Yeah, makes me think how narrow minded can those "good" players really be? Their statements are truly ridiculous.

Of course same with the notion of "elo hell". I would be deeply ashamed of myself if I would defy all logic and sense to find excuses for my lack of skill.

You learn from players who are better than you, not players who are as good as you (or worse).

Matchmaking ruined the competitive aspects of gaming for me, since I either get dragged down by team mates or I get stuck playing the same games over and over.

It's boring, and if I want to get better I have to watch an hour of pro streams before even getting into the game to remind myself of what good play looks like.

People who are against matchmaking have a valid point, and it's part of why games revolving around community run servers last longer.

Seriously. I'm marginally above average and the SBMM in Destiny 2 was a nonstop rollercoaster of win, lose, repeat. Imo it made it difficult to learn, since the game alternated between giving me awful teammates and skilled opponents and giving me skilled teammates and awful opponents.

Now that it's gone for most modes, it feels better. Games where I lose don't feel so simply because the game wanted me to lose.

with sbmm, roughly half the players you face off against are better than you (assuming you have been accurately ranked) and half worse. You have ample opportunity to learn from better players. SBMM simply limits the skill gap between you and the better player.

I am never going to get better at basketball by playing Lebron in 1v1s.

Exactly. The issue they seem to be having is that they finally have to experience the game like _the rest of the playerbase_ does.

I have played games without SBMM (Destiny 2 recently switched away from it in certain game modes) in periods when the sweatiness is particularly high and people join as premade teams to stomp some noobs. Let me tell you that as a casual PvP player, it absolutely ain't fun.

This was a huge problem in league. Players would peak, get tired of losing, create brand-new accounts so they got to play against newbies and feel great at the game for weeks. If you were in one of those games where somebody much better was playing, it could sometimes make 9 other players irrelevant.

Riot used all kinds of clever tricks to fix this. Your skill would get smeared to other accounts playing from your network and they would rapidly adjust skill estimates when you outperformed for several games in a row. A fascinating challenge to be sure.