I think I'll be roasted for this one and I'm not trying to diminish anybody who has a lot on their plate or is struggling to make ends meet in life as somebody who, of course, has a life myself. But I really don't understand the SBMM and design logic of these games anymore. SBMM takes so much variety and fun away from the game by forcing you into a skill bracket. Who HONESTLY thinks that it's fun to only play people who are similar to you in skill?

I WANT to be destroyed at times and I WANT to be the one destroying at times, so I'll hear none of this dumbass excuse of "you just want to pub stomp people who aren't good wahhhh" No.

I want fucking variety in my games back is all dude. I want retained lobbies back so the game can actively switch players around each match, so people who are getting stomped get to rotate having that ass kicker on their team and learning from them. (Yes I know SBMM existed back in the day... in amounts totally undetectable compared to now)

If you aren't good at the game and ALL you do is play other people like you, what do you think happens? You... shockingly don't get any better at said game lmao, you're just placed in a giant echo chamber. The only positive of locking players in skill brackets THIS tightly is to give people who can't handle going negative 10 without raging and uninstalling the game the false illusion that they are better than they are, and I guess that's the point, for player retention. But I question somebody to come up with a reason for how basically never interacting with people who are definitely better than you somehow makes you better yourself at what you are doing. That is straight up a core tenent of learning how to do something or how to get better at pretty much anything in life. Or do people just not care about actually getting better anymore?

I'd argue that if the literal best selling video game year over year would struggle to retain players simply because there isn't heavy SBMM in it... that's a lot more of an indictment against the community for thinking winning and having fun are mutually exclusive things. Either that or the game itself has become such a slog that the feeling of losing constantly overtakes your feelings of fun. I'm sure there are other explanations too