In an uncommon display of openness with its community, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) developers will be hosting an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit later today. But it seems there’s only one topic on players’ minds.
Sledgehammer Games posted about the AMA on Twitter yesterday, and the thread quickly became filled with hundreds of comments and questions centered around the game’s highly controversial skill-based matchmaking.
The AMA begins today at 2pm CT, but the Sledgehammer devs will likely not be able to acknowledge SBMM (also known as Engagement-Optimized Matchmaking or EOMM), its existence, or how it’s deployed in-game because no one at Activision ever has.
But that’s not stopping players from giving impassioned pleas for answers. The entire thread, with 3,000 comments, overflowed with questions, statements, and anger about how SBMM is ruining their experience in-game.
“It’s almost impossible for me to play CoD with my friends because of [SBMM],” one of the top replies in the thread reads. “I was always the better of the group as a kid, but now that they have kids and I work from home that difference is absolutely staggering. Like, I can solo the entire friend group and it’s not even close. I have to actively play like garbage before joining them, and keep it toned down the entire time or you can feel the difficulty increase game over game.”
SBMM has been a hot-button topic in CoD for the past four years, ever since it seems like the matchmaking took a turn from favoring connection to favoring matches of a similar skill level in an effort to keep matches fair for less-skilled players.
The side effect, though, means players who are average or better end up getting more difficult matches by clearly getting matched with lesser players and against better players in an effort to keep things “even.” And many players are saying they can’t match with friends anymore because of it.
“I play with my fiancé,” another player said. “She isn’t great, but this game is especially brutal. She’s lucky to get 4 kills while I’m sweating away, trying like hell just to win a match to possibly unlock something stuck behind the armory system. None of my other friends will play with me anymore because of the horrible lobbies I bring with me. I’m only about a 1.6 k/d player.”
A positive to take from all of the SBMM comments is that many players seem to agree that it’s one of the biggest issues with MW3, as the game feels fun otherwise.
“Came here to echo the SBMM/EOMM complaint,” another Redditor replied. “If this was heavily toned down, I would have FEW complaints about this game.”
Stay tuned, CoD gamers. It’s very likely that Sledgehammer can’t and won’t respond to SBMM questions, but the Reddit AMA may end up being an interesting one nonetheless.
