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Comment by debacle | Hacker News Reader

There is intense competition between these battle royale games. Possibly more intense competition than we've ever seen. Being the 2nd WoW or top MOBA pales in comparison. Of the dozen BRs I've played (including mods for existing games), all but 3 already seem somewhat dead. PUBG, which was the leader for what seems like the longest duration, now seems like a distant third, and will likely never recover.

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I think it might have something to do with a combination of free to play and no matchmaking.

Once a BR has saturated the market, the percentage of new to experienced players starts to drop. I think most players will reach a skill peak and the game starts to get harder faster than they are improving. This can be frustrating, and since newer BRs have a higher percentage of less skill players they feel easier. With no money barrier, the players switch.

Matchmaking is a double edged sword. It makes the newer players feel more welcome, but it will make the dedicated players (who likely invest more $$) feel less rewarded.

I had written some comments similar to what you are saying. Getting into e.g. PUBG right now would be very difficult.

That makes a lot of sense. And even matchmaking, if implemented badly, won't help much: when matchmaking is based on monotonic point accumulation, players with sub-average skill growth will be pushed out. Likewise, if the matchmaking rank decays slower (or not at all) than actual skill, players who took a break will leave when they try to return.

> even matchmaking, if implemented badly, won't help much: when matchmaking is based on monotonic point accumulation

Do any (modern, popular) games implement this kind of matchmaking? I believe there's often a monotonically increasing 'rank' or 'level' displayed to the player, but I'd be surprised if any major games used this kind of score as the sole foundation for matchmaking.

That’s a pretty interesting theory that makes a lot of sense. I only casually play BR type games and this has certainly felt true for me.

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