Totally agree. Since season 3 launched I’ve won less than 25% of my games despite being rated as outperforming either on kills, deaths or both on almost all of my games. Majority of the games have had very large skill gaps as well. My games have not been tightly balanced between teams or between individual player skill levels. I would rather SBMM got tightened for social modes.
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Overly tight SBMM is ruining FPS gaming. It really is. As soon as you start trying to manipulate your players outcomes through matchmaking you have gone way too far.
Some people are good, some people are bad, some are in the middle. That is the reality, and ruining the experience for your veteran and committed players all to benefit low skill players is inevitably going to cause frustration.
Matchmaking should be random and then teams should be balanced once the lobby is populated. I’m not averse to a very limited degree of skill banding, but what we are now being forced in to feels like utter manipulation.
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Serious question - does @343 even read player feedback in these forums? I can’t imagine they care much about whats said here if tthey’re about to close down.
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They certainly do, but I think there is a valid question about the usefulness when Waypoint is certainly something of an echo-chamber and then the question becomes one of resources… Only so much time in the day the community team can be monitoring things
Yeah, I suppose so. My thing is there’s very little transparency; rarely do they hint that they are taking in suggestions and they are being acknowledged. They could also have beefed up their presence on these forums and the like; confirm/denying rumors, providing helpful info, etc.
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Many veteran and committed players are also low skill players.
I don’t play games as much as I used to and I have to say, I’d probably never play a new game again if the game expected me to put in 100s of hours just to get a handful of kills each game. That’s the reality most gamers are facing.
Find it crazy people don’t like to play vs people anywhere near their own skill level. It’s paradise for me. Pubstomping was always popular back in the day but I think if you’re gonna pubstomp, ya may as well be playing bot bootcamp.
I’ve played some games this week and sbmm does not seem strong to me at all. It feels pretty wide.
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I think that’s a volume issue. Back in the day a lot more of the CMs were more visible, but there was a lot less discussion to keep up with and the problem of scale is that the more CMs get involved in discussions, the harder it can be to hear things.
I wonder how many of these SBMM problems would be non-issues if we had received a more diverse PvE experience than just Bot Bootcamp and Training Mode.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Bot Bootcamp is great for new players, but Firefight was always great for giving new players a fun way to learn some mechanics and veterans a place to cool down after super stressful matches. It was always a nice reprieve from SBMM shenanigans lol
“Hey folks. First and foremost, I’m not here to discuss or counter anyone who has differing ideas about what I’m posting. Post in the comments if you like but understand I don’t actually care.”
Why are you posting on a forum then? Arrogant -Yoink!-.
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What’s kinda sad is that the OP’s post has actually sparked some pretty legitimate SBMM discussion in the thread 
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What you are saying here is just not true.
There is a reason (almost) every shooter has SBMM and the ones without it are (almost) extinct. Because people don’t want to play shooters without SBMM. Devs have done research and that shows players leaving games without SBMM. That is just a fact and that is why (almost) every shooter has SBMM. It’s just a very small pool of entitled players who feel differently. Even 343 has done that with H5 and the results where very damaging for the ‘no SBMM’ side. Way more people left when the SBMM was turned of, the people still playing played way less then before and the complaints coming in where way up. People where hugely turned of with not having SBMM.
If that fact doesn’t suit you, that is on you. And that you have to insult people who don’t agree with you as ‘apologists’, is pretty low. Or are you then just an apologist for toxic players who only want to stomp on weaker players? Because that insult can easily be turned around. So just stop with insults to people that have a different opinion.
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LOL
Every game loses their player base, fullstop.
Are you saying Halo 2 didn’t have sbmm and I’m an apologist for saying it did? It was only confirmed by the people who made Halo 2.
Industry loves player retention so if sbmm doesn’t help that, it wouldn’t be in practically every game.
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My favourite multiplayer retention fact is that Gears of War gave new players extra damage for their first game because they found players were significantly more likely to play another game if they got at least one kill. Players who got 0 had a ridiculously high dropoff rate.
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Keep in mind that the population is a bell curve.
A few people are good. A few are bad. Most are in the middle.
When I ran the numbers I was surprised how well you can balance two teams of 4 doing this.
Something like 9/10 games to within 25 MMR points. Which is probably OK for “social”.
The problem though, as we are already starting to see, is that the very good player ends up being balanced with some very bad ones.
Which isn’t a lot of fun. So you need at least some SBMM to curb the skill gaps.
But it all breaks down as soon as two buddies pair up. Spectacularly. Over half your games are now plus 150 points to their advantage.
It is, and in my opinion that should reflected in performance in matches. The top 5% should be outperforming others by a large margin in social if they try 100%. If people want tighter matches they have ranked. I just fundamentally dislike companies manipulating their players results. Especially when they are not transparent about it.
I think that is why they added the overperforming/underperforming stuff the to post game stats, but in my view that is an entirely insufficient way of countering this issue.
FELLOW VETERAN REPLY, but from 2001 
FIRST point - 100% agree
Completely agree on “Totalitarian” - central government who won’t accept anyone else’s opinion, i.e. 343 with their fans.
SECOND point - 80% agree
Halo 1 was approachable and non-competetive
Halo 2 on the other hand kinda started to become competetive, although due to large player base, there were a lot of noobs so it seemed like it wasn’t. But, there were social lobbies, team objective, tons of auto-aim to cater to casuals, and often dismissed sound design was quite pleasing as well, so SBMM wasn’t actually in full swing until 343 took over.
THIRD point - 100% agree
343’s abysmal microtransactions system, lack of other playable characters, like elites, lack of weapon mods (yet still charging $20? is it, for basic “spartan” only gear) is all very divorced from reality indeed, you tell em Bud!
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So if new and or low skilled players do not want to get stomped, they should all jump into ranked? That seems counter intuitive as it’s the least accessible mode for new players.
In addition, with SBMM the better you perform as a player, the more matches you will get where you are one of the top player in the match. So you do get some reward for your skill/dedication, it’s just deliberately limited for the benefit of the player base as a whole.
New players lose… that is how gaming has been since the dawn of multiplayer. They then play more, get better and then start to compete. It’s a journey.
What I am saying, is I don’t want to stuck in a little corner of the sandbox only able to play with other 15+ year vets of the franchise. It is sweaty and miserable. I play games for fun, not to compete in a sport every night after work
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It has always been that way but it’s not anymore. The change isn’t for your benefit it’s what’s proven to bring in and retain new players and has resulted in online gaming growing from a relatively niche hobby to a widespread popular activity.