"skill" based matchmaking & parties

Some of you may know this already or may have other information, but I did think this was interesting.

Got to run some games this afternoon with some of the newer members & noticed something interesting about the lobbies we were getting:

If our highest SPM player (not using names as thats not the point of the post) was party leader we kept getting very tough lobbies & we struggled to do well.

However, when we switched the party leader to our lowest SPM player, we got considerably easier lobbies. I thought that was interesting, apparently the "skill" based matchmaking is determined by the party leader - which makes sense, I just never thought about it before.

So, some of the groups that are going for streaks or challenges (or if you just want to steamroll some lobbies for a while) try having your lowest SPM player lead the lobby.

Would be interested to hear back if anyone further proves this theory, or if someone debunks it.

I will say that I've run several games with Migs as party leader and we still handled the lobbies fairly easily - of course we DID have Migs on our team for those games...so tha makes it difficult to tell!

Yeah i've noticed that too. We ran a few games this weekend choosing the host for that reason. Other times we had to switch hosts to simply get games... i still don't know what the hell is going on with BO2 matchmaking and online performance. All of the other CODs were much, much smoother online for me.

If this theory holds true then I should always host since I have one of the lowest SPM in every lobby I'm in.

Not true. When I host, I seem to get lobbies against unbeatable players. Its hit or miss to be honest. There was a few times where we switched and had me host due to SPM and got great lobbies, other rimes the exact opposite

why would I want to play against lower player only or noobs !

I do notice the difference in the skill matchmaking but it fluctuates as well. Some really good players and some that are less quality players (I don't want to say they suck because they are just a lower grade of suck than I am). In reality it is still about the connection. I have gone against lobbies that are all high SPM and we have waxed them and I noticed I had a good advantage on connection, and vice versa. But if I get high SPM opponents combined with the rubberband respawn I get proper fucked.

I've been telling this to every party that I'm in for a couple of weeks now. Looks like it's catching on that it's not just all in my head.

imHammY661 wrote:

Not true. When I host, I seem to get lobbies against unbeatable players. Its hit or miss to be honest. There was a few times where we switched and had me host due to SPM and got great lobbies, other rimes the exact opposite

That's true, Hammy, but that's more due to connection than anything else. Whenever you host it's like playing multiplayer on veteran mode.

Never really noticed, 90% of the time I am the party leader.

Connection absolutely is king. There's no doubt about that. You can be put in a match with the worst players ever, and if their connection is better than yours you're gonna have a bad time.

I often play with my brother and a couple of local friends. I have a 2.11 K/D and 330ish SPM. When I'm the party leader, the games are much tougher. We also get matched up with people outside of our geographic region much more often.

My brother has a 0.89 K/D and a 200ish SPM. We get matched up with people much closer to us and the games are much easier when he hosts.

I know it's just anecdotal evidence, but it's happened so much that I can't ignore it.

I agree that *in general* the SPM of matched players seem to center around the Lobby leader.

I've taken to closely watching the lobby leaderboard during pre-match to see what kind of SPM we're going up against: basically, who to watch out for. When the lowest SPM player in our lobby is hosting, I find my SPM towards the top of the list much more frequently than when I was trying to finish off my "Top 3 player in Kill Confirmed" challenge.

I'll admit, I fished pre-match lobbies looking for matches where I was in the top 3 in the pre-match lobby leaderboard - a fairly decent chance of being in the top 3 in that match, I figured. I can't tell you how many lobbies I had to ditch with 3 seconds left on the pre-match countdown because I was 5th or 6th on the list.

Also, to the hit-and-miss effect you describe, Hammy... I doubt we're the only folks that have noticed this trend of using the lowest SPM player in their lobby for matchmaking... Could you have run into another clan using the same technique? Our low SPM matched with their low SPM, but heavy-weights on either side?

Some interesting stuff here, anecdotally it plays out from my experience as well, I play with a guy who has 389 SPM as party leader quite often and seem to get thrown into some very tough lobbies, whereas playing on my own in FFA with a 283 SPM I seem to be in the top 3 most of the time and have a much easier time of things.

I'll try and test this a party lead next time I'm on with him and see if there's correlation, thanks for the info!

We should start testing this more often when we get groups going.