Treyarch again publicly acknowledged and did not keep silent about Black Ops 7’s matchmaking and, to tell the truth? The reaction from the community has been… well, to say the least, it is not too warming. They told TheXclusiveAce that the open matchmaking in the entire game is merely a replica of the matchmaking during the beta testing period. Merely the same. More so, they asserted that if it sounds different to the gamers it is just because the player pool and playlist choices changed from beta to launch. Huh? Well, that certainly clears it up.
For those not quite up to speed with this drama, a brief overview might be in order. The beta period had matchmaking problems that different people described as… “different.” Some said better. Others labeled it as more relaxed. Then the game was released, and players in every lobby were instantly at the theatre with sweat towels. Treyarch’s answer? “Uh, it’s just that the gamers now are different from the ones playing in the beta.” That is their story, and they will not change it.
Nevertheless, the exchanges around this announcement have gone over the top. One user who goes by the name Sohsuh outright accused them of lying and continued saying: “They are simply lying. His bot account had perfect pings and his real account had double the ping. That’s indicative that the same SBMM we’ve been dealing with since 2019 is at work.” And he’s not the only one with that view. A lot of players are claiming that when they play with less-skilled friends, these friends do a lot better when playing alone. We mean going from 2.0 KD to 0.4 while playing together. Talk about invisible.
Gabriel Hoyle posed yet another very interesting question about the beta versus full game experience by saying, “I can’t understand why I am always getting packet burst and packet loss during my good game play? It was not like this for me in the beta.” This definitely makes one think that there could be more to the matter than just the matchmaking algorithms. The networking problems seem to coincide with the user experience, which is… rather suspicious, to say the least.
Then comes the whole discussion about the player base that Treyarch is so strongly supporting. Okami Sumo even built up a pretty strong argument why the full game might actually feel different no matter the matchmaking settings: “The answer is really simple, bo7 has low player counts and since the beta the player count is split into 3 modes – endgame, mp, and zombies – and most of the casual players are in endgame and zombies which turns mp into a sweat fest 24/7.” Wait, that does make sense. If the not-so-hardcore gamers are in zombies or the campaign, then multiplayer is this tiny split of tryhards. This might explain why every lobby seems like the CDL finals regardless of the matchmaking that is actually happening.
But matters are about to get even more complicated – the SBMM debate. Eposi_ remarked something very crucial which a lot of people seem to overlook: “It has SBMM though, they never said anything else above removing it.” Thus, even if the matchmaking is similar to the beta, that does not mean there is no skill-based matching at all. They never argued to have it eliminated; just that they “widened” the parameters used or whatever corporate jargon they are applying this week.
Rod Jackson presented some very hard to dispute stats: “Currently, I have won 95 times and lost 40. In the past few CODS, I was keeping a 50/50 win-loss ratio per game. There is no way I could win these if the SBMM were the same all over.” A 70% win-rate in Call of Duty means that either the matchmaking has made significant changes or you have suddenly become the next Scump.
The controller vs mouse debate even came up in the comments section as Mailon Gleidson said: “For God’s sake, bring back the BO6 aim assist; it’s getting tougher and tougher for those on a controller. PC players have the advantage since they can move the mouse while aiming with the arm.” This is a completely different aspect of the game that the developers probably do not want to get into right now.
The fact that the community is so split on this issue is quite interesting. While a big chunk of the comments are venting frustrations with Treyarch’s reasoning, Devon actually said he agreed with them: “I don’t mind the matchmaking. To my mind, it really is like the beta, it feels exactly the same. Except in the evenings, but that’s when all the sweaty players are online.” Thus, there are at least some players that ceaselessly experience this enormous shift that everyone else is talking about, while others on PlayStation and Xbox continue to debate the issue.
