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Modern Warfare III sets new engagement records

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
HeisenbergFX4, I love you like a (NeoGAF) brother, but I think you got this one waaaaaay wrong.

SBMM exists to protect 90% of the lower skilled players from getting wrecked by the top 10% most skilled players. The reason why these developers added SBMM to casual playlists is because the fat wolves scare away the rabbits relatively quickly.

These developers don't want to do extra work. They're doing the extra work because their data shows what happens to playlist populations when fat wolves are getting 30+ kill games against 90% of the lobbies.

Now for a controversial take...

If your game is less enjoyable when players of similar skill face off against eachother, you have yourself a bad game.

skeletor-running-away.gif
Yeah I don't agree with anything you said but we can disagree and still get along

:)
 

IDappa

Member
SBMM is a necessary tool. Let’s be real none of your buddies are like 2.5+ KD average. Otherwise they would get stomped game in game out.

The only reason this became a complaint is because trash streamers like Courage kept getting shit on when he capped out on his skill rating so now he can’t make clips of himself dunking on people because he is in fact average and fat.

You take away sbmm and all it does is trash tier people like him get into lobbies to ego boost.
Sbmm is shit because most of the time it favors one team over another. The balance always seems off. I am pretty decent at most shooters and consistently get put on teams that are nowhere near the opposite sides skill. Seems like if you’re good at a shooter with sbmm it expects you to just carry every game. They always seem to keep you at a 50 percent win rate and you will be punished if you exceed this rate.

I only really engage in shooters with a ranking sbmm/comp mode because I do like the skill progression, however I just think there’s no room for sbmm in a game that’s meant to be a casual run and gun. Even the good players like to kick back and not sweat every minute of game time. It should be clear as day on the start menu, this is our comp pool of game modes and this is our casual pool of game modes. Comp pool has sbmm and casual is a free for all like back in the day.
 

Three

Member
yeah these record engagement figures seem incredibly cherry picked

it’s not even the total hours? so we can assume that while the diehards might be playing it more, overall it’s being played less? 🤔
This would be my guess. The "hours per player" being higher instead of just "hours played" means they've likely lost the casuals who play less hours and only diehards are still playing. This would mean more hours per person, only because there are less people to divide the total hours by. They are even avoiding the actual MAU metric they usually use for "engagement". The hours played per person isn't going to help you sell more mtx or subs so this information is pretty much useless.
 
HeisenbergFX4, I love you like a (NeoGAF) brother, but I think you got this one waaaaaay wrong.

SBMM exists to protect 90% of the lower skilled players from getting wrecked by the top 10% most skilled players. The reason why these developers added SBMM to casual playlists is because the fat wolves scare away the rabbits relatively quickly.

These developers don't want to do extra work. They're doing the extra work because their data shows what happens to playlist populations when fat wolves are getting 30+ kill games against 90% of the lobbies.

Now for a controversial take...

If your game is less enjoyable when players of similar skill face off against eachother, you have yourself a bad game.

skeletor-running-away.gif


This is such a horrible take.

There should be ranked which matches by skill. And there should be open rooms with no skill matching.

SBMM is purely designed to delude bad players that they aren't god awful. It's ruined cods for me. I very casually enjoy cod but I'm also pretty high skill in terms of fps and used to compete on cod like 12 years ago lol. So I wander in, drop a few stupid scores and have a bit of fun. Then every lobby after is full of people with 1000s of hours in cod, sweating their asses off and worst of all abusing all the scummy stuff that would be banned in actual ranked mode because it's broken.

Vanilla cod open rooms are not balanced for a bunch of good players in the same lobby. It's not fun at all and disaster to play in. It's frustrating because the only people who like sbmm probably wouldn't notice much if they didn't have it in a game. Yet people half decent just have a miserable experience. I don't want to sweat every match in a cod ffs.
 

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
This is such a horrible take.

There should be ranked which matches by skill. And there should be open rooms with no skill matching.

SBMM is purely designed to delude bad players that they aren't god awful. It's ruined cods for me. I very casually enjoy cod but I'm also pretty high skill in terms of fps and used to compete on cod like 12 years ago lol. So I wander in, drop a few stupid scores and have a bit of fun. Then every lobby after is full of people with 1000s of hours in cod, sweating their asses off and worst of all abusing all the scummy stuff that would be banned in actual ranked mode because it's broken.

Vanilla cod open rooms are not balanced for a bunch of good players in the same lobby. It's not fun at all and disaster to play in. It's frustrating because the only people who like sbmm probably wouldn't notice much if they didn't have it in a game. Yet people half decent just have a miserable experience. I don't want to sweat every match in a cod ffs.
The Office Thank You GIF
 

havoc00

Member
This is such a horrible take.

There should be ranked which matches by skill. And there should be open rooms with no skill matching.

SBMM is purely designed to delude bad players that they aren't god awful. It's ruined cods for me. I very casually enjoy cod but I'm also pretty high skill in terms of fps and used to compete on cod like 12 years ago lol. So I wander in, drop a few stupid scores and have a bit of fun. Then every lobby after is full of people with 1000s of hours in cod, sweating their asses off and worst of all abusing all the scummy stuff that would be banned in actual ranked mode because it's broken.

Vanilla cod open rooms are not balanced for a bunch of good players in the same lobby. It's not fun at all and disaster to play in. It's frustrating because the only people who like sbmm probably wouldn't notice much if they didn't have it in a game. Yet people half decent just have a miserable experience. I don't want to sweat every match in a cod ffs.
I used to love in the old cods, you would get all types of lobbies, ones that you got crushed in others you dominated etc... it added tons of variety sbmm kills that
 
I used to love in the old cods, you would get all types of lobbies, ones that you got crushed in others you dominated etc... it added tons of variety sbmm kills that

Exactly. I don't even mind a bit of sbmm. But it just seems so fucking busted in the last few cods. Every match should not require full focus to drop a big score. It promotes camping and shitty gameplay all round. Especially on modes/maps which are not competitively viable which in turn promote even more camping/boring sweaty gameplay.

I used to be able to boot a cod, switch my brain off, run around and hit some nice frags. That's the whole reason cod became so popular in the first place.

And as you say - now each lobby is the same experience. It's a shame the data clearly proves there are enough turds who stick around longer because of this shit but they lost me as a player. I may pick this up if ranked drops sooner rather than later and is well implemented.
 

havoc00

Member
Exactly. I don't even mind a bit of sbmm. But it just seems so fucking busted in the last few cods. Every match should not require full focus to drop a big score. It promotes camping and shitty gameplay all round. Especially on modes/maps which are not competitively viable which in turn promote even more camping/boring sweaty gameplay.

I used to be able to boot a cod, switch my brain off, run around and hit some nice frags. That's the whole reason cod became so popular in the first place.

And as you say - now each lobby is the same experience. It's a shame the data clearly proves there are enough turds who stick around longer because of this shit but they lost me as a player. I may pick this up if ranked drops sooner rather than later and is well implemented.
Not only the experience but them not putting ping and location before anything else is criminal. So many games I’ve been paired up with people in other countries
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
How hardcore of you.
Far from it. I don't buy this shit all the time. Now Battlefield, even with a rough beginning, is still retained fun. I like MW2 from last year. I'm not buying 70$ DLC every year. That's why I stopped buying FIFA every year.

I just best Star Ocean 2 remake so you're right about me being hardcore.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
There should be ranked which matches by skill. And there should be open rooms with no skill matching.
The industry started like this.
This no longer exists...FOR. A. REASON.

Low skill players don't like to be dunked on by high skill players, it doesn't matter what mode you call it.


SBMM is purely designed to delude bad players that they aren't god awful.
I used to play basketball. No one who plays basketball, goes to the park, and wants to play with the 10 year old boy and his grandfather. You want to play basketball against people near your skill level.

You'd have to be a psychopath to go to the park and want to play against children as a grown man. Videogames are no different.

It's ruined cods for me. I very casually enjoy cod but I'm also pretty high skill in terms of fps and used to compete on cod like 12 years ago lol. So I wander in, drop a few stupid scores and have a bit of fun. Then every lobby after is full of people with 1000s of hours in cod, sweating their asses off and worst of all abusing all the scummy stuff that would be banned in actual ranked mode because it's broken.
So...you want to dunk on low skill players but you don't like playing against players with higher skill than you? Am I understanding you correctly?

Vanilla cod open rooms are not balanced for a bunch of good players in the same lobby. It's not fun at all and disaster to play in. It's frustrating because the only people who like sbmm probably wouldn't notice much if they didn't have it in a game. Yet people half decent just have a miserable experience. I don't want to sweat every match in a cod ffs.
I suspect the CoD devs do it this way because it leads to better engagement results rather than putting players of similar skill level together.

I've said it once. I've said it 1,000 times. If your game isn't fun when playing people at your skill level...your game isn't good. CoD sucks. Stop playing CoD.
 
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Solidus_T

Member
Warzone players? Yeah it's free.
And since when CoD cares about engagement? They were aways strong on sales.

Oh Microsoft...right...
Nah I think this is all ABK right now. The point about Engagement still sticks, however. Clearly they didn't want to talk about sales records.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
HeisenbergFX4, I love you like a (NeoGAF) brother, but I think you got this one waaaaaay wrong.

SBMM exists to protect 90% of the lower skilled players from getting wrecked by the top 10% most skilled players. The reason why these developers added SBMM to casual playlists is because the fat wolves scare away the rabbits relatively quickly.

These developers don't want to do extra work. They're doing the extra work because their data shows what happens to playlist populations when fat wolves are getting 30+ kill games against 90% of the lobbies.

Now for a controversial take...

If your game is less enjoyable when players of similar skill face off against eachother, you have yourself a bad game.

skeletor-running-away.gif
I think the protecting of low skilled gamers from leaving isn't so much about caring about their feelings. I think it's to keep them around for monetization.

In the old games, the only monetization were occasional map packs and perhaps the game had $5 dashboard themes. Thats it. If gamers leave due to being thrashed, it's not a big deal as they already bought the game and they werent built around GAAS like now where every time you boot up the game you get splash screens everywhere about seasons, events and buying shit.
 
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clarky

Gold Member
COD isn't in gamepass yet. That engagement talk says all I need to know about this flop.
Yeah 2nd top selling game on steam, in every chart all over the world, number two on xbox most played only behind fornite, same on psn.

What a flop. COD is doomed.

New warzone isn't even out yet, watch it really flop then.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I've said it once. I've said it 1,000 times. If your game isn't fun when playing people at your skill level...your game isn't good. CoD sucks. Stop playing CoD.
I dont know about that. Depends on the person.

When it comes to watching sports or playing MP, I enjoy the match a lot more when my team dominates or I kick ass.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
I dont know about that. Depends on the person.

When it comes to watching sports or playing MP, I enjoy the match a lot more when my team dominates or I kick ass.

The scene in Billy Madison, where he crushes kids in dodgeball is funny because grown adults are not supposed to find joy in competing against weak humans.
 

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
The scene in Billy Madison, where he crushes kids in dodgeball is funny because grown adults are not supposed to find joy in competing against weak humans.
My main problem with this SBMM is how wildly it swings.

I have legit had a few nice games then play against people showing Top 250 in the world calling cards and I get wrecked

The SBMM in Rocket League worked so much better when I played that a lot.

If I had several good games I was bumped up to the next tier that I could still compete, I usually lost but it was competitive

In COD I just get smoked if I have a few good games

Plus I hate the fact SBMM works harder putting me in skill based matches than connection based and I know it does that because some of my random matches the ping can get up close to 100 in searching where as the War mode my ping was always in the low teens if not single digits
 

twilo99

Member
Yeah 2nd top selling game on steam, in every chart all over the world, number two on xbox most played only behind fornite, same on psn.

What a flop. COD is doomed.

New warzone isn't even out yet, watch it really flop then.

I don’t know if we would be able to handle this much flopping
 

twilo99

Member
I love how the nanosecond the MS acquisition of ABK completed, they stopped talking about sales and switched to engagement

Have they ever talked about sales numbers for a CoD game that didn’t do as well as the one before it? MWII did some crazy numbers so I doubt they will be beating that anytime soon.
 

Ogbert

Member
I’m loving it. Great maps, good guns. Zombies is fun (although losing the novelty factor).

Not really sure why people get worked up with CoD. It’s like getting angry about McDonald’s.
 
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The industry started like this.
This no longer exists...FOR. A. REASON.

Low skill players don't like to be dunked on by high skill players, it doesn't matter what mode you call it.



I used to play basketball. No one who plays basketball, goes to the park, and wants to play with the 10 year old boy and his grandfather. You want to play basketball against people near your skill level.

You'd have to be a psychopath to go to the park and want to play against children as a grown man. Videogames are no different.


So...you want to dunk on low skill players but you don't like playing against players with higher skill than you? Am I understanding you correctly?


I suspect the CoD devs do it this way because it leads to better engagement results rather than putting players of similar skill level together.

I've said it once. I've said it 1,000 times. If your game isn't fun when playing people at your skill level...your game isn't good. CoD sucks. Stop playing CoD.

You seem to miss the point where I'm happy playing people as good/better than me in a COMPETITIVE RULESET with all the bullshit gadgets, guns, modes and maps BANNED. In those circumstances I like playing people better than me because I'm learning.

What I get matched with isn't even better players than me. It's sweatier players, who just camp and only care about their K/D. It puts good players like me who just run around vs scummy players. Your basketball analogy is appalling.

Read this thread from SOMEWHO ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.

Only thing I agree with you on is yes - they do sbmm purely for engagement results. I thought that was obvious to everyone.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
You seem to miss the point where I'm happy playing people as good/better than me in a COMPETITIVE RULESET with all the bullshit gadgets, guns, modes and maps BANNED. In those circumstances I like playing people better than me because I'm learning.
You and everybody else.

What I get matched with isn't even better players than me. It's sweatier players, who just camp and only care about their K/D.
No, it's better players. Calling them "sweaty" is a psychological trick your mind performs on itself to soothe your ego. "They're not better than me, they're just trying harder than me!"

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

Read this thread from SOMEWHO ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.

This article supports my position 100%.

Only thing I agree with you on is yes - they do sbmm purely for engagement results. I thought that was obvious to everyone.
No, I'm talking about the type of SBMM. It sounds like CoD rubber bands players from feeder matches to matches they dominate in rather than settle people in matches against players near their skill level.

My only hypothesis for why they would be doing that is they know players don't have as much fun playing others near their skill level. If that's the case, CoD is trash.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Such a waste for what qas a good comeback for the series.

Kinda shocked that they just shat this out. Wonder what they can do to bring the hype for the franchise back.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
My main problem with this SBMM is how wildly it swings.

I have legit had a few nice games then play against people showing Top 250 in the world calling cards and I get wrecked

The SBMM in Rocket League worked so much better when I played that a lot.

If I had several good games I was bumped up to the next tier that I could still compete, I usually lost but it was competitive

In COD I just get smoked if I have a few good games

Plus I hate the fact SBMM works harder putting me in skill based matches than connection based and I know it does that because some of my random matches the ping can get up close to 100 in searching where as the War mode my ping was always in the low teens if not single digits

Your issues here are completely reasonable. I'm on board.

highfive-zac-efron.gif
 

The Cockatrice

Gold Member
Do you only buy corporate free games then?

Theres good ones that treat the consumer with fair product, then theres bad ones that treat the consumer like an idiot. You can guess where the Call of Duty franchise is. No need to move this further, enjoy your purchase.
 
First time I've ever been annoyed at gamers for simply buying a game is NW3. This game is so clearly a disgusting cash grab that it insults us all. 4 hour campaign- half of which is recycled warzone bs, multiplayer consisting of mw2 maps that shouldve been added to mw2 2022. Not to mention that you guys buying this game ensures that the previous mw2 will never get fixed and will drastically lose player populations.

Just a disgusting cash grab and people buying it justify then doing it and continuing to do so in the future.
 
No, it's better players. Calling them "sweaty" is a psychological trick your mind performs on itself to soothe your ego. "They're not better than me, they're just trying harder than me!"

No. It's not. I play counter strike to a pretty damn high level. I never call anyone sweaty who is better than me. I'll also get shit on by people in cod, I've played with and against pro players on cod back in the day. I know when someone is better than me.

I'm talking about people camping, not playing the objective, stat whoring, baiting, using scummy weapons and perks which I refuse to use because they are busted. That is sweaty. Please don't patronise me. I have no dunning kruger or delusions of my skill level. I know I'm not the best. I'm just unfortunately one of the victims of being good enough to have a miserable time with cods sbmm.
 

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
First time I've ever been annoyed at gamers for simply buying a game is NW3. This game is so clearly a disgusting cash grab that it insults us all. 4 hour campaign- half of which is recycled warzone bs, multiplayer consisting of mw2 maps that shouldve been added to mw2 2022. Not to mention that you guys buying this game ensures that the previous mw2 will never get fixed and will drastically lose player populations.

Just a disgusting cash grab and people buying it justify then doing it and continuing to do so in the future.
We don't know how well this game has actually sold compared to previous years as this term engagement just means the people who actually bought it has played it more than those who bought last years

In fact sales numbers are likely down as last years broke sales records and they were quick to scream that at every chance they got how well it was selling
 

Little Mac

Gold Member
Should I get the PS5 Slim MW3 or Spider-man 2 bundle? Haven't played a CoD since OG Modern Warfare. Not a huge competitive player but I love playing the campaign and co-op modes. Spider-man 2 is supposed to be good but I haven't played the originals and the combat looks like a bad imitation of the Arkham games (Maybe I need to play it to appreciate it?). I already bought Ghost of Tsushima ($30) and Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade ($16).
 
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MAX PAYMENT

Member
I know that it's all the rage on this forum to shit on Microsoft and call of duty, but I'm confused a bit on how this data would mean the game is a flop?

The campaign for this game is absolute trash.

But the engagement comparison (whatever the hell that even means) is directly compared to the previous 2 modern warfare games. If it's actually better than thr previous 2 games, how does the data represent it being a flop?

I dont keep up with numbers and records at all, so I'll definitely require a simplified explanation lol.
 
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