re: Bumble on SBMM

Okay so some thoughts here. I wanna highlight the points you made for my own clarification:

a) benefit to lower skill players
b) higher skill players having relaxing games
c) MM diversity
d) population support
e) connection strength
f) competitive playlist
...1/?

a) benefit to lower skill players

This is true- they don't have to square up against the highest eschelon of skill. This sort of counters some other points because the non-SBMM will supposedly provide diversity in gameplay. My thought here is that the frustration level, however, is gonna greatly counter any sense of accomplishment for "beating" a better player. In games like COD- you face a challenge against yourself as you try to go positive on K/D, and a battle against your team as you try to win games. This is the way it's viewed from a player of low skill. My theory is that injecting even a single higher skilled player doesn't teach them but churn them from the game entirely. See predator injections in wildlife conservation scenarios.

b) higher skill players having relaxing games

I fully agree that this is something that needs to be taken into account. It is undoubtedly frustrating to never feel like you can relax when you're playing. Like every game is high stakes to protect your stats. Doing poorly here is a reflection of your skill and not the energy you invested into the game.

c) matchmaking diversity

See above. I genuinely think diversity of skill should be capped at extreme levels. If the scale is 500-4500mmr, you should never see a 500 and 4500 paired. You should never see a 2500-3500 paired. If the ratings are calculated intelligently (they likely are) then this is going to be so much of a divide in skill either mechanically or technically, that the lower skilled player is 9/10 times going to just leave outright after having an extremely negative experience. Not to say they can't grow from these situations, but it's a lot less likely for that to occur than a game where they are paired within brackets that are relevant to them.

d) population support

Hard for me to really see anything close to this being an issue. We're talking about the largest FPS franchise of all time. With yearly releases, you are guaranteed to find a game within seconds (NOT minutes). I could only see a case for this ever being an issue at the absolute highest competitive tiers, like top .5% of players. But in that case, there are almost always matchmaking rules to bucket them into the closest bracket where there is convincing proof that those players are encouraged by going against a higher skilled player, and the differences between them are likely much smaller than that of two more casual players.

e) connection strength

I may be totally wrong on this one... but guaranteed that 10ms is not making a difference in 99.99% of scenarios compared to game knowledge. Whenever I hear complaints about connection strength, I giggle because you should really be asking if there is more likely to have been an issue with your positioning or strategy in the first place for 10ms to matter. It's 2020. The internet is probably not the reason you died.

f) competitive playlist
My main cause for concern here is actually going to contradict some things I said in my contrarian spittings on population, heh. This is a scenario where you split the player base in an unhealthy way. You see a lot in games where they release with a ranked and unranked playlist. The psychology behind that is if you take the game seriously, you go one place, and if you don't, you go to the other. But these games are designed around winning. So people tend to trickle into the ranked game modes because nothing "matters" in the unranked game mode. You usually see the unranked queues taking minutes now instead of seconds like before. And then you're now plaguing the lower skilled players in one lobby, so they are just going to further trickle into ranked.

Let's even look at a common curve of player population on a ranked system:

Bronze: 10.25% (12553 players)
Silver: 21.59% (26427 players)
Gold: 32.1% (39300 players)
Platinum: 26.55% (32495 players)
Diamond: 6.72% (8232 players)
Master: 2.13% (2612 players)
Grandmaster: 0.65% (795 players)

source: https://medium.com/@morkenborken/attempting-to-collect-unbiased-data-about-the-player-base-of-overwatch-pc-f236a06eb2c5

The top 3% of players are undoubtedly going to face long queues. But pretty much everyone under that is going to be having more healthy games, and at a higher frequency, because their populations and rankings have been calculated in a way to protect them from unneccesary toxic injections. That Master/GM player is guaranteed gonna want some casual time - but in a game like Call of Duty, I can't help but feel the environment is different enough to where injecting even a single player into a lower skilled lobby is risking the fun of 6-12 others at the benefit of one player.

From a product standpoint, you have to make decisions to protect the majority of your playerbase. Angry tweeters are gonna rampage on this and say the devs hate the players, but they want the game to be profitable so they can keep their job. They want the folks who are playing it to continue having fun with it.

I think you made some good points but these were just my thoughts that contrasted a bit. I could be happy either way as I've played games with both systems and never really been concerned because I can justify a reason both ways.