Not a fan of Saltagreppo but I wrote a Twitter thread on my thoughts on SBMM.
tldr, the way Bungie seems to be planning to implement it seems more like outlier protection rather than strict SBMM, reducing extreme skill gaps while still leaving some skill gap for match variety.
This should, hopefully, result in fewer stomps. Having one or two high skill players in a lobby full of low to mid skill players often results in engagements that are over too quickly to learn anything. Having a smaller skill gap means the lower skilled player generally survives longer, gets to try out more approaches, and thus can see what works and what doesn't. Thus, they learn and potentially improve.
Maybe it makes Control less casual for high skill players, but for low to mid skill players, or disabled players like myself, it could make it actually approachable and fun. Maybe it doesn't work, but I can see what Bungie is trying for with this approach.
This has always been a pet peeve of mine with gamer dudebros who say stuff like this. Saltagreppo was already an ass about accessibility before so I'm not surprised, but this line of thinking is extremely common among high rank pvp players.
I'm not sure if they genuinely do not understand or if they're being deliberately assholes, but in case they just genuinely don't understand, what you wrote in your thread is a great explanation.
There's a reason why when doing anything competitive, gaming or otherwise, you start from scratch and with people who are also new to the activity. I don't know if these pvp pros ever did any IRL sport, but when you start training in any sport, you don't get put against Olympic athletes and hope that you will improve. You start with people who are on the same skill level as you.
Improvement is impossible if the skill gap is so big that you are physically incapable of reacting at all before you're overpowered.
Also something that they don't seem to understand is that sometimes improvement is not possible in general. Many people with disabilities can't improve significantly, but they still want to enjoy the game. Hell, even without disabilities, every human being has a skill ceiling they will never surpass for a million reasons. It's impossible for everyone to become a pro high rank player. In gaming or in IRL sport or in anything.
So many times I see people saying shit like "but you've played this for years, shouldn't you be better?" and the answer is that I AM better. I am better than I was when I started. But I will never be on the level of professional athletes. There's a point where my skill cannot go higher. It just makes no sense statistically because if everyone was "just getting better with time," then at one point everyone would be at a professional level and you'd have 90% of the playerbase in the top ranks. Which is not how it works. Most players are always in the average skill bracket. No matter how long you've played.
Ι can not speak for people with disabilities simply because i dont have any and trying to for me feels wrong so I'll address another point of this.
What's the problem with SBMM exactly? Casuals play with Casuals, that's good.
Pros and gamerbros will play with others of their kind, thus their wins will mean EVEN more in their dick measuring contests. (imagine trying to go pro on D2 pvp, touch grass but i digress)
Or is it simply because most of these so called pros (aka lets be fucking real the incredibly moronic and toxic content creators who are hurting the game every time they open their mouth.) are worried that if they match with actually good non-celebrity players they'll eat shit and lose and people will laugh at how shit they really are?
But hey, that's just a theory, a GAME theory.
