Black Ops 2 to Offer Skill-Based Matchmaking System?

Black Ops 2 will be the first Call of Duty title to offer a matchmaking system. For the past eight games, there hasn't been a single Call of Duty title to offer a ranking system which places players in lobbies with other players of similar rank and skill level.

That may all be about to change in Black Ops 2.

Competitive gamers received very little official support from either Infinity Ward or Activision in Modern Warfare 3. Treyarch appears to employ a different philosophy with regards to competitive gaming, and provided heavy support for competitive gaming through MLG in Black Ops.

Given what we've seen in the end of the recently released multiplayer trailer of Black Ops 2, we can easily expect them to do the same with the upcoming game.

We have reason to believe that Treyarch has been in talks with the professional gaming community, and one of them in particular—Scump of Pro Team Optic—may have accidentally disclosed information about the company's plans with Black Ops 2 through one of his recent commentary videos.

In the video, Scump refers to a true-skill matchmaking system in Black Ops 2, which is similar to what's in the Halo and Starcraft 2 games. This matchmaking system determines your rank based on who you play against rather than the kills you get against average players.

According to Scump, the studio has plans to implement a "League" system similar to the one in Starcraft 2. How it works is that winning matches will place you into a certain league which you can move up and down in depending on who you play against and how well you perform.

The implementation of this system has been hinted at by David Vonderhaar over Twitter when he wrote: "The person below this Tweet is unranked in #BlackOps2MP & needs 4 more placement matches."

Finally, Scump says that the skill system will typically revolve around 4v4 battles, with players of similar skill level matched up against each other.

It's hard to say whether Scump is talking about what he knows to be fact, but it's hard to deny that the things he's saying make a whole lot of sense.

Expect Treyarch to make an announcement regarding the multiplayer sometime in the near future.