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GamingTranscript
00:00When inspired this video was two things, things I need to bring to your attention.
00:04And I'm going to be 100% real here, it feels like online games, specifically matchmaking,
00:08are artificial now. The people are just along for the ride. The first thing I'm going to bring up
00:13is a ranked player on Halo who got placed at the highest possible rank by purposely losing
00:19and throwing every game. He placed higher than 80% of the population just by losing.
00:26Second, and this is also in the news, Call of Duty actually published their
00:30skill based matchmaking data. The system is almost 1 to 1 Halo system,
00:33Apex Legends system, or even League of Legends system as I said, industry standard. I also have
00:39to say I've been told by developers themselves that major corporations don't care if anyone
00:44does a video like this as it's not enough to ever change anything. The faceless people in
00:48charge will continue and ironically I think in the long run, the more people become aware of this,
00:53the more pressure there's going to be put on the big gaming companies and they're going to
00:56have to change the major problems that are plaguing gaming today. It's my goal this video
01:02educates, brings awareness, and kind of shows everyone why they have the experience they do
01:07online. If you are feeling frustrated with online gaming as a whole, this will explain
01:11why this is happening. In the past I've spoken about major corporations hiring numerous game
01:16psychologists to manipulate the user base into extending their playtime. How many bad games will
01:21a player have to play before they disengage? How many good games do they need to have to keep them
01:26on the hook?
01:56Multiplayer was fun, bro. It was a good time and you knew that if you were good, you would win.
02:04In fact, we were so good at matchmaking, my team that I used to, and this is against TOS so
02:10hopefully I don't get in trouble, I used to sell ranked locked 50s on Halo 3 because we'd have to
02:15win 25 games or something in a row in order to lock a 50 in. It was locked, it wouldn't derank
02:22and I used to sell those because, you know, we just win so many games in a row because we were
02:25freaking good. We were the number one game battles team when Halo 3 started. We were disgusting.
02:30So it's like, we'd use skill to get where we needed to be, but now it's like, no, absolutely
02:36not. We need to make sure you lose. Listen to what he says.
02:39Questions these psychologists have refined into the current matchmaking system. The problem is
02:43now that people are aware of what's happening, a very large group of people now feel as though
02:48matchmaking is artificial. So very briefly, before I get into the meat and potatoes,
02:53here is a quick rundown of current matchmaking systems. Each game might have some small tweaks
02:58here or there, but loosely, this is the experience most people will find nowadays.
03:02If you perform well consistently, you will continue to verse better and better players.
03:06If you perform badly consistently, you will begin to verse worse and worse players. This sounds fine
03:11right? Here's where it gets diabolical. If you continually play better, you will get worse and
03:16worse teammates until you have zero chance of winning. If you still perform well in the very
03:21unfair match, you will continually have those same matches. If you still somehow continue to
03:27play at that same level, you'll be locked out of playing completely with extended matchmaking times.
03:32If you play with friends, the system will multiply your skill levels together,
03:37meaning if you've noticed, when you play with friends, it's rough. This is why.
03:41An example very quickly, I got a viewer of mine on Twitch. He loaded into some
03:45unranked games with me because I couldn't find any matches. The skill based matchmaking was so
03:49strict, he performed horribly. The kicker here is I couldn't even get into a game without him,
03:54and then once we got a game, there was 0% chance of us winning.
03:58The social nature of what made gaming fundamentally enjoyable is gone,
04:02replaced with hyper competitiveness all of the time. You guys are the ones who said to me,
04:07Remy, I get off work, there's just no relaxing anymore, gaming isn't what I remember. And most
04:12of you guys, my core demographic on the channel are aged 24-35, some of you might be younger,
04:17some of you might be older, but a lot of you grew up with the Xbox 360 and PS3 era of gaming.
04:23Nowadays, it's completely different. To continue on my point, video games nowadays now punish
04:28players who improve. There's legitimately average skilled players with higher win
04:33percentages than the professionals themselves. And that's the problem right there. So all of
04:39that tied in together. And listen, it affects all of us, but I feel bad for the professional players.
04:51I feel bad for Lucid, I feel bad for APG, anyone who's a pro who plays the game,
04:57Snakebite, I feel bad for all of those guys because they perform well pretty much every
05:03single game because they're professional. So they get to a point where the system's like,
05:08yeah, no, you're not winning this game. You're not winning this game, period. Oh, you want to win
05:13that game? Okay, you're definitely not winning this next game. And then you end up with a scenario
05:17where, like today, literally the entire community of pros have smurfs because they can't find a
05:25game on their normal account. It's just... We then reach the big issue of contention. If
05:32everything else wasn't already so convoluted, the new matchmaking system already knows within
05:37a standard deviation what the outcome of the game is going to be. You can literally tell nowadays if
05:42you're going to win or lose. And if you go to Halo Waypoint, the system very accurately predicts how
05:47well you're going to perform. Here's the problem with this system. The big problem. Each map on
05:52Halo has different weapons. Each map on Halo has different vehicles. For example, me, I might be
05:58able to drop 50 kills with a sniper rifle, but without one, I'll get maybe 20 to 25. The system
06:04does not take this into account and will balance teams thinking you are going to perform the same
06:09level as that game I had the sniper rifle. If a player drops 50 kills in a banshee, and in the
06:14next match there is no banshee, then the system still thinks he can get a banshee and still thinks
06:19he can drop 50 kills. So then it balances the teams that way. What, are you just supposed to
06:24never use anything? It is fundamentally flawed in every single way. For Halo skill-based matchmaking
06:30specifically, and I think it's for other games as well, kills per minute are a major factor when
06:36taking into the account skill level. The first thing I can point out, because you're watching
06:40this video and you're seeing scoreboards where it's completely unfair on screen right now,
06:44I hope this changes your expectations while gaming to understand that it is truly outside
06:50of your control. If you do really, really well, you're going to get punished with a loss. If you
06:54lose X amount of games in a row, you're going to get gifted a free win. Isn't that so sad?
07:01Think about that for a minute, dude. You do really well. You put the time in. You grind the game. You
07:07get better. You'll get punished. You get punished for it. That's sad. That is sad. It's crazy,
07:20because I do coaching for Halo Infinite, right? So even my students that I coach,
07:28I'm like, their goal, and always their goal, always their goal, I want to get Onyx. I want
07:34to get Onyx. I want to get Onyx. Or even my Onyx students, they're like, I want to compete or
07:38whatever, and I want to climb Onyx or whatever. They'll be 1,700. They want to get to 1,900,
07:42blah, blah, blah. It's like, I give them the tools, and I see improvement the entire time.
07:48We have 12-week sessions that these guys pay a lot of money for,
07:52right? And we see improvement the entire time, but they're not climbing. And I have to sit there
07:58and tell them, well, I don't know why you're not climbing. You have to carry your teammates. You
08:02got to carry them harder. And unbeknownst to me, this is exactly what's happening.
08:09You know what I mean? And that sucks. You have a little bit of free time. You're watching right
08:14now. You work all day. You work all day, every day, weekdays, even weekends probably for overtime
08:20or whatever. And you come home, and you just want to go on a game and improve or have a little side
08:25hobby where you improve. If you're not competitive, where you just want to have fun and just have a
08:29good time. No, absolutely not. That's not allowed. We want you to spend money. That's upsetting,
08:36man. This is upsetting to me. This is bad. You know what I mean? And this is not
08:42Halo Studios' fault or whatever. This is not their fault. This is corporate's fault.
08:49These are the suits. And even Mimple said at the beginning of his video, they don't care
08:54if we make a video about this. They don't care if we talk about this. They don't care. They're
08:58going to keep doing it. They're going to keep putting these gambling lottery specific type
09:04manipulations into these games so that we buy more stuff. It's completely out of your hands.
09:10The best thing you can do is just switch your brain off and not take it seriously. With all
09:14of that said, here's what the average matchmaking session looks like in 2025. You're a slightly
09:21above average player. Each game is sweaty. Each game is the same. Each game has terrible team
09:26balancing, forcing you to play the exact same way or you're going to get destroyed. That means you're
09:30going to match the exact same sweaty people over and over again. And only when the system feels
09:34sorry for you are you going to get an easier game. You can't play with friends or it gets
09:39exponentially harder. You can't goof off or you're not meeting the system's expectations of you,
09:44meaning your team gets destroyed. The matchmaking system literally thinks you are going to play your
09:48optimal efficiency every single game and any deviation of that equals a loss and a terrible
09:53time. I have covered it in the past but this system is literally designed for people to try
09:59as hard as possible. It is in the exact published document that Microsoft themselves published.
10:05After a certain amount of games, as I said, psychologically you're about to disengage from
10:09the product so the system will give you a carrot, a free win against people who just destroyed their
10:14last lobby. It happened to me yesterday. We lost a ton of games in a row and then all of a sudden
10:21it's me and some other guy constricted or whatever on the other team but me with three other pros
10:27and constricted with three other pros and it was like really nice. We won. We actually made
10:33the other that other third guy that fourth guy quit on the other team with the pros and we won
10:38and we played really well. I played really well. I was really comfortable. I was telling you guys
10:42look what it looks like when people clean up damage. It was really nice. It was like
10:46and I'm not saying I want an easy match every time but I'm just talking about this was the
10:49carrot that was given to me to make me continue to play. It's important to note that this system
10:54tries to encourage a 50% win rate. It's not on purpose by any means but just by its very design
10:59it's an outcome that seems to happen. Video games aren't supposed to be a second job but it's a
11:03gaming company that need that younger audience, that very low skill rating of player, the silent
11:08majority so they drop money on microtransactions. It's the core reason why it's very hard to change
11:12the current gaming landscape. For me personally I've nothing wrong with the skill-based matchmaking.
11:17In the original Halo games they all had skill-based matchmaking and it all worked very
11:20well. It's when it begins to be manipulative I have problems. If you're the best in the world
11:25you should be winning 90% of your games. Exactly if you're the think of that think of that right
11:31there. If you're the best in the world you should be winning 90% of your games. 1000% that the pros
11:36that are playing this game should be winning 90% of their games. 100% 100% dude. A chess grand
11:43champion only having a 30% win rate? It's just ludicrous when you think about it. This brings me
11:48to the latest Halo example. To play ranked on Halo Infinite you need to play 50 unranked games. This
11:54is to stop cheaters from absolutely destroying the playlist. Watch this chat. Watch this.
12:00One ranked player named Bort made an account and played 1v1 showdown for his 50 games.
12:06A majority of which were boosted with 0 kills. He then went to ranked and did his 5 placement
12:12matches throwing every game. The game placed him diamond 5. The highest possible placement.
12:19Now by 343 industries and now Halo Studios very definition they said unranked games have
12:24zero effect on ranked playlists. The only time the system will grab from other playlists for
12:30ranked is when you first play your very few first ranked placement games. So that's what
12:35the system did. It saw he won so many of his 1v1 showdown games even though over half of them were
12:40boosted and it put him into high diamond lobbies. Again by 343's very own definition once the ranked
12:47playlist gathers enough information of the player, the very thing placements are used for,
12:52it should correct the player's skill level and place them in the appropriate skill bracket.
12:56Dropping a .15 KD does not mean you are equal with those lobbies but where does the game place
13:03the account? Diamond 5. The whole damn matchmaking system is busted. The worst thing about this is
13:09I've had numerous developers literally say the opposite of what the data has said for years.
13:15I've had people quote the developers saying hey mintblitz you're wrong and then I see this
13:19happening over and over and over again. I've played 20,000 matches of Halo Infinite. I
13:24understand the system to the extent of even the people who designed it. The rabbit hole goes even
13:30deeper. So to take it a step further many of you guys say to me Remi why don't you play ranked?
13:34And well for starters I have. I got high onyx in every playlist but why I stopped playing ranked
13:38is very simple. Because I play high kill games in social and unranked playlists when I go to ranked
13:44in past seasons there was instances of me losing 15 to 17 games straight because even though playing
13:50unranked and getting high kills doesn't affect who you match it does affect the team balancing
13:56in the ranked playlists. For example let's look at a lobby of 8 players including me. It takes
14:01that high skill history and I assume I'm the highest player in the lobby even if my visual
14:06rank doesn't represent that so it will give me the number 1. It will then take the skill levels
14:10of players 2, 3, 4 and 5, the 2nd best to the 5th best players in the lobby and put them onto the
14:16other team. Then it'll give me players 6, 7 and 8 and place them onto my team. Now in practice when
14:22you go to high rank this means you'll see games of 15 or 1600 onyx level players bursting professionals
14:482300 and higher. I'll throw some screenshots up on screen so you can see what I mean. I don't
14:53really need to say anything more than that. Look at the numbers. How is it balanced at all? It
14:57is not. It's gotten so broken now that players have worked out it's in their best interest to
15:02just perform well enough to win but to not over perform as it'll give better team balancing.
15:18It's not because I suck but because I'm trying to fool the system.
15:23It's even gotten to the point that when someone knows they're going to win,
15:26they start rapidly lowering their KD so they get better team balancing next game.
15:30So not only are social playlists not social anymore but ranked playlists aren't really
15:34ranked either. Matchmaking on the whole is a participation trophy where your skill
15:39is completely irrelevant unless it's free for all. There is no point for someone to say haha
15:43I beat you because you're literally just playing into a matchmaking algorithm that's decided before
15:48the game starts who's gonna win and who's gonna lose. As I mentioned at the start of the video,
15:52Call of Duty released their own data this week for certain players and something caught my eye.
15:57Yes the system is more or less identical to Halo and other franchises but it actually showed proof
16:02for the very first time that there are multiple different groups of players and each one of those
16:07groups has a very different experience. They never interact with one another. They all have a very
16:12similar KD because they're going up against different skill brackets and it's pretty much
16:16made kill death ratio mean absolutely nothing. You could be versing some really beginner level
16:22players and have a KD of 1.5 or you could be a competitive ranked player on Call of Duty with
16:27a KD of 1.5. There are so many different levels of manipulation to this, it is crazy. Ultimately
16:34the problem with the entire system as a whole is that your most dedicated players are becoming
16:38burnt out. They're tired. They want variety in their games. They don't mind trying sometimes but
16:43other times they don't even take it seriously. They want to chat. How many of you guys are burnt
16:47out? Guys how many of you are burnt out? Let me know in the comments, let me know. How many of
16:51you are burnt out? I'm gonna be honest, I am. I'm burnt out man. Use different weapons, play different
16:57classes, try to do something unique, be funny, not having to do the meta play style in any video game
17:03just to be able to keep up. It's even worse that if a player does decide to use the meta,
17:07just to keep up, the system will continually give you worse teammates and worse teammates until you
17:12no longer can keep up, forcing a loss. It really is no matter what you do, you are screwed. It's
17:18sad really because if you grow up with video games now, it is so so so much worse than it was before.
17:24You really missed out if you didn't play the Xbox 360 era. It is my hope that you guys keep this
17:29information in the back of your head so if you do find yourself frustrated, just know it isn't you.
17:34It's out of your hands and honestly within a few matches, you're probably gonna get given a free
17:51win or a good wellbee. That's how I handle it anyway. Personally, I found myself getting
17:54exhausted during the Halo 5 era when I was much younger because it was so competitive all of the
17:59time. I don't feel like games should always be like that. So with all of that said, thank you
18:03for watching. I do these videos every six months or when new information comes out because it is
18:07so important. Guys, check out this video. I'll post a link in the comments, in the description
18:12of the video and in the chat there.