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Comment by okprod | Hacker News Reader

I'm fine with SBMM, and I'm top 10 TDM for one of the recent CoDs (casual/nonpro). I want to play against better people; it's really no fun to me to easily win games.

The main complaint I've seen re: SBMM comes from top level players, including creators, who don't want to sweat / they want to beat players who aren't as good as them. To me this means SBMM is absolutely needed. Unranked play shouldn't mean better players can crush those who aren't as good.

This isn't even considering the fact that creators rely on looking good play-wise for their income, and SBMM makes this harder.

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As a non-good player, my main complaint with SBMM is that EVERY round feels like a sweatfest. I much preferred the "sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you" experience of other games.

Sometimes you want to have a good game and have that excitement of completely crushing it.

I haven't experienced much of that; I either finish at the top of the board or at the top for my team and still lose, or I win the game. If I'm really feeling like I'm getting crushed, I'll start a party with other players I know are good, but I don't do that often. I typically prefer solo in public lobbies for the challenge and the variety.

agreed, this was the magic of #sourcescrim back in the day (if you played css). you might get five kids who just bought the game, or you might get rolled by some invite team.

SBMM with first party servers is definitely more accessible though. I'll grudgingly accept it if it means a larger playerbase and more active development for my favorite games.

And many people prefer to not play games where they have to suffer through however long a match takes in a hopeless effort to maybe not lose _that_ much.

I would vastly prefer if every match I play makes me at least _feel_ like I have a chance to win if I try hard enough, than have a large percentage be obvious losses leading only to frustration and waste of time.

In dirty bomb there were three objectives per match and if you somehow stomped the other team on defense the match would end after 5 min ran out on the first objective. If you stomped the team on offense then it was possible to complete all objectives in 7 minutes or less. On the other hand if there was actually a stalemate then the match could last the whole 15 minutes. It's an "old" game though. It's officially shutdown but the servers are still running.

Dirty bomb started off well but the classes and maps they added later on slowly sank it. One of my favourite fps's.

I don't play COD any more, last I played was Black Ops 2, but yeah, I liked the swing of the rounds.

Having some easier rounds also allowed me to goof off, like doing pistol or knife only rounds. Sure I didn't contribute as much to the team, but the team didn't need it and I had fun.

Having some more difficult rounds could make it more rewarding to win the next round.

But constantly having to play against similarly skilled players to me would totally not be what I'd be after.

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