It’s a landmark day in the greatest ideological conflict of our time: In a blog detailing its Black Ops 7 beta takeaways, Treyarch has announced that BO7 will launch with “minimal skill consideration” as the multiplayer default, reversing a series trajectory of skill-based matchmaking implementation that dates all the way back to Call of Duty 4.
“Simply put, imagine the matchmaking experience of Open Moshpit from the Beta, but as the standard in Black Ops 7 on day one,” Treyarch said. “Our team feels strongly about providing players with a more varied experience, and the Beta proved to be a great opportunity to test this approach.”
If you haven’t been tuned into this years-long contentious debate, the main argument of SBMM critics is that matchmaking logic that attempts to clump together similarly-skilled players leads to less variety. It means less crushing defeats, sure, but also fewer blowout victories. Every match becomes a battle of tryhard attrition.
It’s worth noting that SBMM’s loudest critics tend to be those who’d most benefit from ditching it: high skill players and streamers who’d get to enjoy more public games where they can reap clip-worthy killstreaks from the hapless, outmatched masses. Whether or not that risk sounds appealing is probably down to personal preference—but it seems like a preference that plenty of BO7 beta players shared.
The impressions of PC Gamer staff who played the Open Moshpit beta playlist were generally in the neighborhood of “seems alright, but didn’t really notice a difference.” But it’s a win for anyone nostalgic for the days where pubstomping was more achievable.
And that’s not the only item CoD players can cross off their matchmaking wishlists: BO7 will also bring back persistent lobbies, so your bitter rivalries with that dude who won’t stop camping the staircase can once more carry over from one match to the next.
“We’ve heard the community discussion and dialogue around lobby disbanding, and as we mentioned earlier during the Beta, we’re focused on keeping players together from match to match more often,” Treyarch said. “Today, we’re excited to announce we’ll have persistent lobbies at launch for Black Ops 7. We’re committed to improving this experience for players, and will be sharing more details soon.”
Treyarch said that aim assist will get additional tuning before launch, too. These are some dramatic changes to what’s been the standard CoD multiplayer formula for years now—and it’s probably not coincidental that they’re being announced just a day before the Battlefield 6 launch.
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