Nero is not nearly as disdainful of CoD as BT. BT hasn’t even played CoD for years now. That’s how done he is with CoD. Now he only plays Xdefiant and praises it nonstop as better than CoD in every way. I doubt he’ll ever come back to CoD since he seems so happy with Xdefiant.
@RedKingdom28 I personally think both games are ass in some ways that both cod, and xdefiant share, and in other ways where they have their own things that I hate. The only good thing I'll say out both, is they both have good gameplay, and xdefiant has NO SBMM/EOMM in its games... Its mainly the microtranactions is why I think the games are ass At least xdefiant is a free game, so microtranactions are a bit more excusable、but thay cost to much. And as for cod... I payed 70 dollars for the whole game, and I expect to have the whole game, I don't want to be locked out of over 50% of what the game has to offer, because im not willing to spend more money on it. Definitely not spending more than the base game to get a weapon either.
What on Earth are you talking about? The big report they released today was as straight forward as it gets; It makes them a lot of money, it's not going anywhere. Just because it's not what you want to hear doesn't mean "it doesn't make sense" or "they're not being clear." It doesn't get more clear than "we like money." 💀
@@Nazrat84 even if we disregard the money aspect. SBMM is keeping more people playing the game than it is turning them away… sure it can be considered “shady” but it’s keeping the games population “healthy”
@@OMGItzSlickerz This is the idea behind it. If that's not "making sense" thats a skill issue on behalf of the person angry about it because they're saying it in the most direct, verbose way possible. All those CoD skills mean nothing if you don't got reading skills.
Literally why I only play dmz. Not even intending to stop playing mwIII, sbmm just completely killed my passion/wanting to play. Hardly looking forward to bo6 too cuz of it
@NeverMetTheGuy yeah I stopped playing after mw19. No wants a manipulative eomm system. The thing is ppl who don't play the game everyday or aren't that good don't notice the eomm manipulating their game. Eomm only works if you don't notice what it's doing.
I know people want this (I do too) but don't be surprised when people back peddle instantly when they'd get this. Just glance over at the almost SBMM-free casual modes in XDefiant. Being confronted with the fact that you won't be pwning nubs, but that it's way more likely that you'll be some 14 year old's food is painful for a lot of people. Although I still vastly prefer having no (or almost no) SBMM in casual modes and keepin SBMM for ranked only. I like the diversity of random matches. Now if only lobbies didn't break up after every damn match...
@@MrAlaverge1 I watched an economics video explaining that our markets are shifting to luxury branding. As in, focus on the top 3% people with the most money to waste. Guess what skill level the top 3% economic strata whales are in CoD.
This is the most passionate I've ever heard you man. What makes it most frustrating is that this data they shared supports our points but they are still gonna use SBMM anyway
I started playing COD when BO4 came out. I remember being really bad and then getting way better towards the end. I was excited to get MW and SBMM/EOMM killed it for me. Ironically, not knowing whether or not I was getting better is what made me worse because I stopped caring. The game got too sweaty and I got tired of going against wanna be COD pros. Now I’m a competitive person but I also had a full time job. Video games are about fun at the end of the day. It’s fun to get better but it isn’t fun to be crapped on all day and not afforded the opportunity to get better because the game lets everyone get a trophy if they start doing bad enough. I’m 31 now and I don’t have time to even try to get better. I’ll only buy BO6 when it goes on sale because I don’t trust this game anymore haha.
Come join the fighting game community! Theres a ton fo games helping out newer players at a fast rate! We just finished EVO if you wanted to check any games out!
@@Chickensea10 I actually might join the fighting game community. Street fighter and tekken have been looking appealing. I grew up on MK but that didn’t pull me in this year which was disappointing. I’m looking forward to Warhammer 40,000. Its online looks sick. The older I get the more I become a single player gamer but that’s because online games have went downhill so much.
@@rio6524 I hear ya. Theres also, granblue fanatasy versus rising. 2XKO, melty blood type lumina, guilty gear strive! Fatal fury city of the wolves, dragonball sparking zero, and bleach rebirth of souls are also coming out with trailers! Welcome to the fighting game community
It's insane that Activision and the SBMM Avengers are and have been gas lighting us. I want my apology because it wasn't too long ago when people denied it existed and that we just needed to get better or that others got better. Now, it's just LITERALLY a statistical fact that it exists, and it exists to protect 10-20% of the bad players. Wtf is wrong with America...😂
Great comment. Its not just gaming. This "participation trophy or everyone should be equal regardless of skill" mindset has plagued many areas of the world and its disgusting.
This is the best worded video about SBMM in CoD I have ever seen. Literally perfectly explained why it’s in the game and why it SHOULD NOT BE. Every company these days is only thinking about new customers and they start ignoring their loyal (and much larger) fan base. I will NEVER get why. Amazing video man. Easy subscription. 🔥
Bunch of nonsense they are just throwing out ... my numbers in xdefiant went up and i can run and gun ... cod holds you back with rigged spawns and all the nonsense they have in the game
Exactly. I was bad at XD at first but I got better and I now I pop off in most of my games. I still have some games where I get pooped on but thats ok. I love the variety in my matches and I love the feeling of progression. Having a close match in normal connection based lobbies feels so cool because it just happened to play out that way and since you don't do it all the time, its very fun. Having a close. Having a close match in sbmm lobbies is just annoying because I know none of its real. Its all rigged.
the skill based spawns have been insane lately I’ll kill some random dude 3 times in the row & on the 4th the game is like ok its his time for revenge so we’re going to spawn him directly behind you for a free kill 💀
@@sintwo0one That’s the thing though, they haven’t. When i play Ranked on XDefiant i can feel it, the SBMM, but when i play on Quickplay, it feels more relaxed snd i can play the way i want to.
@@Refracturonthey haven’t for now. I don’t think that game is going to last very long to be honest. It was overhyped and still being overhyped by a couple die hard cod haters but the game just isn’t that great. Every cod hater said xdefiant was the cod k1ller. I don’t think they took many players from cod to be honest. It’s probably mostly people that have always played Ubisoft titles. I played Ubisoft fps for about 3 years before trying cod for the first time. To me it feels like a mobile game that was upscaled for console.
They made this data into bar graphs with small percentages to make it look like the difference was bigger than it actually is. They either think we are stupid or won't look deep enough into it to see the truth. A 1-3 kill difference in the least skilled players shouldn't ruin the experience for the top 80% of players.
i dont get how people ignore this. This is a really big deal, the people who aren't at the very bottom just get abused cause activision wants the person who doesn't really care much for the game to buy more bundles
Have you never made a graph before? You think it should’ve been scaled to a 100 on the left side with really tiny bars? And Nero couldn’t even read the graphs right for the video lol
Admitting to manipulating the experience for certain players by having the “higher” and “lower” strength segment SBMM lobbies should be criminal. We’re not fkn test subjects. Scht needs to be way more transparent.
They just admitted to having EOMM, not SBMM. Which is far more nefarious. They claim they manipulate everything to give each team "roughly" a 50% chance to win...but fail to tell you how.... First, if you are doctoring things to encourage a result, you are fixing matches. No way to get around that one, you just are. Now, the big problem is they don't elaborate much here at all. Do we just take them at face value? Both teams have a 50% chance to win? Well, here's a quick question for ya, they also touches on team balancing. My question for you is this, if both teams need to more or less "equal out" during team balancing, and I'm by far the best player in the lobby, then the only way their team balancing can work the way they say it does, is by putting all the bad players on my team till our "team score" zeros out or is close enough to the other teams score....so how do you figure we have a 50% chance to win when I have to carry the entire team? This whole thing contradicts what they said in the last blog and what they said in this one. They think their customers are morons. This data they are showing isn't hard to follow, but it's also not hard to see it doesn't show much of anything either. It's not conclusive of anything, certainly not what they were trying to prove anyway. Honestly if I was the lawyer they made proof read this, I would be sweating, there are so many holes in this it's crazy
@@d8l835let’s be honest, their customers are stupid, even with this paper blatantly calling them test subjects, they’ll still buy the new titles and find a way to defend them
You already give them your money, personal information, and IP address. If realizing they test and train using you as a subject is a wake up moment then it might be time to stop engaging.
Funny how XDefiant doesn't have any of the issues Activision is claiming that SBMM/EOMM fixes... It's almost like Activision is LYING. Oh well, I hope Warzone is bringing them in enough money, because I'm sure XDefiant is going to snatch up all of the neglected CoD multiplayer players. We don't forget all of the endless content recycling, holding back of features, relentless SBMM/EOMM, pay-to=win store bundles etc.
xDefiant has a lot of other issues it has to contend with, and it's also a significantly smaller playerbase than any of the main shooters out on the market. This isn't the own you think it is or want it to be.
I feel burnt out from playing COD and haven’t played it for a few weeks now. Playing solo, with a half squad, or just a party of two is really frustrating. It's strange how the "low skilled players" that SBMM is trying to protect don’t seem to care about their performance like a typical COD player would. If I decide to get BO6, the only mode I'll play is S&D with a full squad. The game has become torturous and SBMM and EOMM have exhausted me. On the other hand, I’m having a great time with XDefiant and don’t even consider returning to MW3.
First, I'll start by stating that I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said in your video. Most casuals don't care. They care about getting a handful of kills and maybe a killstreak or two before turning the game off for the night. And the above average players quit because they get frustrated and/or mentally burned out by playing in sweat lobbies. However, the only thing that Activision cares about is the initial $70 investment (Hell, I could be wrong in that they actually care more about bundle purchases). Companies can't be forced to care unless their bottom line is hurting. Then they'll acknowledge the community concerns. If everyone that bitched about SBMM and lack of dedicated servers, etc. collectively did not give a single cent to Activision until SBMM was eliminated entirely and server server stability was upgraded - Activision would have two choices: A) Give into player's demands and listen to feedback and address it in a timely manner or B) Let the franchise die off. Again, I agree with everything - but at the end of the day....I believe it's a non-factor. Money is king and "valuing customer feedback" card is only played by companies when sales dip below their target sales metrics. Sorry, I wish it wasn't reality. I wish companies made games with customer satisfaction being top priority but those days are long gone and corporate greed killed it.
Oh well. I think some of you are too serious and think if you’re good at a video game it proves something. It’s unfortunate that they would rather please the minority of players but chances are those are the ones buying the packs especially the kids. Maybe instead of sbmm they have a tiered system. Maybe .5-1 kd intervals. You have a 1 kd you play against others of a same kd.
@@The_Conservative_Latino your logic doesn't make sense. Ppl who spend money on the game turn to be consistent, good players. Not noobs. Why would a "noob" buy packs and log on everyday?
@@limbeboy7 not always some people are just bad at the game. They buy packs because their favorite streamer had the skin or that weapon. They don’t want to take the time and play and unlock weapons. Everyone’s a noob until they’re not but some people just stay noobs. To be honest the cheating is more annoying than any negative sbmm can give you. You’ve heard the lobbies, so many people get enraged cause they lost a match or they felt their team didn’t pull enough weight. They get enraged if they don’t like your play style or weapon of choice. So many act like the game is real life or as if they had a billion dollars riding on their stats. By your comment I assume you stopped playing so why continue wasting your time trashing others that still play or like the game. Remember the people that talk trash online and make a lot of noise about how much the game sucks now and that it’s terrible you are the minority, you’re just loud.
And their $30+ overpriced bundles and BlackCell BP. They're helping ruin the game because Activision is more focused on monetizing the game than making an actual fun and engaging game.
I played COD a couple days ago when the game came on game pass. It was the first time my friend played MW3. I hadn’t played since like December. The game was so laggy and felt so bad. We played 3 games and had to play something else. The lag was giving us headaches
Just stopped by to say I played the other day after not playing for 6 weeks, and my 1.5 KD was putting me into the SWEATIEST lobbies I’ve ever seen. Even after not playing for a month and a half SBMM decided I needed to play in 1.5-2 K/D average lobbies. I played for about two hours then hopped off because it just wasn’t enjoyable. SBMM felt like it got ramped up or something. What a bummer
That’s the whole problem with it You can go 14-4 in a game which is terrible if you look at the number of kills, but amazing of you look at KD because it’s 3.5. But your overall KD might be 1.2 Then you get thrown in with CDL champs for the next 10 matches until you’ve gone negative enough times to where you’re dropped down again to a level you can actually compete at How this shit is legal is amazing
well, at least it looks like xd's no sbmm pitch got Activision thinking of "testing" a toned down SBMM. But at the end of the day, we are all statistics, and when stats show SBMM retains players, they're gonna keep it. Manufactured fun, yay!
I absolutely loved your commentary on the Activision study. It's spot on how they prioritize protecting new players who honestly don't even care, while long-time loyal Call of Duty fans who buy the game every year and spend countless hours playing are getting screwed over by the SBMM system. I'm so fed up with long-time Call of Duty players being punished for their dedication instead of being rewarded. Luckily, we have XDefiant, which is not perfect, shows that the developers truly care about the players who want to invest their time in the game. They've proven this by implementing the changes that players have been asking for. And the game is fantastic without SBMM. Hopefully, Call of Duty can learn from this approach. Also, thank you for your work and the great content about games that I've been watching for years! As a Call of Duty fan who started playing from Modern Warfare 2 back in 2009, I 100% agree with your perspective. Cheers!
I actually appreciate the exasperation in your voice. Not in a sadistic way, it just lets me know you actually care and aren't just trying to pump out content to pay the bills. I haven't been a cod main in over 10 years now. They really stopped caring about the people who love the IP.
I couldn’t agree more with your final statements. Activision has been pushing away their hard-core fan base for years now in hopes to gain favor from the more casual community who genuinely couldn’t care less if they play or not. This is a literal definition of the term “Sell Out”
WOW, so spot on, sad black ops 6 will have sbmm too, I won't even play it. In fact, I recently returned to black ops 3 multiplayer on steam & it was awesome, having the same people in muiltiple games is amazing, you get mad at them cause they're good players and you want to actually improve to kill them, even if they kill you 3 times in a row, when you finally kill them you feel you're making progress. And if you're not in the mood to "improve" you can just quit the match and queue in another lobby. In nowadays CoD that feeling doesn't happen, because everyone just has the same level you have, & there's no differences, all matches feel the same, it sucks. Activision is so dumb not understanding this, they're so disconnected
I'm sure they have enough data to pick the "test" group that will give them the results that they want. The true test would be the total player population.
What you mention at 7:17 has been my natural progression in cod. Ever since I was in HS playing cod, I graduated in 09’, I have been getting worse at cod. But only because I have a normal life and have to work. I can’t sit and grind cod for 6-8 hours a day anymore like I did when I was in HS. But ever since 2016-2017 my performance in cod has gotten wayyyyy worse! I bet that’s the time they cranked SBMM and EOMM to its absolute limits!
And I don’t care I’m getting worse. I used to be able to carry a 1.5-1.8 kd in all cod titles since the OG mw4. Ever since 2016-2017 I struggled to maintain a 1 kd… SBMM and eomm have ruined cod
It is what it is, man. The game is gonna be huge, you're gonna cover it to high heaven because it's a money maker, and everything else will fall by the wayside. I don't blame you, just calling it like it is. Classic CoD grip on the industry.
There has to be some sort of correlation between the lower skill bracket and how much money they spend relative to the average player. Thats the only thing that makes any sense to me. Great video Nero thank you for making it.
never heard you raise your voice ever and it shows how painful activision just continues to use SBMM & More ways to screw over the players. Sad Days man.
My first CoD was black ops 1 way back when and I was atrocious to say the least but over time I became a pretty good player, now I can keep up just fine with sbmm CoDs. I still had a blast on cold war, it felt like there wasn't sbmm because I could drop 30+ kills a match every match but I've also played games where the sbmm was noticeable and it truly did feel like I was playing a competitive game every time. I feel like xdefiant is a perfect middle ground the way they split it up, hope more devs would follow suit for games of that format
Stupid thing is that they make their majority of their money off of micro transactionns and they are protecting the lower brackets who are less likely to purchess skins.
People leave anyway because they have 1 stud match where they carried the team and are the reason the team one the last game, then SBMM punishes them for the next 8 matches. There is no feeling of growth or progression.
When I was a kid I got my ass handed to me in Cod 4. By the time World at War came out I got better and was doing the ass kicking more often. For Activision to say sbmm protects people from quitting is horse crap. Those same people are gonna quit most things in life.
they actually mentioned something about that. they thought about dropping a non sbmm mode but they figured itll only be the sweats in there anyways. They never said they wont add it so its possible its introduced sometime in the future.
@@Lowsky__apparently they did a test recently where they “turned off sbmm” for a percentage of the player base a few weeks ago. Me & my boy noticed it because we were ripping lobbies even getting double nukes it was a blast, seems to be over now tho as every game is a 1/2v6 again where it expects me to carry my clueless team to victory
Every suggestion to "fix" SBMM was tried and not one of them worked with hard data and numbers to back it up. You can only bargain so much but once you get math involved and the results are objective, you're kind of boned if you want SBMM gone.
For all we know they could have pulled those number out of their rear ends. They lie literally about everything, and now they are telling the truth? Not in a million years
If every variable involved in matchmaking is weighed at say 10% importance, and ping is 11%, when they say ping is king, it's still a factually true statement, but grossly representing what that means. The community wants to have the best connection possible to them. That's not an unfair thing to ask for. If I live near a server, I want to connect to that server the majority of the time, not one 1000s of miles away because my skill, or wether or not my mic is on makes me match better to this other server...that is so unbelievably stupid. They are intentionally hiding actual data that would prove what they are saying or wording it in a way that makes it partially true, half truths so to say. The entire document, and the last one was crafted this way. Having an arbitrary graph that was only representitive of a portion of the player base during a single test with no other data given is completely meaningless. There are so many other variables contributing to that data that they will not show you...why? Why do companies do stuff like this? They are intentionally hiding something, so it has to be bad or they would just prove us all wrong to shut us all up for good. Like why drip feed us any of what they have so far? They know a very substantial percentage of the playerbase has had enough, they know, that we know there is some shady shit going on in the background. They went 5 years without even acknowledging it's existence. Why now? Why these vague ass statements and no context bar graphs? Duuuuh
If the mentality at the start was correct CoD would have never gotten big enough to implement SBMM if not having it drives people out. It makes no sense.
Its a bit of a stretch to assume they don't care. If they didn't care than they wouldn't be coming back more with SBMM on, which is what the data shows. They might not care about becoming better, but they do care about feeling like they're having fun. I hate to admit it, but this data does prove a point.
When I played mw3 and mw2 I had 0.30 kd bo1 0.54 kd bo2 .80 kd then I made a sniping account 1kd now cod ghost .80+ kd then after that 1.10-1.70 kd on every yearly release problem is in America everything is a business exploitation so instead of just encouraging players to get better like I had to go through when I was younger to cater to the share holders they protect that 10-20 so they continue to buy skins etc all it is
@@SeddyPooh I hear you. Thing is most people aren't built like that. Back then a lot fewer people were gamers. I remember being one of only 5 people at school who played games and it was considered "nerdy". Now things are different. Everyone at school plays. Most kids don't want to get stomped on by old farts, they just want to have fun. The ones who are like us will find more challenge and they'll get called "sweatlords" instead of "nerds". The only thing that changed is nobody is catering to us anymore.
@@Peter-uf4yn exactly bro the person who not really a try hard but at the same time good enough to compete / can hold is own and even pop off now and then that’s who suffering 😂
@@Peter-uf4yn and that is true video game is a everybody thing now you are 100% right more casual than ever before and people want to be catered too instead of getting better but hey at least there’s xdefaint now
SBMM and EOMM is only for Bundle Purchasing Engagement. They dont care about retention. They have a price point that they want to extract from each player. 79.99 -99.99 for the game and another $100-200 for the battle passes and bundles. Once a player reaches that.. they can careless if you ever log on again until the next annual release. They wont get rid of or heavily nullify SBMM until they feel that it is negatively impacting their Bundle Purchasing Engagement.
Here’s my point. It worked back in the day. The cod community has shrunk loads since mw2019 when they really really stated slapping sbmm up so the proof is there already. Regarding the good players becoming bad blah blah. It’s a cycle and that’s life and it’s like that everywhere
A lot of kids nowadays grew up without a father figure that were not there to teach them life lessons such as practice makes perfect and that you're not going to be immediately good at something as soon as you pick it up without putting in time and effort.
@@IcyFISHERMAN2maybe we leave because we don’t like rigged 1v6 games? Last night i got put into 5 headquarters lobbies in a 1 hour span where my team lost 0-200. Each game I have most kills in the lobby with 2.5+ kd but it’s not enough to get on the obj cuz my team feeds the enemy infinite cluster mines. Every single game i lose i have triple my teammates kills, most caps/time on obj etc. Why would I stay in a match where we are getting streaked to death & im not responsible for feeding the enemy streaks 😂
What graph they didn't show was how it effects their bottom dollar. Average to good players don't waste money on skins etc because they care about the game itself. They bottom 30% spend the money to look "cool" in a fps. Bottom dollar is what matters as it is a business after all. Smh
I play SnD and every match my whole team quits. 1 out of 10 lobbies my team stays. One match last week I dropped 23 kills and went through 4 teams. The 4th team backed out at rounds 3-3 and I 1 v 6 every round to a loss. My enemy's were like wtf bearded so sorry your team is dog shit. I've played since waw and they're about to lose me as a customer. Subbed great vid.
It's funny how close modern gaming is to a casino. So many aspects are designed to manipulate you, for instance casinos being red because the colour red is shown to make a noticeable amount of people spend more money, no windows to see how long you've been there, and machines that pump out a smell that makes everything more enjoyable. Gaming is no different nowadays
Great video! and way to attack team balancing!!!! The fact that they are using TDM has one of there tests is hilarious becasue in TDM the only thing needed is kills. There is so many variables to TDM that a lot of blowouts can happen. If your a bad player that goes 4-0 your helping your team tremendously. SBMM combined with how bad their team balancing is shows that it’s not good for cod and just needs to be removed from the game. IF PEOPLE KNEW that there wasn’t SBMM in the game then I bet that those graphs would be much different! Doing tests with out telling the player base is false testing and shouldn’t count due to the nature of the players playing that you decided to lower the SBMM for how do you know what they were doing and how they wanted to play the game at that time. You can’t just decide how someone should play a game based off your stupid algorithm. Let us play an organic match making system where getting better is something that matters and if you want to have fun you can. Get rid of disbanding lobby’s and let us build a story for our sessions and build rivals!!!
There’s no way I trust this data. I have yet to find anyone that I have played with for years support SBMM. The games are not tolerable for long sessions. Maybe an hour or two then your burned out. Before you could spend a whole weekend playing and have fun the whole time. The modern games crucify you if you are a top 10 percent solo player.
Activision has completely forgotten how successful their franchise was before they introduced EOMM. Cod doesn't need this rigged matchmaking system to make money.
The point you made at 10:00 is so true. I haven’t bought since CW and I was one of the many that used to buy COD every year and damn near purchase every bundle in the store.
