Skill-based matchmaking is one of the biggest controversies in Call of Duty. MeinMMO author Maik Schneider believes, however, that there is an even bigger issue with matchmaking and finds it unfortunate that it’s harder to find friends in CoD today.
The “Call of Duty” series has undergone many changes since its inception. It had to. After all, a new title is released every year, and the changing developer studios want to offer us players something new to remember.
The new Call of Duty: Vanguard introduces combat pacings, allowing us to decide how large the teams should be.
Some developments I only reluctantly acknowledged, leading me to skip a few yearly titles. I was out when CoD had jetpack gameplay.
However, since Modern Warfare 2019 I am fully back in and can adapt to most of the new features. But one thing really bothers me because it takes away a sense of belonging in Call of Duty: lobbies are dissolved after every match.
Dissolving lobbies take away a certain charm from CoD
Why is this lobby issue a problem? On one hand, it removes a social component from the game, and on the other, my motivation suffers during longer sessions.
Whether the players are on your own team or on the opposite side. The longer you were in a match together, the more mysterious the relationship with your teammates became. An invisible bond created by mutual respect – or disrespect.
Both factors also led to me staying in the game longer.
A tea-bagging teammate once made me go all out and push the enemy into the ground over 3 matches until it said on the edge of the screen, “T-Bägga69 has left.” That brought motivation and fighting spirit – even if I sometimes got pushed into the ground myself.
This applied to team members as well. After a few matches, you developed a superficial sense of how the unknown teammates played. And sometimes it was a very pleasant feeling. Then came voice chats, which can lead to long gaming friendships.
And if not, at least I had an interesting conversation.
This is how I found my first shooter clan back then, with which I played World at War (2008) and Modern Warfare II (2009) very intensively. Later, I also logged over 4,000 hours in Destiny multiplayer – thanks to my clan, I was never alone in the space shooter.
I also wrote a lot in the forum, received positive feedback for it, and discovered my passion for writing. I can even go so far as to say: Without the feedback from my clan, I would probably never have considered working as an author.
Perhaps I would have found another clan that would pay attention to me. But I didn’t have to – I could just play CoD and get to know strangers better over several matches.
Conclusion: Call of Duty was a better MMO in the past
CoD has always been a very social game for me – whether you believe it or not. Here I found some of my best gaming acquaintances and took the step into a larger community.
Since I was only on the console back then, there was nothing comparable on the market. My other two favorite shooters at the time, Battlefield and Resistance, were much more “unsocial” than Call of Duty, and I wasn’t directly connected to my team.
In CoD, however, I was even in the same voice chat as my entire team from the very beginning and could talk directly to the other players.
This invisible bond, which formed over several matches with unknown players, is something I really miss in CoD today. Maybe not in the Battle Royale Warzone. But in the multiplayer modes, it’s the feature that I miss the most.
I would love to hear your opinion on the dissolving lobbies. Do you feel the same way I do, or do you think it’s better that we now get new teammates with every match?
If you want to read instead how much I suffered in the Halloween mode of CoD Warzone, then check it out here: CoD Warzone is currently the biggest horror MMO in the world and drives me completely crazy
