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The Finals is improving its skill-based matchmaking system for better and closer matches.
The new shooter from former Battlefield devs just launched earlier this month on December 7, but improvements are already on the way. In a Steam post earlier today, December 13, Embark Studios writes that it has "made some changes to our skill-based matchmaking to ensure better-quality games."
"This means matchmaking times are likely to be ever so slightly longer, but you should find yourselves in slightly closer matches," the Steam post from the developer reads. These changes have come into effect for The Finals now, so the SBMM changes are now active.
Skill-based matchmaking is, if you're unfamiliar, a system whereby competitive online games attempt to match players of a similar skill level together. In theory, this makes matches more competitive by evening the playing field, instead of lopsided games where players of differing skill levels are pitted against one another.
This has, somehow, become a touchy subject for gamers over the past few years. People bloody hate the SBMM system because a lot of people would simply rather steamroll their opponents instead of having a competitive match. As we wrote about last month, wanting an even playing field in your online lobbies isn't a skill issue.
Mercifully, there are relatively few people in the Steam comments complaining about the new SBMM measures. The vast majority of responses are actually geared towards stuttering and crashes on the PC version of The Finals, which seems to be plaguing a fair few players regardless of the hardware they're running.
