It’s the eternal debate: Should you, as a parent let your kid “win” when playing games, or should you play fairly and crush them until they either give up or get skilled enough to actually beat you?
There are pros and cons to either solution and ultimately it depends on what the individual wants; the immediate satisfaction of a balanced experience, or the assurance that every win or loss was earned fair and square.
I don’t play these types of games anymore, but as a teenager I played a lot of Battlefield and I went from noob who would get absolutely crushed every game, to good enough at some game modes that my presence in a 32 player lobby would be sufficient to tip the whole game in my favor and my team winrate was well over 50 %. That is a meaningful, long-term reward that does not quite compare to the modern approach where no matter how many hours you sink in honing your skill, you’ll still only win about 50 % of the time. Yeah sure you have a fancier badge or whatever, but it doesn’t feel like improvement.
Of course Activision makes a compelling argument that SBBM is overall better for the health of the playerbase. I do feel like we lost something though, and that it is another area in life where algorithms decide what our experience is going to be and smooth out any meaningful challenge.
Hard disagree. I neither like dunking on or being dunked on. The best games are when it’s a close match, and you know you played well but the other team did too.
The key issue that’s hard to address is making a hard fought loss feel more valuable than any other loss and not worse than any other fight.
Some games a hard fought fight can look like rushing to the point, getting a kill and a trade and then spectating either the rest of the match or the 20s respawn timer before making the 30s run back to the point, rinse and repeat. This might mean you’re “playing” for less that you 10% of the time you actually spend in the match.
I don’t think that analogy makes sense. The parent and child would be two players with a massive skill gap between them. The point of matchmaking is that you don’t match them against each other to begin with, rather than asking the parent to hold back.
It’s the eternal debate: Should you, as a parent let your kid “win” when playing games, or should you play fairly and crush them until they either give up or get skilled enough to actually beat you?
There are pros and cons to either solution and ultimately it depends on what the individual wants; the immediate satisfaction of a balanced experience, or the assurance that every win or loss was earned fair and square.
I don’t play these types of games anymore, but as a teenager I played a lot of Battlefield and I went from noob who would get absolutely crushed every game, to good enough at some game modes that my presence in a 32 player lobby would be sufficient to tip the whole game in my favor and my team winrate was well over 50 %. That is a meaningful, long-term reward that does not quite compare to the modern approach where no matter how many hours you sink in honing your skill, you’ll still only win about 50 % of the time. Yeah sure you have a fancier badge or whatever, but it doesn’t feel like improvement.
Of course Activision makes a compelling argument that SBBM is overall better for the health of the playerbase. I do feel like we lost something though, and that it is another area in life where algorithms decide what our experience is going to be and smooth out any meaningful challenge.
Hard disagree. I neither like dunking on or being dunked on. The best games are when it’s a close match, and you know you played well but the other team did too.
The key issue that’s hard to address is making a hard fought loss feel more valuable than any other loss and not worse than any other fight.
Some games a hard fought fight can look like rushing to the point, getting a kill and a trade and then spectating either the rest of the match or the 20s respawn timer before making the 30s run back to the point, rinse and repeat. This might mean you’re “playing” for less that you 10% of the time you actually spend in the match.
That has more to do with game design than matchmaking, but yes, it’s hard to balance games so that dying has consequence but isn’t too un-fun.
It is, but it’s critical to causing the goal of SBMM being desirable on both ends
I don’t think that analogy makes sense. The parent and child would be two players with a massive skill gap between them. The point of matchmaking is that you don’t match them against each other to begin with, rather than asking the parent to hold back.