DotA is a free game and had sbmm in unranked for years? I highly doubt it's just ea doing this since it's something a lot of games use and will be using more in the future.
Main argument from me is the season is too long. Sure some legends are weaker than others but that's how these games work. They all can't be great. R6 is the same (tchanka anyone); however once the roster expands you can get more unique combos and characters that are viable. Respawn could do better at tweaking and changing abilities to shake things up more in a sensible way. I feel several legends that people don't rate can still be viable in matches. Yeah bloodhound can be weak but his Intel can swing an upcoming battle if you didn't know you were following a team into a cave. Caustic can be played differently than just letting his traps sit for teams to walk into. He can throw and detonate to secure revives and prevent pushes.
I think the key for this game to remain high with player counts will be the speed they put out legends. They need more than one per season. It's just too slow at the pace they are going. The leaked roster would take years at the rate they are releasing them. A bigger roster is needed to keep interest and eliminate the same combos at high play. Top steamers had more variety in player picks this season but it's still limited with this roster.
Map updates are going to be interesting. I hope we see changes to both on the next season and both added back. For ranked have a random rotation between the two. Unranked you can pick the map you want.
I think that SBMM is neccesary in some games but not others, as a result of the game design.
Take pool or snooker for instance, if you play that game with someone who is not at your skill level, then you won't get a turn. A bad player, fundamentally can never beat a good player at snooker, so that can get to frustration quickly, the match is decided on player skill alone and that skill feeds into a snowballing mechanic (where you get another shot if you successfully land a shot) which leads to a very unbalanced experience of the game across the two players. Not only did the other player lose, he didn't get to practice, that's where skill based matching is important.
In video games, you see that in some spaces, like strategy games, MOBAs, and the like. Without SBMM in a game like DOTA, the better player would just steamroll the new player, it stops being fun for anyone quickly. A player that's much worse would quickly be pushed out of their lane, as the better player snowballs, and then the lesser player is forced to experience the game for 20 more minutes. There comes a point where the lesser skilled player can't do anything meaningful to sway the match, their impact is nill, they can't practice, develop, or enjoy the game.
It comes down to
- How high skill allows players to differentiate themselves from each other (can a bad player kill a good player?)
- To which extent snowballing features in the game?
- How much impact can a successful player have on an unsuccessful players experience? How long are players forced to endure through losses?
I think we can answer those questions for the battle royale genre as a whole using Apex as an example, the whole point is that everyone is placed on a relatively level playing field. Anyone can kill anyone, I can open a crate and get nothing while Billy-no-skill can open the crate next to me and find a Peacekeeper and a body shield.
Snowballing does feature in the game to a degree, as when good players kill other players they get more loot, but these resources can also be attained by searching the map. Snowballing doesn't bring you to victory any faster, a team that wins a game with 6 kills could easily have as good equipment as a team that spent the whole game searching for resources. Furthermore, if you die, it takes seconds to leave and get into another game, players are never forced to suffer through a negative experience.
I went on to Titanfall 2 instead of Apex last night, and it's just much easier to have a good time there. Every lobby has its share of good and bad players. Everyone feels free to mess around and test with different abilities, weapons, titans. It feels like a playground.
That playground analogy brings back memories of play as a kid. We would go down to the park and play a game of football or whatever with a random group of kids. Sometimes it felt unbalanced, sometimes it didn't, but it never prevented us from having a good time. Most importantly we could go whenever we wanted and just mess about, experiment, play. If you took that experience and told me that every time I turned up to the park, there would be an opposing team of evenly distributed skill waiting. I can see how that would have become boring very quickly.
That's the other issue for me I suppose. Skill based matchmaking isn't realistic to how people play and learn in the real world. In ranked it makes sense, in the same way that we have things like football leagues and such that ensure players of high skill are playing each other, but in everyday experiences you get to meet people of a whole range of skill levels and pick and choose what you take from it. Because of that, you get people that stand out, you get people that have the opportunity to teach you something, or you get to teach other people something. Imagine a conversation where all parties came into it with the same knowledge and information? Sharing strategies, skills and techniques, watching a player perform a crazy off the wall aerial that you could never do in rocket league, I think those moments are cool. They're the moments that keep me invested, and wanting to get better at the game.
People also act as though you can't have fun if a game isn't even. That you can't enjoy yourself playing a game if your KDR isn't 1:0, but I don't think that's true. Millions of Call of Duty players continue to play the game every day and yet more than half of them have ratios sitting below 1.0. Compelling games are engaging even when you aren't winning, compelling experiences allow players to invest in implicit victory states - such as 'doing better than the last game', 'capturing that specific objective' or even just 'getting a few kills with a particular gun' - even when the game tells them they're losing the match.
