If there’s one thing that’s been talked about a lot lately among esports pros, streamers, and us mere mortals (in the online shooter sphere), it’s the matchmaking system in Call of Duty and how poorly it often seems to work. It’s not uncommon to be thrown into lobbies where players chasing nukes blast past at 300 km/h and shoot you in the head with a single no scope bullet and at the players’ request, Activision has started a blog series where they go through in detail how their skill-based matchmaking works.
In the last post we found out that voice chat options and choice of Resurgence map matter, and today we found out that “time to match” matters more than “skill”, which is no doubt part of the problem. Anyway, you can read about the whole thing, here.
Call of Duty Matchmaking Intel – White Paper #2
“Today, the Call of Duty team published the next installment of its ongoing white paper series detailing Call of Duty’s matchmaking system titled “Matchmaking Series: The Role of Skill in Matchmaking”. This engineering document shares a look at matchmaking inside Call of Duty multiplayer, including how we always work to create a balanced system for the benefit of all players. While skill is one of many factors in matchmaking; it is not the driving force behind Call of Duty’s matchmaking system.
With respect to skill, one area that is critical to consider is team balance. Team balancing is very important for forming games where players can have fun and enjoy competitive matches. Blowouts result in players leaving the game which adversely affects the player pool. Team balance itself is covered in more detail within the white paper. As previously detailed in the first Matchmaking Intel Blog, Call of Duty has historically considered player skill among other factors as part of the matchmaking process as far back as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007). One of the topics explored in the white paper is recent and historical testing around loosening skill in matchmaking (increasing the gap in skill between players in a lobby).”