Epicstream is your one stop-shop for everything you need to know about SBMM, or skill-based matchmaking, in Call of Duty. We've published pieces on why SBMM is in modern Call of Duty games when older games worked a lot differently; we've published pieces on why SBMM is such a controversial topic in the Call of Duty community; and we've published pieces explaining exactly what we know about how SBMM works.
Today, we're following up all our previous SBMM coverage with everything you'll need to know about getting around SBMM and having the best shot possible at finding relaxed, chill lobbies you can grind in, level up guns with, or simply just hang out with friends on.
Just to be clear, you can't actually toggle SBMM off in a direct way. There isn't a setting for it. However, there are reliable methods you can use to get around SBMM in easy, simple ways anybody can do. Exploiting the system to dominate far worse players isn't a great move, but manipulating SBMM a little bit to get into lobbies where you can have fun is a different story.
Before you can exploit SBMM in any way, though, you have to understand broadly how the system works. We don't know the specifics of the system, as Activision has never gone on record explaining it, but we do know how it works in general.
Based on your stats tied to your Activision account, the game will try to place you in lobbies with other players of a similar skill-level. We don't know exactly what stats are tracked, but the most likely candidates are SPM, or score-per-minute, KD, or kill/death ratio, and WL, or win/loss ratio. If you have good stats, expect to be generally matchmade with people with similarly good stats.
To some extent, matchmaking is also probably influenced by in-game level and playtime, but this is by all accounts minor. What's more relevant is ping, which can have a big influence on your lobbies depending on your connection and location.
Related: The Controversy of Skill-Based Matchmaking, or SBMM, in Call of Duty Explained
Some people will try to manipulate their ping by changing their location on a router level to load into lobbies in different regions to try to find easier opponents. This has a somewhat dubious success rate, and depending on how you do this, you might risk a ban.
However, this same general feature of the matchmaking system can be exploited in other ways. Depending on what time of day you play, there will be either many more people or far fewer people online. With fewer people to matchmake with the game is forced to focus on finding games quickly with decent ping over finding people of similar skill.
So, if you play at a particularly off-peak time in your region, and assuming you can find games on servers in your timezone, you'll have a comparatively easy time with SBMM. Though, playing in the morning or late at night is not usually workable for most people.
Related: Why Is SBMM, or Skill-Based Matchmaking, in Call of Duty?
Aside from stats, time of day, and ping, the other major factor in SBMM in Call of Duty is recent performance. The game never wants you to play a long series of awful games you perform badly in just as it doesn't feel like it's fair for you to play tons of games where you dominate.
What this means is that whenever you have an unusually bad game you can expect to have a great game in the next few you play. The opposite is true, too, so when you go really crazy in a certain game and do extremely well you can expect to have a couple bad games in the near future.
How bad you have to play exactly and what exact stats the game looks at to determine if you've played badly is unclear, but the nature of this feature of SBMM is what has led to the creation and popularization of the practice of reverse boosting. This is similar to the forbidden, bannable offense of normal boosting, which is when you conspire with someone else in the game to give either you or them free kills.
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Reverse boosting is when you kill yourself over and over and purposefully lose games to get the game to see your recent performance as extremely terrible so it will load you into equivalently easy lobbies next. This practice is generally frowned upon by the community as it's unfair to the players of the lower-skill brackets reverse boosters try to get paired up with.
The easiest way to manipulate SBMM in a similar way that isn't bad practice to anyone is extremely simple: Party up with friends worse than you. The majority of Call of Duty players in every game, but especially the modern ones, don't care that much about how they perform in-game and hover at a 1.0 KD ratio or lower. If you're a higher-skill player and you party up with any friend that isn't as skilled as you are, you'll get put into easier lobbies than you would queueing alone.
Now, it's important to recognize that you don't get matchmade into the lobbies of whoever's party leader. It's not that simple. What actually happens is that your stats and the stats of your party members are taken into account together by SBMM to find appropriate games for the entire party.
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Exactly how this is calculated is, once again, unclear, but whether you're high-skill or brand new to the game, play with a friend with stats very different from yours and you'll immediately notice the difference in-game. If you're the lower-skill player and you have friends with cracked stats, unfortunately this does mean your experience playing with them will likely be worse than it would be playing by yourself.
Fortunately, though, there is something of a solution to this problem: partying up with multiple people. Depending on the mode and the game, parties can include up to six people. And naturally, every party member's stats are considered when it comes to matchmaking for your entire party.
So, the math is simple: If you've got a friend with crazy stats, if you and them play with a couple other of friends who play the game casually, then you have a much better shot at finding a lobby appropriate for the majority of the members of the party. This benefits the higher-skill player, too, who would likely see an easier lobby either way when partying up with other people.
Related: Is Call of Duty: Vanguard Good?
This isn't an exact science, though. We don't know exactly how skill is judged for any player, and we don't know how skill is judged for a party, either. Plus, ping and time of day will also influence your matchmaking experience independent of partying up with friends. And then, even as a party, recent performance is another big factor in matchmaking.
The last two things you can do to take advantage of SBMM aren't huge game-changers but they can be useful to keep in mind. Regardless of platform, you have the option of turning off crossplay. If you use a keyboard and mouse or controller, playing with people using the same input device as you is always the fairest.
Plus, this limits your pool of potential players, so if you can find lobbies, you might get into ones you normally wouldn't with a larger player pool. Though this can work the other way too, and you might find you're getting into sweatier lobbies with it turned off. You may also fail to find games.
Related: How Many Maps Are in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Are They Good?
You can also try to play larger game modes. Whether it's Ground War in Modern Warfare, 12v12 in Cold War, or Blitz combat pacing in Vanguard, or if it's just Warzone, the larger the game mode, the less strict SBMM is to make sure queues are fast and ping is low. Regardless of skill-level, you'll find a wider variety of skill-levels in larger game modes than smaller ones
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