Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is coming out Fall 2022, which is quickly approaching. SBMM, or skill-based matchmaking, is a controversial feature of modern Call of Duty games, but the feature is rumored to be (and likely to be) reworked in Modern Warfare II. In this article, we'll explain why SBMM will change in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022).
The Time to Change SBMM Is Right
SBMM of some sort has always been in Call of Duty as it is, to some extent, in most big multiplayer games. In the background, a whole host of factors go into what players you play against when you're talking about a huge AAA game.
However, matchmaking changed a lot in Modern Warfare (2019). The Call of Duty franchise moved away from lootboxes and selling DLC to cosmetic microtransactions and battle passes. In the past, Call of Duty made its money, beyond the price of the games, from its most passionate fans who would buy DLC and spend money on lootboxes.
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This changed when Call of Duty changed up its monetization. From Modern Warfare (2019) onwards, Call of Duty has been about engagement. It's been about making sure all players get matched up against appropriate opponents so they feel good enough about their experience to consider buying something from the in-game shop.
SBMM, in turn, has become aggressive in Call of Duty. The games try to match players against those of equal skill, but the system doesn't work very well, often putting players into frustrating games that the very SBMM system was created to prevent. Plus, the data the game has to determine skill, like kills deaths, score, etcetera, aren't good metrics for actually measuring skill, either.
However, Call of Duty has been moving away from microtransactions in general and focusing on its battle passes, launching multiple in a year and supporting many games with a single battle pass. Call of Duty is heading towards a subscription model where the games focus on getting players to routinely buy into the latest battle pass.
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Battle passes rely less on getting gamers to sink time into them to make money, so an SBMM system focused on perpetual engagement becomes less relevant, and the impact of SBMM on the Call of Duty multiplayer experience isn't popular, with many preferring the random fun of loading into a fresh lobby every time. Accordingly, a change makes sense.
Plus, Modern Warfare II is likely to come exclusively to PS5/Series X/PC and not last-gen platforms, much like Warzone 2, which allows for a total technical overhaul and generational leap in terms of the franchise. Rebuilding a matchmaking system to work differently takes time, and debuting it when you're only launching a game on a few platforms makes sense.
Also, there really hasn't been a good time to change SBMM in the Call of Duty games since Modern Warfare (2019). Black Ops Cold War was a game that struggled with delays and production issues behind the scenes, making an overhaul of matchmaking not feasible. Vanguard was much the same, requiring Treyarch's collaboration to make Zombies and the game's ranked mode, making it unlikely Sledgehammer would have the bandwidth to create a new matchmaking system.
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Infinity Ward has been working on Modern Warfare II since 2019 when SBMM changed with Modern Warfare (2019), and they're the perfect studio to change and improve upon this system that they introduced. Gamers haven't liked SBMM for years, so tweaking it feels inevitable, while seeing the changes come in Modern Warfare II seems right.
Free-to-Play Call of Duty 2023
Call of Duty isn't getting a mainline release in 2023, with Treyarch's next game being delayed into 2024, but the series is getting a new free-to-play experience on top of the eventual Warzone 2 and Warzone on mobile.
Since Call of Duty Mobile is already a popular game, a third mobile game doesn't make a lot of sense, and with another battle royale game coming, a sequel to Blackout from Black Ops 4 doesn't make sense either. Zombies is a popular CoD mode, but Activision could make more money from a free-to-play multiplayer game, which means that's likely the direction they'll go.
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The biggest thing in shooters over the last few years has remained competitive, tactical games like Counter-Strike, Valorant, or Rainbow Six Siege, so it makes sense that Call of Duty might try to get their own version of that kind of more competitive shooting experience out there.
Plus, Treyarch is known for League Play, the closest thing Call of Duty has had to a competitive mode that actually works, so if any studio was to develop a competitive Call of Duty spin-off game, Treyarch would be the studio to do so.
And if all of this is true, a game with a more competitive angle and an exhaustive ranking system with lots of clear SBMM would give Call of Duty fans a good option if they wanted that style of gameplay from the franchise. And it wouldn't be missed in the mainline games as the League Play modes, while appreciated by a few, aren't that popular.
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