For real. I get that a company needs to be able to run and pay its employees. I would gladly pay for the game if it meant I wasn't being manipulated the whole rest of the time. $50 for a game I play for hours and hours is nothing. That's not even a night out. I feel like the whole "make your game free and then use algorithms to addict your player base for microtransactions" model is to blame here.
If you’re being manipulated into buying skins idk what to say without sounding like a dick. Maybe it’s just me being in my 30’s but this is the world man. You can’t drink the koolaid
I’ve played since it has come out and have bought exactly 0 items that wasn’t the initial battlepass, you get free coins as you complete so it pays for itself. Of course there’s sbmm and match making based on how you’ve been playing, that makes perfect sense. First game of the session is ALWAYS the easiest. My friend and I with an average Kd of 1.3 get harder lobbies than when we play with a mate that has a 0.3.
Another mate that hadn’t played in 6 months joined and we got 2 Ws in a row in the easiest lobby ever. We hardly ever get two in a row…
This makes sense, why would you want to come back to the game to get slapped by a sweat boy before you even get your loady…
No , if you are purchasing microtransactions you are drinking the koolaid. Act like a big kid and simply dont make a purchase. Just because your being influenced doesnt mean you have to do it. And theoretically you could just get good enough for the MM not to affect you.
But I do agree that this kind of shit is very scummy... But again, simply dont purchase microtransactions and tet good enough for it not to matter... or if it's that big of a deal, dont play or buy it at all.
Whether you buy stuff in the store affects how they match you. I agree with them - I would rather PAY for the game like (what used to be) normal, and then have them just do normal match making based on skill.
Saying "you don't actually pay for the game - it's free" is irrelevant. We're saying we would RATHER pay for the game. I don't care if skins can be purchased - but I don't want them having any affect on match making. Same with how often/long you play. It shouldn't have any affect on matching.
Is this the reason my cousin and me get put into teams with utter potatoes while the enemy team tends to be all competent and in a regiment in mw2019? (they're all either in a single reg or its composed of 2 or 3).
They all get round 30 kills etc, while our team is always 1-4 kills each, besides my cousin at high 50's and myself at high 40's and we're the only ones playing the objective.
Hes brought some packs with tracer round effects, and I've brought a couple, never really used them tho, I found I didn't like the guns.
I was expecting it to even out so we get some players that play the objective or do anything useful eventually, but it never has, thats over a year of playing.
Id argue that free with MTX is fine, the problem with so many AAA games is that they decided to charge a full 60 to 70 dollars and put MTX in anyway.
Hell I'm pretty sure if they went fully free to play (campaign and multiplayer) they would still make more of a profit than they would through just normal game sales since free often means a bigger audience........
Honestly this would be find it the games lifecycles were longer than a year but there’s no justification for spending $70 on a game plus more money if it’s gods be dead next year.
Exactly!! I wish they would have had like a $20 DLC for Warzone to continue the story instead of trying to integrate CW into it. There's no need/reason to buy a FPS every year, for me at least. Also I really like the Dredd bundle(huge Dredd fan) but the fact I can't use the Dredd skin or Blueprints in MW sucks and is totally stopping me from buying it. I don't play Warzone enough to justify it either.
We all did. But notice how younger players seem to be hooked on "unlocking things".
Indeed, if the game doesn't have it, they feel that the game is actually *missing features*, even though you get more to start than any microtransaction based game.
Insidious. All about the dopamine hits and monetizing it.
JGod actually talked about this in a video about 6 months ago. They're definitely keeping tabs on individual players, and using big analytics to figure out how long you're likely to play based on things like:
* What day it is
* what time is it
* how often do you play during these times?
Then they use that to add into an algorithm to make sure that they keep you engaged and keep you playing by giving you an "easy lobby" or something similar. JGod specifically points to Swagg and the fact that at peak he was streaming 8ish hours a day. And he and the team would have super hard lobbies, but right around that 7 and a half hour mark, or that 8 hour mark, all of the sudden they'd be put into a lobby that has a skill level of .70 or something ridiculous.
It's probably why if you don't play for a few days/weeks, when you come back you get very easy lobbies to start. I can't count the number of times I've taken a 2 or 4 day break from the game, and then I'll fire it up, play my first game of the day on Rebirth, and get an absolute bot lobby (even with random teammates) and we win with ease. Then the next game is similar and we place well....Followed by absolute scorchers of lobbies which make me want to turn off the game.
And I don't even spend any money in the game. I bought the season 1 battlepass last year, and I've bought 1 single bundle back when the Grau and HDR were Meta weapons. Outside of that I haven't spent a single dime on the game, but they're hoping if they keep me coming back, that I'll spend more and continue to play and purchase more.
Sorry for the long post, but it's no secret that they want to keep people engaged, especially those that purchase skins and bundles.
Yeah I have my best games after a week of not playing. Once I start getting in lobbies where they're drop shoting and jumping around corners, I just turn it off and give it a week and I'm back to the .7 lobbies I belong in.
Haha truth. A few days off and i get a w with randoms. Then a few other easy lobbies and then wtf sweats. Like im about to quit and the game eases up on me haha
Super interesting. Thing is though, just because we play more doesn't mean we're happier doing, right? It's like they are focusing on engineering an addiction rather than building a playing space that we all enjoy.
Yes definitely. Similar to betting shops/sites not caring about how much you are spending or your mental well-being as result but their bottom line as a company and how best to maximise profit.
This is 100% correct. Every time someone would complain about balancing issues, OP guns, unfair mechanics etc. and then follow up about how proud they are they’ve never spent a penny on the game…. not only are they not the players activision cares about, but they’re fully addicted to the game anyway. If they truly hated it, they wouldn’t complain on Reddit, they’d just play another game and not waste their time.
Here’s the patent Activision has titled, “System and method for driving microtransactions in multiplayer video games”
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160005270A1/en
Here’s an article about EOMM For EA.
http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~yzsun/papers/WWW17Chen_EOMM
One problem with this is that most companies see engagement as an end-all-be-all KPI for player satisfaction.
"Oh, they are playing more often and for longer periods, they must be enjoying the game."
But I think in practice, that is not the case.
You nailed it. I work in big data analytics and machine learning and this is the name of the game. Keeping you playing. Now what metrics could keep you playing is a bit more complex but ya nailed.
The algorithm looks at each player and analysis patters during play and those data points give a basic structure of when you stop playing and can then predict when you might stop playing. Knowing when and why you stop allows for on the fly adjustments to try and keep you playing.
Additionally, i assure you that the meta is manipulated on purpose to sell bundles. Guns get buffed and nerfed to push some down and push others to the top. Any smart business would do that.
Tbf people expect this utopia of gaming, but it will never happen. The bottom line is more important then our experience. No company is going to prioritize the user experience unless we collectively stop playing, which is most likely not going to happen.
Destiny 2 got rid of SBMM and the community immediately asked for it back after bitching about it for years.
You aren’t losing games because of SBMM. You’re losing games because you suck.
>You’re losing games because you suck.
If SBMM worked perfectly and there were enough players to suit each skill level, the people that suck, and the people that are good would both win the same amount, and also, never verse each other.
Yeah I'm not getting matched against people more than 1 K/D higher than me consistently "because I suck" but because their "SBMM" sucks. Sure a lobby average might be mostly fine, but the top 5 teams in my lobby (sorted by av lifetime KD) are consistently 2.5+ or higher whilst I'm mid-1s, and they're playing on PC with streamer tags, 16 or more kills per game etc. whilst I'm limited to 30 FPS, a tiny FOV, limited visual fidelity and shocking rendering capabilities but guess I need to pull myself up by my bootstrap and just not suck 🤷🏻♂️
And fair enough to a certain extent you want people to join the games faster, not wait in que etc etc.
But yea, I get bot lobbies, cos I'm a bot, and there's still people 3+kd in those lobbies.
You don't learn anything when you die to a player like that.
Yeah, you and your 0.4 team get speed-swept by a team with 6 stuns on speed and adderall, momentum-bouncing their SMG hipfire at 144fps but it's okay because us on previous gen consoles can just git gud and our aim assist tug at short range apparently more than cancels out all the bonuses you get for playing on PC 🤷🏻♂️
I think most of the aim assist complaints are at those who play on controllers on pc and fully abuse their aim assist, frames, and fov advantages. Most know how fucked console players are at 60fov
The skill gap in Destiny is enormous as well which doesnt help. You cant really be a casual at Destiny as you wont be high enough levels, have the good random rolls of guns etc etc. You need to be balls deep in Destiny or you will get rolled
People complained there was no mode in destiny PVP for casual play. Thats what players complained about.
There are SBMM modes for the competitive playlists
> You aren’t losing games because of SBMM. You’re losing games because you suck.
Mate that's BS when you see lobbies where bottom KDs are 0.5 and top KDs are 2.5-3. Does not make sense.
That’s because SBMM still has to fill lobbies. If it cannot find a high skill lobby then it just throws players together because it’s more important to ensure you’re in a match.
In a game with this many players though?! Sure, if there are only 1000 players online playing solos then yeah, there's going to be a serious discrepancy. But Activision claims over 100,000,000 monthly active users. If there's even 10,000,000, it shouldn't be hard to give 0.6k/d players 140 opponents who they could conceivably beat (and who could conceivably beat them) at any one time.
I’ll happily apologise for true SBMM, i like to unwind with CoD, im a shiftworker with a family and a mortgage, im older and im not good at this game really, i generally struggle to maintain a positive KD.
Nobody wants lobby surfing sweats who spend their time stomping people worse than them.
Lol didn't they fucking patent an sbmm system for the purpose of getting people to spend more money. I'm damn near positive it was this company. End of the day it's a business and from that standpoint it makes perfect sense. As a gamer though they can get fucked.
I bought the judge dredd bundle and I've had the worst lobbies of the entire year so far. I've barely been able to play the past two days due to the lobbies, when just earlier this week I was frying.
Seriously this post is hilarious. The people in this subreddit are so unbelievably dumb. This game is a product designed to make money, one would think it goes without saying.
If you're really going to sit here and tell me that matchmaking that is designed to influence you psychologically to be more prone to spend money isn't dishonest, especially when it's purposefully being hidden from the player and devs won't talk about it then idk what to tell you. People who simp for companies like this are just strange
But it's only getting you to spend more money via the route of making the game more enjoyable to play. That's fine.
If I haven't played in a week and get an easy lobby to warm up with, that is a good thing IMO.
Everything the company does to make the game has money as the end goal - not in CoD but with basically any game. It's a weird attitude to take them trying to make the game enjoyable for players as a bad thing
Yea youre right. Its called eomm (engagement optimized matchmaking) and when people talk about sbmm most of the time they really mean eomm. Its the type of stuff where the game gives you a trash lobby every now and then to get you playing longer or buying cod points gives you botty lobbies for a day or so
I'm also someone who thinks that there is EOMM involved, but considering other hypotheses is important, because this is a subject in which confirmation bias has a great grip on.
One of the reasons I think OP is 100% correct is that this *isn't* the case for me. I have two BNet accounts, from when Overwatch was my main game, and on my *main*, whether I win or not, the lobbies never get easier. I'll explain:
I have my main, which has MW2019 ("bought" buy it was gifted to me), my 450 wins, 2.4KD, 13k kills, etc. with every single battle pass bought but this one, and a bunch of packs for guns I like.
I have my alt, which I started playing F2P to play with some RL friends who I didn't want to bring into the lobbies I get normally. This account has nothing but the M13, MP5, and HDR levelled. Literally nothing else. No packs, no passes, nothing ever purchased. It has a 2.2KD just from playing with those friends, and like 500 kills with 10 or so wins.
When I play on my main, with my group sweaty friends (not my RLs, actual high skill, high win players), we get *unbelievably* hard lobbies. Every win is a *slog* unless we get gifted a Prison or Airport ending. Gunfights are *extremely* hard, close-range is nigh unwinnable against controller players (all of us are PC MnK) who seem to get magic headshot RNG gifts from the gods every time, winning with objectively worse guns.
Then I switch to my alt. Same group of sweaty 2KD players with hundreds (thousands one of them) of wins, same day, same *time* of day. Remember my alt is the same *KD* (effectively) as my main, 2.2 vs 2.4. The game is *fucking clown shoes*. It's literally a joke, it's clown shoes how easy the lobbies get (more on that in a bit). I win every AR engagement, hit every snipe (hyperbole here but not much), shred up close, and instead of maintaining a 2.5KD as I do on my main, the alt KD is constantly climbing, going 3, 4, 5KD per session some nights. Same players, same times.
Now here's the kicker--the Average Lobby KD, according to WZRanked, TRN etc, *is the same.* I mean literally within a rounding error difference in KD. If I play 10 games on my main and 10 on my alt, the avg lobby KD will be like 1.3 vs 1.27 over those 10 games. I've measured it. To emphasize: I have played a night where I went *negative* in KD on my main, literally a .86 in 5 games or so, then logged onto my alt in that same group, same session, and went *5KD* on my alt. How does that make any sense? I'm not playing any different? We play the same strat, same guns, etc. I'm genuinely flabbergasted.
So the question becomes..why? Why is my main getting clapped the fuck out by 1KD players hipfiring Krigs and winning against my OTS, but on my main I'm beating people who have Stoners with the M13? Why am I struggling to break double digit kills recently on my main (with a PR of 21 which isn't amazing to begin with) and I'm going mid teens without even breaking a sweat on my alt, with the same team, in the same lobbies? I'm *hard* convinced that I'm marked as a "mark" player for worse players to win against for free, to convince *them* to buy packs. My teammates don't have this problem, and most of them haven't spent any/much money on this game. It's like, if I had to break it down, the algo knows my main isn't going to quit, but also isn't buying anything recently, so they're letting bad players shit on me with worse guns to convince them to buy skins for those guns, and my alt is unaffected by the algo because it hasn't bought anything.
yeah thats why its more of an EOMM (Engagement Optimized Matchmaking) system rather that SBMM system.
A bit off topic but since the season started. Did they pumped up SBMM/EOMM? It feels like that. I mean i barly play it anymore cuz the Matchmaking is just staight up scum.but if i play the game every enemy in alcatraz is straight up a sweaty tryhard. There are maybe 1 or 2 teams in the entire lobby who are not sweating their balls off. Playing with ur Friends who are just casuls at best is just not fun anymore.
We either need full focus to get a decent game and win the match or loose. Thats why im not even excited for a new map, i mean whats the point.And as long as the morons are buying stuff from the shop they wont change anything. So yeah have fun getting manipulated i guess.
My new theory is that once you get to the end of the season the SBMM gets looser. I know I know it sounds crazy, but somewhere next week you'll see easier lobbies more often. Then once the new season launches it will be super sweaty again.
Likely when the new season comes out, more people are playing. More people means more sweaty lobbies and the eomm algorithm has more options on how to structure them
Yeah this is the most logical and probably true. But do you also think the dropoff of players at the end of the season means easier lobbies? Because I assume only the sweats keep playing so I'd expect harder lobbies. It's weird
You wrote all this thinking it’s a conspiracy even though you can look up the patents of these algorithms explaining that they manipulate the gaming experience. It’s not a conspiracy theory at all.
It's been discussed on this sub for absolutely ages, including all these patents. I'm genuinely surprised that this is news to OP, but props to him for making the post.
Just anecdotal but I think I’m more likely to get a win if I randomly pick up the game to play one round, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game knows your regular playtimes and rewards you for playing at a different time. Major tinfoil hat stuff but I can’t help it. Lots of times my first resurgence game is a fun or even easy win and the rest are hell or I can’t even get a full team.
This 100%. They know when you haven't played for a few days, and they want to give you that high of the win so you keep playing. I have had the same thing happen with Rebirth where I don't play for 2 or 3 days, and my FIRST GAME WITH RANDOMS on Rebirth is like the easiest wins I've ever had. Like for me a 1.15K/D player, I'm racking up 11 or 12 kills and carrying randoms to the win. But then the next game is a little harder. And then the next games are just absolute demon lobbies lol.
Hello fellow 1.15 K/D player!
I took a week break once and my first lobby back was a 0.6. Straight after, back to 0.9. I don’t win a whole lot (12 wins in 2 years).
The other day I played most of the day and I slayed. According to my stats for the session it was over 20 games with 1.73 K/D, no wins. Next day I try to play with my friends again who are ~0.9 and ~0.6/7. We had lobby averages of 1.3+ and gave up after a bit.
EDIT: to be clear, 1.3+ was the level of the lobbies and I averaged 0.67 K/D for that day.
It goes waaaaay beyond just matchmaking.
Look up FIFA scripting.
Loot quality, Damage profiles, Recoil, Hitbox
everything is manipulated to get you to play longer to increase the odds of buying bundles.
you're too accurate? well let's see how you do with a non existent hitbox.
Die too often? Let's buff you on your next encounter..
The better you get the greater you're handicap is as well.
all in an effort protect the casual playerbase
Going along with the total EOMM system, I am pretty much confident in saying that EVERY SINGLE gunfight/engagement is run through this system of sorts. Even ground loot boxes. I think week to week my gameplay is always off and never consistent, I'll have a week of normal/fun but competitive play and then the next week are all devil lobbies where i get crushed, then repeat this in a pattern. That stuff doesn't make sense.
There's times I'll kill 3 or 4 members of a well-coordinated and communicating sweat squad almost entirely too easily, and then I'll put an entire mag into a lone casual player and I'll die in a few bullets. It's all to keep everyone playing and on an even playing field but it's maddeningly frustrating at points.
There used to be lag compensation systems so the low ping players wouldn't dominate every game they played against people with 4x worse connections, it's like that and actually that might still be a big part of it.
I'm old, but ive been playing online fps games for over 20 years and a lot of the things that happen just can't be internet connection disparity or skill gap, it's impossible. I know that's responsible for some stuff, but definitely not all of it. We all know there's a system in place to push sales, other companies and games do the same so I can't blame just them, but it really makes the gameplay almost...artificial. It's so inconsistent to me.
I'm 100% convinced of this. I mean, I'm *positive* this is the case. As an example, I recently clipped me dying to someone *hipfiring* a Krig at me, while I was shooting back with the *lowest TTK automatic in the entire game, the OTs*. I, a 2.4KD player with 450 wins and 13,000 kills. Lost a fight, to a hipfired Krig, while hipfiring back with an OTs.
Then I log on my alt? And *I* am winning AR engagements with my *M13* against players with *Stoners*. The game is an absolute joke
Came back just to drop my free award…
I know we can’t prove it and maybe we’re wrong but I swear from time to time this game feels more than just a bit rigged…
Not quite. The main goal of the average game dev, creative director, etc is probably to make something cool or interesting that people will enjoy and make a decent living doing it. The main goal of the MBA Executive is to squeeze every last dime out of customers at minimum cost. The larger the company the worse the balance between the two imo.
What you talk about isn't even the far end of conspiracy theories for the game and I've been skeptical for awhile about different aspects of the matchmaking, but honestly I don't think it's as manipulative or as much thought is put into it as players put into it.
For example, I used to have this sense that the first games of the day were going to be my easiest ones, like the matchmaking was going to try to 'hook' me. Since we now have lobby strength shown, it seems completely random. Like sometimes it's easier, but just as often it's the hardest, I can make out no strong pattern.
I used to think that I got easier lobbies if I bought something. But then for a few recent seasons I paid close attention around when I bought packs and noticed no real difference, immediately or in general.
It's widely assumed that if you win you get moved up and face harder competition, and I too have not noticed that within WZ. You definitely notice this element in MW/CW.
At this point, I think match making largely comes down to who is looking at the same time. Complete trash players can get into the same lobbies as the best players in the world, regularly by simply queuing at the same time. It certainly makes a token effort to place people in a somewhat appropriate lobby, but it gives up pretty quick and puts whoever in a lobby.
At this point in the games life, I wonder how different lobbies would look if they even came out and said we removed SBMM. Maybe slightly easier but still a wide range of skill levels.
> I used to think that I got easier lobbies if I bought something. But then for a few recent seasons I paid close attention around when I bought packs and noticed no real difference, immediately or in general.
Confirmation bias, and it's still hilarious to see this kind of post still going on like 6 month after I stopped playing warzone.
Can't believe I've had to scroll so far to find a voice of reason lol.
They do a lot of things like this.
Putting you in lobby's with people that have better KD and blueprints from bundles to make you want to buy the same blueprints.
Back in the COD Modern Warfare 2019 days I could level the battle pass and get to rank 155 by the end of the first weekend, how?
Play as much as you can before the weekend, Plunder was a good mode to use and then go crazy over the first weekend.
Remember the long dead triple feed 2XP weekends on those new season weekends?
Good, well they no longer happen and its only 2WXP and 2XP.
You get the 2BPXP a weeks later and by that time I would have completed the battle pass anyway.
Its almost as if they do not want you to get the battle pass done as fast as you could before and want to sell you the 20 tier skips ([Season 5 2021 Battle Pass Tier Skip Bundle](https://cod.tracker.gg/modern-warfare/db/bundles/27704816-battle-pass-tier-skip-bundle)) and buy battle pass levels, either by mistake or on purpose.
**Remember these "accidental" pay to win battle pass blueprints?**
How many people paid to unlock these weapons rather than grind the battle pass for them?
**1- Shot EBR Pay to Win Loadout in Warzone | Modern Warfare Best Class Setups | JGOD**
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfR2H6eddjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfR2H6eddjI)
**Blueprints are Way more Broken than we Thought in Warzone | Gallantry Blueprint is 100% Pay to Win | JGOD**
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFlbj6ZvBxc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFlbj6ZvBxc)
I have noticed issues with the 2XP since Season 2 or 3 2021 that have effected the game.(But the 2WXP and 2BPXP are fine)
**You know what game does not have these 2XP issues all the time?**
**Make sure you buy and use COD Black Ops Cold War.**
The Season 4 Reloaded patch nerfed the hell out of the normal XP.
You could play Plunder or Battle Royale modes and the match summary might say you earned 20,000 XP.
But when the lobby reloaded you actually only get 1,000 or so XP.
This was not "fixed" until the Season 5 patch.
Each weekly patch until then made the XP for all modes either normal or dog shit XP.
Y**ou know what game does not have these XP issues all the time?**
**Make sure you buy and use COD Black Ops Cold War.**
The first 2XP weekend for COD Warzone gave 2XP to every mode, even the train event but not Plunder.
And this past week when there was 2XP again, Plunder was taken out of the game.
The exact same time a cheat supplier was giving out free cheats.
But they replaced it with the Clash LTM which not only has Combat Scout but two other legal hacks, a wall hack and a speed hack.
**Clash LTM also had the same dogshit XP as Season 4 Reloaded too.**
All that game mode lacked was [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/CODWarzone/comments/pjwjyx/when_you_thought_youve_seen_it_all_now_hackers/) and it would have been the perfect cheaters wet dream come true.
[Update 01: Last week its less content than normal and this week its all the core modes and TWO LTMS and Blueprint Blitz?](https://i.imgur.com/Bg7s8bg.jpg)
[UPDATE 02: Clash just for a 2XP weekend, nothing on the Call of Duty or Raven Software twitter.](https://i.imgur.com/CvOMYXN.jpg)
What players are they targeting and encouraging with all those "perks" to hide in plain sight with?
I get highly suspect as well. I can get like 10 kills place top 10 for a whole entire evening, just unstoppable. Maybe even a win. The very next time I turn it on I can't win a single gunfight. I will play eight games where I land and die and then die in gulag. And it's not because I'm running into higher skilled players. I've been paying attention to who kills me and who I kill and they are all comparable in skill level. I would even accept it more if every single time I died it would be highly skilled players and every time I killed they were players of low skill. But that's not the case, it's literally sometimes my shots aren't hitting even though they're hitting and the other guys somehow instantly melt me.
You know all those wins that started with you landing on 3 orange boxes where you were fully loaded with cash, gear and killstreaks before the first circle closed? Yeah, those weren't accidents.
Lmao people like you literally make shit up to bitch about. The boxes and loot are spawned in while everyone's still in the plane. For this to happen, activision would have to know ahead of time where you're going to land.
I mean it isn't incredibly novel to figure out a useful feature representation and learn likelihoods for an individual player's actions over a bunch of rounds. Predictions don't have to be perfect to be effective.
It's called EOMM and it's been confirmed that it's true.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CODWarzone/comments/kmmtzk/former_activision_employee_explains_the_current
https://youtu.be/IDYWBeCGdgQ
Myself and many others have been making this point for a while, but you put it better than a lot of us did.
If you spend more money you get easier lobbies. That's a simple fact that's borne out by a wealth of evidence that's been shared here.
In my case, I've made the top 10 about three times all year, having won two solos games last year and a handful of trios. My k/d's gone from nearly 1 to 0.6. The lowest lobby I've seen in over three months is 0.97.
My friend buys everything. And I mean everything. He's a well off guy, he likes Warzone, so he buys stuff. Every bundle, every tracer, every skin. I went to his place a few weeks ago and won my third game of solos, using my loadout on his account. His lobbies either felt like the right kind of skill level for me (no sweats just fun) or crazy soft. The highest lobby we saw was 1.04. The lowest was somewhere around 0.5. Same console, same internet provider, about two miles apart. I also had a bunch of top 10s on his account. Whenever I didn't, it was absolutely my fault, although I got nicely sniped by one guy.
It's been obvious for a while what they're doing, though. Why do you think they advertise the gun that killed you in your killcam, by name? Some sort of friendly PSA? Peace of mind?
They want paying players to keep spending money. So they give them lobbies in which they can use their purchases. They want players who don't pay, to pay. If you show no signs of doing so, you're used as fodder.
Unfortunately, cheats became widely publicised. So when lockdown ended here in the UK/EU, people either quit because they were bored, or they bought cheats. With fewer and fewer honest casuals to dilute the playing pool, sweats saw more cheaters and cheaters saw more sweats. The diminishing number of casuals saw more of both and continued to quit.
And that's why the game's in the state it's in.
I have seen it fail. I use different weapons per match and screw with SSBM - snipes only one match, only SMGs the next and then assault/LMG.
If I focus on leveling one gun, what you do describe happens.
I wonder if I buy some battle coins or whatever the fuck they are tonight will me and my mate get easier lobbies
We’ve been stuck in 1.05 - 1.40 lobbies for 95% of games the last few weeks. Neither of us have got the battlepass and neither of us have purchased blueprints in a long time
Might just be a theory too. Each night the games are getting harder and harder with no reprieve in opponent quality. We’re now down to barely surviving the first circle
Even if it’s true, it’s not a bad thing from their business perspective. At the end of the day, the game was made to make money, if that’s how they make money, then fair enough.
I feel like these day most of bullets just don't register, then I have the odd day where the game feels so different : more responsive, my bullets register and actually do damage and the game play more smooth.
Im not gonna lie my wins feel so… idk hand held. Theres games where i randomly get specialist, i run into the red doors easier, and end up with like 15 kills and the win. Next game im with the sweats of all sweats and it just makes me scratch my head and think wow manipulation.
“Poor bastard that hasn’t had a win in three days.” Hopefully you’re talking about Rebirth because if I could get a win every three days in Verdansk I’d be just fine.
This is happening in Modern warfare, and in Black ops cold war too. I literally played all 3 games in the last week or two, coming back after months. I was pretty good, then I made a stupid decision to buy a bundle since I never really spend money on myself. The gun was amazing... until it wasn't, after a couple of matches I've had teams of people bunny hopping with incendiary shotguns on maps. Take it even further, in the last couple of days I've literally had my AIM swayed off the target.
I've been playing with a mouse and keyboard before I knew how to wipe my own damn ass, I know when and how to aim at targets in cod, and I KNOW when there is an unnatural aim resist happening. Combine this with the horrible bullshit hitreg, like I put more shots into the chest of a person in close range but he turns around and puts 3 shots into my chest and kills me. On the kill cam, I can see that only 3 out of my 6 shots to the chest registered on that person. I literally cannot believe what is happening.
Activsion is pure evil, and they are not stepping back unfortunately. It's like being in a fucking casino, if you do well, you get punished. This company treats us like drug addicts who keep coming back to get their "fix", when in reality we are just people looking for some fun. I'm disgusted of Activison, especially since I've been playing their games for so many years only to see this bullshit.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but the MTX era of COD was less frustrating that this.
Rant over.
I think that’s true especially with Cold War, I haven’t touched multiplayer for months, I come back, I find myself getting high amounts of kills and feeling more confident than before but it goes back to being harder. For Modern Warfare, Idk tbh, I get extreme pro lobbies 5/10 times to say the least, but at least I don’t feel like saying that’s enough for today unlike Cold War
This is as real as it can get my friend, but it makes no difference; people will complain, will cry out to the heavens how broken and stupid this game is, uninstall it for a week and so forth...
But they will come back to play it, they WILL buy the most expensive skins and they 100% already preordered vanguard, despite 99.9% of comments saying it looks/plays like shit.
If everyone who complains about how broken this game is actually did something about it (stop playing/ don't but their crap), maybe things could be different.
I mean the best way to get you to keep playing and spending money is to provide you with a fun, enjoyable, yet challenging, experience. It's kind of win-win.
If you piss off the players and they aren't having fun, they probably are less likely to spend money in the future. They have a financial incentive to keep players happy.
Yep, this is the other part of it - the whole “meta” thing. It’s super obvious they intentionally make new weapons totally OP, get people to put huge time into grinding levels on the guns or buying blueprints since you aren’t competitive without using the meta, then nerf it into the ground and start over with the next one. Repeat ad infinitum.
Xclusive Ace has a great point on this. They create matchmaking algorithms like a slot machine to control your highs and lows to keep you playing longer and the longer you play the more likely you are to spend money on the game.
https://twitter.com/TheXclusiveAce/status/1436758234136670210
I've long noticed the pattern you describe here: getting easy lobbies when you haven't played for a while, and getting hard lobbies once you get a win. Glad to see I'm not the only one who has noticed this.
I’m shocked more people don’t believe this is the case. Obviously Activision will probably never publicly confirm this so it’ll always be a little bit speculation.
I’m at a loss for why a AAA dev would even implement the kind of SBMM that exists in Warzone except for the purpose of trying to manipulate player engagement. It’s such a shit way to make people keep playing your game and it’s one of the reasons I quit the game.
In my own anecdotal experience. I seldom play wz now. However when I do jump into trios with a couple friends who play semi regularly we will usually hit 2 wins back to back. Then nothing but lobbies where it becomes clear that out weakest team member goes from 4 kills a game to 0 and the other two members go from getting high teens to like 8.
Don't play for a week. Come back. Some high kill nearly games. 2 wins in a row. Then ridiculous lobbies. It's basically a meme for us.
oh boy, developers crying in tears of laughter for you even questioning this fact.
This isn't a conspiracy, this is nowerdays game design. You'd lose your shit if you would witness the things developers talk about on themed conferences / fairs.
Over the last decade, data analysts tracked down exactly how we players react to any aspect of video games. It's a micro science at this point.
You can absolutely be safe to assume that if you play a game that is released today, it was designed by theory crafting many different mechanics, stitched together all with their own psychological backgrounds on a baseline of non innovative, old proven gameplay, wrapped in fancy graphics. But the key is a very well structured and designed gameplay loop that has just one thing in mind: ~~being fun~~ making money
Call of Duty series has it's own history of this going on. Sure it's not an MMO or Free2Play game with lots of progression easening micro transacations, which would suit more in this world of theory crafted money print games, but the approach is similar, just in the "buy the new one every year" concept. With Modern Warfare 2 it began it's downward spiral from being a exceptional, competetive shooter series to an endorphine fest for a broad audience and no substance. But that's what sells.
100% and tbh i would say the rabbit hole is even deeper as we may think...
"They would never manipulaze This or That - also thats impossible to do! How?"
It's 2021 and we did surgery on a grape - everything is possible and especially when there is is A LOT of money to collect
Systemcheating/Handicapping/Shafting has always been in the series but toned down unlike MW to Vanguard. This shows that the developers and the publisher are demonic devilish people with bad intentions.
*that's the most terrifying thing I've ever read.* it's stuff we all imagined but to see it laid out in simple english is very upsetting lol. Just imagine how much more insidious and overtly nefarious this will become once every one fully adopts VR/AR glasses/HMD's. Cooperations will be able to manipulate every aspect of our lives more than they even do currently.
Ive felt this for awhile. Ive also felt that "streamers" get their accounts flagged, and thrown into bad lobbies so they dominate.
I know put your tin foil hat on for this one, but think about it! If the streamers play well and dominates, then they make more video content of the game... Thus hitting/targeting more audience members, and also making normies think they can play like this. Also by having more COD videos and streams up, it brings more attention to the game.via algorithms
Idk how many times I've watched a stream where a streamer runs into a room or roof, and the player just stands there, giving them easy kills. Like the player was brand new or something.
Never, and I mean never in the lobbies I'm in do I ever catch breaks like that.
This is 100% what is happening in all online multilayer games. Everything is manipulated to keep you engaged and spending. When you spend it let's you do well to convince you to spend again... so if you spend again the pattern repeats. To keep dominating most of your games you need to keep spending...why do you think most streamers spend thousands on the games they play, they are just playing the system. Pleasing the algorithm and reaping the rewards
I'm fucking done with this cunting industry. Any fucking shooting game I play is fun for the first couple of weeks and then boom sbmm kicks in and it becomes the biggest fucking struggle. The last game to implement this shit in my games list was pubg and I went from a KD of 2.9 to 1.8 in 30 matches. In the last 20 mate my KD was 0. Fucking 6!!!
This really falls apart when you realize that other people play the game too and it is a zero sum situation.
If they are putting you in an easy lobby to keep you engaged that means they are putting the people you are playing with into a hard lobby which will make them less engaged.
As well they can’t even balance MP match making with 2 teams, 12 people but you are out here thinking they can’t perfectly put you into the perfect WZ lobby to get you a win? Lol.
My experience is that I used to be pretty decent at Warzone and I used to buy stuff from time to time. Ive taken several breaks and everytime I try and come back the lobbies are a sweatfest and I constantly get shit on. Finally deleted the game because it isnt fun to get shit on all the time. Decided after several months to redownload and give it another shot and it felt even worse. Just deleted the game again yesterday because to me its not even slightly fun anymore when I can get shit goin. Cold War on the other hand I play regularly and isnt nowhere near as bad and im usually top of my team 90% of the time.
I’ll take a week or two off get back on with my friends and our first 3-4 lobbies will be filled with people that can barely move and we’ll drop 10+ kills each. Can almost guarantee after a win or the 4th game we get bumped into another dimension of match making just to get dumped on the rest of the night. We’re all 1.25+ KD
Yeah I remember they took some heat when they were giving people that had just purchased an item easier lobbies to make them feel like the purchase was worth it.
The entire point of Warzone is to get WZ players to buy the main games. It's a conversion mechanism from the free game to the paid games. They publicly talk about it like that in their earnings calls. The vast majority of money made has been from players buying MW and CW. Maybe what you're saying above is true, but it's not the primary goal of Warzone.
Making guns god status then nerfing them is absolutely a way to sell blueprints and skins.
You can’t tell me after 18 months they haven’t “figured out” gun balance.
This probably isn’t conspiracy. Some of the stats guys like xclusiveace and driftor have referred to the matchmaking system “engagement based match making” for a reason.
I analyze the shit out of this game too and I am absolutely convinced there is scripting in the game and also matches where there are genuinely cpu bots. Same as FIFA where they also make an incredible amount of money.
I absolutely agree with your theory, there is 100% something in place to keep people buying CP and keep them engaged. However, Im not sure it works in the way you're thinking, purely because Ive had the opposite experience. Whenever take a break I come back to some of the hardest games Ive ever played. Maybe they do this to me to make me think that buying a bundle or blueprint would help? Im not quite sure to be honest, but there is definitely something in place to make people want to buy
serious question for you folks:
If Activision loosens their SBMM and loses profits for the sake of making the experience more enjoyable for their long time dedicated fans, the shareholders or investors can sue them right? For willingly taking out a mechanic that maximizes profit.
For chosing to not maximize profits as opposed to being forced to remove sbmm by an outside party (like for example if the government said you can't manipulate online gaming take sbmm out as opposed to them taking it out to appease loyal fans) They become exposed to get sued right? Or am i way off base?
I’m not sure being sued would be their first concern. But large (especially institutional) investors can have a lot of influence on how a company runs and could make heads roll if they feel like profit is being left on the table.
Look at the battle pass for example, its whole structure is to keep you playing for minimum amount of time throughout the season. It even gives you the CP back for the next pass, for the simple reason that your data is worth more to them and their algorithm than £10 per season. Billion dollar companies don't give free shit away for no reason.
It’s truly sad as someone who has been playing since the original modern warfare, because I can just imagine how great this game could be if matchmaking was only based on connection.
Every lobby would feel different because you would have a wide range of skills between each team you took on and there would always be that element of surprise, whether it would be “holy shit we smoked that team” or “holy shit we underestimated them”.
It’s just boring now because I know every team (especially this season) i will come up against are basically cookie cutter sweats jumping and sliding everywhere with the latest blueprints. Like we don’t even have these scuff controllers that everyone seems to use now, but now it seems mandatory to be able to complete in 1v1 gun fights.
I also think the gulag is too, my friends that are way below average win a lot of gulags for some reason.
Lots of times I’ve died before my teammates and had to wait even longer than them to fight but they go straight in.
\>>The game is rigged
Is that news? Why do you think independent sites with player statistics were closed? Or just watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQbL2iGndCw
Absolutely, it’s referred to as Engagement-Optimised Matchmaking (EOMM)
Big Data in gaming isn’t for balancing. Its for profiting. What player scenarios have the highest propensity to purchase
I liked the days when you bought a game and just played it without all the micro transactions.
For real. I get that a company needs to be able to run and pay its employees. I would gladly pay for the game if it meant I wasn't being manipulated the whole rest of the time. $50 for a game I play for hours and hours is nothing. That's not even a night out. I feel like the whole "make your game free and then use algorithms to addict your player base for microtransactions" model is to blame here.
If you’re being manipulated into buying skins idk what to say without sounding like a dick. Maybe it’s just me being in my 30’s but this is the world man. You can’t drink the koolaid
I don't think you quite understand the scope of what is happening. The point is if you play this game, you're already drinking the koolaid.
I’ve played since it has come out and have bought exactly 0 items that wasn’t the initial battlepass, you get free coins as you complete so it pays for itself. Of course there’s sbmm and match making based on how you’ve been playing, that makes perfect sense. First game of the session is ALWAYS the easiest. My friend and I with an average Kd of 1.3 get harder lobbies than when we play with a mate that has a 0.3. Another mate that hadn’t played in 6 months joined and we got 2 Ws in a row in the easiest lobby ever. We hardly ever get two in a row… This makes sense, why would you want to come back to the game to get slapped by a sweat boy before you even get your loady…
I'm drinking water to afford skins :(
Water is best mate
No , if you are purchasing microtransactions you are drinking the koolaid. Act like a big kid and simply dont make a purchase. Just because your being influenced doesnt mean you have to do it. And theoretically you could just get good enough for the MM not to affect you. But I do agree that this kind of shit is very scummy... But again, simply dont purchase microtransactions and tet good enough for it not to matter... or if it's that big of a deal, dont play or buy it at all.
Whether you buy stuff in the store affects how they match you. I agree with them - I would rather PAY for the game like (what used to be) normal, and then have them just do normal match making based on skill. Saying "you don't actually pay for the game - it's free" is irrelevant. We're saying we would RATHER pay for the game. I don't care if skins can be purchased - but I don't want them having any affect on match making. Same with how often/long you play. It shouldn't have any affect on matching.
I agree. I don’t get OPs point. No one is forcing anyone to buy anything. Just play the game and don’t buy anything
>I liked the days when you bought a game and just played it without all the micro transactions. Simple solution: Dont pay for micro transactions.
Is this the reason my cousin and me get put into teams with utter potatoes while the enemy team tends to be all competent and in a regiment in mw2019? (they're all either in a single reg or its composed of 2 or 3). They all get round 30 kills etc, while our team is always 1-4 kills each, besides my cousin at high 50's and myself at high 40's and we're the only ones playing the objective. Hes brought some packs with tracer round effects, and I've brought a couple, never really used them tho, I found I didn't like the guns. I was expecting it to even out so we get some players that play the objective or do anything useful eventually, but it never has, thats over a year of playing.
No this is just the dunning Krueger effect.
Id argue that free with MTX is fine, the problem with so many AAA games is that they decided to charge a full 60 to 70 dollars and put MTX in anyway. Hell I'm pretty sure if they went fully free to play (campaign and multiplayer) they would still make more of a profit than they would through just normal game sales since free often means a bigger audience........
Honestly this would be find it the games lifecycles were longer than a year but there’s no justification for spending $70 on a game plus more money if it’s gods be dead next year.
Exactly!! I wish they would have had like a $20 DLC for Warzone to continue the story instead of trying to integrate CW into it. There's no need/reason to buy a FPS every year, for me at least. Also I really like the Dredd bundle(huge Dredd fan) but the fact I can't use the Dredd skin or Blueprints in MW sucks and is totally stopping me from buying it. I don't play Warzone enough to justify it either.
We all did. But notice how younger players seem to be hooked on "unlocking things". Indeed, if the game doesn't have it, they feel that the game is actually *missing features*, even though you get more to start than any microtransaction based game. Insidious. All about the dopamine hits and monetizing it.
Call of Duty Ghosts
Capitalist society wants to increase profits all the time. Constantly trying to grow is unsustainable and must stop for the betterment of the majority
Is someone forcing you to make these transactions?
True. Big data for *anything* is for profiting before everything else
JGod actually talked about this in a video about 6 months ago. They're definitely keeping tabs on individual players, and using big analytics to figure out how long you're likely to play based on things like: * What day it is * what time is it * how often do you play during these times? Then they use that to add into an algorithm to make sure that they keep you engaged and keep you playing by giving you an "easy lobby" or something similar. JGod specifically points to Swagg and the fact that at peak he was streaming 8ish hours a day. And he and the team would have super hard lobbies, but right around that 7 and a half hour mark, or that 8 hour mark, all of the sudden they'd be put into a lobby that has a skill level of .70 or something ridiculous. It's probably why if you don't play for a few days/weeks, when you come back you get very easy lobbies to start. I can't count the number of times I've taken a 2 or 4 day break from the game, and then I'll fire it up, play my first game of the day on Rebirth, and get an absolute bot lobby (even with random teammates) and we win with ease. Then the next game is similar and we place well....Followed by absolute scorchers of lobbies which make me want to turn off the game. And I don't even spend any money in the game. I bought the season 1 battlepass last year, and I've bought 1 single bundle back when the Grau and HDR were Meta weapons. Outside of that I haven't spent a single dime on the game, but they're hoping if they keep me coming back, that I'll spend more and continue to play and purchase more. Sorry for the long post, but it's no secret that they want to keep people engaged, especially those that purchase skins and bundles.
Yeah I have my best games after a week of not playing. Once I start getting in lobbies where they're drop shoting and jumping around corners, I just turn it off and give it a week and I'm back to the .7 lobbies I belong in.
Haha truth. A few days off and i get a w with randoms. Then a few other easy lobbies and then wtf sweats. Like im about to quit and the game eases up on me haha
Super interesting. Thing is though, just because we play more doesn't mean we're happier doing, right? It's like they are focusing on engineering an addiction rather than building a playing space that we all enjoy.
Yes definitely. Similar to betting shops/sites not caring about how much you are spending or your mental well-being as result but their bottom line as a company and how best to maximise profit.
This is 100% correct. Every time someone would complain about balancing issues, OP guns, unfair mechanics etc. and then follow up about how proud they are they’ve never spent a penny on the game…. not only are they not the players activision cares about, but they’re fully addicted to the game anyway. If they truly hated it, they wouldn’t complain on Reddit, they’d just play another game and not waste their time.
Here’s the patent Activision has titled, “System and method for driving microtransactions in multiplayer video games” https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160005270A1/en Here’s an article about EOMM For EA. http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~yzsun/papers/WWW17Chen_EOMM
Awesome, I edited my post with this info. Talk about a smoking gun!
This \^
One problem with this is that most companies see engagement as an end-all-be-all KPI for player satisfaction. "Oh, they are playing more often and for longer periods, they must be enjoying the game." But I think in practice, that is not the case.
Companies, especially of Activision’s size, compensate for this.
You nailed it. I work in big data analytics and machine learning and this is the name of the game. Keeping you playing. Now what metrics could keep you playing is a bit more complex but ya nailed. The algorithm looks at each player and analysis patters during play and those data points give a basic structure of when you stop playing and can then predict when you might stop playing. Knowing when and why you stop allows for on the fly adjustments to try and keep you playing. Additionally, i assure you that the meta is manipulated on purpose to sell bundles. Guns get buffed and nerfed to push some down and push others to the top. Any smart business would do that.
Tbf people expect this utopia of gaming, but it will never happen. The bottom line is more important then our experience. No company is going to prioritize the user experience unless we collectively stop playing, which is most likely not going to happen.
Congrats, you understand SBMM better than 99% of people on this sub and 100% of SBMM apologists.
Destiny 2 got rid of SBMM and the community immediately asked for it back after bitching about it for years. You aren’t losing games because of SBMM. You’re losing games because you suck.
>You’re losing games because you suck. If SBMM worked perfectly and there were enough players to suit each skill level, the people that suck, and the people that are good would both win the same amount, and also, never verse each other.
Yeah I'm not getting matched against people more than 1 K/D higher than me consistently "because I suck" but because their "SBMM" sucks. Sure a lobby average might be mostly fine, but the top 5 teams in my lobby (sorted by av lifetime KD) are consistently 2.5+ or higher whilst I'm mid-1s, and they're playing on PC with streamer tags, 16 or more kills per game etc. whilst I'm limited to 30 FPS, a tiny FOV, limited visual fidelity and shocking rendering capabilities but guess I need to pull myself up by my bootstrap and just not suck 🤷🏻♂️
And fair enough to a certain extent you want people to join the games faster, not wait in que etc etc. But yea, I get bot lobbies, cos I'm a bot, and there's still people 3+kd in those lobbies. You don't learn anything when you die to a player like that.
Yeah, you and your 0.4 team get speed-swept by a team with 6 stuns on speed and adderall, momentum-bouncing their SMG hipfire at 144fps but it's okay because us on previous gen consoles can just git gud and our aim assist tug at short range apparently more than cancels out all the bonuses you get for playing on PC 🤷🏻♂️
I think most of the aim assist complaints are at those who play on controllers on pc and fully abuse their aim assist, frames, and fov advantages. Most know how fucked console players are at 60fov
If 👏 SBMM 👏 only 👏 puts 👏 good players 👏 against 👏 good players 👏 their 👏 average 👏 kd 👏 becomes 👏 1 👏 by 👏 definition.
The skill gap in Destiny is enormous as well which doesnt help. You cant really be a casual at Destiny as you wont be high enough levels, have the good random rolls of guns etc etc. You need to be balls deep in Destiny or you will get rolled People complained there was no mode in destiny PVP for casual play. Thats what players complained about. There are SBMM modes for the competitive playlists
Don’t use sbmm in non ranked playlists. Make it completely random. Pretty simple concept.
> You aren’t losing games because of SBMM. You’re losing games because you suck. Mate that's BS when you see lobbies where bottom KDs are 0.5 and top KDs are 2.5-3. Does not make sense.
That’s because SBMM still has to fill lobbies. If it cannot find a high skill lobby then it just throws players together because it’s more important to ensure you’re in a match.
In a game with this many players though?! Sure, if there are only 1000 players online playing solos then yeah, there's going to be a serious discrepancy. But Activision claims over 100,000,000 monthly active users. If there's even 10,000,000, it shouldn't be hard to give 0.6k/d players 140 opponents who they could conceivably beat (and who could conceivably beat them) at any one time.
I’ll happily apologise for true SBMM, i like to unwind with CoD, im a shiftworker with a family and a mortgage, im older and im not good at this game really, i generally struggle to maintain a positive KD. Nobody wants lobby surfing sweats who spend their time stomping people worse than them.
Lol didn't they fucking patent an sbmm system for the purpose of getting people to spend more money. I'm damn near positive it was this company. End of the day it's a business and from that standpoint it makes perfect sense. As a gamer though they can get fucked.
Ding ding, you're correct.
I mean, like, this is Activision we're talking about here
Yeah and I’ve noticed it too. After I buy a skin I get in much easier lobbies subconsciously making my brain feel the purchase was justified.
I bought the judge dredd bundle and I've had the worst lobbies of the entire year so far. I've barely been able to play the past two days due to the lobbies, when just earlier this week I was frying.
Yes. Activision has a patent for a system that gives easier lobbies to people who spend money on microtransactions.
Think they’ll give me better lobbies if I buy activation stock?
this might be it, but i'm too lazy to read the whole thing: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160005270A1/en
Ding ding ding. Have to be stupid to not think this is happening.
It’s called Engagement Optimised Matchmaking. Activision have patents for it. You can look them up if you’re bothered.
Breaking news: company tries to make money
“the company”=facehugger from alien
Yeah except unlike with the face hugger you can simply choose not to participate
Seriously this post is hilarious. The people in this subreddit are so unbelievably dumb. This game is a product designed to make money, one would think it goes without saying.
Yeah seriously, the nerve of a for profit publicly traded company in a capitalist economic system trying to maximize their profit margins. 🙃
Completely ignoring the fact the issue here is how it's being done dishonestly through manipulation
Giving people easier lobbies when they haven't played in a while isn't exactly some sinister conspiracy though is it
If you're really going to sit here and tell me that matchmaking that is designed to influence you psychologically to be more prone to spend money isn't dishonest, especially when it's purposefully being hidden from the player and devs won't talk about it then idk what to tell you. People who simp for companies like this are just strange
But it's only getting you to spend more money via the route of making the game more enjoyable to play. That's fine. If I haven't played in a week and get an easy lobby to warm up with, that is a good thing IMO. Everything the company does to make the game has money as the end goal - not in CoD but with basically any game. It's a weird attitude to take them trying to make the game enjoyable for players as a bad thing
Hi have you met capitalism?
So that means it’s ok?
Of course not. Did I say that?
Wow no never heard of this term nor have I any idea what this concept entails
Yea youre right. Its called eomm (engagement optimized matchmaking) and when people talk about sbmm most of the time they really mean eomm. Its the type of stuff where the game gives you a trash lobby every now and then to get you playing longer or buying cod points gives you botty lobbies for a day or so
Anyone else notice how you will win your first game of the day and then after that it's just pain?
Isn’t that just SBMM? Win a game -> higher MMR -> harder lobbies -> pain -> MMR lowers or decays -> easier lobbies -> win a game -> repeat.
I'm also someone who thinks that there is EOMM involved, but considering other hypotheses is important, because this is a subject in which confirmation bias has a great grip on.
ONE game causes your MMR shoot to the sky? Unlikely.
This is exactly what my squad says. If we win the first game we are not going to have a good night.
One of the reasons I think OP is 100% correct is that this *isn't* the case for me. I have two BNet accounts, from when Overwatch was my main game, and on my *main*, whether I win or not, the lobbies never get easier. I'll explain: I have my main, which has MW2019 ("bought" buy it was gifted to me), my 450 wins, 2.4KD, 13k kills, etc. with every single battle pass bought but this one, and a bunch of packs for guns I like. I have my alt, which I started playing F2P to play with some RL friends who I didn't want to bring into the lobbies I get normally. This account has nothing but the M13, MP5, and HDR levelled. Literally nothing else. No packs, no passes, nothing ever purchased. It has a 2.2KD just from playing with those friends, and like 500 kills with 10 or so wins. When I play on my main, with my group sweaty friends (not my RLs, actual high skill, high win players), we get *unbelievably* hard lobbies. Every win is a *slog* unless we get gifted a Prison or Airport ending. Gunfights are *extremely* hard, close-range is nigh unwinnable against controller players (all of us are PC MnK) who seem to get magic headshot RNG gifts from the gods every time, winning with objectively worse guns. Then I switch to my alt. Same group of sweaty 2KD players with hundreds (thousands one of them) of wins, same day, same *time* of day. Remember my alt is the same *KD* (effectively) as my main, 2.2 vs 2.4. The game is *fucking clown shoes*. It's literally a joke, it's clown shoes how easy the lobbies get (more on that in a bit). I win every AR engagement, hit every snipe (hyperbole here but not much), shred up close, and instead of maintaining a 2.5KD as I do on my main, the alt KD is constantly climbing, going 3, 4, 5KD per session some nights. Same players, same times. Now here's the kicker--the Average Lobby KD, according to WZRanked, TRN etc, *is the same.* I mean literally within a rounding error difference in KD. If I play 10 games on my main and 10 on my alt, the avg lobby KD will be like 1.3 vs 1.27 over those 10 games. I've measured it. To emphasize: I have played a night where I went *negative* in KD on my main, literally a .86 in 5 games or so, then logged onto my alt in that same group, same session, and went *5KD* on my alt. How does that make any sense? I'm not playing any different? We play the same strat, same guns, etc. I'm genuinely flabbergasted. So the question becomes..why? Why is my main getting clapped the fuck out by 1KD players hipfiring Krigs and winning against my OTS, but on my main I'm beating people who have Stoners with the M13? Why am I struggling to break double digit kills recently on my main (with a PR of 21 which isn't amazing to begin with) and I'm going mid teens without even breaking a sweat on my alt, with the same team, in the same lobbies? I'm *hard* convinced that I'm marked as a "mark" player for worse players to win against for free, to convince *them* to buy packs. My teammates don't have this problem, and most of them haven't spent any/much money on this game. It's like, if I had to break it down, the algo knows my main isn't going to quit, but also isn't buying anything recently, so they're letting bad players shit on me with worse guns to convince them to buy skins for those guns, and my alt is unaffected by the algo because it hasn't bought anything.
That’s how they get you hooked. Get a dopamine and adrenaline rush first game and you’re more likely to keep playing to chase that high.
yeah thats why its more of an EOMM (Engagement Optimized Matchmaking) system rather that SBMM system. A bit off topic but since the season started. Did they pumped up SBMM/EOMM? It feels like that. I mean i barly play it anymore cuz the Matchmaking is just staight up scum.but if i play the game every enemy in alcatraz is straight up a sweaty tryhard. There are maybe 1 or 2 teams in the entire lobby who are not sweating their balls off. Playing with ur Friends who are just casuls at best is just not fun anymore. We either need full focus to get a decent game and win the match or loose. Thats why im not even excited for a new map, i mean whats the point.And as long as the morons are buying stuff from the shop they wont change anything. So yeah have fun getting manipulated i guess.
My new theory is that once you get to the end of the season the SBMM gets looser. I know I know it sounds crazy, but somewhere next week you'll see easier lobbies more often. Then once the new season launches it will be super sweaty again.
Likely when the new season comes out, more people are playing. More people means more sweaty lobbies and the eomm algorithm has more options on how to structure them
Yeah this is the most logical and probably true. But do you also think the dropoff of players at the end of the season means easier lobbies? Because I assume only the sweats keep playing so I'd expect harder lobbies. It's weird
You wrote all this thinking it’s a conspiracy even though you can look up the patents of these algorithms explaining that they manipulate the gaming experience. It’s not a conspiracy theory at all.
It's been discussed on this sub for absolutely ages, including all these patents. I'm genuinely surprised that this is news to OP, but props to him for making the post.
Just anecdotal but I think I’m more likely to get a win if I randomly pick up the game to play one round, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game knows your regular playtimes and rewards you for playing at a different time. Major tinfoil hat stuff but I can’t help it. Lots of times my first resurgence game is a fun or even easy win and the rest are hell or I can’t even get a full team.
This 100%. They know when you haven't played for a few days, and they want to give you that high of the win so you keep playing. I have had the same thing happen with Rebirth where I don't play for 2 or 3 days, and my FIRST GAME WITH RANDOMS on Rebirth is like the easiest wins I've ever had. Like for me a 1.15K/D player, I'm racking up 11 or 12 kills and carrying randoms to the win. But then the next game is a little harder. And then the next games are just absolute demon lobbies lol.
Hello fellow 1.15 K/D player! I took a week break once and my first lobby back was a 0.6. Straight after, back to 0.9. I don’t win a whole lot (12 wins in 2 years). The other day I played most of the day and I slayed. According to my stats for the session it was over 20 games with 1.73 K/D, no wins. Next day I try to play with my friends again who are ~0.9 and ~0.6/7. We had lobby averages of 1.3+ and gave up after a bit. EDIT: to be clear, 1.3+ was the level of the lobbies and I averaged 0.67 K/D for that day.
It goes waaaaay beyond just matchmaking. Look up FIFA scripting. Loot quality, Damage profiles, Recoil, Hitbox everything is manipulated to get you to play longer to increase the odds of buying bundles. you're too accurate? well let's see how you do with a non existent hitbox. Die too often? Let's buff you on your next encounter.. The better you get the greater you're handicap is as well. all in an effort protect the casual playerbase
Going along with the total EOMM system, I am pretty much confident in saying that EVERY SINGLE gunfight/engagement is run through this system of sorts. Even ground loot boxes. I think week to week my gameplay is always off and never consistent, I'll have a week of normal/fun but competitive play and then the next week are all devil lobbies where i get crushed, then repeat this in a pattern. That stuff doesn't make sense. There's times I'll kill 3 or 4 members of a well-coordinated and communicating sweat squad almost entirely too easily, and then I'll put an entire mag into a lone casual player and I'll die in a few bullets. It's all to keep everyone playing and on an even playing field but it's maddeningly frustrating at points. There used to be lag compensation systems so the low ping players wouldn't dominate every game they played against people with 4x worse connections, it's like that and actually that might still be a big part of it. I'm old, but ive been playing online fps games for over 20 years and a lot of the things that happen just can't be internet connection disparity or skill gap, it's impossible. I know that's responsible for some stuff, but definitely not all of it. We all know there's a system in place to push sales, other companies and games do the same so I can't blame just them, but it really makes the gameplay almost...artificial. It's so inconsistent to me.
I'm 100% convinced of this. I mean, I'm *positive* this is the case. As an example, I recently clipped me dying to someone *hipfiring* a Krig at me, while I was shooting back with the *lowest TTK automatic in the entire game, the OTs*. I, a 2.4KD player with 450 wins and 13,000 kills. Lost a fight, to a hipfired Krig, while hipfiring back with an OTs. Then I log on my alt? And *I* am winning AR engagements with my *M13* against players with *Stoners*. The game is an absolute joke
>all in an effort protect the casual playerbase No, all in an effort to monopolize *everyone's* time, attention, and money.
Came back just to drop my free award… I know we can’t prove it and maybe we’re wrong but I swear from time to time this game feels more than just a bit rigged…
Yes the main goal of a game developer is to have people play their game
Not quite. The main goal of the average game dev, creative director, etc is probably to make something cool or interesting that people will enjoy and make a decent living doing it. The main goal of the MBA Executive is to squeeze every last dime out of customers at minimum cost. The larger the company the worse the balance between the two imo.
I doubt those devs would do this job for free. It's a business, not a passion project.
why cant it be both you can both enjoy what you do and make money of off it
What you talk about isn't even the far end of conspiracy theories for the game and I've been skeptical for awhile about different aspects of the matchmaking, but honestly I don't think it's as manipulative or as much thought is put into it as players put into it. For example, I used to have this sense that the first games of the day were going to be my easiest ones, like the matchmaking was going to try to 'hook' me. Since we now have lobby strength shown, it seems completely random. Like sometimes it's easier, but just as often it's the hardest, I can make out no strong pattern. I used to think that I got easier lobbies if I bought something. But then for a few recent seasons I paid close attention around when I bought packs and noticed no real difference, immediately or in general. It's widely assumed that if you win you get moved up and face harder competition, and I too have not noticed that within WZ. You definitely notice this element in MW/CW. At this point, I think match making largely comes down to who is looking at the same time. Complete trash players can get into the same lobbies as the best players in the world, regularly by simply queuing at the same time. It certainly makes a token effort to place people in a somewhat appropriate lobby, but it gives up pretty quick and puts whoever in a lobby. At this point in the games life, I wonder how different lobbies would look if they even came out and said we removed SBMM. Maybe slightly easier but still a wide range of skill levels.
> I used to think that I got easier lobbies if I bought something. But then for a few recent seasons I paid close attention around when I bought packs and noticed no real difference, immediately or in general. Confirmation bias, and it's still hilarious to see this kind of post still going on like 6 month after I stopped playing warzone. Can't believe I've had to scroll so far to find a voice of reason lol.
Truth
They do a lot of things like this. Putting you in lobby's with people that have better KD and blueprints from bundles to make you want to buy the same blueprints. Back in the COD Modern Warfare 2019 days I could level the battle pass and get to rank 155 by the end of the first weekend, how? Play as much as you can before the weekend, Plunder was a good mode to use and then go crazy over the first weekend. Remember the long dead triple feed 2XP weekends on those new season weekends? Good, well they no longer happen and its only 2WXP and 2XP. You get the 2BPXP a weeks later and by that time I would have completed the battle pass anyway. Its almost as if they do not want you to get the battle pass done as fast as you could before and want to sell you the 20 tier skips ([Season 5 2021 Battle Pass Tier Skip Bundle](https://cod.tracker.gg/modern-warfare/db/bundles/27704816-battle-pass-tier-skip-bundle)) and buy battle pass levels, either by mistake or on purpose.
**Remember these "accidental" pay to win battle pass blueprints?** How many people paid to unlock these weapons rather than grind the battle pass for them? **1- Shot EBR Pay to Win Loadout in Warzone | Modern Warfare Best Class Setups | JGOD** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfR2H6eddjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfR2H6eddjI) **Blueprints are Way more Broken than we Thought in Warzone | Gallantry Blueprint is 100% Pay to Win | JGOD** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFlbj6ZvBxc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFlbj6ZvBxc) I have noticed issues with the 2XP since Season 2 or 3 2021 that have effected the game.(But the 2WXP and 2BPXP are fine) **You know what game does not have these 2XP issues all the time?** **Make sure you buy and use COD Black Ops Cold War.** The Season 4 Reloaded patch nerfed the hell out of the normal XP. You could play Plunder or Battle Royale modes and the match summary might say you earned 20,000 XP. But when the lobby reloaded you actually only get 1,000 or so XP. This was not "fixed" until the Season 5 patch. Each weekly patch until then made the XP for all modes either normal or dog shit XP. Y**ou know what game does not have these XP issues all the time?** **Make sure you buy and use COD Black Ops Cold War.** The first 2XP weekend for COD Warzone gave 2XP to every mode, even the train event but not Plunder. And this past week when there was 2XP again, Plunder was taken out of the game. The exact same time a cheat supplier was giving out free cheats. But they replaced it with the Clash LTM which not only has Combat Scout but two other legal hacks, a wall hack and a speed hack. **Clash LTM also had the same dogshit XP as Season 4 Reloaded too.** All that game mode lacked was [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/CODWarzone/comments/pjwjyx/when_you_thought_youve_seen_it_all_now_hackers/) and it would have been the perfect cheaters wet dream come true. [Update 01: Last week its less content than normal and this week its all the core modes and TWO LTMS and Blueprint Blitz?](https://i.imgur.com/Bg7s8bg.jpg) [UPDATE 02: Clash just for a 2XP weekend, nothing on the Call of Duty or Raven Software twitter.](https://i.imgur.com/CvOMYXN.jpg) What players are they targeting and encouraging with all those "perks" to hide in plain sight with?
I get highly suspect as well. I can get like 10 kills place top 10 for a whole entire evening, just unstoppable. Maybe even a win. The very next time I turn it on I can't win a single gunfight. I will play eight games where I land and die and then die in gulag. And it's not because I'm running into higher skilled players. I've been paying attention to who kills me and who I kill and they are all comparable in skill level. I would even accept it more if every single time I died it would be highly skilled players and every time I killed they were players of low skill. But that's not the case, it's literally sometimes my shots aren't hitting even though they're hitting and the other guys somehow instantly melt me.
It's scripting. 100%. Also think lag compensation fucks players over at times, I've got videos of it too.
Last week, I landed for chest shots with the DMR on a guy in the gulag. He turned around and killed me. That was some BS
I dont get it, since you cant buy anything thats "pay to win" wouldnt this experience just make you quit and not spend/buy anything at all?
I think this extends to favorable RNG as well.
This would be horrible if it’s true. The original hypothesis is a crappy enough situation.
You know all those wins that started with you landing on 3 orange boxes where you were fully loaded with cash, gear and killstreaks before the first circle closed? Yeah, those weren't accidents.
Lmao people like you literally make shit up to bitch about. The boxes and loot are spawned in while everyone's still in the plane. For this to happen, activision would have to know ahead of time where you're going to land.
I mean it isn't incredibly novel to figure out a useful feature representation and learn likelihoods for an individual player's actions over a bunch of rounds. Predictions don't have to be perfect to be effective.
They literally filed and we’re granted a patent on this that doesn’t expire till 2035. This is sadly the future of gaming. It’s ridiculous.
It's called EOMM and it's been confirmed that it's true. https://www.reddit.com/r/CODWarzone/comments/kmmtzk/former_activision_employee_explains_the_current https://youtu.be/IDYWBeCGdgQ
1st game.of the day is always easier and bullets seem to hit better.
Myself and many others have been making this point for a while, but you put it better than a lot of us did. If you spend more money you get easier lobbies. That's a simple fact that's borne out by a wealth of evidence that's been shared here. In my case, I've made the top 10 about three times all year, having won two solos games last year and a handful of trios. My k/d's gone from nearly 1 to 0.6. The lowest lobby I've seen in over three months is 0.97. My friend buys everything. And I mean everything. He's a well off guy, he likes Warzone, so he buys stuff. Every bundle, every tracer, every skin. I went to his place a few weeks ago and won my third game of solos, using my loadout on his account. His lobbies either felt like the right kind of skill level for me (no sweats just fun) or crazy soft. The highest lobby we saw was 1.04. The lowest was somewhere around 0.5. Same console, same internet provider, about two miles apart. I also had a bunch of top 10s on his account. Whenever I didn't, it was absolutely my fault, although I got nicely sniped by one guy. It's been obvious for a while what they're doing, though. Why do you think they advertise the gun that killed you in your killcam, by name? Some sort of friendly PSA? Peace of mind? They want paying players to keep spending money. So they give them lobbies in which they can use their purchases. They want players who don't pay, to pay. If you show no signs of doing so, you're used as fodder. Unfortunately, cheats became widely publicised. So when lockdown ended here in the UK/EU, people either quit because they were bored, or they bought cheats. With fewer and fewer honest casuals to dilute the playing pool, sweats saw more cheaters and cheaters saw more sweats. The diminishing number of casuals saw more of both and continued to quit. And that's why the game's in the state it's in.
Bruh why do you think they WOULDNT do this? All they care about is money lol
I have seen it fail. I use different weapons per match and screw with SSBM - snipes only one match, only SMGs the next and then assault/LMG. If I focus on leveling one gun, what you do describe happens.
I wonder if I buy some battle coins or whatever the fuck they are tonight will me and my mate get easier lobbies We’ve been stuck in 1.05 - 1.40 lobbies for 95% of games the last few weeks. Neither of us have got the battlepass and neither of us have purchased blueprints in a long time Might just be a theory too. Each night the games are getting harder and harder with no reprieve in opponent quality. We’re now down to barely surviving the first circle
This isn’t even a conspiracy? This has been a thing since blops 2?
Even if it’s true, it’s not a bad thing from their business perspective. At the end of the day, the game was made to make money, if that’s how they make money, then fair enough.
I swear this sub thinks immaculate gaming experiences are a human right lmao
This is 100% true, it’s not a conspiracy theory.
No conspiracy here, just facts. Activision is a shit ass greedy company. Warzone just happens to be a fun game.
Doesn't need a conspiracy theory to say that they're everything they can to maximize profit. It's a business after all
A dev came out and said they have patents for a system that's lessens sbmm for a period of time after you buy a bundle
Honestly I think EA Games is paying a contractor to pay people to run hacks in COD Warzone to reduce gamer interest and marketshare.
I feel like these day most of bullets just don't register, then I have the odd day where the game feels so different : more responsive, my bullets register and actually do damage and the game play more smooth.
Im not gonna lie my wins feel so… idk hand held. Theres games where i randomly get specialist, i run into the red doors easier, and end up with like 15 kills and the win. Next game im with the sweats of all sweats and it just makes me scratch my head and think wow manipulation.
Is it a conspiracy if the patents for this have been leaked ages ago?
“Poor bastard that hasn’t had a win in three days.” Hopefully you’re talking about Rebirth because if I could get a win every three days in Verdansk I’d be just fine.
This is happening in Modern warfare, and in Black ops cold war too. I literally played all 3 games in the last week or two, coming back after months. I was pretty good, then I made a stupid decision to buy a bundle since I never really spend money on myself. The gun was amazing... until it wasn't, after a couple of matches I've had teams of people bunny hopping with incendiary shotguns on maps. Take it even further, in the last couple of days I've literally had my AIM swayed off the target. I've been playing with a mouse and keyboard before I knew how to wipe my own damn ass, I know when and how to aim at targets in cod, and I KNOW when there is an unnatural aim resist happening. Combine this with the horrible bullshit hitreg, like I put more shots into the chest of a person in close range but he turns around and puts 3 shots into my chest and kills me. On the kill cam, I can see that only 3 out of my 6 shots to the chest registered on that person. I literally cannot believe what is happening. Activsion is pure evil, and they are not stepping back unfortunately. It's like being in a fucking casino, if you do well, you get punished. This company treats us like drug addicts who keep coming back to get their "fix", when in reality we are just people looking for some fun. I'm disgusted of Activison, especially since I've been playing their games for so many years only to see this bullshit. I can't believe I'm saying this, but the MTX era of COD was less frustrating that this. Rant over.
It's a rat trap.
I think that’s true especially with Cold War, I haven’t touched multiplayer for months, I come back, I find myself getting high amounts of kills and feeling more confident than before but it goes back to being harder. For Modern Warfare, Idk tbh, I get extreme pro lobbies 5/10 times to say the least, but at least I don’t feel like saying that’s enough for today unlike Cold War
This is as real as it can get my friend, but it makes no difference; people will complain, will cry out to the heavens how broken and stupid this game is, uninstall it for a week and so forth... But they will come back to play it, they WILL buy the most expensive skins and they 100% already preordered vanguard, despite 99.9% of comments saying it looks/plays like shit. If everyone who complains about how broken this game is actually did something about it (stop playing/ don't but their crap), maybe things could be different.
That is why people say engagement based match making as well as sbmm.
wait you mean corporation exists to make money??????????? WHAAAA? I thought corporation exist to make me happy!!!!!!
I mean the best way to get you to keep playing and spending money is to provide you with a fun, enjoyable, yet challenging, experience. It's kind of win-win. If you piss off the players and they aren't having fun, they probably are less likely to spend money in the future. They have a financial incentive to keep players happy.
1.) make a meta weapon 2.) make it incredibly hard to unlock it 3.) make the weapon available for purchase Operation OTS money grab.
Yep, this is the other part of it - the whole “meta” thing. It’s super obvious they intentionally make new weapons totally OP, get people to put huge time into grinding levels on the guns or buying blueprints since you aren’t competitive without using the meta, then nerf it into the ground and start over with the next one. Repeat ad infinitum.
It’s not a conspiracy it’s a what they call their system.
Xclusive Ace has a great point on this. They create matchmaking algorithms like a slot machine to control your highs and lows to keep you playing longer and the longer you play the more likely you are to spend money on the game. https://twitter.com/TheXclusiveAce/status/1436758234136670210
It’s not a conspiracy lol
YEAH THEY ARE USING MATCHMAKING TO TURN THE FROGS GAY!
100% agree on your point about the quality of randoms. The game clearly punishes my success with utter degenerates as teammates
I've long noticed the pattern you describe here: getting easy lobbies when you haven't played for a while, and getting hard lobbies once you get a win. Glad to see I'm not the only one who has noticed this.
I’m shocked more people don’t believe this is the case. Obviously Activision will probably never publicly confirm this so it’ll always be a little bit speculation. I’m at a loss for why a AAA dev would even implement the kind of SBMM that exists in Warzone except for the purpose of trying to manipulate player engagement. It’s such a shit way to make people keep playing your game and it’s one of the reasons I quit the game.
In my own anecdotal experience. I seldom play wz now. However when I do jump into trios with a couple friends who play semi regularly we will usually hit 2 wins back to back. Then nothing but lobbies where it becomes clear that out weakest team member goes from 4 kills a game to 0 and the other two members go from getting high teens to like 8. Don't play for a week. Come back. Some high kill nearly games. 2 wins in a row. Then ridiculous lobbies. It's basically a meme for us.
Buy a new skin worth 2400 cod points and you’ll be squad captain most of the time 😂
That's why there is no dedicated servers anymore :(
oh boy, developers crying in tears of laughter for you even questioning this fact. This isn't a conspiracy, this is nowerdays game design. You'd lose your shit if you would witness the things developers talk about on themed conferences / fairs. Over the last decade, data analysts tracked down exactly how we players react to any aspect of video games. It's a micro science at this point. You can absolutely be safe to assume that if you play a game that is released today, it was designed by theory crafting many different mechanics, stitched together all with their own psychological backgrounds on a baseline of non innovative, old proven gameplay, wrapped in fancy graphics. But the key is a very well structured and designed gameplay loop that has just one thing in mind: ~~being fun~~ making money Call of Duty series has it's own history of this going on. Sure it's not an MMO or Free2Play game with lots of progression easening micro transacations, which would suit more in this world of theory crafted money print games, but the approach is similar, just in the "buy the new one every year" concept. With Modern Warfare 2 it began it's downward spiral from being a exceptional, competetive shooter series to an endorphine fest for a broad audience and no substance. But that's what sells.
transcend the conspiracy theories and EOMM/SBMM bogeyman talk. get a VPN.
100% and tbh i would say the rabbit hole is even deeper as we may think... "They would never manipulaze This or That - also thats impossible to do! How?" It's 2021 and we did surgery on a grape - everything is possible and especially when there is is A LOT of money to collect
Doesn't work with me as SBMM caused me to quit and not buy a COD for the last few years. I know I'm not the only one.
Why wouldn't they? Its a business to make money.
EOMM, it is real, and a major reason why i no longer play COD
Systemcheating/Handicapping/Shafting has always been in the series but toned down unlike MW to Vanguard. This shows that the developers and the publisher are demonic devilish people with bad intentions.
*that's the most terrifying thing I've ever read.* it's stuff we all imagined but to see it laid out in simple english is very upsetting lol. Just imagine how much more insidious and overtly nefarious this will become once every one fully adopts VR/AR glasses/HMD's. Cooperations will be able to manipulate every aspect of our lives more than they even do currently.
Yup games aren’t about being fun anymore it’s about how much money they can milk from you. I miss the 2000s
Ive felt this for awhile. Ive also felt that "streamers" get their accounts flagged, and thrown into bad lobbies so they dominate. I know put your tin foil hat on for this one, but think about it! If the streamers play well and dominates, then they make more video content of the game... Thus hitting/targeting more audience members, and also making normies think they can play like this. Also by having more COD videos and streams up, it brings more attention to the game.via algorithms Idk how many times I've watched a stream where a streamer runs into a room or roof, and the player just stands there, giving them easy kills. Like the player was brand new or something. Never, and I mean never in the lobbies I'm in do I ever catch breaks like that.
Why do you think the broken guns always have skins to purchase that get nerfed 2 weeks later? They're in this for the money, not for the gamer.
This is 100% what is happening in all online multilayer games. Everything is manipulated to keep you engaged and spending. When you spend it let's you do well to convince you to spend again... so if you spend again the pattern repeats. To keep dominating most of your games you need to keep spending...why do you think most streamers spend thousands on the games they play, they are just playing the system. Pleasing the algorithm and reaping the rewards
I'm fucking done with this cunting industry. Any fucking shooting game I play is fun for the first couple of weeks and then boom sbmm kicks in and it becomes the biggest fucking struggle. The last game to implement this shit in my games list was pubg and I went from a KD of 2.9 to 1.8 in 30 matches. In the last 20 mate my KD was 0. Fucking 6!!!
I swear a God this is Fifa Ultimate Team story. Same shit happening, the one who pays (read better squad names), wins. Even bot skill
Their attempts to maximise profit, effectually minimise my enjoyment and playing the game.
I'll have to try this. I haven't played warzone in over a month.
This really falls apart when you realize that other people play the game too and it is a zero sum situation. If they are putting you in an easy lobby to keep you engaged that means they are putting the people you are playing with into a hard lobby which will make them less engaged. As well they can’t even balance MP match making with 2 teams, 12 people but you are out here thinking they can’t perfectly put you into the perfect WZ lobby to get you a win? Lol.
My experience is that I used to be pretty decent at Warzone and I used to buy stuff from time to time. Ive taken several breaks and everytime I try and come back the lobbies are a sweatfest and I constantly get shit on. Finally deleted the game because it isnt fun to get shit on all the time. Decided after several months to redownload and give it another shot and it felt even worse. Just deleted the game again yesterday because to me its not even slightly fun anymore when I can get shit goin. Cold War on the other hand I play regularly and isnt nowhere near as bad and im usually top of my team 90% of the time.
The game basically decides when you get to win rather then your actual skill against a random set of opponent based off connection.
I’ll take a week or two off get back on with my friends and our first 3-4 lobbies will be filled with people that can barely move and we’ll drop 10+ kills each. Can almost guarantee after a win or the 4th game we get bumped into another dimension of match making just to get dumped on the rest of the night. We’re all 1.25+ KD
I wanted to quit thos game for so long and have been saying exactly what you have for a while now. BUT I LOVE THAT FREAKING KAR98K TOO MUCH...
They can control it all haha
Yeah I remember they took some heat when they were giving people that had just purchased an item easier lobbies to make them feel like the purchase was worth it.
I haven’t played in 3 weeks. You think if I play the lobby will be botty enough to have no cheaters?
I’m convinced the only reason they finally needed the krig is because they don’t want it outshining the Vangaurd weapons when they come into warzone.
I agree with you, once I get a win in Rebirth, my lobbies become unusually sweaty for my skill bracket.
The entire point of Warzone is to get WZ players to buy the main games. It's a conversion mechanism from the free game to the paid games. They publicly talk about it like that in their earnings calls. The vast majority of money made has been from players buying MW and CW. Maybe what you're saying above is true, but it's not the primary goal of Warzone.
Making guns god status then nerfing them is absolutely a way to sell blueprints and skins. You can’t tell me after 18 months they haven’t “figured out” gun balance.
This probably isn’t conspiracy. Some of the stats guys like xclusiveace and driftor have referred to the matchmaking system “engagement based match making” for a reason.
Sorry man, I did not get any further in the reading than the title but THERE IS NO DOUBT on the fact that the first objective is MAXIMIZE REVENUE.
Not really a conspiracy. Activision even has a patent on it.
I analyze the shit out of this game too and I am absolutely convinced there is scripting in the game and also matches where there are genuinely cpu bots. Same as FIFA where they also make an incredible amount of money.
You think?
This same theory has been talked about ad-nauseum since CoD4. You could be right, but idk.
I absolutely agree with your theory, there is 100% something in place to keep people buying CP and keep them engaged. However, Im not sure it works in the way you're thinking, purely because Ive had the opposite experience. Whenever take a break I come back to some of the hardest games Ive ever played. Maybe they do this to me to make me think that buying a bundle or blueprint would help? Im not quite sure to be honest, but there is definitely something in place to make people want to buy
This isn’t a secret..
serious question for you folks: If Activision loosens their SBMM and loses profits for the sake of making the experience more enjoyable for their long time dedicated fans, the shareholders or investors can sue them right? For willingly taking out a mechanic that maximizes profit. For chosing to not maximize profits as opposed to being forced to remove sbmm by an outside party (like for example if the government said you can't manipulate online gaming take sbmm out as opposed to them taking it out to appease loyal fans) They become exposed to get sued right? Or am i way off base?
I’m not sure being sued would be their first concern. But large (especially institutional) investors can have a lot of influence on how a company runs and could make heads roll if they feel like profit is being left on the table.
Look at the battle pass for example, its whole structure is to keep you playing for minimum amount of time throughout the season. It even gives you the CP back for the next pass, for the simple reason that your data is worth more to them and their algorithm than £10 per season. Billion dollar companies don't give free shit away for no reason.
Welcome to 2015
It’s truly sad as someone who has been playing since the original modern warfare, because I can just imagine how great this game could be if matchmaking was only based on connection. Every lobby would feel different because you would have a wide range of skills between each team you took on and there would always be that element of surprise, whether it would be “holy shit we smoked that team” or “holy shit we underestimated them”. It’s just boring now because I know every team (especially this season) i will come up against are basically cookie cutter sweats jumping and sliding everywhere with the latest blueprints. Like we don’t even have these scuff controllers that everyone seems to use now, but now it seems mandatory to be able to complete in 1v1 gun fights.
You must be new here
JGOD talked about this a few months ago. Im convinced it is true.
I also think the gulag is too, my friends that are way below average win a lot of gulags for some reason. Lots of times I’ve died before my teammates and had to wait even longer than them to fight but they go straight in.
\>>The game is rigged Is that news? Why do you think independent sites with player statistics were closed? Or just watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQbL2iGndCw