With Season 01's launch arriving today for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, developer Treyarch has dropped the new season's patch notes - and they contain some controversial updates on the game's skill-based matchmaking system.
As we covered a few times in the run up to launch, the team decided to remove SBMM in Black Ops 7 before clarifying that one playlist would remain more skill-based. Well now, that playlist is becoming more prominent, as Treyarch sees "increased engagement" with the SBMM-heavy mode.
Basically, the game's 'Standard Moshpit' mode — which features this heavier implementation of SBMM — is now moving over to the 'Featured Playlists' area, where it'll be more visible to players. Here's Treyarch's reasoning behind this move:
"We’ve continued to see increased engagement with Standard Moshpit, so we’ll be featuring it in the Featured tab for players who prefer an experience with more similarly skilled opponents. With the main tab changing to Featured, the other tab will now become Party Games, which will include Prop Hunt, Sharpshooter, One in the Chamber, and Gunfight at the launch of Season 01, as well as the debut of Sticks & Stones and Gun Game in Week 2."
The team does go on to clarify that all of the other playlists still feature the 'Open' matchmaking system that fans have been asking for, but yep, this skill-based option is becoming more prominent starting in Season 01. If you're more interested in all of the new content coming in the game's first season, the update goes live at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT today, December 4th.