Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 public matchmaking fully explained after fans demand dedicated servers

After many fans have asked exactly how public matchmaking works inside “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2,” either out of curiosity or through complaints of lag issues, Activision has described the entire process of how their multiplayer system groups players together. Before now the process has been largely secretive, leaving players to speculate why they believe whether they have been placed in a properly ranked match with good connection or not. This has left many players to ask for dedicated servers as opposed to the peer-to-peer setup currently in place. The following steps are how “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2” filters all matches to players during the matchmaking process.

1. Filter all games that can be joined by proximity to the player. Proximity does not adhere strictly to city, state or country as seen on a map. Rather, it breaks down into four tiers of geographical region surrounding the player. The query starts in the tier closest to the player and expands from there if it cannot find enough matches. The query also ignores all full or “non-joinable” games, which could be half or more of the total available games in a playlist.
2. Filter by broad skill range. This step takes the proximity-filtered list and narrows it further to the set of games that fall roughly in the same broad skill range. This is very loose criteria in Public Match and is a broad-stroke filter that avoids games at the extreme ends. A player of very high skill should generally not get matched to games where the average skill of players is very low, and vice versa.
3. Steps 1 and 2 normally take a fraction of a second and result in a list of “top 50” available games. From here, the game tests for the best connection quality of those 50 games. Connection quality includes a measure of ping, bandwidth between you and the host, and NAT compatibility. The game attempts to join you to the game with the best connection quality of all possible matches, starting at the top of the list.

[HeavenlySnipes]

Thats fine and all, but the games still lag

[blackbeld]

Yep. It's the spawn issue and they not fixing it.

When you get killed first then its over. All your enemies will spawn right behind you. Ahh and you never got the change to turn around :)

Bad game and still people buying it. And get frustrated every day lol.

Lag my lover..... COD brand!

[supersonicjerry]

What does a spawn issue have to do with lag? You must be playing nuketown to much to be having that issue.

[JeffGUNZ]

@ Blackbeld. The only time I ever experience any bad spawning is in Nuketown. The map is the size of my bedroom, what do you expect? When the enemy is on both sides of the map, where do you expect the game to spawn you? It's not like they are going to spawn you down the road. You obviously don't play this game after that comment. All the other maps the spawn system works well. Also, lag and spawn are completely irrelevant so stop trolling.

[csreynolds]

This.

Treyarch needs to stop pushing blame onto the consumer. If it's the consumers fault for not having the right settings, or having a sub-par connection, why do the older games play better? Why weren't guidance notes released for previous CoDs? I know why: because the netcode for recent titles has been s**t, and I imagine lag compensation - y'know, that feature introduced in Black Ops 1 designed to IMPROVE online multiplayer performance - is a big part of the problem with BO/MW3/BO2.

I've lost all respect for this company, and will not be buying anymore games it develops.

[venom06]

THIS IS B.S!!! we as gamers that put hundreds of millions of dollars in these idiots hands DESERVE dedicated servers... BF3's dedicated servers are awesome for one on one gun battles.. but i blame the gamers for this garbage... until we speak with out dollars, and stop being sheeple and giving these people our money year after year, we're going to keep getting the same garbage..

[blackbeld]

Not all of them.

COD 4 is still the best! I still playing it.

MW2 and 3 and all Black ops are not dedicated.

[Spenok]

No CoD has dedicated servers....

[meatnormous]

Cod 4 on PC has dedicated servers.

[LocutusEstBorg]

Black Ops was dedicated.

[Timurse]

Though MW2's network code was somehow a lot better than the one used in BO1/MW3/BO2. I just don't know why but there were a lot less lag issues in MW2. Here in BO2 watching kill cams makes me laugh so hard.
I shoot half of my clip into a guy, then he kills me with 1 bullet. I watch killcam - I didn't shoot EVEN 1 BULLET, just running as a sheep blatantly right into my enemy's fire.
So it seems like the ping with host is about 500-900ms which is totally ridiculous as my 20mbps internet connection has a very low lattency (most of servers below 90ms).

[FarCryLover182]

The game has inherent lag and it is seemingly "built-in." Every time I play and get killed, it seems as if my enemy is playing about .75 seconds in the future.

[Mutant-Spud]

All the COD games are like that, I played a bit of MW3 last night and after playing other shooters online for the last couple of months the difference was startling. I'm an average player, my K/D in all FPS games is usually about 0.9-1.0 but I never seem to have an average game of COD, I'm either on a killing spree or unable to hit anything. At level 80 I don't sporadically get worse or better because I know the maps and can anticipate other players to a certain extent, it's the game .

[blackbeld]

Lag my lover..... COD brand!

[Janitor]

@FarCryLover-
You just answered yourself...if your enemies seem to be in the future that tells me they're not lagging, and you are. Your connection sucks.

[JaredH]

Or he never gets host because he's not from the US. That's my experience with Call of Duty games. I'm in Canada and have a 15 mb connection and use Ethernet but I still never get host or 4 bars. And yes it feels like everyone else is in the future for me too.

There's videos of it online too. If you record your gameplay and then compare it to what theater mode records there is a difference even when you are not noticeably lagging.

[Mutant-Spud]

I'm in Australia, I've got 100 Mbps cable and it's still as laggy as hell, there's more than likely something in this geographical and matchmaking disparity, I suspect what's happening is that the filter is matching me with compatible peers based on connection speed more often than geographic proximity. It stands to reason that if I'm being put in with people with good connections from the U.S more so than people with slower speeds in Asia or Australia there are still going to be latency issues.

[MRMagoo123]

Hmm i'm in Australia and i only usually get in matches with Australians or kiwis even with everyone having full green bars cept maybe a couple kiwis there is still lag I have actually filmed my games and watched them in theater mode and there is around a second to half a second discrepancy.

[Soldierone]

I'm fine with dedicated servers as long as its them hosting it. I don't want custom lobbies. I can't stand them. I haven't played BF3 since they did that, and will gladly leave COD if they do it too.

I think Resistance did it best. Ranked games were their servers, non-ranked games were allowed to be custom.

However either way, I don't think dedicated servers fix the issue either. BF3 still has its fair amount of lag, not as bad as COD, but its still there.

[BuryYourHead707]

The thing is with BF3's lag, it's the person who's connection is weak that lags.

Bf3
Jon's connection is weak = Jon Lags
Jons connection is good = Jon doesn't lag

You might still see someone ELSE lagging in BF3, but once again that's their own fault, not the game.

COD
Jon's connection is weak = Jon Lags
Jon's connection is good = Jon lags

This is caused by the connection relying on host bandwidth.
You could have 50mbs down/20mbs up and still lag on COD because little Billy's
Host and his connection is 1mbs down/.5mbs up.

Shit, my connection is 12/3 and I show 1 bar one match and full the next so.

For The Record, no matter what game, dedicated servers or not, there will be lag.:)

[Soldierone]

Thats what I said. Dedicated servers still lag lol

I had a 20mbs connection, connected through Ethernet, and I was still lagging at times on BF3. No not like COD (like I said) but it was still there.

I understand how COD's work, but people pretend dedicated servers fix the issue entirely. It doesn't. Also if dedicated servers were so grand, then why do games that come around offering them die so often. You'd think people would jump ship to go support those games if the feature was so important....

[SJPFTW]

When i still had my PS3 I experiences almost no lag in servers in the US east coast where I reside. It is a good experience

[Tetsujin]

@Soldierone

Socom Confrontation does the same thing; Ranked Rooms are on their servers, and unranked is to the player.

[csreynolds]

That was silly, as there are still plenty of DICE servers available to join...

BuryYourHead707 summed it up very well. Connection matters in BF3. It doesn't in CoD: you lag regardless. I have a 55mb down, 17mb up connection and a 25ms ping (average). On CoD, I'm b***hed by players with weaker connections. On BF3, the bullets I fire actually kill people.

Which to play, therefore, is an easy decision for me.

[BaconBits]

I have no problem being put into games with high ranked players and long as some of them are on my team too. When I am just an average player it helps to watch the tricks/pointers of higher ranks. I am more concerned that the connection is good.

[Laughing Buddha]

My setup has remained the same yet...

1.58 KDR Black Ops I
1.44 KDR MW3
0.83 KDR Black Ops II

Something has changed with the net-code. I have to say the next COD will not be a pre-order but a rental.

LB

[Revolver_X_]

Bubbles to you for pointing out the real problem. Dedicated servers make no difference when the net coding is poor. I run 45-50mbs DL and 15-20 UL even during peek hours with fiber optic connection. Ports forwarded and everything. This trend started for me with BO1. The outrage was so bad if you remember, they patched it. Only then BO1 became my highest kdr game with a 2.38. But since MW3 its been horrible for me. After like 3 or 4 patches it just got worse, so I gave up and traded it in. I gave BO2 the benefit since BO1 became my favorite online experience. But it seems Treyarch has used MW3s net coding, but made it worse. I may could rarely get high killstreaks due to lag, but I still managed a 1.91 kdr in MW3. I struggle to maintain 1.40 in BO2. I've clocked a killcam to having a 2 sec lead due to lag compensation. Im tech savvy enough to know, its not on my end. The biggest disappointment is that I paid $60 for a broken game. BO2 will be my last COD experience. While its meant to be fun. The greed of sales to casuals has blinded them. The mechanics reflect some misguided sense of fairness. I pay for superior internet speeds for a reason. Treyarch comping me so a 5mbs DL can have it fair is absurd. Dont buy BO2, if you have, dont purchase DLC.

[meatnormous]

I wired my house with cat 6 ethernet cable, I refuse to use wifi for online gamming, I only use it on my laptop. I checked the forums and seen that a lot of people were experiencing the same thing. The house next door has a unsecured network and I can get about 65% signal strength on my living room ps3 (I own 3). I played using her connection and I destroyed the other team.

[Riderz1337]

I still don't understand why Dice is able to have dedicated servers for consoles but Activision can't put dedicated servers on a billion dollar game. Just wtf...

[Spenok]

Damn good point. Makes you wonder huh?

[meatnormous]

Its profit with very little overhead. What other games does activision make that brings in the money like COD.

[BX81]

Now explain why COD refuses to use dedicated servers for the consoles!

[liquidhalos]

They wont use dedicated servers because people buy the game year in and year out despite its problems. They wont spend any money on making things better so long as everyone is buying their games when they are broken. Until gamers speak with their wallets nothing will change

[JeffGUNZ]

It also doesn't help that most people gaming online play this game and the amount of dedicated servers they would need would be astronomical and cost millions upon millions.

[liquidhalos]

It wouldn't cost that much to run dedicated servers. The cost would barely scratch their astronomical profits. We all know it

[BX81]

LOL! I was talking to one of my boys and said the exact same thing. Why change it when people will buy it any way? I bet they won't use dedicated servers on consoles until the franchise starts to die down. That'll be their way to draw gamers back in.