MW3 devs answer questions about weapons, skins, lobbies disbanding, and more—but not SBMM

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit today hosted by Sledgehammer Games has come and gone without a single mention of SBMM, the community’s most requested topic.

While the vast majority of the questions in the thread asked or complained about the game’s matchmaking system, the developer did not acknowledge them whatsoever, as expected. And it’s likely that they’re not allowed to do so at all, considering changes to the matchmaking algorithm probably come from above them at Activision.

You can check out the remnants of the AMA above, but the developers did little to stem the tidal wave of player requests to turn down or turn off SBMM. It’s likely the single biggest complaint about the game’s multiplayer at this point, which is an accomplishment considering most players seem to be enjoying the game’s movement, weapons, and maps outside of their sweaty games.

There is one highly requested change that the team is considering, however. Remember how CoD lobbies used to stick together for multiple games without disbanding? That may be coming back.

“In a future game update, we’ll be testing non-disbanding lobbies with a cohort of players to determine the performance of such a change,” Sledgehammer said. “If these tests go well, we’ll explore a rollout to all players.”

Although SBMM changes were not discussed or really even up for debate, the dev did confirm more of what to expect in MW3 season one and beyond, including tweaks to the weapon meta.

“Weapon balancing is one of the biggest things we are looking at on a daily basis,” Sledgehammer said. “Our goal is to have a meta shift from season to season to keep things fresh and interesting. That being said – we want as many weapons as possible to be viable to suit the variety of playstyles we have in our community. This is where we are looking closely at the data to target immediate tweaks for weapons that seem to be over or under-performing.”

On the subject of desync, hitmarker inconsistency, and general lag, Sledgehammer said it’s “always working to improve server and game performance” and that “many improvements have already been made, and further are underway.”

As for other future content and changes, Sledgehammer teased “shotguns and sniper rifles” from past MW series entries in future updates, yet another fix for the Gaia “Groot” skin, and ongoing issues like packet burst.

You can prune the replies by SHG (detailing everything but SBMM) by checking out its Reddit profile.