBruh, listen, you need to understand something. The very system you claim to be against is what you are rooting for, unintentionally.
You are promoting a system that's in place to make it supposedly easier on you, yet you fail to realize that for you to succeed you need to spoil someone else's fun too. This happens at all levels. The difference in a randomized lobby vs sbmm is that one is organic and will play out naturally vs one that is forced. No one wins with forced lobbies, and progress feels non existent. You might as well play a scripted game like God Of War where your choices are limited and you just go along.Sbmm was originally not a bad thing. It was a way to automate the system so the user didn't have to manually search for a server to join in order to find a match, and the matches made were largely based on connection. I'll say it again, initially, lobbies were not created based on skill, it evolved into that later on - sbmm didn't exist with games who had server browsers. People didn't stop playing because of the lack of sbmm, it was never a selling point. People knew what they were getting themselves into when they bought the game. None of those companies went under as a result either. You play it or you don't, it was that simple. This instant gratification nonsense wasn't so apparent then.. No game's success hangs in the balance of everyone playing it, that's an illusion. Some will play and some won't. You can lose and still be around too, just like you in Destiny and Apex. You didn't seem to go anywhere in spite of your bad experiences? The issue is these developers are becoming unreasonably greedy as time goes on. Sbmm was so relaxed with earlier COD titles for example, that players were debating whether it was even in the game. FF to today and we all feel it, cranked up to 16. Why have it at all then when we both know they won't stop abusing it? And why have it when we also already have a sweat mode aka ranked? There's no new bleed, it's already causing veterans to leave in order to accommodate other players, we are already there, always have been.
@reconzeroWe can agree it's a bad system, but when you take away the randomness of lobbies you also take away some of that "luck" you speak of and you are doing it at the expense of other players. And when so many people are talking about the state of mm it seems more of a "proof of concept" that it's working in favor of the developer.
- @Unitee01
"No game's success hangs in the balance of everyone playing it, that's an illusion."
This is very true. And yet as business managers with a responsibility to shareholders to maximize profit, you can be guaranteed that these developers will behave in a way that may well appear to you and to me as "unreasonably greedy," but is in fact their attempt to maximize the player base, the revenue, the profits, and thus keep their jobs or maybe set themselves up with a glowing resumé so they can get an even better one.
This isn't the first instance of narrow self-interest taking precedence over the greater good (though I'm hardly convinced that the elimination of sbmm serves a greater good) and it certainly won't be the last. What I would like to see happen is for developers to figure out a method of matchmaking that can serve both interests. I agree that "skill-based" isn't the answer - I believe only that it's preferable to random matches. In the mean time they should be exploring alternatives. And building their games with single-player options. I know. Keep dreaming, recon. Keep dreaming. - @reconzero "This is very true. And yet as business managers with a responsibility to shareholders to maximize profit, you can be guaranteed that these developers will behave in a way that may well appear to you and to me as "unreasonably greedy," but is in fact their attempt to maximize the player base, the revenue, the profits, and thus keep their jobs or maybe set themselves up with a glowing resumé so they can get an even better one."
We can at least agree on this too. It's disgusting actually. Like, where are we even headed? - @reconzero I'll say it to you too, Bruh 🙂
- @Unitee01
"It's disgusting actually. Like, where are we even headed?"
You don't have to wonder where we're headed. We're already there and we have been since the first game studio went public and started selling stock on an exchange. Bad decisions made with the stated goal of expanding the franchise, the playerbase, the experience... decisions which you and I can see are plainly not going to produce the desired result. Hell, look at where Halo is at right now. No game has ever had so much money thrown at it with all the right intentions just to have it produce such pitiful results. I can't understand how developers can be so out of touch with reality, but there you have it. Respawn certainly isn't to that point with Titanfall/Apex, but give it thirteen years to catch up. I'm sure it won't be pretty. - @reconzero Ok just for reference Titanfall is done. It's never coming back. Destiny is headed there too btw. Yeah I'd say that a lot of what is keeping fps alive is actually...wait for it....streamers.....like you hate lol. They do good things and it is often over looked. Me, I would kick Aztecross' * irl lol but not in Desiny 🙂
@Unitee01
Please describe the "good things" streamers do because I need the refresher. From where I'm standing they're pretty exclusively corrosive.
@gg123xyz
I don't care if you have 56 kills in one match. If you can't get #57 because #57 killed you then you're still dead. Which means you lost. You're just a dead loser.
There are two things I hate about this game. One is streamers and the entire streaming culture. Two is the very mistaken idea that kills are somehow more important than winning. I guess the second one is understandable as most players can sort of wrap their heads around the possibility that they might get a kill or two in the normal course of a match. But winning, they seem to believe, is some sort of strange alchemy that's beyond their abilities or control. So they spend every single match they play making decisions they think will net them kills, and they do it without even realizing that most of those decisions are actively pushing the win farther away from them. And to bring one and two together: it's the streamers that are largely responsible for creating that idiotic mindset, the mindset that says if you get a bunch of kills and then die that you're somehow still a winner. Sorry, but no.
Sorry. Rant over.
@reconzero wrote:@Unitee01
Please describe the "good things" streamers do because I need the refresher. From where I'm standing they're pretty exclusively corrosive.
@gg123xyz
I don't care if you have 56 kills in one match. If you can't get #57 because #57 killed you then you're still dead. Which means you lost. You're just a dead loser.
There are two things I hate about this game. One is streamers and the entire streaming culture. Two is the very mistaken idea that kills are somehow more important than winning. I guess the second one is understandable as most players can sort of wrap their heads around the possibility that they might get a kill or two in the normal course of a match. But winning, they seem to believe, is some sort of strange alchemy that's beyond their abilities or control. So they spend every single match they play making decisions they think will net them kills, and they do it without even realizing that most of those decisions are actively pushing the win farther away from them. And to bring one and two together: it's the streamers that are largely responsible for creating that idiotic mindset, the mindset that says if you get a bunch of kills and then die that you're somehow still a winner. Sorry, but no.
Sorry. Rant over.i dont think i said its ok to want kills and not a win. if you think i did i didnt. k?
- @Unitee01
"They [streamers] do good things and it is often over looked."
My impression of streamers has always been that they give a game exposure and in exchange developers make a lot of very questionable decisions which benefit the best players at the expense of everyone else. It doesn't always work that way, but it does more often than not. Unless you can tell me that the majority of them play for charity or run soup kitchens in their spare time then I'm not really sure what "good things" it is that you're saying they do. ??? - @reconzero Yes, exactly, they act as advertising essentially. Sure, they basically create a false sense of what the game is about because they are so good at it and now every scrub think they are too if they do the same... I get that too. But I think overall they are a force for good. They hype people up to play and I think that is a good thing. They did also make the landscape more sweaty by people trying to copy them, I get that also. But I still think content keeps games relevant longer, at least.
Community Highlights
- EA_Mako3 months ago
Community Manager