Black Ops 7 Reverses Controversial Changes to SBMM and Lobbies

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is making changes to its SBMM and lobbies, suggesting that hell itself may have frozen over. The Call of Duty franchise is a juggernaut and consistently tops the sales charts every single year. This all happens in spite of community members growing irate with issues over the game’s quality. While the developers do make attempts to innovate and address some problems, for years, there have been major issues that have been more or less unaddressed. Whacky skins that impact player immersion, skill-based matchmaking, disbanding lobbies, and more have all been the subject of player fury, but major changes are coming.

Ever since Black Ops 7 was announced back in August, developer Treyarch has been addressing player feedback at a rapid rate. It started when fans expressed annoyance over Black Ops 7 having a system known as carry forward, a feature that would allow players to transfer over weapons and cosmetics from Black Ops 6. There were some really controversial skins in that game that fans didn’t want to re-experience, so Treyarch heard them and quickly reversed plans to include this feature. It was a huge win for the community and things only got better when it was revealed that Black Ops 7 had cancelled plans for major crossovers for skins that would’ve strayed away from the Black Ops identity.

Black Ops 7 Will Have Minimal SBMM and No Disbanding Lobbies at Launch

All of this leads us to now, about a month before the game’s launch. The beta is wrapping up and a lot of feedback is being mulled over by the team. Last weekend, Black Ops 7‘s beta added a new playlist that had classic SBMM, which essentially feels like no SBMM. In older Call of Duty games, skill was far less of a factor when matchmaking players, so your lobbies felt more random. You’d either get absolutely rolled over or stomp the other team. It didn’t feel so sweaty and overly competitive in the game’s more casual modes.

By the grace of god, Treyarch has confirmed that Black Ops 7 will not only launch with a matchmaking system that minimally factors skill by default across the various modes, but they will be removing disbanding lobbies. For years, players would join a match in Call of Duty only to have to find a new lobby once it ended. The player pool was constantly being mixed up, meaning you couldn’t continue playing with people you liked. Classic Call of Duty kept players together until they left on their own volition. Thankfully, with Black Ops 7, lobbies will stay together once more.

The question has now become, why is Call of Duty listening to fans now? Well, the prominent theory is that Battlefield 6 is providing strong competition. It is looking like a very enticing new shooter that could steal Call of Duty’s thunder in theory. So, Call of Duty has to make some bold decisions to keep players around. Whether or not this kind of consideration of fans will continue in the coming years when there’s not as strong of competition remains to be seen.

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