For some gamers, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a multiplayer-only game and a pretty serious affair. However, being too rigid about your K/D and performance can also quickly break the game.

How do CoD players approach multiplayer? Every gamer approaches a game a little differently, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is no exception:

• There are soldiers who prefer to take it easy in multiplayer
• but also performance-oriented, competitive players who start every game with a high pulse.

For some players, the K/D, i.e. the ratio of kills to deaths, is the most important value in the game and even influences the fun of the game, which quickly dwindles after a few rounds with bad results.

Multiplayer titles like CoD must manage to reconcile personal and competitive play styles with their match-making. Unfortunately, Modern Warfare only succeeds to a limited extent according to current appearances.

SBMM affects the difficulty of multiplayer

How does my performance affect the game? There is clear evidence of skill-based match-making (SBMM) in Modern Warfare. Unlike connection-dependent matchmaking, SBMM focuses on skill statistics.

Examples of performance stats in CoD:

• K/D ratio
• Points per minute
• Wins/Losses ratio
• Precision values

In SBMM, such values then partly determine what kind of players you play with. Thus, better performance also leads to stronger teammates and thus influences the difficulty of the multiplayer.

Balancing thought game

How do the play styles clash in SBMM? This type of match-making makes sense, as it is how players with similar skill levels should meet.

However, in reality it usually looks different. Too much focus on power levels can quickly turn the game from a fun number to a serious affair.

A graphic by redditor “mrfoster42” contrasts the “Personal” and “Competitive” play styles with the balance of a match.

What does the curve mean? The curve is meant to illustrate the current problem of Modern Warfare matchmaking.

The higher the curve, the fairer the match. “mrfoster42” divides the matched games into 5 categories:

1. Green – The players are at a similar level and have a balanced game, as it should be.
2. Orange – You’re stronger than 1.0, now you’re playing against soldiers based on meta loadouts and playstyles. An exhausting game at a high level.
   • K/D between 1.50 and 2.00
3. Red – Here you were clearly too strong. So you get to deal with the strongest players and everyone uses the OP weapons and meta playstyles. The soldiers give their all and are also often on a different level.
4. Blue – This is where you end up if you’re a little weaker than average. Now you play again and again with players at a lower level and find your playing style. Loadouts are chosen according to your mood.
   1. K/D between 0.50 and 1.00
5. Purple – Games at the lowest level. Here you compete against “blind people”.

Doubts about the fairness of match making

Why can match making break my game? According to “mrfoster42”, these skill areas limit matchmaking to only a small intersection of players who can play at the same level.

This is because you are quickly down from the ideal K/D 1.0 and out of the “optimal range”.

This is what mrfoster42 laments: If you’re too good, you’ll have to deal with players who are even better and you’ll struggle to enjoy the game. Even at the lower level, the opponents are often too easy and the games are thus not fair either.

Another problem is lobbies that aren’t completely filled due to a lack of players at the high level, and bad pings when your own good connection doesn’t really factor into matchmaking.

What is he trying to show with this? The thought experiment wants to illustrate that only a relatively small amount of players get to enjoy balanced matches and that CoD’s multiplayer thus has a design flaw.

Too high a K/D can thus lead to a lot of frustration and ruin the game for good players, but soldiers below the average level also have, according to him, hardly any good matches.

Developer suspiciously quiet

How do the developers feel about this? There aren’t really any statements from the developers about match-making in Modern Warfare. The community has been asking for statements about SBMM for a while now, and some are frustrated that the developers are so silent on this very issue.

One of the people responsible for the previous CoD: Black Ops 4 made some statements about it on Twitter and was apparently retweeted. His tweets have even been deleted in the meantime.

What do you guys think of the match-making Modern Warfare? Do you also have problems with the difficulty of the multiplayer?