After warring with fans for years, Black Ops 7 will finally ditch aggressive skill-based matchmaking: 'Our team feels strongly about providing players with a more varied experience'

It's a landmark day in the greatest ideological conflict of our time: In a blog detailing its Black Ops 7 beta takeaways, Treyarch has announced that BO7 will launch with "minimal skill consideration" as the multiplayer default, reversing a series trajectory of skill-based matchmaking implementation that dates all the way back to Call of Duty 4.

"Simply put, imagine the matchmaking experience of Open Moshpit from the Beta, but as the standard in Black Ops 7 on day one," Treyarch said. "Our team feels strongly about providing players with a more varied experience, and the Beta proved to be a great opportunity to test this approach."

If you haven't been tuned into this years-long contentious debate, the main argument of SBMM critics is that matchmaking logic that attempts to clump together similarly-skilled players leads to less variety. It means less crushing defeats, sure, but also fewer blowout victories. Every match becomes a battle of tryhard attrition.