The recent release of Sea of Thieves Season 8 delivered not only a new battle pass, but the first bit of PvP-focused content we’ve seen in a while, allowing players to participate in faction battles between the Guardians of Fortune and the Servants of the Flame, but it hasn’t been without its problems.

On top of issues with running into ship alliances, one of the most hot-button topics surrounding the new on-demand PvP gameplay is the idea of skill-based matchmaking (or SBMM for short). The official Sea of Thieves discord server, reddit, and the community forums are riddled with stories of players who are consistently finding unfair matchups in on-demand PVP, some of whom are even starting to question if a skill-based matchmaking system even exists.

So let's talk about what skill-based matchmaking actually is, what I’ve been able to dig up so far as it relates to Sea of Thieves, and what I think is going to happen with it.

#seaofthieves
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Video Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:56 What Is Skill-Based Matchmaking
1:26 Skill-Based Matchmaking in Sea of Thieves
6:29 What I think Will Happen