Activision
CoD: Modern Warfare 3 devs reveal what’s coming to the game, won’t acknowledge Skill-Based Matchmaking
The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 devs held a Reddit AMA session to reveal what is next for the title, but silently ignored all questions about fixing the Matchmaking.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has not had the highly successful launch that anyone hoped for: devs have been scrambling since the release to fix issues with maps, appease fans concerns and still deliver their constant flux of paid content. Fans on the other hand have been disappointed by its offerings, with an extremely weak and short campaign, recycled maps from older entries, and a Zombies component that completely deviates from the beloved mode.
As such, the developers at Sledgehammer Games chose to hold a Reddit AMA session on Monday to directly answer questions from the players about the game’s multiplayer modes. And while they revealed many positive upcoming features, one of the biggest issues right now was actively ignored.
What’s next for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3?
Aside from the promise of fixing the Groot look-alike operator that’s been controversial for how difficult it is to see them in-game, Sledgehammer promised a slew of testing and updates that is still to come to the various multiplayer modes of the game.
One of the biggest reveals is that the devs are currently working on “non-disbanding lobbies with a cohort of players to determine the performance of such a change.” As of the time of writing, the way matches work resulted in lobbies being completely disbanded after matches, which forces players to jump into matchmaking repeatedly.
Weapon balancing is another of the larger issues being actively worked on , as at launch players found that their Modern Warfare 2 guns were completely unaltered from the previvous game. Due to the changes made to health points and time-to-kill in the new title, this resulted in these weapons becoming objectively inferior to the Modern Warfare 3 weapons added at launch. “We want as many weapons as possible to be viable to suit the variety of playstyles we have in our community. This is where we are looking closely at the data to target immediate tweaks for weapons that seem to be over or under-performing. We expect Season 1 to have higher-level tweaks with S1.5 to have some deeper changes”
Here’s a list of everything mentioned by the devs during the AMA session:
- Scatter Mines and the RGL-80 will be balanced for Hardcore playlists
- Frag Grenades will have their maximum damage reduced and their area of effects rebalanced
- Final Killcams and HUD fixes are in progress
- No plans for a 1v1 mode as of this moment
- No plans to add a Third Person playlist, but the option is available in Custom Games
- Server and game performance will be improved
- Perks will be rebalanced according to active monitoring by the team
- Streak Looping (Killstreaks reactivating with more kills) will be tested in an experimental playlist
- Classic weapons from the Modern Warfare series will return in future Seasons
- More 24/7 limited time modes will be available through Hardcore playlists
- A 10v10 Moshpit playlist is set to come soon
- Previews of Finishers and Executions are coming to the store
No comments about Skill-Based Matchmaking
Sadly, Sledgehammer completely ignored the pleas of many of the fans during the AMA who asked for a fix to the SBMM (Skill-Based Matchmaking) system that is currently active on every playlist. Many players believe that it should only be active for Ranked modes of the game, as casual players are constantly faced with Smurf accounts (high skill players who lose on purpose to dominate lower-skilled players).
The top-rated comment on the thread, posted by ImMarksman, speaks about this issue in great detail: “I think Skill-Based Matchmaking, Engagement Optimized Matchmaking and Team Balancing is probably one of the largest complaints. Not only is it insanely frustrating for solo players to just queue and enjoy the game, it also makes it really hard to play with friends if your skill difference is too large.”
“Many times people don’t want to consistently use the ‘meta’ weapons to hold their own in games. But the system doesn’t really seem to get that until you’ve suffered for hours on end. Would it be possible to test having these much lower in that experimental playlist? It would cool to see and try out.”
However, the devs ignored ImMarksman, as well as the dozens of other posts about the issue. Their silence was greatly noticed, as this is probably one of the most talked about issues plaguing the game right now.