One of the biggest advertised features for Black Ops 7 multiplayer was open lobbies. For the first time in years, Treyarch was removing the SBMM shackles from Call of Duty players, offering a more open and varied matchmaking experience.
Skill-based matchmaking is not supposed to be the main factor considered for Black Ops 7 matchmaking. The game’s open lobbies are supposed to represent this new ideology, but CoD content creator TheXclusiveAce has conducted a small test to check if everything is as transparent as it seems.
SBMM Could Be Affecting Black Ops 7 Lobbies More Than You Think
On the creator’s ‘XclusiveReloaded’ YouTube channel, they asked an important question in a new video: “Is Skill Really ‘Minimally Considered’ in Black Ops 7?”
Black Ops 7 is supposed to favour certain conditions, such as region, proximity, and numerous other factors, before taking into account a player’s skill level—the final parameter being the heartbeat of SBMM.
TheXclusiveAce opened by discussing the ongoing narrative in the community that SBMM is stronger and more prevalent than advertised. Many think it’s been ramped up as of late. This is where the renowned data tracker compared some numbers.
“I do feel my experience has been changing as time has been going on. I have been feeling like my matchmaking times are going up, my connection quality is no longer nearly as consistent as it was early on, and as it was in the open matchmaking in the beta build of the game. On top of that, I’ve been noticing that more often than not, my lobbies are a lot more difficult than they were in the first few days.”
TheXclusiveAce used two accounts to test their theory: Their regular account the play the majority of Black Ops 7 on, and their bot account that’s sole purpose is for offline testing, as they constantly check weapons and attachments to find meta loadouts with it. They played at the same time of day, and kept the variables and controllable factors consistent.
In 10 matches, the creator used traditional Team Deathmatch matchmaking to see the results for each account. The final stats are quite interesting.
The main account’s 10 matches took 34 seconds on average to find a game, compared to 28 seconds on the bot account. 6 seconds isn’t the end of the world, but leans ever-so-slightly in favor of SBMM. However, the average ping was a different story.
The average ping for the main account was 42ms, whereas it was 25ms for the bot account. TheXclusiveAce says the best ping they can get is 20ms, and the bot account was within 5ms of this in eight matches out of 10. The main account achieved this feat once, with several games reaching into the high 40s and low 50s.
SBMM generally takes longer on average, as the system has to find players in your skill bracket, which means it might have to go further around the world to find players, which adds more time to matchmaking, and can influence ping. This data and study aren’t conclusive—due to it being such a small data sample—but the initial numbers are eyebrow-raising and only support the narrative that Black Ops 7’s SBMM might be stronger than first thought.
How are you finding your Black Ops 7 matchmaking? Are you experiencing anything like this? Is SBMM stronger than Treyarch led everyone to believe it would be? Share your thoughts and experience via the Insider Gaming Discord Server.
Be sure to check out when Black Ops 7 Ranked Play Is Coming, and take a look at Leaked Season 2 Maps.
Andy is Insider Gaming's Senior Evergreen Editor and has been in the games journalism sphere in one way or another for over 7 years. His video game taste is as…
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Ten is not a sample size.