Has Skill Based Match Making Taken the Fun Out of Call of Duty?

I am a CoD nerd of the highest order, there I admitted it. It is a heavy cross to bear especially for a man of my years with 20 years (give or take) of CoD highs (original MW2, Black Ops) and the incredible lows (Advanced Warfare anyone?).

I have seen every release of the huge empire that is CoD and have experienced every step of the franchises evolution from map packs to customisable skins and prestige system to battle pass. Some good, some bad and some clearly just about money and pandering to a probably too young client base (stupid skins I'm looking at you)

One thing that has definitely changed and I think impacted the game on Xbox in particular is the development of SBMM. Whilst on the surface the idea of pitching you against equally competent players sounds like a great idea in reality it has become a fun vacuum with every game being overshadowed by being placed in foreign lobbies and invariably against level 7 PC players running the latest wall hacks and aim bots. Why does this even exist? Surely connection should be king? A recent article from the developers claimed it was but it simply isn't true. Let me give you an example.

I play mainly Domination (the game mode of the gods) with my good friend Powell. We are similar skill levels and as such when we search for lobbies our instant "ping" rating starts in the mid 30's and works its' way up from there. On its this means nothing until we jump in a lobby with another KGK member, (who won't mind me saying is a lower skill level in CoD), Deadshot, and with him being host every lobby search starts at around 15ms. This is a blatant attempt to handicap the better player. We get UK lobbies and the whole experience is far more enjoyable.

To additionally quantify this my K/D has dropped from around 5 on the original MW2 to 1.5 on the current version. The maps are similar, the guns are similar, the time to kill is similar and yes I am a little older and slower but not to this extent. I remember regular 100 kill plus games on Afghan etc now it is an exceptional game to get 40 kills.

Don't get me started on cross play with PC hacking scum bags.

I'd love to know your experience and thoughts?