Did Treyarch Change The Matchmaking In Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Since Beta?

Treyarch has spoken out after fans raise questions about the matchmaking on Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

The Issue With Call of Duty’s Matchmaking

The Call of Duty studios have been facing criticism over SBMM (skill-based matchmaking) for some time now. These developers have to strike an odd balance between keeping their hardcore players happy, while also not turning off their more casual players.

The double bind all these online multiplayer developers deal with is the top influencers are often hardcore players, and their followers will help propagate what they want to see.

But sometimes, the things that hardcore players want to see turn out to be the things that lead casual players to stop playing. A lot of this will be invisible to their community, but the developers see it in their data –and also when they see the player numbers on other games like Fortnite.

Why Treyarch Spoke Out

What changed this time is because of one such influencer, Xclusive Ace.

In his latest video, Ace revealed his suspicions that Treyarch turned their back on their promise to step away from SBMM. While Treyarch didn’t say they would remove skill as a factor completely, they said that skill would be minimally considered in matchmaking.

Ace explained that he played in the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 beta, and he noticed differences in gameplay then and now. He then decided to test his theory by playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 now using a burner account.

Ace believes that he was getting slower ‘pings’ for matchmaking as opposed to the beta. He explained that if skill was still minimally considered, he should be getting faster pings for faster matches.

The slower pings suggests that the matchmaking is going back to finding players to play against him based on skill level, instead of location.

Treyarch’s Response

After this video, Ace shared an update on Twitter:

Update on yesterday’s video regarding matchmaking in Black Ops 7. I’ve been in contact with Treyarch and they’ve been looking into the matches I was testing on my accounts.

They’ve reiterated to me that nothing has changed with the matchmaking at all compared to the open matchmaking in the beta, however, they stated the player demographics and playlist selections are very different in the full build vs the Beta.

So the discrepancy that many of us have had with our experience in the Beta vs at Launch is most likely due to these factors.

This is something I noted in the video as a potential reason for this and I believe that it’s the case after discussing things with them.

I’m hoping to see something official come out after the Thanksgiving break so you don’t just have to take my word for it but time will tell.

We’ll see if Treyarch comes out with a statement later. But they’re likely to get skeptical reactions, save if they share their data with us to prove it.