Re: SBMM: Worse than I thought
@BaldWraithSimp
Every single SBMM thread needs to highlight one thing:
Companies are NOT prioritizing “fairness”. They are prioritizing “how to squeeze the most amount of money out of a playerbase as possible.” This is literally the main goal of every gaming publisher/developer. If that means creating manipulative unfair systems, then so be it.
With regards to Apex, the developers/publishers want players of all skill levels to be winning as equally as possible, because studies have shown that performance correlates to someone’s willingness to invest money back into the experience.
Before they ramped up SBMM, higher-skilled players were winning and performing at better ratios than lesser-skilled players; average players were somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately, the devs realized that players who lose frequently (even though those loses were “fair”) were more inclined to say “screw this game”, rather than practicing to improve. To address this they ramped up the SBMM to create a safe space for lower-skilled players. While safe spaces are TOTALLY fair for new players, they shouldn’t be granted to players who have experience but just aren’t that good.
This is a game but its a competitive game— there will be winners and there will be losers. But SBMM attempts to create equal outcomes by shifting the sum total of loses from the low skilled players to the high skilled players. Low skilled players are now winning more matches than they would have had the lobby been FAIRLY populated randomly.
EA/Respawn believe they can get away with this because high skilled players are already far more invested in the game and are more likely to endure the new crappy landscape that their pubs have become. The result?
It actually HURTS a player’s overall experience if they attempt to improve their performance. I’m sorry to say this but Apex Legends does not play that well in high tier lobbies. Perhaps this is a product of the Battle Royal genre. I have played high level BR’s and high level arena shooters— not only are they obviously different, but the latter “feels” far fairer and more rewarding than the former. The only reason this relates to the thread is that the current SBMM forces good players into this very unpleasant setting, all for the purpose of maximizing their own profits (by virtue of creating safe spaces).
It’s disenchanting.
