Now we all know the CBMM vs SBMM arguement. Both benefit a chunk of the community at the expense of the other. I'm not here to scream "REMOVE SBMM." I don't think that's the best solution. I think the solution lies somewhere in between CBMM and SBMM.
Currently, the system often presnets players with the following 3 problems (with proposed solutions):
1. Lag. Most obvious thing here. SBMM creates more laggy environments. My proposed solution to this is essentially more strict connection search criteria. Have the matchmaking system search for excess players within a certain skill level, and then remove all the players from the pool that do not meet a connection standard. Simple. This will result in a slighter looser SBMM criteria, but I think we can all agree that a [i]slightly[/i] wider skill range search is acceptable if we can ensure the match is of the highest connection quality.
2. Stacked teams. I don't mean 6 friends chilling together. I mean guys who went to LFG, posted "2.0+ K/D QP Farm" and went in. More often than not, the system has issues finding matches within that team's skill level, so the skill-based search criteria expands, resulting in the inevitable stompfest. That's not fun to anyone, casual or not, except for the stack. My proposed solution is that [b][i]stacked[/i][/b] teams [b]ONLY[/b] match [b][i]stacked[/i][/b] teams, or at the very least, stacked teams get extremely steep competition. The matchmaking system will have to determine if the stack is actually a stack or just 6 friends, which is easy to do. It can easily check for things like:
A. High ELOs across the board.
B. Inflated stats across the board.
C. More than 4 players in the team.
D. History of stacking.
E. Other things that are specific to stacked teams and generally not associated with a group of friends.
If ALL or most of the criteria is met, the system could then label it as "stacked" and then ensure they get matched against another stack. Hopefully that way friends just teaming up will be fine while stacks will only face teams of the same mentality.
3. Outliers in matches. Players with inflated stats that either solo queue or duo queue often can't find a match, so their criteria expands. This often results in team balancing putting all the "worst" players on their team and the best on the opponent's. This creates lobbies where the outliers do well, but their team gets farmed while the opposition does well. That's not fun for those lower skilled players. My proposed solution is to identify the outliers and remove them from the team balancing process. For example, say two outliers join a game. Remove both of them, balance the remaining ten players, and then add the outliers in accordingly. This way, ten players in the lobby will have a chance at success while the outliers aren't punished for their stats by long queue times or poor team balancing.
With this additional criteria in place, hopefully the system would be more of a CBMM/SBMM hybrid with special criteria for outliers and stacked teams. I honestly think this will make PvP a better experience across the board.
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They should use grinder. Seems to put weirdos together no problems at all?
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There is no reason we can't keep Control, Comp, Rumble, and IB SBMM and make "Classic Mix/Quick Play" and the others CBMM. Honestly Bungie needs to up their server game. A lot of players have serious connection issues in Crucible even when their internet is working optimally and we can play the rest of the game without issues.
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There's currently 4 platforms, and 9 crucible playlists. In 9 months I'd guess they release a dumbed down next gen pc version for the 2 new consoles, that'll be 6 platforms, 9 playlists, and 400k daily players (it'll prob be a lot lower by then). Even with no sbmm involved, concurrent numbers won't support it.
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Naw fam, REMOVE SBMM!!! Make the game great again!!! FUN!!
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Yeah, no. If stacks can only match other stacks then the matchmaking times are going to be horrendous. It's also pretty likely you'd just be matching the same team over and over again due to how small the pool of stacks is. Also think it's worth noting that good players are usually friends with other good players. Don't think it's fair for people who are actually just playing with friends to suffer slow matchmaking times and bad connections. A group of three good players is also more than enough to crush a lobby if they're good enough, so people who wanna stack will just switch to 3-stacking instead of 6-stacking to avoid your changes.
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Ok, but what if I’m playing with my friends who are all high elo/high star players because they are genuinely good at the game...
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I always say preferences so those that want to avoid lag can have it and those that don't care can have a small skill gap. Even when I seriously doubt SBMM even freaking works and lose games because I got shot through a corner
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You wrote a lot of nothing. It's nothing because player numbers won't support it. Sorry
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A freelance playlist for QP would solve #2
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Great suggestions, especially the 3. regarding team balancing. This has been a long time problem I've been mulling over (and experienced first hand *a lot* especially with CBMM playlists) and just couldn't come up with a solution. This is sound.