I grew up during the golden age of gaming where games like Black Ops 2, Modern Warfare 2, TitanFall, Gears of War and many more were played by almost everyone. While some of the games had awful game balance (cough cough one man army) the games still managed to be both fun and competitive. I don’t remember getting mad when I was getting stomped by a player on the other team. I remember thinking wow that dude is good, I want to be that good someday. But with an aggressive matchmaking system in almost every First Person Shooter game, can casual and hard core gamers get along?
I think one of the core problems with modern games is the lack of player progression, both in game and also just that overall feeling of getting better. I hate to sound like a broken record but matchmaking in casual lobbies makes literally zero sense. Imagine you’re a below average player who wants to improve at call of duty. So you practice your aim, learn the maps and how to better position yourself. Now you’ve increased your skill to be as good as let’s say the average player, well instead of performing better in your games you perform about the same because the game is matching you up against similarly skilled players. To any normal person this would leave you feeling like what’s even the point of trying to get better. There’s no reward. Not to mention we don’t have proper leveling systems in games anymore. Look at what they did to halo infinite. When the multiplayer launched it was basically just a barebones game. Literally had zero progression, nothing to work for. One of the most anticipated games in the last few years became boring within a week. They did end up adding in a ranked system but In my opinion it wasn’t a very good one.
How can we fix this so everyone is able enjoy the game no matter their skill level. First off we need to bring back to the old matchmaking system where it would be more about balancing teams instead of making sure everyone in the lobby was the same skill. In call of duty you would typically have a system where it would grab 12 players and split them up into two teams with as even a skill rating as possible on each team. This seems like the perfect balance of fairness without over bearing match making. And it gives players room to improve and see their skill level increase and get that sweet sweet dopamine hit all of us gamers are chasing. One of the biggest problems with the current matchmaking system is that friends of varying skill can’t play together without the lower skill friends just getting stomped and having a bad time. One of the most overlooked parts of gaming is the social aspect, being able to play with your friends, chop it up, talk $hit and have fun with the boys. Having a harsh matchmaking system in public matches just ruins the fun for everyone.
Next we need to have a proper ranked system to give the hyper competitive and sweaty players like myself a place to go grind. But the ranked mode only works if you have a system that is truly fair and maintains the games competitive integrity, and also has worthwhile rewards for getting to the higher ranks. If either of these pieces are missing then the entire ranked mode falls apart. I mean just look at what is happening to apex legends right now. What used to be considered a very competitive game with a solid ranked system is now a joke on twitter. The most achieved rank in Season 17 is the highest rank of Master… How is anyone supposed to feel like that rank is worthwhile if most players have it?
So let’s talk about the culture around gaming. This “everyone gets a trophy mentality” has to stop. Sometimes your just bad at a game, and that’s ok. It takes time to improve and some of your favorite streamers have been playing call of duty for 10 plus years. With youtube and the internet there are more videos, now more than ever, teaching you how to get better at your favorite games. If you’re getting crushed in a match, how about you try to be friends with that player and see if you can learn anything from them instead of just spam reporting people to get them shadow banned.
I don’t have any cold hard data to prove this but I get the sense that people are starting to get fatigued and burnt out on modern games. The fact that Activision fixed the servers for all call of duty titles and those games had over 100,000 players on them instantly shows that something is wrong with these new games and I think a large part of it has to do with the match making. Now it's possible that people complaining about SBMM or EOMM (Engagement Optimized Match Making) are just the loud minority on the internet considering the average player probably doesn't even know what a match making algorithm is. Only time will tell and the market will correct itself if players stop playing games because of it. We'll have to see if the match making is leading to short term success and long term fatigue or if most people actually like it.
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