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Time to tune down SBMM
Hold up! Don’t like reading? Watch instead…
If you’ve been waiting for Modern Warfare 2’s official release, you’re not alone.
I’m hearing a lot of people refer to what we’re playing now as Beta Version 3. Clever.
So if you’ve been waiting for a more complete package, surprise surprise, Treyarch’s got our back.
Treyarch recently posted a tweet announcing the 2023 release of 5 features the CoD community has been politely requesting since launch — Competitive Modes, Ranked Skill Divisions, Visible Skill Ratings, Top 250 Leaderboard, and Competitive Rewards.
I know what you’re thinking, “Why didn’t Ranked launch out of the box?“
The most likely answer is a lot more mundane than what the CoD community might think. It’s not incompetence, laziness, or false advertising. As Lupo explained in a recent collab stream with TimTheTatman and Dr Disrespect, it probably has to do with working out balancing issues and bugs before letting us affect our permanent records.
Both Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War and Call of Duty: Vanguard followed the same pattern. Cold War and Vanguard both launched in November 2020 and 2021 respectively. And League Play was subsequently released in February 2021 and 2022, respectively.
Modern Warfare 2 launched in late October so look for the grabbag of competitive goodies sometime in January.
And like a post-Halloween haul of loot, next year’s competitive goodies have one thing in common and it starts with ‘S’. If you guessed “sugar,” you’re wrong. This is Call of Duty — it’s all about “sweat.“
Now that Treyarch is introducing the cornerstones of competitive play — Ranked Playlists, Battle Records, and Leaderboards — that means casual should get less sweaty, right?
I went digging around Reddit to see how gamers were experiencing Cold War and Vanguard after Ranked Playlists were introduced.
You would think that having a playlist dedicated to highly competitive play meant Infinity Ward would dial down the SBMM in casual play. Or maybe the gamers who wanted to sweat would gravitate to the other side of the fence.
I’m here to report to you, you’d be wrong.
Based on the subreddit ribaldry, SBMM didn’t budge an inch after the implementation of exclusive Ranked Playlists.
For those hoping for relief from SBMM, here’s some hopium: Modern Warfare 2 represents a new strategic and financial era for Call of Duty. So maybe this time Infinity Ward will start listening to CoD Community feedback and tone down SBMM just a bit.
Conclusion
Let’s be real, Activision just wants us to sweat.
At least with Ranked Play coming in 2023, we’ll have the option of sweating for something. That’s where I’ll be so I’ll see you around.
Keep fragging and as always, stay cool, gentlemen.
