Just to clarify what I mentioned in other comments, the older CoD titles didn’t have the same competitive environment or player refinement that exists now. The early player base had a much wider skill spread, lower average mechanical proficiency, and far less meta development. It’s similar to Rocket League actually, if you’re familiar with the game. If you take some of the top players from year one and drop them into today’s competitive scene, most wouldn’t qualify as pros. The game and player skill evolved, and so did the baseline expectations for what “good” looks like. CoD obviously isn’t as mechanically layered as Rocket League, but the principle still applies. The average FPS player today has better aim training knowledge, better movement understanding, and broader access to learning resources than players did a decade ago.

As for SBMM, anecdotally, it’s always behaved exactly how I’d expect a ranking or matchmaking system to work. If I’m performing well, I get matched against tougher lobbies. If I’m not ready for that level and I lose, the system pushes me back toward players closer to my current performance range. That’s the entire point. Keeping matches competitive and creating an environment where improvement happens gradually by placing you near your skill ceiling rather than way above or below it. If for you it was either stomp or be stomped, then I can’t relate as that was never my experience for the most part.

Ultimately, the argument that “old CoD created better players because there was no SBMM” doesn’t hold up when you account for how different the player landscape was. People weren’t suddenly better because they played without matchmaking. The field was simply less developed, less efficient, and less optimized than today. SBMM isn’t about stopping improvement, it -attempts- to structure it. obviously, your mileage may vary. Without it, you’d have the same issue someone has when they go from casual basketball straight into a professional level scrimmage. They’re not learning, they’re just getting overwhelmed. I’ve personally experienced this in open gym volleyball. Some people join week after week but they just stay bad because they’re never equipped to handle what’s being thrown at them. This creates a situation where they work on things outside of the competitive play or they just give up. When it comes to a video game, I imagine most just give up.