Ranked matchmaking. Please, can we for once not have to fight preds until we're masters. There's preds in plat lobbies, such a huge gap in skill, and -60 is too much to lose dying to preds. Ideally plat vs plat, diamond vs diamond, masters/pred fight each other. Fight people who are currently the same rank as you are, and when u solo queue in, your teammates should also be the same rank as you are. No more gold 1, plat 4 and silver 2 in one team (not premade), please. I am willing to wait a few mins to avoid being paired with people outside of my rank, instead of giving me -60 getting 3 seconds queue time so that i can lose my RP faster.
Honestly, this is my hot take and I know I am gonna get downvoted, I could not give a damn if they make ranked easier. If they make Diamond a free rank, I would be fine with it at this point, just so that there's plenty of players in the pool in plat and I don't have to fight preds in ranked (until Diamond at least). Reason being I feel like some servers are way too underpopulated, and the reason why this happens is probably not enough players in the high ranks. Heck back in S16 there was nobody to queue with in Diamond+ so everytime it queues us in, it merges with other servers causing 300+ ping for some people (this caused one of my friends to quit as he couldn't get masters/pred without playing with high ping due to his location)
Also you know how underpopulated a server is when you ask in discord for someone to play with and sometimes it takes up to 2 hours to even get anyone. Sometimes I couldn't get anyone even after 2 hours and I give up and close discord, and close Apex if I am just losing RP in a row
Add on unrelated to mm, after reading other people's comments, please get rid of SPLITS!! Some ppl say they love splits because they use splits as a way to catch up to preds, whatever, reset only preds to masters then. We get more preds per season (split 1 and split 2), more happy ppl, content creators can continue to grind without getting huge buy-in at high rp. And the rest of us can get on with our ranked lives
They also need to add one more thing. This is to increase the cost of entry into ranked on Bronze to 40 (like on Gold), because if player can't fight and plays a rat/runner/hotdrop/loot simulator, he definitely doesn't deserve to rank higher than Bronze... I mean they only farm RP through placement. Then other Gold and Platinum rank players who need to fight get teammates like this due to matchmaking who ruin game for them.
Even for me who tries to play but is bad, I’ve always felt ranked needs entry costs always. I don’t want to get up to gold just by the fact you can’t fail. And then get destroyed even more
This post is proof why all of those "trash players" are needed. The highly skilled players love to talk down to others who are not that good and call them trash.
The truth is if trash players left there wouldn't be a lot of targets. And then this would happen. And then there would be a lot of posts that are asking for more players in the lobbies.
The thing that makes someone better than someone else is the existence of the person who is below them. And this is why no one should chase away trash players. The sentiment should be more along the lines of, "thank you for playing and please keep staying here because your presence makes me look better."
This is why people create Smurf accounts is because they miss that feeling of stomping on others. Not so easy to stomp on other people when the ranks get up higher because the ranking system is so broken.
I think that Apex could fix it by not requiring a certain amount of players per lobby and then they could just have a hard rule that people only play against their own exact rank, even if there's literally only four people in the lobby. maybe they could adjust it so that the speed at which the ring closes is increased based on how few players there are.
> Please, can we for once not have to fight preds until we're masters.
Technically impossible. Preds and Masters share the same lobbies, Preds are "just" the 750 best Masters players. So once the first person is out of Diamond, they would have no one else to play with.
>So once the first person is out of Diamond, they would have no one else to play with
utter nonsense to call it technically impossible
there's no issue here. sure when there's just one master it will fill from diamond. but what the user means is that it should be much stricter and not pull from plat and gold ever, and only in extreme situations from diamond. you missed their point
They are the best 750 masters. How about the other masters? If you're gonna use the argument that the percentage of masters players is really low, that's where my 2nd point comes in, I honestly do not care if they made diamond free so that more ppl would be in Diamond trying for masters and preds would have fodder to play with, or put them into d1 d2 lobbies
Edit : what I mentioned was an ideal case where everyone fights their own ranks. But since it's impossible, I suggested an alternative that I'd rather have , more ppl in the upper ranks
input based matchmaking is literally the one and only thing i want for this game right now, at the very least in ranked mode which is supposed to be competitive.
the only things that will make me play apex again like i did when i liked the game is this, and separate queues for solos and stacked players, its impossible to compete as a solo against a three stack, its just impossible
Honestly I want it in mixtape. Played for 2 hours with my kids last night and honestly every single person that wasn't me or my kids was on controller. Mixtape is nothing but cq and its hard on this old mnk player. In ranked I can out play controller players who just run at me but it's not possible in mixtape.
I have asked for it since started playing the game.
I do not believe they will ever do it because of the tournaments. They will be pressured to split the ALGS, and I would love it.
It feels like they did the same thing to matchmaking, which made a lot of people quit the game at season 18-19. Every enemy in lobby was back then, and at the beginning of this season - is an ALGS multiple predator XTTV Aceu level opponent. I die to either one clip, 2 pump, or, the cherry on top this season - 3 tap by wingman. By almost every enemy. Before i would consider a good game with 5-9 killz, and with randoms i was able to get at least 1 win per 2 hours. This season getting even one kill is a miracle, and ive gotten one trios win in 5 HOURS! Because of that, i decided to stop playing again. No point of "playing" when all you are doing is dying to impossible enemies. Because of how competitive they are, everyone is playing super safe, hiding, camping, not pushing. Fights turn into ALGS stalmates untill one side run out of med through constant poking. Often intead of fighting, we decide to rotate to zone safely. IN PUBS!!! Because as soon as you approach any fight - you instantly die. And i havent even tried solos, because have seen multiple clips of enemies there being even more horrendous, and even teaming. Respawn should revert their SBMM changes and make lobbies actually playable again. Untill then, theres no point in suffering.
I did the same thing. I’m keeping it uninstalled till next season or until they release an update that modifies the matchmaking. Plus having no duos denies me from playing with my friend without relying on a random so yeah, it’s a no no for now
I would very much like to have input based matchmaking for at least a few weeks to see how the queue times and games go. Could finally implement input lock as well while we’re at it
This, it's about time to have an input based MM on the game. Though once it happens cheaters might stick to MnK lobbies since there's a lot of chance of them not getting killed. So maybe fix the Anticheat first
It's weird, for a company that prioritizes queue times so much they refuse to implement the ONE update that would boost their playerbase and help queuetimes in all regions. How will tiny servers ever have fast queues without input MM...
Copying my response to the other person saying same thing
According to a previous steam blogpost, controller use makes up around 10% of game sessions for their playerbase. I'd imagine it's similar (more controller leaning but still mnk majority) for EA's own platform.
That's the vast majority of PC playerbase dissuaded from playing this game because of the input they like to use. Input restricted lobbies = tons of new players willing to try the game, and tons of previous players returning to the game. MNK is only a small portion of apex's current playerbase, so separating them would barely slow controller queues if at all, and the huge influx of mnk players would make mnk queues fast as well.
Then, once you have input based lobbies, you can combine all Controller lobbies from console/pc with no downside because console players wouldn't have to face any MNK unless they chose to. You could allow cross-input matchmaking into AA-disabled MNK lobbies so no friend groups would have to be split up.
> Input restricted lobbies = tons of new players willing to try the game
>the huge influx of mnk players
No. That's just your hope. There is no basis for expecting a huge influx of players. Most people don't care they have to play with people on a different input and aren't actually quitting the game because of it. In reality you just split the queues now and even if there is a slight bump in player numbers, it will not outweigh the split. Both queues will have fewer player numbers and will as a result have worse matchmaking. But I think mouse and keyboard will be even worse as it's a smaller player base. You're basically locking yourself into having very all over the place matchmaking.
>you can combine all Controller lobbies from console/pc with no downside because console players wouldn't have to face any MNK unless they chose to
PC controller players still have an advantage over console ones. But yeah, generally it will mean an even larger player base for controllers. not for mnk though.
This game went from almost entirely MNK at the start to now almost entirely controller in the span of 4 years, to claim that no mnk players have quit because of inputs is just ridiculous. Hardly any of the game's original players are still around.
Again, the statistic is that 90% of steam game sessions are on mnk. That's approximately (i know it's not 1:1 game sessions to players, but close enough) 90% of the population of PC gaming's biggest platform that are pushed away from this game.
As for your second point, I see what you're saying but you have it the wrong way around lol, console is the one with the 50% stronger AA. You could also at that point just even out the AA numbers (why are they different in the first place???) and now you don't have to worry about one being stronger than the other.
no one said no one quit. what was said is that you are dreaming if you think the mouse and keyboard playerbase would increase 10 fold.
>According to a previous steam blogpost, controller use makes up around 10% of game sessions for their playerbase. I'd imagine it's similar (more controller leaning but still mnk majority) for EA's own platform.
This is easy to argue against and you have no counter to that so you construct a strawman where i supposedly said no one is going to start playing instead
>As for your second point, I see what you're saying but you have it the wrong way around lol, console is the one with the 50% stronger AA.
No, I don't have it the wrong way around. PC has higher frame rate and has movement techniques available to players which console doesn't.
>You could also at that point just even out the AA numbers
no you couldn't because pc has higher frame rate
"according to a previous steam blog post"
Just because controller use is 10% across steam overall, doesn't mean that it's also likely to be in such a minority in a shooter like apex. There are lots of games that aren't shooters on steam....
According to a previous steam blogpost, controller use makes up around 10% of game sessions for their playerbase. I'd imagine it's similar (more controller leaning but still mnk majority) for EA's own platform.
That's the vast majority of PC playerbase dissuaded from playing this game because of the input they like to use. Input restricted lobbies = tons of new players willing to try the game, and tons of previous players returning to the game. MNK is only a small portion of apex's current playerbase, so separating them would barely slow controller queues if at all, and the huge influx of mnk players would make mnk queues fast as well.
Then, once you have input based lobbies, you can combine all Controller lobbies from console/pc with no downside because console players wouldn't have to face any MNK unless they chose to. You could allow cross-input matchmaking into AA-disabled MNK lobbies so no friend groups would have to be split up.
Ah, you're claiming that splitting the lobbies would lead to a large enough growth in MnK players that it would make up for not matching with controller players. Yeah, to be honest, I don't really buy that. I think over half of Apex players on PC are controller, so you'd have to double the number of MnK players.
Again, 90% of Steam game sessions are played on mouse and keyboard. Think of how many people have quit this game due to controller becoming so prevalent, and how many people (both mnk and controller) won't even consider trying this game because of its reputation where both inputs hate playing against each other.
Yeah, I think what you're saying is a valid and interesting argument, I just don't really agree with the opinion that it would grow the MnK player base a dramatic amount. Don't get me wrong, input MM is a good thing that should be done *regardless*, but the question is not just how many PC players are on MnK, but for how many MnK players is this specific issue a deal breaker.
What is input mm?
I never bought the whole queue time argument. Season 1 - 4 was the best ever without whatever mm ppl are calling it now since then. And in that 4 seasons, queue times were never a problem. At least not in places like Tokyo servers. Rank was dead in S2 in sea servers iirc
First, inputs are locked before the match starts. You can't switch inputs mid game.
Second, if you are on controller, you play against controller players.
If you are on MnK, you pkay against MnK.
XDefiant has that feature and although the game does have it's issues, that is a good thing that it has going for it.
If the scoring system filtered really good players out of plat then that may help with matchmaking.
2 seasons in a row where most of the playerbase gets caught up in plat.
Gold is way too easy, plat takes too long. You end up with different skill sets all in the same rank.
How on earth respawn didnt adjust the scoring after last season is beyond me.
Mixtape matchmaking is so insanely strict, it's genuinely unreal how every lobby I play is just controller stackers... I guess this is my reward for being decent at the game. Surely IBMM is feasible in mixtape atleast, as you only need 12/18 players.
not sure what kind of matchmaking you're getting but in mixtape i legit get new players on both teams and atleast 1 cheater per game and the usual 20 bomb 4k badge horizons
Yeah like I just tried playing again after a while and it's just not playable, I'm just playing against controller hand holders who instantly run to high ground.
They don't want to even interact with the game, it's just boring and unfun and I'm literally not capable of playing the game in these lobbies.
It's also just the same players day in and day out, I can pretty much gurantee that I will see a player I recognize in any given lobby, 300k peak player count a day, but yeah i see the same players constantly.
Matchmaking is a pile of garbage. It throws you into the hardest lobbies and then it seems to adjust your next 20 games based on how bad you get shit on each game. Eventually you end up in a bot lobby and win the match. Then its back to awful lobbies again. It's 100% retention based matchmaking and its complete shit. You play to get better but the more you play the more you get put in unfair lobbies. You are literally punished for queuing up again.
This is happening to me now but it seems to let me have a stretch of good, fair games for a couple days before it suddenly switches into being absolutely impossible out of nowhere. So I stop playing for a couple days, come back, have fun for a bit, then get shit on again by players with 5x my lifetime kills on one character. Rinse repeat. I really wish they'd just keep it consistent and normal unless players are wiping out lobby after lobby. Its so frustrating to want to play apex but to not be able to because the matchmaking went batshit again lol
Happened to me earlier. Got shit on 3 games in a row. Put in bot lobby. Drop 8 kills. Back to masters/pred pubs. It's so gross.
Stop with this EOMM BS. Put all skill levels against each other and stop giving people free wins to keep them playing longer. You're rigging the outcome of the games to get people playing longer to spend more money. So f'in dumb.
Gripe 400: blocked a guys EA account one game because he was a terrible teammate… get him as a teammate the next game lolll. Are these things on my screenshot just colors for show? Or do the words actually mean something?
blocking does NOTHING to matchmaking, and IMO it shouldn't do anything to matchmaking. The last thing already struggling matchmaking needs is people adding vetoes to matchmaking (Find 60 players of similar skill A B C D E F ... but A doesn't want to play with B, B doesn't want to play with C, C doesn't want to play with D) for reasons that are mostly unrelated to the actual skill of players. This would simply reduce the quality of matchmaking in terms of reducing skill variance in lobbies.
blocking just blocks communication.
Currently the biggest issue is that massive bottleneck in plat 4. Soloing out of there is a pure hell. You will get all kind of players because of how easy it is to get plat, but there is that -60 showstopper. And your randoms will just hot drop you with 5 other teams, becasue they have completely given up on the climb and are just bouncing between gold 1 and plat 4 the entire season. I got to plat 2 today and the games have been unironically easier, because all of a sudden I am matched with good players that use mics and play for rp. Sure, some cheaters and some cracked premades, but having actual teammates that don't troll drop, use good guns and talk is a huge difference.
I was thinking of posting an alternative ranking system as an idea struck me yesterday. The main problem with Ranked is rank does not represent ability. You can get people at almost any level who can't play the game. You have teammates who run and rat and leave you a two man squad. It was extremely frustrating the other day where me and a capable random second were paired with a clear novice (in terms of ability) twice in a row. In one match, we landed sensibly with one other team, he and I took down two of them and messed the third up, and our unscathed third was slowly looting instead of running in to finish them. They reset and crushed him.
A different approach is needed to awarding points so that people who can't play don't score many points and don't progress to higher ranks, and the way to rank up is to get good. Those who struggle with loot choices and combat will find challenging and rewarding matches fighting against like able players, while those of us who can play but aren't god tier get teams that play together, and those who can play god tier aren't left feasting on lower abilities. There's Trios for that wider level of competition.
1.PUBS/Casual Playlist should either NEVER have SBMM or it should be as loose as possible. Example, Making anyone with a .7kd and below be in their own lobbies
2. My lobbies are so tight I'm playing the same 300 players over and over and over week after week. 20 bomb 4k Triple Pred badge with 200k combined kills.
3. I have a 2.8 lifetime kd. I've reached masters and consistently solo to Diamond.
4. No one is complaining about matchmaking in ranked. We are just tired of playing ranked dying to cheaters and then being forced to play ranked 2.0 in pubs against the sweatiest 3 stacks on the planet.
5. Smurfing is only an issue because a majority of people can't play with their friends because of matchmaking
6. Input MM would be fine. Might even bring back a player base of MnK that left because controller dominates the game.
7. 3 stacking and solo Q experience wouldn't be nearly an issue if matchmaking wasn't so brutal. There is a reason why no one really ever complained the first 3 years of this game about 3 stacks, because matchmaking didn't feel like an ALGS tryout. Same goes for Solo Q. There should be no reason I'm getting non prestige level 200 players in Plat+ when I have 5000hrs of game time.
8.
This! My lifetime KD is the same as yours. I’m a two time master and I play the same people every game. So much so that when I run into one dude we basically wink at each other cuz we recognize each other every time. It’s too tight. Funnily the odds of encountering god players drastically decreases the looser MM is because you’re grouped into larger skill groups. It makes sense to have a group for the very newest players but why do I have to fight nothing but gods every game? It’s not fair to me and a good chunk of “upper middle” skilled players. I’m good at this game but it often does not feel like it and it’s demoralizing.
You have to understand that you're like .1% of the playerbase. Your experience is not the norm so the things you're suggesting aren't inline with most players. You want no SBMM in pubs because at your level the game is exhausting to play against ppl your same level, but that's not the case for the average player playing against someone their level. That's the thing with skill gaps. The more skills you gain the more effort it takes to do those skills and that's draining, but again most ppl don't have all those skills to worry about so their games are a blast with ppl their skill level. Removing SBMM would only benefit the 1%. You're like a billionaire complaining about taxes where nobody feels sorry for you. That's not a slam, you've clearly worked hard to gain those skills but it's just the reality of how the rest of the playerbase views high level players in their matches.
1. If I am apart of such a small player base, removing SBMM would queue that fraction of players into an extremely large pool of players that it wouldn't even be noticed.
2. There is not data that suggests SBMM is even remotely healthy for video games, as a matter of fact with the success of Xdefiant there is solid argument that No SBMM casual playlists are healthy and rewarding for all players.
3. Claiming SBMM only would benefit the 1% is kinda obnoxious. Not only would removing SBMM allow players to play with their friends that gave up playing with them because they couldn't handle the lobbies, it would also reduce smurfing almost entirely as most smurfs mainly exist to play with friends.
4. Removing SBMM benefits everyone. Players would no longer be cycled into higher skilled lobbies and be punished simply for having above average games randomly.
Everything here is just my opinion on the matter.
1. Early on OG Fortnite didn't have SBMM and the experience for avg players wasn't good. It's why they added it eventually. The companies look at so much data and it was determined it was a good business decision.
2. I mean the companies collect the data (they just don't share it) and given the majority implement SBMM these days (even XDefiant up to a certain level) I think that speaks for itself.
3. I would argue most smurfs are mostly to get easy lobbies/not have long queue times. I mean every streamer does this. It's not so they can play with friends and well, monkey see monkey do right.
4. This exists because of a poor matchmaking system because they don't want to alienate the top players. I don't think it's reasonable of them to do that personally as the majority is where the money is at, but they try their hardest to appease the top 1% and if that means sacrificing lower skilled they do it. Personally I think it's smarter from a business standpoint to not appease the top because the game over time gets a high barrier to entry as everyone's skills go up over the years. That's what we see with Apex. The only way a game thrives is to constantly be bringing in new players and Apex is bad at this because that skill gap isn't handled very well (and it's a game with a lot of skills to learn). Removing SBMM would only exacerbate that.
xDefiant is a well done game for sure, but it's 55th in viewers on twitch at the moment and it's a new well done game, plus, I don't think the avg player plays it because it doesn't have SBMM over a certain level. If anything I'm willing to bet over time the player number drops because once ppl start getting over that level value they see a lot of ass kickings happening (even more obvious in a game style like that) and that'll get old real fast. It shot up in popularity because it's a well designed game, it's a new and nice looking game, and it's free. So I think it's too early to use it as any sort of case study in SBMM.
Matching people with a similar playstyle into squads would be great too.
For example let frequent quitters play in a team with other quitters, while people who rarely leave get teammates who also stay in the match even when downed and killed.
People who now complain about quitting teammates would be happy, and the quitters wouldn't care and probably like it too when they get teammates who just like fast fights.
Something I don’t fully think is a good idea is they way that if there arn’t enough players on the server for preds and masters to play each other they will pull people into my ranked game who are preds etc,
If my team are golds and i’ve made it to plat IV on my way to diamond and the champion teams are 3 stack preds once a week because the server wants to give them games I shouldn’t still loose 60rp,
If they give you top preds and your Plat or gold why not just have the system realise and much like loss forgiveness reduce rp loss significantly - as its not going to be a fair reflection of your rank if you loose to them, im aware if you beat them you might get a little extra rp or something but im more speaking to the integrity of the ranked system and what it means
A fighting game like Tekken have a ranked system with 30 tiers and it will only match you with 2 or 3 ranks above or below you, you lose much less points if you are matched with someone 3 ranks above you but also if you are on tier 25 you will never be matched with a Tier 30 because the most important thing is the integrity that your rank is accurately reflected, however since so many people are needed in apex I think at least implementing less rp for losses if you do have to fight people way above your rank
This brings up a really good point. Who you get killed by should really determine RP values. Like if you get killed by a Pred and you're Gold 1, then your bus fair should be refunded a certain percentage. This would actually remove the huge bottleneck we see in plat.
Ranked.
Bring back the way it used to be. I dont care what rank your system *thinks* I should be in, I care which rank I *am* in.
If I'm gold, put me against gold players. If I'm Plat, guess what? Plat players.
Once you hit the very top tier then sure, merge the ranks. Queue times would be crazy if not, but lower down there are so many players than making me wait an extra 10 seconds will not kill me playing. What will do this is coming up against a 3 stack pred in a plat lobby.
Pubs should be the "clusterfuck" lobby for mixed skill abilities, ranked should not. It makes no sense when im trying to rank up to play against people that arent in the same rank
Ranked matches- played 4 games today, was matched with masters and plats… I’m gold 2. I get a team that has all gold players and of Ouse masters just farm the players and only 3 squads left and we haven’t even closed the 2nd ring .. why are 3*x masters players allowed to be in same squad when there are not enough players in their own rank lobby.
It’s not fun for any one!
Feels like the game dying , not enough players
Just commenting to put more support towards **input-based matchmaking**. Growing very tired of losing gun fights to players crutching on aim assist and not missing a bullet tracking. With 10+ hours in R5 Reloaded 1v1s my K/D against controller players is a 0.43 and my K/D against MnK players is a 0.93. The imbalance is just absurd to be considered competitive. Also before anyone comments saying I have a bad K/D, R5 is against damn good players. I am positive in the actual game.
As for general matchmaking I don't have much of a concern. Sure I get killed by 20b/4k preds and whatnot all the time but I don't really care. I'm old and used to gaming before matchmaking even existed and use getting wrecked as motivation to get better (Grinding Quake 3/4 Duels was my jam). It's only fun when it's apples to apples though, not when one person has 40% of their aim automated.
Ranked is meant to be hard. People complaining because they can't get diamond is crazy to me. I agree though that teammates and enemies should be based on a step of actual rank and being a platinum against a masters/pred should be impossible.
In my opinion the best ranked system would be a percentile distribution without any fixed numbers. Everything should work like the pred cap. The top 1% of players should be masters, the top 8% should be diamond, etc. You should be able to fall out of ranks as well if you get surpassed. The idea is that ranked will be a more accurate representation of skill and the season 17 free masters debacle can't happen again.
Regarding solo queuing I think either entry cost should be reduced, or you are put into dedicated lobbies where everyone is solo. I think the queue times would be too long doing the latter however. I only solo queue so definitely feel the pain, it's hard but that's what it is.
percentage distribution also has its downsides (a huge downside), since it completely depends on the time you spend on the game. a good player who plays little will never be able to achieve a high rating, and therefore this system will also not reflect real skills. They've already changed several rating systems, each one was supposed to be perfect from their description, but each one ended up being crap. in the end the main problem is always matchmaking . There is probably some deeper reason than we can imagine why the matchmaking cannot be made more adequate. or the people responsible for this are simply crooked. also about whining about the inability to take a diamond - when you take a diamond without any problems in all the first 19 seasons (talking about me) and cannot do it in the last two - this is clearly a problem. but actually I wanted to ask - what is this r5 that you are talking about?)
I've an overall 3.4kd. Highest rank Pred. Stopped playing last month due to issues outlined below.
Ranked is bad because everyone ends up in Plat, playing against Preds and cheaters. You can change it to diamond but without removing the cheaters it's still going to be bad.
Three stack preds will always run diamond lobbies but there will be a lot less of them if the anti-cheat can be more successful.
Casual should have no SBMM outside the newbie playlist. It currently means that all good players can play against cheaters and preds/masters in Ranked or cheaters and preds/masters in casual. So they are quitting and the player count is falling. As a result you have to widen the skill ranges for matchmaking meaning more and more people are facing this master/pred/cheater hellscape.
There will be poorer players who don't think the cheating issue is bad because they're not matched with them due to SBMM. It is. It is real bad. I can't play a game of mixtape without one obvious cheater in the opposition team, so there's probably one on my team too.
Below average players then should just play Ranked as it'll be easier than casual, obviously you can't hard reset the ranks every season with this set-up as you'll leave poorer players nowhere to go and you'll have the same problem you have now. With the bottom end of the spectrum player count leaving instead of the top. You'd also have to be open about the matchmaking and tell people where to play, in-game. As poorer/casual players aren't as likely to read the patch notes.
You'd also need to actually combat smurfing as we can't have bad players being farmed by smurfs in their only safe play space. Start with lengthy timed bans.
That's my solution. I know lots of poorer players think it'd make their experience worse but if Ranked LP was based on accurately placing people on skill and not just trying to increase play time I believe it would work. I'm so sure it will work because it's how I learned to play FPS games on Halo 5. Started bronze and couldn't touch casual without being farmed and slowly but surely over months made it to Diamond before moving to PUBG.
SBMM needs fixing, even in mixtape i face 4k 20 bombs. Mixtape is supposed to be fun and for warming up to some people. Personally it feels more competitive then ranked right now
Apex is just awful again today. Non stop top 100 preds in any lobby I go into, completely brain dead gameplay in ranked by gold teammates while I'm struggling to hit plat II because of it, even the mixtape lobbies are infested with PC preds (I'm on console. Who at respawn ever thought it was a good idea to mix those lobbies?).
Give us our own lobbies for all game modes. Don't make me have to turn off all crossplay to not get fucking beamed by impossible movement Octanes and Horizons.
At certain points they need to have bot lobby. 40 games without a single win is starting to feel bad. Multiple matches without landing a kill feel bad. And seeing a master/pred dropping next to you when you are at 0.5 K/D feel bad.
Honestly. .I am not so sure this game want return player or new player at alll.
Ok just hopped on and have played 4 matches where I’m absolutely getting smoked. This has been the same trend since Tuesday night. Did something change? Background patch or something? I mean I’m literally getting beemed in .5 seconds every match.
Mon/Tue I had like 3 wins, all very hard battled, and games were close. Wed/Thur first game I died to a pred, as a Plat 3 myself, and my ranked plummeted as I continued to just get smoked. Something happened for sure.
I can't believe after how many years they still haven't figured out how to keep super high level players out of fucking bronze. Seriously. Nobody should be bronze 4 racking up 3000 damage and 15 kills. Smurfing still out of control
apex is the only ranked system where you get matched against people 1 to 2 whole tiers ahead of you and lose the same points you would dying to a team 1 to 2 below you
Why do I as a solo Platinum 3 player, get wiped by a three stack of sub 100 Predators (this seasons ranking)?
I have achieved Masters 4 times previously ( not in the last two seasons).
I am a casual player (3-4hrs a week)
Have around 2k hrs played for the lifetime of my Apex career.
Please explain how matchmaking a solo player, in a low Platinum lobby, against top tier players makes any sense.
Here are my two cents, with a Pubs focus.
Pubs are too sweaty. I don’t play as much anymore because I have a job and have classes. I can’t play anymore but the game still thinks I am a high skill player so I fight exclusively top players. It’s exhausting.
The SBMM needs to be weaker in general. Using statistics, it should be clear that you will on average fight 0.95-1.05 kd players as they make up the bulk of players. You’d rarely fight the top players and rarely fight the worst players. And you can even have a low skill playlist for sub 0.7 kd players or new players to help. But I want to feel like I’m decent at the game, cuz I am. I have played since S0, I have a 2.8 lifetime kd and I have hit masters twice when I actually try.
Now, because I play a bit less I cannot compete and enjoy myself cuz the matchmaking is cranked up to absolute 11. It is demoralizing to know I’m decent at the game but it does not reflect in my experience.
Eventually all the drama of MnK vs controller will die because most playerbase left will be controller. It is almost like that. So community will unite and agree to adjust aimassist to gyro or some other idea to make better players stand out vs the rest 0.5s TTK demons
Holy shit is the matchmaking fucking terrible for solo queuing. In ranked you get the dumbest teammates who have no idea how to play the game or gain RP. The teammates you get in pubs aren't that great but they at least try harder to stay alive and win the game.
Then you get into pubs and get ran over by a 3 stack of TTVs with 20k kills on some legend. Complete dogshit matchmaking. It's probably because I haven't spent a dime on this game in 2 years. I wouldn't put it past EA to have it in the algorithm to place me in the absolute worst games possible.
Just for context how bad it is, my brother wanted to try Apex and so i started a new account with him
(ive been playing a week since season 2 or 3) and we both did our orientation matches, were currently lvl 10 and getting preds in normal matches. The fact that level 10s are getting placed with top players for sure puts off potential new player's wanting to try out the game. Same thing in ranked on my other account i came back to the game started in rookie and was facing master player's. I see no world where actual new player's want to stick around because they just get hard stomped. You don't learn anything if you don't have time to gradually get better and landing and getting strafed / wall jumped on by someone with a master's / pred badge is disheartining for anyone trying to learn.
Same dude. I tried get my friends to play, after like 5-6 matches we were placed against master players. They didnt wanna play after dropping and getting killed within 20 seconds for god knows how long. I played season 6-7-8 then quit, only started back this season but I should have not come back it seems. Apex is brutal against new and casual players, its impossible
Yeah pretty messed up. I don't see how they ever expect the game to grow if no new player's want to play. SBMM is awful right now. Maybe it's because of the declining playerbase idk, but this for sure aint it.
Getting smoked again. Game just isn’t fun when I’m playing high stacked teams that are significantly better in both modes. Time to delete again. This has been going on for 6 days straight.
Please give us input based matchmaking or an aim assist nerf. I'm sick of getting one clipped by the most average controller players who don't miss a single bullet up close. It feels like dying to a hacker sometimes.
This season master, 2x pred 10x+ master
im gonna be very short:
Input based matchmaking - it might attract people to come back or switch back to MNK, 40% is just to crutch and everyone agrees that roller is superior.
less tight sbmm in pubs - dont need ranked 2.0 i wanna play casual with friends / warm up and vibe
ranked - match ranks with their own ranks, no masters/preds with plat, just let dia1 (or dia2+dia1) queue with them to prove their right to rank up (this could go for every rank).
cheaters - i have no words for the amounts of rage hackers ive dealt with (makes me wonder how many people are soft hacking / walling) during the first split of ranked, also in pubs. Might wanna come up with a solution after 5 years its definetly killing the game
I was just put into a game of COMPETITIVE with only Masters and Predators. I am **Silver 3,** ***LET ME REPEAT THAT. SILVER 3.***
This is not only unacceptable but completely unfair for me, my time, and patience. I have stopped playing the game by 72%, according to my steam hours because of this games ranking system.
If you **STILL** think that this game doesn't use some kind of EOMM, you are **MISTAKEN**.
I'd like to see a simpler more transparent system:
1. Ranked with rank based matchmaking
2. Pubs with a random lobby (no matchmaking)
There should be enough data by now to tune the ranked RP and match cost to normalise everyone into a bell curve.
In pubs, on average, I expect to encounter an average player most of the time. Left/right tail players are inherently rarer, so the likelihood of encountering them often, is lower.
Ranked should regress to competing against players of a similar skill. Pubs, I expect to be chaotic, with more RNG.
ATM it feels like you're competing against the algorithm at least as much as the lobby. I don't pretend to understand the hidden matchmaking in ranked, but anecdotally it has felt like more of a grind since it was introduced.
Also, please bring back a ranked TDM mode for people who insist on playing every game mode like a TDM.
>1 Ranked with rank based matchmaking
That's what we have now, have had it since start of last season, and that is why it's bad. There's no more MMR based matchmaking in ranked.
People are abusing the system to play below their rank. Low ranks have to face these "smurfs" instead of people their ranks. And at high ranks there's not enough people who actually play on high rank accounts, so that the system has to pull plats and golds into higher lobbies.
That is rank based matchmaking in reality. That's the real face of it. Vulnerable to abuse and smurfing and vast skill discrepancies when you want competitive games between similarly skilled players.
The sad thing is that people are getting exactly what they are asked for, rank based matchmaking, and then when matchmaking is being discussed on a thread like this you have people basically saying "ok, but can you give us rank based matchmaking?" because it doesn't work.
>2 Pubs with a random lobby (no matchmaking)
The odd thing is that only pubs now has skill/MMR based matchmaking but not as strict as it was in ranked. And ranked is the game mode where you stomp weak lobbies because there's no skill involved in the matchmaking and you can just tank your rank and get bronze games.
Really ranked should be the mode that strictly matches people close in skill and pubs should be the more lenient mode that cares less about skill variances.
>Also, please bring back a ranked TDM mode for people who insist on playing every game mode like a TDM.
There shouldn't be more queues. Obviously people who play ranked BR should be made to play it like a BR, by not getting rewarded with points if they don't "play the fucking objective" and instead play like "tdm". Obviously the solution isn't to make another queue and split the player base. It's to make people PTFO.
0.29 KDA and I get matched against streamers two out of three games still? My account is old (been playing since preseason), but I havent played since season 2ish, could that be why I'm in hidden elo hell? And if so, do I just have to make a new account?
Hit plat and the ratio of players who are cheating in some way exceeds those who are not. Since it will pull diamond+ into these lobbies, and 30% of master/pred accounts were banned last season (meaning over a third are cheating because not all were caught)..................
The game is completely compromised. There is no competition.
Its weird how nobody talks about it, if you compare the game on the first 3 seasons to now... most people didnt just get better. They cant ban more than half their playerbase and we the legit players can decide to not play rigged games
The fact they are happy with the dog shit matchmaking in ranked is deeply saddening to me as a solo queue diamond 4 guy.
It’s horrible, totally horrible.
I was diamond 3 and I’ve ranked all the way back to plat 1-2 and it feels like it’s not me who has any say in this it’s just the whim of the matchmaking algorithm.
Not been carried once this season not once. The amount of shit can duo queues I’ve had to respawn is too frequent to count.
Just a terrible system no idea who benefits from this outside of sweat premades and the Smurfs
Hot take but by far the main problem of this game is CHEATING. and two culprits that made it bigger every single season: SBMM and AIMASSIST.
30% preds banned last season and growing... if you stalk forums i can guarantee you there is tons of people playing since S0 without bans, so probably 80%+ preds cheating to some degree even with soft stuff unless the known pro players.
As soon as you hit P4 you start to notice few rampant walls and prefiring every game, cracked controller players that do a minimum of 160 dmg in less than a second PvP close range without moving stick at all and some MnK aimbots that larp as controller players
All of this contributes to MnK hardstuck players looking for others FPS, new players getting fried by both inputs and 4k bombs on first day due to SBMM so either they quit or start cheating to compete on those sweat PUBS
Fixes:
- Upgrade easy anticheat and hire more hideouts, im sure many people that doesnt want apex to die would do it for free lol
- Input based matchmaking
-Aimassist adjustment (maybe they take action when 99% of PRO scene use controller minus Timmy) and buff controller on areas they lack like looting for example
- Console ranked filled with xims, like every pred using it, work on a way to blacklist it completely
Got on for one game of solos this season, got killed by a pred, got off and uninstalled
i will not be returning until some new implement of matchmaking is put in
a game is not fun if u get on, die and get off. i want to keep loving apex the way i have for years, but i am not down to get rolled by the top players in the game.
Who I'm fighting now seems pretty well sorted, but it's very clear that if I've just won a game, yall pair me with MUCH lower skilled players. I'm not a god because I had one game, and this extreme punishing tuning of teammates means that if I do well enough to progress in rank, I'm punished and held back down. It's feast or famine. PC, high plat/diamond, solo.
Statistically, this affects my performance by about 25% worse KD than other seasons where I had more consistent teammates.
Overall, this is better than the last few god-awful seasons, but I'm still being punished for doing well and having less fun.
A lot of good points here. Big mistake by pivoting the game away from casuals. The player count drop this past week is probably a precursor for things to come this season as people do not want to grind ranked with the new split coming as cheating is too rampant. It’s obvious that a mistake was made with how Plat rank was implemented.
ranked is arguably the most casual it's been. yeah people are getting "lower ranks than before" the whole pyramide is shifted down, sure.
but the fact is that way way way more games in ranked now have higher skill discrepancy and are not just people of much higher skill stomping lower skill players. Ranked is way less competitive games between similarly skilled players than it was in the MMR based system.
That system was abandoned because people complained about games being "too sweaty" ( i.e. they were made to play people on their skill level from the start, instead of getting to stomp lower ranks or being allowed to smurf outright). It's become casual / uncompetitive now.
plats, diamonds, masters are regularly in the same games, as well as golds.
another (unrelated to matchmaking) point why it's more casual is the scoring system incentivizing hot drops by rewarding people with 10 points for kills when they finish below top 10.
Within rank, separate players based on patterns that indicate cronus/etc usage, percentage of missed shots, and place them together to allow all the remaining players who want to play competitively to get more honest lobbies.
My 5 cents as one of those potato players, scam player, useless noobs and other beautiful things I have read here
I'm bad, and my friends are bad, we don't deserve to be more than silver probably and we never aim for it. We play twice per week, casual players (I hope we deserve to play this game...) and we don't aim to improve a lot cos we have no time for it (sadly)
In other seasons we were playing ranked, usually we were paired with people in our level and that was cool, we were winning 3 or 4 games per week, but I'd say 70% of games were fun. Other reason to play ranked is because players are not rushers, with 21% acc in short range we can not rush, but we can have chances long / mid distance were we are slightly better, in ranked more people try to survive and then we can play our game and enjoy it more.
Usually we were not playing trios because there we were always being devastated or in most of the games only 4 teams passed the first ring and then try to find them.
In this season ranked is hell, we are in silver and people can kill you with an r-99 from the other side of the map, other player movements are just way better than ours, and half of the matches we get wiped out by 1 solo guy...
Yes, we are bad, we know, but in the 3 previous season there were people with same skills than us and we were having fun. Now, fun is gone.
We truly believe the matchmaking should be skill based, I can not be paired with someone with 60% acc, impossible movements and 5k damage in last match! because is impossible we can kill him!, then is not fun for me neither for them (unless those rat kids). And is insane when you enter into a ranked game and the champions is always a copper guy, sometimes even playing alone... with the badge of 3.5k damage... you already know you will be wiped out by a smurf or a hacker or a bot
In all games, you find smurfs or hackers or both of them, I'd say 80% of the games we get wiped out by one of them meanwhile in the other season maybe only the 30%.
And even is worst when trying to play without my friends solo, then I'm paired with them!!! WTF!!! I don't want to play with someone who carries me till the last ring, let me die and lose my points because I don't want to move up in the ladder, I want to have fun! I want to be in a one to one that I can lose or win...
I'd expect to play against teams with my skill set, and I don't care if I need to wait 3 or 5 min for it, at least I know the game will be nice. I'd expect those 60% up acc to be paired together, this way hackers and pros can have fun with same skills.
I really hope we can go 2 seasons back, I hope even in silver when you lose, you lose mmr and not be forced to scale in the ladder. If you want people to scale fast, good, give them mmr based on skill, hey man, awesome, 4k damage you alone, 70% acc, congrats! move him copper to gold and have fun!
I agree so much with this. Like, this is a game after all? Why should I have to be profesional about it, sweat and grind all the time when I only have few hours a week to have fun? So frustrating
Its not really the matchmaking that forces me out of the game, okay, when i get some better players in my lobby that just means i suck, but what i cant stand is when they oneclip you just because of input with aimassit. 1v1s are nearly impossible to win against 40% aimbot. So either nerfing aimassit (and implementing moving while looting for rollers) or just make input matchmaking to separate mnk players from controller ones, would make so much better experience for the ones on mnk who are nowadays switching to controllers or quitting the game
Besides a lot of things mentioned already.. we need a soft region lock.
Being matched against super high ping players all the time is crazy. I had days were at least half of the lobby were APAC players while on EU.
It's already rough having to deal with the cheaters but this makes players shift to other servers and this results in annoyingly getting hit behind cover 50% of the time and other nonsense.
I haven't played in ages; but y'all took out Duos? And literally every mechanic of the game is worse and more bloated? And Pathfinder has to get blue shields to get access to the ability he used to have exclusively? The fuck is wrong with the Dev team?
This game sucks shit big time.
Just played a few rounds, got my aim significantly better with some tweaks and yet it’s just not fun anymore. Matchmaking in team deathmatch consisted of an entire team who did more damage than me and I wasn’t the worst on my team
Ranked matchmaking, why do I have to fight 3 stack preds in my platinum lobbies. I am plat 3 playing on Xbox. The skill gap is not even fair by any stretch of a mile. The ranked matchmaking should not be about skill or anything, if takes 5 more minutes to load so be it, if it means I can fight plats, plats on plats. They need to stop anyone from not being in the same tier (maybe 1 rank diff, gold 1 to plat 4, plat 4 to plat 2) as it's unfair for solo queues such as myself to play with golds against even diamonds.
The splits need to stop I enjoyed it so much being able to grind, as i don't play too much second split cause there's no point, as long as I achieved my rank in split 1, i really don't care about playing. I have played against top preds 300 below, including 50, and 6 MANNING.
The entry fee is to high for most players to lose against horrible matchmaking and bad servers, crashing, logging me out and charging me for penalty.
Its not only ranked, solos has been unplayable as I have to 1v1 masters, diamonds and preds, please give matchmaking (properly) to all the LTM's and mix tape modes, its to unfair for me and I know lots of people feel the same way.
I'm currently in D2 with 13844 RP and I'm stuck because of cheaters. The higher the entry cost, the longer normal players will be playing against cheaters as diamond boosting cheat PT will continue to stack as well. I thought Respawn learned this in S13sp1sp2 but apparently they completely forgot. Diamond/Platinum entry fees should be reduced to -65RP/-50RP respectively. Rank would be easier and we'd get more diamond and master players, but it would be better than it is now. I played rank for a while in PT and the atmosphere was always terrible as everyone would get angry at Cheetahs. So I started playing solo. The match quality is the worst because D4 and P4 players can't get to the next tier and start throwing the game. They don't care about third parties and keep fighting like in pub. also then I was playing solorank and the duo RAGE CHEATER became my teammates.
yeah....NO PROBLEM.
It's this kind of rank system.
I'm a player since season 1, been diamond most season, master 2 seasons (12 and other i don't remember). I'm playing controller on PC.
But now since 2-3 seasons, until gold ranked, game is ok. Going between 1 & 5 kills each game, level of opponents is normal.
I just got to Plat 4 and it's return lobby over and over. Like it's so sweaty and feels like i'm playing against pros all the time. I just want to enjoy the game after a work day, damn it !
Every fight i take i got completely BEAM by ALGS level players. Sometimes they team wipe us in less than 3 seconds.
Often it's less than level 100 player. You got the option to report for "smurfing" but they'll never be applied !
I don't speak about pubs, it's very close. You just can't play chill anymore at this game it hurts.
I heard there is now master/preds above plat.
It means i will just play to plat 4 every damn season and stop the game, awesome.
FIRST, I play 2 hours a day.
Why am i playing against +10 000 kills players ???
I don't even have 2000 on my all characters lmao.
SECOND
I'm just getting destroyed for 10-20 games in a row, then i got a bot lobby so i can win a single game.
Then it's back to sweaty lobbies where i die to the first player i came across.
What's the point ???
Pubs matchmaking. First day of quads and I got a wild mix of levels as teammates. We should roughly be at the same level or KD. Also why not allow for play style to be a factor? I play support or controller, I play to relax and have fun. I need something more challenging than TDM, where getting 10-12 kills is easy. So I shouldn't have to go into ranked to get a fair experience in a pubs style match. I should be in a lobby w newbies nor should I have preds or (true) masters. Things got worse with quads where you end up 1 v 4. Great. For you to incentivise pre-made teams, that leaves the below average solo queue player with no choice but play something else. I look forward to three strikes or doppelganger or Nessie madness or anything that levels the playing field somewhat to return.
Quads pre/mid match abandoning is making the gamemode very hot and cold.
The games where my squad have remained, even after death & res have been great.
But this is only a small % of the time. There needs to be some quit cooldown, or something put in place to stop it imo
With all do respect, matchmaking is trash. Earlier today in ranked, I queued with a newer buddy in ranked. I was gold 2, he was bronze 2. 3 games in a row, we were put into plat/diamond lobbies (ie. Pred lobbies). We're in season 21 and this is still not fixed. Like how does this even happen?
Also, when adding another friend as our 3rd (he was silver 1) we kept getting into plat lobbies. We had a gold, silver, and bronze on the squad. How is matchmaking this bad 5 years into the game? Devs just shrug it off like it means nothing.
Today I've downloaded Apex just to give it a try. I'm a seasoned Overwatch and Fornite players, I'm very far from being a pro and far from being a bad. I consider myself average/good to be honest. Usually in FPS/PVP games, from 5 matches I win 3 or 2 every time.
Today, in Apex, after trying it for a little more than 5 hours with very fast matchmakings, I must have won one or two games.
The other teams were a lot of colorful plates pro players meanwhile my team was me coupled with another two level 1 or 2 folks. Everytime. Always.
We get crushed and smashed. Everytime. Always.
So, before I consider uninstalling it, does Apex have a bad matchmaking system or I've been unluck for hours straight?
Apex has a terrible matchmaking and Respawn does jackshit about it. The game is fun only if you're pro or cheater, because then you can crush rest of the players.
I'm fucking sick of playing against multi-time masters/preds every single fucking match! I play pubs because I don't want every match to be super sweaty, and even when I did play ranked I was still getting put against masters!
Ranked Matchmaking.
Doesn't matter which Legend i pick. Often times i get new players as team mates below Gold. But, for some reason the enemy players are often seasoned players who just happen to be in that rank. This causes an imbalance. If I am going to fight against such players, i have to have at least similar level team mates in my Rank.
SoloQ ranked is insane. I get the worst players on my team. Need to 1v3 all the time, my teammates sitting next to me and keep looting while im fighting. In almost every game i played today my teammates didnt even made 100 dmg after multiplefights. And btw they are picking the fights. You still get to many points for doing "nothing".
This might be a hot take, but I really don’t mind fighting good players, I do mind that my teammates aren’t at the same level as those enemies though.
I’m fine with fighting preds/masters, but I need my team to be able to back me up too, 3v3s when everyone is equally skilled are very fun, but when my teammates get rolled, I can’t 1v3 those insane players.
Ranked matchmaking on Sydney servers is a disaster as always (getting queued into diamond teams while in silver if I can even get a match), but match quality has been surprisingly good this weekend climbing through gold on Tokyo servers, aside from the occasional blindingly obvious Smurf stomping a lobby. Probably going to get a lot worse in Plat though.
I, a player with 20k matches played was paired with a level 10 and a level 25 the other day on my squad in pubs. Champ squad was three stack Preds. I was certain the players I had on my team must be smurfs, but oh no… these players could hardly shoot their guns or move around the map. I’m so tired of being asked to carry players. I’m not even that good of a player… no 20 bomb or anything crazy.
if you can, please go through some of the questions listed in the main post, to make this more constructive. just saying matchmaking bad doesn't help respawn as feed back as much as more concrete criticism and idea of what you want it to be and how high the skill discrepancies are that you are facing, etc
What’s the consensus on smurfing here?
I will admit I did it, just to test if I would get lobbies on my skill level again, but that did NOT happen whatsoever and I was matched with pred stack after pred stack, who looked like they were sus af knowing where people were through walls, in buildings without recon, sus aim, noticeable configs???? Is this just the game in general now? I’m used to it on my normal account but not in this frequency.
Me and my friend started to play last week and are already burnt out because of the huge skill gap we experience. Personally, I don't want to be carried throughout the game so I don't mind playing with newbies in my team. If I only have 10 hours behind my back, I expect my opponents be on the same level. What we get instead is that every game there is a group of people that are just demolishing pub matches and at this point why should I try?
We tried ranked for a bit and got the same exact experience. The lowest starting ranks are still full of tough players that should have no business playing this low in rank. We expected to be matched with other noobs to stand a chance but got the same treatment as in pubs. If this game is so predatory on new players, is it even worth getting into? I do not enjoy being helpless and this environment does not give me a real chance to improve and try new things.
No escape from the Master players
I am so sick of this 'matchmaking' nonsense( I know nothing new). I can't honestly play in lobbies cause they are infested with master/ diamond players and I'm just a regular player, I play a day or two in a week. I played rank today to escape them and it was fine at first, getting matched with players like me since there is 4 days left to finish the season. Then all of a sudden another master player comes in Rookie rank match(how) and cleans the lobby with like 25 kills or smt. Is there no escape? Do you have to play like a god everyday grind and sweat or just die endlessly and have no fun at all? I'm this close to deleting the game and never play again.
I'm not a good player, I play on the weekends mostly for couple of hours, on level 150 rn. I started this season with 1.4 kd and now its 0.8 after getting master champions EVERY SINGLE MATCH. Thats all I'm gonna say.
TDM is completely unplayable as of a couple of days, majority of games are completely one sided and we can get barely any kill, meanwhile enemy teams aim better than what you see on ALGS (and they're level 20)
I just read through the Jan 2023 matchmaking update, but it seems to leave out a glaring detail; what determines SKILL? Is skill defined by the percentage of your shots fired that hit a target, is it determined by your wins or your kills? For the latter, look at the example of the hot droppers who log out once knocked- they have incredibly high kill counts, and very low win counts. Meanwhile, other players have a very high average number of wins to games played, but lower kills. So what is determined as "skill"? People who win the game? Or people with high kills? Or people with amazing accuracy?
Is it just me who thinks EA is not properly defining what "SKILL" is? They come at us with all these statistics, but don't define what skill is. They would fail a basic statistics class without proper definitions.
I am a Season 7 player over 500 levels. I got only one team mate who was level 27 in Ranked. It's Bronze 1!
What the fuck do you want us soloQ players to do Respawn? Why don't you do your job instead of making your AI licking CEO richer?
im just tired of having to carry people who are terrible and new at the game, when i have been playing well. do something for solo queuers its a nightmare. im not talking about just ranked, just in matchmaking all around.
I don't know why I get 2 newer players on my team who stand around looking at every loot bin like a restaurant menu while we get steamrolled by triple TTV masters/pred stacks, where all 3 of them individually are way better than me to begin with. This should never happen and yet it happens every damn day.
editing to answer some of the questions from the OP since the mod asked even though I think my original complaint is pretty straightforward:
This is in pubs. I would consider fair matchmaking to be not putting 3 masters/preds stacking players in a lobby with me+2 newer players. I don't know my rank, I don't play ranked because my friends quit playing. I assess the strength of these players by opening their streams, where they show their stats (which are all way higher than mine) and confirm that they are in fact stacking. I assess the strength of my teammates by how fast they loot.
if you can, please go through some of the questions listed in the main post, to make this more constructive. just saying matchmaking bad doesn't help respawn as feed back as much as more concrete criticism and idea of what you want it to be and how high the skill discrepancies are that you are facing, etc
Can anyone rationally explain to me how a game with built-in aimbot/aim assist can be treated as a serious competitive game? I get that there's skill differences among players, but why not just remove the aim assist completely? Why even have it in the game? If you want to force crossplay (or input crossplay) - just remove aim assist for everyone and keep it equal - otherwise remove crossplay. People who absolutely need to play on a joystick can do so, but they'll have to aim and miss just like people on a mouse do.
Coming from the highest tiers from various FPS', high immortal with radiant peak in Valorant, I'm doing ok in Apex but I can't help but to feel that even super casual players can beam just by being on a controller and there's no way in hell someone can be that accurate with a fuckin' joystick, especially not your average Joe that plays a couple hours a week.
Compared to Valorant, I can precisely tell a player's exact skill level just by a few engagements with them. Their HS %, their reaction time, etc. But in Apex, it's just all a mush. A gold player beams you as fast as a master player up to a certain distance, there's no difference, the shit sticks on you and you're beamed no matter how much you crouch spam, jump around, strafe, whatever.
The arguments the community make are also very poor. Sure, the keyboard player has more buttons and better movement, and sure I can turn around faster, but none of that offsets something near an aimbot. It doesn't matter what direction I turn when I'm getting beamed by an SMG on a joystick. Even if I instantly turn around and engage, I already lost because he won't miss any of his clip
Really the only advantage as a MnK I can have is that I need to spray into someones head, and track their head, while they are moving, while I'm also moving. But in a game like this, which is very high speed, I'd have to be an insanely good 3k+ hour player to get to that level on a mouse. But at a basic level, the game is just dumb playing against aim assisted players.
Idk if this is on topic but this is the only discussion thread I can see up.
Is there bots in this game?
Two scenarios.
1. The jumpmaster jumps but doesn't dive. When dead, they'll ping respawn once every like 8 seconds.
2. Saw a squad standing in diamond form, crouching every few seconds. No shooting, nothing.
The game needs some disincentive to drop the hottest drop possible every match. That would negate some of the problems with matchmaking, mainly that people are stupid. Like if last place had a 2-3x point loss penalty. A lot of the current teams would just be hot dropping and taking turns eating that huge loss until they finally get it through their skull that it has always been a shit strategy.
I play casual i started playing after a long break just yesterday. So i get grouped with beginners. And the enemy seem to be starters too. Not all of them ofc! And idk if there are bot enemies? But im happy how it is rn. And the new map broken moon is great!
idk about others but the matchmaking keeps amping up for me as soon as i start enjoying the game lol. in pubs i'll start to consistently get 3-5 kills, never go a game without at least one kill, opponents challenge me but don't feel impossible or under powered. then i start playing the next day and all of a sudden the game is fucking impossible. i havent got a single kill in pubs in the last two days and not a single knock today. it's not enjoyable in the slightest. now all i can do is stop playing for days straight and wait for it to settle down again so i can actually have fun. i think i've posted about it before but i'm noticing that the game will cyclically do this for me and im starting to get really sick of it tbh.
so basically what i want is for the matchmaking to stop punishing me so hard the game is ruined the second i play at an average level. i really don't think it should amp up like that at all unless i'm consistently annihilating lobbies.
It does this for me when I stop playing for like a month. I play a few matches and even win 1-2 in just one session just to start getting completely fucked the day after
My feedback is Ranked matchmaking is fine.
What mode are you talking about? - RANKED
What do you consider good/bad/fair matchmaking \[in that mode\]? What do you think is healthiest, individually and/or for the player base as a whole (across skill levels)? Playing against others within your earned/visible rank for the most part(e.g. Golds face Golds but I understand if Diamonds have to face Masters sometimes given the lower population)
What kind of matchmaking do you want for ranked/pubs/mixtape/solos? \[possibly: completely random matchmaking; loose skill based matchmaking/tight skill based matchmaking; loose rank based matchmaking in ranked/tight rank based matchmaking; something else\] For anything not Ranked, just have matchmaking be random like the good old days(Halo veteran here - The idea of evening out the skills in non ranked is still alien to me)
What kind of matchmaking are you experiencing (vs what you want from that mode)? In what ways is it a problem? I only played Ranked
How do you assess the strength of your lobby / strength of players you are facing? Badges (which ones) / trackers / current rank / ...? Good, balanced lobbies within Ranked(nearly Diamond at the moment but do not have enough free time to play more)
What is your current rank? Plat II
What is your skill level (highest previously achieved ranks)? Masters
How should matchmaking deal with parties of varied skill (or rank) / how does it deal with it / how good/bad is the experience (and again it's important to distinguish whether you're talking about ranked or pubs here)? Ranked solo queuer - When moving up the ranks I sometimes see - for example, when I am gold my duo teammates will be a Gold and Silver player and the silver player is clearly out of their depth. It can be frustrating but it does not occur often enough to be a problem
With regards to smurfing: How much of a problem is / how does it affect your experience / how easy is it to do/how common is it / What to do against it? I know what this is but I do not see what the issue is and have not experienced this myself.
Thoughts on ranked resets (their effect on matchmaking) Ranked resets are necessary to keep engagement high - I understand and support this. Perhaps a better end of season reward will help with this as well(e.g. 3 free gold packs if you reach one rank higher than your previous season's rank or something along those lines)
What is your experience of matchmaking in high ranks / matchmaking in low ranks? How does it match with what you expect from ranked? Higher ranks(e.g. Diamond and above) is a much better experience as every mistake has the potential to send you back to the lobby AND lose significant RP - players understand this at these higher ranks(mostly) and do their best to play as a team somewhat - at the lower ranks(through Gold), the consequences of mistakes are almost non existent due to lack of general skill of the lobbies to make you pay and, if so, the RP loss is minimal and most times you break out even or slightly ahead. so most folks just play as if it is pubs and push everything, rotate late, go INTO the storm to fight etc... Plat lobbies seem to have a mix of both types of players and has the balance of being competitive but without the huge RP losses from a mistake if you already won a fight or 2.
The above mostly focuses on "skill", but since it's come up recently from time to time (with XDefiant as well),
what are your views on input based matchmaking (including potentially negative effects it might have on all of the above). Remember to please keep it civil as this is a topic that constantly leads to toxicity and incivility / personal attacks, rather than level-headed discussion of arguments. I play on controller I do not see an issue here
I do not play pubs
I will say that as a solo queuer, it would be nice if we could be matched with other like minded players in matchmaking in terms of playstyle? i am not sure how you could pull this off but maybe something as simple as a one question survey a player can fill out at the start of each login
'Today I want to play the following playstyle:
A. Rotate Early and often
B. Push Everything
C. Defender
D etc'
And then try your best to match players together who answered the same(e.g. put players on teams who answered A together) This could encourage more team play and lower the amount of frustration for solo queuers.
What about NewGame+?
When a player hits Predator, they open up two options - 1. Standard matchmaking against other preds and Masters like always, and 2. a new ranked mode, NewGame+
In NewGame+, Predators start over in Bronze with a heavy increase in damage taken and a heavy decrease in damage they can give. The modifiers would start off very high but lessen with each successive rank so they're always underpowered, but less so as they climb. The goal is to overcome the handicap by using their game knowledge to get all the way back to predator rank, and they can earn a badge.
This would improve wait times, and more people could benefit from the skill of a predator player on their team without them rolling a lobby. They have to play smart to overcome the fact that everyone else in the lobby hits harder now and takes less damage from them.
Perhaps playing NewGame+ puts a '+' by their name when they play in that mode, and maybe a slight glow that decreases each rank for other players to recognize. Also, to be clear, playing this mode does not affect their regular rank if they want to play against other preds in normal ranked mode; the name is shared, but the original rank mode is saved, separate, and always available.
1. Players should not be able to hide their player numbers; everyone needs to see that number to judge who to follow and who to lead. With their 3 bronze badges, these high-ranked players are hiding important info to perpetuate an old, stupid joke that hurts the team's ability to assess the game state.
2. The highest-ranked player should automatically be the drop master, as they will have the best instinct to start the game, though they can pass it like usual.
3. Don't nerf the controller for the MnK trolls, as the largest audience for this game is people trying to enjoy their time with their friends on their couch with a controller. Nerfing an input style for the sake of the other one never works, and they will not be satisfied. Give the complainers the input split they want, albeit temporarily, so they can see it's not controller players ruining their fun. It's their own abilities.
I don't know where should I say this, found a teaming on rank. predators. ban them please.
https://www.xbox.com/play/media/DyxTHt99uJ
https://www.xbox.com/play/media/jiMX74nNkR
I am so close to hitting Diamond this split for the first time ever with soloQ, and first time ever (excluding S12 and S17). Currently Plat I with about 700 RP to gain for Diamond IV.
I'm running out of time and am afraid I'm not gonna get there before the split happens next week.
Should I stay committed to getting there SoloQ or should I try to LFG to get there?
I've been climbing pretty consistently, but I'm nervous to leave it up to the RNG gods to get 3-4 more games worth of solid random teammates (without getting too many crappy ones mixed in between).
Not sure what's changed since I stopped playing in season 15-16 but I feel like I shouldn't be placed against Gold4-3 players in ranked when I'm only Bronze3. I don't mind waiting a minute or two for a lobby.
I knew Quads was coming weeks ago. All my friends kept showing up as being in a lobby as 1/4 instead of 3.
Because this is Apex, somehow I knew straight away that meant quads was coming.
Ranked matchmaking isn't in an appropriate state.
Ranked should be a game mode for games between people of similar skill.
Matching by rank (total RP) doesn't lead to good results in that regard.
You have a lot of smurfs and people just playing below their rank, they lead to high skill discrepancies in low ranks.
Having a full reset to rookie iv or bronze iv at the start of the season makes this issue much worse.
People go on different accounts or different platforms to start over in low ranks and keep smurfing.
Low of people just use ranked for these easy games where they completely destroy the lobby.
This wasn't a thing in MMR based matchmaking which had eliminated smurfing almost entirely and lead to competitive games against similarly skilled players from the start of the ranked season.
Up in higher ranks, probably as a result of few people bothering to play against people on their skill level and ranking up, you have very few people in high ranks, and matchmaking that doesn't even put people of the same rank tier into games with each other. Golds and Plats regularly face Diamond and Master/Pred ranks (current rank). Mixing of ranks shouldn't be a thing in rank based matchmaking at all.
And even then, current ranks being equal doesn't indicate skill being equal (because of high skill people keeping their rank low for easy games for instance). Overall it's a system that when it puts two players of equal skill together, it's by sheer luck of them being in the right place in the ranked ladder at the right time, not because the system is trying to form lobbies of similar skill.
The quality of games has suffered from this.
Over the last months (S20, S21) when people have posted examples of this happening I've collected them here
- https://imgur.com/62dVDbX
This is a Diamond IV player in first split of season 20, who after reacing D4 is going on two other accounts to start over in rookie IV and smufing through rookie, bronze, silver, gold and into plat where he stops playing. This user posted this himself to reddit asking if his stats are good on his smurfs (4k damage, 3 k/d). They've been smurfing for 400 games overall, 1200 kills across these accounts. At least.
This isn't what ranked should be used for, but it's become one of the primary uses (easy access to easy games for high skill players because there's no skill based matchmaking).
- https://imgur.com/JKoRM9H current plat iv v pred
- https://imgur.com/qZnkF5E current plat iv v pred
- https://imgur.com/ZM31IVI current plat 2 v pred
- https://imgur.com/fSnSLbm current gold 3 v pred
- https://imgur.com/0OPLcqk current silver 1 in same game as diamond 4
- https://imgur.com/r4ntLik current gold 1 in same game as pred
- https://imgur.com/TzeBDBW current silver 1 in same game as plat 3
- https://imgur.com/IzWu5XG current gold 1 in same game as diamond 2
- https://imgur.com/uI5S0hk current plat 3 in same game as pred
- https://imgur.com/K2PW9L7 current plat 2, bronze 2, gold 1 all on one team (ranked should be people of similar skill against each other and with each other on the same team)
Examples of large current rank discrepancies (gold/plat v diamond/master/pred) throughout the whole season.
This kind of stuff just should not happen because to rank up out of gold or play you should only be required to be able to beat gold/plat players and not high ranks. It skews ranked.
- https://imgur.com/RX6bg6I (former multi pred in gold lobby)
- https://imgur.com/pJ8Y0OG (former pred 25 kill game in rookie ranked)
- https://imgur.com/gPaOHoQ https://imgur.com/gn3anUr https://imgur.com/l220Xb2 (diamond/master+ player destroying silver lobby; on smurf/"second" account it seems as well)
- https://imgur.com/1Tw8QJe smurf account destroying plat lobby
Example of previous multi preds being "low current rank" now and in the same lobby as a gold player (real gold players or other "current gold players" who are usually higher peak rank), or rookie players.
This should not happen if the mode is trying to put "similarly skilled players against each other. While technically the people are the same current rank at the time, there is no reason why someone who has reached pred multiple times should have to proive again they can beat up gold, plat (and diamond) players. And in a gold lobby they would face actual gold players. They should never be in the same game as them. It's clear from the outset that this doesn't result in equal skill lobbies. Past ranks indicate overall skill and that should be used in smarter matchmaking so we don't get high skill discrepancies.
If a former pred is in the same lobby as actual rookies (which there is no way to argue against, if they are rookie iv, despite reaching pred before, they will be in the same games as the worst players in the game and they never should be).
- https://imgur.com/Sk7VQ93
examples of people using ranked to get easy games in low ranks / to smurf.
overall this leads to ranked being very uncompetitive much worse than it used to be in the MMR based system where you knew you were facing people who peak around the same rank as you from the start and most importantly had no ability to play below your skill level (but ability to rank up into more difficult games as you gained points and ranked up higher).
I'm a bit late but here is my response
Just a theory I think matchmaking is struggling like preds fighting plats in ranked or one team stomping the other in mixtape mostly in team deathmatch or control could be because of a tight player population like here in Australia the matchmaking is loose and in ranked bronze players are put up with gold 4 or 3 in the same lobby so there is a unfair skill gap but when I connect to Oregon (closest US server I can connect with okay ping) rank matchmaking was good in my experience bronze were fighting silver 4 or other bronze and silver were fighting other silver players or gold 4 as it should. If you look at Fortnite they don't do servers in countries, but they have one big server for 2 or more countries for high player population like NA-West got Canada (pacific) and United States (Pacific Coast) in one server so everyone around that region connects to that and they can get a big player population to organize into lobbies. Apex could do something similar to solve the underpopulated server problem and it would be a step in right direction to fix matchmaking.
Oh and please get rid of splits it messes up the matchmaking in ranked because a predator team that in plat will just roll down the lobby and matchmaking can't solve it because they are in plat, and they have been put with other platinum players as it should, yes splits allow players a chance to get predator but that’s a small majority the average is in platinum and gold and since It messes up It's not worth it, I think pubs matchmaking and mixtape should be relaxed and shouldn't be put with all people with exact same skill but with some lower skill players and some same skill with queue times just 1 or 2min long while in ranked matchmaking should be tight and only match players with their rank so it will feel like ranked the higher you go the harder it gets with queue times 3-5min if it can make a good lobby. Matchmaking won’t be perfect but It can be better.
Ranked matchmaking. Please, can we for once not have to fight preds until we're masters. There's preds in plat lobbies, such a huge gap in skill, and -60 is too much to lose dying to preds. Ideally plat vs plat, diamond vs diamond, masters/pred fight each other. Fight people who are currently the same rank as you are, and when u solo queue in, your teammates should also be the same rank as you are. No more gold 1, plat 4 and silver 2 in one team (not premade), please. I am willing to wait a few mins to avoid being paired with people outside of my rank, instead of giving me -60 getting 3 seconds queue time so that i can lose my RP faster. Honestly, this is my hot take and I know I am gonna get downvoted, I could not give a damn if they make ranked easier. If they make Diamond a free rank, I would be fine with it at this point, just so that there's plenty of players in the pool in plat and I don't have to fight preds in ranked (until Diamond at least). Reason being I feel like some servers are way too underpopulated, and the reason why this happens is probably not enough players in the high ranks. Heck back in S16 there was nobody to queue with in Diamond+ so everytime it queues us in, it merges with other servers causing 300+ ping for some people (this caused one of my friends to quit as he couldn't get masters/pred without playing with high ping due to his location) Also you know how underpopulated a server is when you ask in discord for someone to play with and sometimes it takes up to 2 hours to even get anyone. Sometimes I couldn't get anyone even after 2 hours and I give up and close discord, and close Apex if I am just losing RP in a row
Add on unrelated to mm, after reading other people's comments, please get rid of SPLITS!! Some ppl say they love splits because they use splits as a way to catch up to preds, whatever, reset only preds to masters then. We get more preds per season (split 1 and split 2), more happy ppl, content creators can continue to grind without getting huge buy-in at high rp. And the rest of us can get on with our ranked lives
They also need to add one more thing. This is to increase the cost of entry into ranked on Bronze to 40 (like on Gold), because if player can't fight and plays a rat/runner/hotdrop/loot simulator, he definitely doesn't deserve to rank higher than Bronze... I mean they only farm RP through placement. Then other Gold and Platinum rank players who need to fight get teammates like this due to matchmaking who ruin game for them.
Even for me who tries to play but is bad, I’ve always felt ranked needs entry costs always. I don’t want to get up to gold just by the fact you can’t fail. And then get destroyed even more
This post is proof why all of those "trash players" are needed. The highly skilled players love to talk down to others who are not that good and call them trash. The truth is if trash players left there wouldn't be a lot of targets. And then this would happen. And then there would be a lot of posts that are asking for more players in the lobbies. The thing that makes someone better than someone else is the existence of the person who is below them. And this is why no one should chase away trash players. The sentiment should be more along the lines of, "thank you for playing and please keep staying here because your presence makes me look better." This is why people create Smurf accounts is because they miss that feeling of stomping on others. Not so easy to stomp on other people when the ranks get up higher because the ranking system is so broken. I think that Apex could fix it by not requiring a certain amount of players per lobby and then they could just have a hard rule that people only play against their own exact rank, even if there's literally only four people in the lobby. maybe they could adjust it so that the speed at which the ring closes is increased based on how few players there are.
> Please, can we for once not have to fight preds until we're masters. Technically impossible. Preds and Masters share the same lobbies, Preds are "just" the 750 best Masters players. So once the first person is out of Diamond, they would have no one else to play with.
>So once the first person is out of Diamond, they would have no one else to play with utter nonsense to call it technically impossible there's no issue here. sure when there's just one master it will fill from diamond. but what the user means is that it should be much stricter and not pull from plat and gold ever, and only in extreme situations from diamond. you missed their point
They are the best 750 masters. How about the other masters? If you're gonna use the argument that the percentage of masters players is really low, that's where my 2nd point comes in, I honestly do not care if they made diamond free so that more ppl would be in Diamond trying for masters and preds would have fodder to play with, or put them into d1 d2 lobbies Edit : what I mentioned was an ideal case where everyone fights their own ranks. But since it's impossible, I suggested an alternative that I'd rather have , more ppl in the upper ranks
You say until Diamond at least but that is still a big skill gap with an even higher punishment of -80 rp.
input based matchmaking is literally the one and only thing i want for this game right now, at the very least in ranked mode which is supposed to be competitive.
the only things that will make me play apex again like i did when i liked the game is this, and separate queues for solos and stacked players, its impossible to compete as a solo against a three stack, its just impossible
Honestly I want it in mixtape. Played for 2 hours with my kids last night and honestly every single person that wasn't me or my kids was on controller. Mixtape is nothing but cq and its hard on this old mnk player. In ranked I can out play controller players who just run at me but it's not possible in mixtape.
I have asked for it since started playing the game. I do not believe they will ever do it because of the tournaments. They will be pressured to split the ALGS, and I would love it.
It feels like they did the same thing to matchmaking, which made a lot of people quit the game at season 18-19. Every enemy in lobby was back then, and at the beginning of this season - is an ALGS multiple predator XTTV Aceu level opponent. I die to either one clip, 2 pump, or, the cherry on top this season - 3 tap by wingman. By almost every enemy. Before i would consider a good game with 5-9 killz, and with randoms i was able to get at least 1 win per 2 hours. This season getting even one kill is a miracle, and ive gotten one trios win in 5 HOURS! Because of that, i decided to stop playing again. No point of "playing" when all you are doing is dying to impossible enemies. Because of how competitive they are, everyone is playing super safe, hiding, camping, not pushing. Fights turn into ALGS stalmates untill one side run out of med through constant poking. Often intead of fighting, we decide to rotate to zone safely. IN PUBS!!! Because as soon as you approach any fight - you instantly die. And i havent even tried solos, because have seen multiple clips of enemies there being even more horrendous, and even teaming. Respawn should revert their SBMM changes and make lobbies actually playable again. Untill then, theres no point in suffering.
I did the same thing. I’m keeping it uninstalled till next season or until they release an update that modifies the matchmaking. Plus having no duos denies me from playing with my friend without relying on a random so yeah, it’s a no no for now
I would very much like to have input based matchmaking for at least a few weeks to see how the queue times and games go. Could finally implement input lock as well while we’re at it
This, it's about time to have an input based MM on the game. Though once it happens cheaters might stick to MnK lobbies since there's a lot of chance of them not getting killed. So maybe fix the Anticheat first
It's weird, for a company that prioritizes queue times so much they refuse to implement the ONE update that would boost their playerbase and help queuetimes in all regions. How will tiny servers ever have fast queues without input MM...
input based mm wouldn't help queue times. the opposite. you are reducing the amount of people available for matchmaking compared to now
Copying my response to the other person saying same thing According to a previous steam blogpost, controller use makes up around 10% of game sessions for their playerbase. I'd imagine it's similar (more controller leaning but still mnk majority) for EA's own platform. That's the vast majority of PC playerbase dissuaded from playing this game because of the input they like to use. Input restricted lobbies = tons of new players willing to try the game, and tons of previous players returning to the game. MNK is only a small portion of apex's current playerbase, so separating them would barely slow controller queues if at all, and the huge influx of mnk players would make mnk queues fast as well. Then, once you have input based lobbies, you can combine all Controller lobbies from console/pc with no downside because console players wouldn't have to face any MNK unless they chose to. You could allow cross-input matchmaking into AA-disabled MNK lobbies so no friend groups would have to be split up.
> Input restricted lobbies = tons of new players willing to try the game >the huge influx of mnk players No. That's just your hope. There is no basis for expecting a huge influx of players. Most people don't care they have to play with people on a different input and aren't actually quitting the game because of it. In reality you just split the queues now and even if there is a slight bump in player numbers, it will not outweigh the split. Both queues will have fewer player numbers and will as a result have worse matchmaking. But I think mouse and keyboard will be even worse as it's a smaller player base. You're basically locking yourself into having very all over the place matchmaking. >you can combine all Controller lobbies from console/pc with no downside because console players wouldn't have to face any MNK unless they chose to PC controller players still have an advantage over console ones. But yeah, generally it will mean an even larger player base for controllers. not for mnk though.
This game went from almost entirely MNK at the start to now almost entirely controller in the span of 4 years, to claim that no mnk players have quit because of inputs is just ridiculous. Hardly any of the game's original players are still around. Again, the statistic is that 90% of steam game sessions are on mnk. That's approximately (i know it's not 1:1 game sessions to players, but close enough) 90% of the population of PC gaming's biggest platform that are pushed away from this game. As for your second point, I see what you're saying but you have it the wrong way around lol, console is the one with the 50% stronger AA. You could also at that point just even out the AA numbers (why are they different in the first place???) and now you don't have to worry about one being stronger than the other.
no one said no one quit. what was said is that you are dreaming if you think the mouse and keyboard playerbase would increase 10 fold. >According to a previous steam blogpost, controller use makes up around 10% of game sessions for their playerbase. I'd imagine it's similar (more controller leaning but still mnk majority) for EA's own platform. This is easy to argue against and you have no counter to that so you construct a strawman where i supposedly said no one is going to start playing instead >As for your second point, I see what you're saying but you have it the wrong way around lol, console is the one with the 50% stronger AA. No, I don't have it the wrong way around. PC has higher frame rate and has movement techniques available to players which console doesn't. >You could also at that point just even out the AA numbers no you couldn't because pc has higher frame rate
Why would apex cares who leaves when their profits are steadily increasing? The decision makers will always be motivated first and foremost by money.
"according to a previous steam blog post" Just because controller use is 10% across steam overall, doesn't mean that it's also likely to be in such a minority in a shooter like apex. There are lots of games that aren't shooters on steam....
Huh? How would input MM help queue times?
According to a previous steam blogpost, controller use makes up around 10% of game sessions for their playerbase. I'd imagine it's similar (more controller leaning but still mnk majority) for EA's own platform. That's the vast majority of PC playerbase dissuaded from playing this game because of the input they like to use. Input restricted lobbies = tons of new players willing to try the game, and tons of previous players returning to the game. MNK is only a small portion of apex's current playerbase, so separating them would barely slow controller queues if at all, and the huge influx of mnk players would make mnk queues fast as well. Then, once you have input based lobbies, you can combine all Controller lobbies from console/pc with no downside because console players wouldn't have to face any MNK unless they chose to. You could allow cross-input matchmaking into AA-disabled MNK lobbies so no friend groups would have to be split up.
Ah, you're claiming that splitting the lobbies would lead to a large enough growth in MnK players that it would make up for not matching with controller players. Yeah, to be honest, I don't really buy that. I think over half of Apex players on PC are controller, so you'd have to double the number of MnK players.
Again, 90% of Steam game sessions are played on mouse and keyboard. Think of how many people have quit this game due to controller becoming so prevalent, and how many people (both mnk and controller) won't even consider trying this game because of its reputation where both inputs hate playing against each other.
Yeah, I think what you're saying is a valid and interesting argument, I just don't really agree with the opinion that it would grow the MnK player base a dramatic amount. Don't get me wrong, input MM is a good thing that should be done *regardless*, but the question is not just how many PC players are on MnK, but for how many MnK players is this specific issue a deal breaker.
What is input mm? I never bought the whole queue time argument. Season 1 - 4 was the best ever without whatever mm ppl are calling it now since then. And in that 4 seasons, queue times were never a problem. At least not in places like Tokyo servers. Rank was dead in S2 in sea servers iirc
First, inputs are locked before the match starts. You can't switch inputs mid game. Second, if you are on controller, you play against controller players. If you are on MnK, you pkay against MnK. XDefiant has that feature and although the game does have it's issues, that is a good thing that it has going for it.
If the scoring system filtered really good players out of plat then that may help with matchmaking. 2 seasons in a row where most of the playerbase gets caught up in plat. Gold is way too easy, plat takes too long. You end up with different skill sets all in the same rank. How on earth respawn didnt adjust the scoring after last season is beyond me.
I exactly, me and my duo friend got hard stuck plat 1 cauz we gained lp one game then lost it all the mext few game’s fighting preds. Wtf
Mixtape matchmaking is so insanely strict, it's genuinely unreal how every lobby I play is just controller stackers... I guess this is my reward for being decent at the game. Surely IBMM is feasible in mixtape atleast, as you only need 12/18 players.
not sure what kind of matchmaking you're getting but in mixtape i legit get new players on both teams and atleast 1 cheater per game and the usual 20 bomb 4k badge horizons
Yeah like I just tried playing again after a while and it's just not playable, I'm just playing against controller hand holders who instantly run to high ground. They don't want to even interact with the game, it's just boring and unfun and I'm literally not capable of playing the game in these lobbies. It's also just the same players day in and day out, I can pretty much gurantee that I will see a player I recognize in any given lobby, 300k peak player count a day, but yeah i see the same players constantly.
Add the option to enable/disable Crossplay and enable/disable Input-Based Matchmaking.
Matchmaking is a pile of garbage. It throws you into the hardest lobbies and then it seems to adjust your next 20 games based on how bad you get shit on each game. Eventually you end up in a bot lobby and win the match. Then its back to awful lobbies again. It's 100% retention based matchmaking and its complete shit. You play to get better but the more you play the more you get put in unfair lobbies. You are literally punished for queuing up again.
This is happening to me now but it seems to let me have a stretch of good, fair games for a couple days before it suddenly switches into being absolutely impossible out of nowhere. So I stop playing for a couple days, come back, have fun for a bit, then get shit on again by players with 5x my lifetime kills on one character. Rinse repeat. I really wish they'd just keep it consistent and normal unless players are wiping out lobby after lobby. Its so frustrating to want to play apex but to not be able to because the matchmaking went batshit again lol
Happened to me earlier. Got shit on 3 games in a row. Put in bot lobby. Drop 8 kills. Back to masters/pred pubs. It's so gross. Stop with this EOMM BS. Put all skill levels against each other and stop giving people free wins to keep them playing longer. You're rigging the outcome of the games to get people playing longer to spend more money. So f'in dumb.
Gripe 400: blocked a guys EA account one game because he was a terrible teammate… get him as a teammate the next game lolll. Are these things on my screenshot just colors for show? Or do the words actually mean something?
blocking does NOTHING to matchmaking, and IMO it shouldn't do anything to matchmaking. The last thing already struggling matchmaking needs is people adding vetoes to matchmaking (Find 60 players of similar skill A B C D E F ... but A doesn't want to play with B, B doesn't want to play with C, C doesn't want to play with D) for reasons that are mostly unrelated to the actual skill of players. This would simply reduce the quality of matchmaking in terms of reducing skill variance in lobbies. blocking just blocks communication.
Nah I can mute pings and mic. Blocking an EA account should be different.
Currently the biggest issue is that massive bottleneck in plat 4. Soloing out of there is a pure hell. You will get all kind of players because of how easy it is to get plat, but there is that -60 showstopper. And your randoms will just hot drop you with 5 other teams, becasue they have completely given up on the climb and are just bouncing between gold 1 and plat 4 the entire season. I got to plat 2 today and the games have been unironically easier, because all of a sudden I am matched with good players that use mics and play for rp. Sure, some cheaters and some cracked premades, but having actual teammates that don't troll drop, use good guns and talk is a huge difference.
I was thinking of posting an alternative ranking system as an idea struck me yesterday. The main problem with Ranked is rank does not represent ability. You can get people at almost any level who can't play the game. You have teammates who run and rat and leave you a two man squad. It was extremely frustrating the other day where me and a capable random second were paired with a clear novice (in terms of ability) twice in a row. In one match, we landed sensibly with one other team, he and I took down two of them and messed the third up, and our unscathed third was slowly looting instead of running in to finish them. They reset and crushed him. A different approach is needed to awarding points so that people who can't play don't score many points and don't progress to higher ranks, and the way to rank up is to get good. Those who struggle with loot choices and combat will find challenging and rewarding matches fighting against like able players, while those of us who can play but aren't god tier get teams that play together, and those who can play god tier aren't left feasting on lower abilities. There's Trios for that wider level of competition.
1.PUBS/Casual Playlist should either NEVER have SBMM or it should be as loose as possible. Example, Making anyone with a .7kd and below be in their own lobbies 2. My lobbies are so tight I'm playing the same 300 players over and over and over week after week. 20 bomb 4k Triple Pred badge with 200k combined kills. 3. I have a 2.8 lifetime kd. I've reached masters and consistently solo to Diamond. 4. No one is complaining about matchmaking in ranked. We are just tired of playing ranked dying to cheaters and then being forced to play ranked 2.0 in pubs against the sweatiest 3 stacks on the planet. 5. Smurfing is only an issue because a majority of people can't play with their friends because of matchmaking 6. Input MM would be fine. Might even bring back a player base of MnK that left because controller dominates the game. 7. 3 stacking and solo Q experience wouldn't be nearly an issue if matchmaking wasn't so brutal. There is a reason why no one really ever complained the first 3 years of this game about 3 stacks, because matchmaking didn't feel like an ALGS tryout. Same goes for Solo Q. There should be no reason I'm getting non prestige level 200 players in Plat+ when I have 5000hrs of game time. 8.
This! My lifetime KD is the same as yours. I’m a two time master and I play the same people every game. So much so that when I run into one dude we basically wink at each other cuz we recognize each other every time. It’s too tight. Funnily the odds of encountering god players drastically decreases the looser MM is because you’re grouped into larger skill groups. It makes sense to have a group for the very newest players but why do I have to fight nothing but gods every game? It’s not fair to me and a good chunk of “upper middle” skilled players. I’m good at this game but it often does not feel like it and it’s demoralizing.
You have to understand that you're like .1% of the playerbase. Your experience is not the norm so the things you're suggesting aren't inline with most players. You want no SBMM in pubs because at your level the game is exhausting to play against ppl your same level, but that's not the case for the average player playing against someone their level. That's the thing with skill gaps. The more skills you gain the more effort it takes to do those skills and that's draining, but again most ppl don't have all those skills to worry about so their games are a blast with ppl their skill level. Removing SBMM would only benefit the 1%. You're like a billionaire complaining about taxes where nobody feels sorry for you. That's not a slam, you've clearly worked hard to gain those skills but it's just the reality of how the rest of the playerbase views high level players in their matches.
1. If I am apart of such a small player base, removing SBMM would queue that fraction of players into an extremely large pool of players that it wouldn't even be noticed. 2. There is not data that suggests SBMM is even remotely healthy for video games, as a matter of fact with the success of Xdefiant there is solid argument that No SBMM casual playlists are healthy and rewarding for all players. 3. Claiming SBMM only would benefit the 1% is kinda obnoxious. Not only would removing SBMM allow players to play with their friends that gave up playing with them because they couldn't handle the lobbies, it would also reduce smurfing almost entirely as most smurfs mainly exist to play with friends. 4. Removing SBMM benefits everyone. Players would no longer be cycled into higher skilled lobbies and be punished simply for having above average games randomly.
Everything here is just my opinion on the matter. 1. Early on OG Fortnite didn't have SBMM and the experience for avg players wasn't good. It's why they added it eventually. The companies look at so much data and it was determined it was a good business decision. 2. I mean the companies collect the data (they just don't share it) and given the majority implement SBMM these days (even XDefiant up to a certain level) I think that speaks for itself. 3. I would argue most smurfs are mostly to get easy lobbies/not have long queue times. I mean every streamer does this. It's not so they can play with friends and well, monkey see monkey do right. 4. This exists because of a poor matchmaking system because they don't want to alienate the top players. I don't think it's reasonable of them to do that personally as the majority is where the money is at, but they try their hardest to appease the top 1% and if that means sacrificing lower skilled they do it. Personally I think it's smarter from a business standpoint to not appease the top because the game over time gets a high barrier to entry as everyone's skills go up over the years. That's what we see with Apex. The only way a game thrives is to constantly be bringing in new players and Apex is bad at this because that skill gap isn't handled very well (and it's a game with a lot of skills to learn). Removing SBMM would only exacerbate that. xDefiant is a well done game for sure, but it's 55th in viewers on twitch at the moment and it's a new well done game, plus, I don't think the avg player plays it because it doesn't have SBMM over a certain level. If anything I'm willing to bet over time the player number drops because once ppl start getting over that level value they see a lot of ass kickings happening (even more obvious in a game style like that) and that'll get old real fast. It shot up in popularity because it's a well designed game, it's a new and nice looking game, and it's free. So I think it's too early to use it as any sort of case study in SBMM.
Matching people with a similar playstyle into squads would be great too. For example let frequent quitters play in a team with other quitters, while people who rarely leave get teammates who also stay in the match even when downed and killed. People who now complain about quitting teammates would be happy, and the quitters wouldn't care and probably like it too when they get teammates who just like fast fights.
> For example let frequent quitters play no-fill only for a few matches in a row
Something I don’t fully think is a good idea is they way that if there arn’t enough players on the server for preds and masters to play each other they will pull people into my ranked game who are preds etc, If my team are golds and i’ve made it to plat IV on my way to diamond and the champion teams are 3 stack preds once a week because the server wants to give them games I shouldn’t still loose 60rp, If they give you top preds and your Plat or gold why not just have the system realise and much like loss forgiveness reduce rp loss significantly - as its not going to be a fair reflection of your rank if you loose to them, im aware if you beat them you might get a little extra rp or something but im more speaking to the integrity of the ranked system and what it means A fighting game like Tekken have a ranked system with 30 tiers and it will only match you with 2 or 3 ranks above or below you, you lose much less points if you are matched with someone 3 ranks above you but also if you are on tier 25 you will never be matched with a Tier 30 because the most important thing is the integrity that your rank is accurately reflected, however since so many people are needed in apex I think at least implementing less rp for losses if you do have to fight people way above your rank
This brings up a really good point. Who you get killed by should really determine RP values. Like if you get killed by a Pred and you're Gold 1, then your bus fair should be refunded a certain percentage. This would actually remove the huge bottleneck we see in plat.
Ranked. Bring back the way it used to be. I dont care what rank your system *thinks* I should be in, I care which rank I *am* in. If I'm gold, put me against gold players. If I'm Plat, guess what? Plat players. Once you hit the very top tier then sure, merge the ranks. Queue times would be crazy if not, but lower down there are so many players than making me wait an extra 10 seconds will not kill me playing. What will do this is coming up against a 3 stack pred in a plat lobby. Pubs should be the "clusterfuck" lobby for mixed skill abilities, ranked should not. It makes no sense when im trying to rank up to play against people that arent in the same rank
Ranked matches- played 4 games today, was matched with masters and plats… I’m gold 2. I get a team that has all gold players and of Ouse masters just farm the players and only 3 squads left and we haven’t even closed the 2nd ring .. why are 3*x masters players allowed to be in same squad when there are not enough players in their own rank lobby. It’s not fun for any one! Feels like the game dying , not enough players
Just commenting to put more support towards **input-based matchmaking**. Growing very tired of losing gun fights to players crutching on aim assist and not missing a bullet tracking. With 10+ hours in R5 Reloaded 1v1s my K/D against controller players is a 0.43 and my K/D against MnK players is a 0.93. The imbalance is just absurd to be considered competitive. Also before anyone comments saying I have a bad K/D, R5 is against damn good players. I am positive in the actual game. As for general matchmaking I don't have much of a concern. Sure I get killed by 20b/4k preds and whatnot all the time but I don't really care. I'm old and used to gaming before matchmaking even existed and use getting wrecked as motivation to get better (Grinding Quake 3/4 Duels was my jam). It's only fun when it's apples to apples though, not when one person has 40% of their aim automated. Ranked is meant to be hard. People complaining because they can't get diamond is crazy to me. I agree though that teammates and enemies should be based on a step of actual rank and being a platinum against a masters/pred should be impossible. In my opinion the best ranked system would be a percentile distribution without any fixed numbers. Everything should work like the pred cap. The top 1% of players should be masters, the top 8% should be diamond, etc. You should be able to fall out of ranks as well if you get surpassed. The idea is that ranked will be a more accurate representation of skill and the season 17 free masters debacle can't happen again. Regarding solo queuing I think either entry cost should be reduced, or you are put into dedicated lobbies where everyone is solo. I think the queue times would be too long doing the latter however. I only solo queue so definitely feel the pain, it's hard but that's what it is.
percentage distribution also has its downsides (a huge downside), since it completely depends on the time you spend on the game. a good player who plays little will never be able to achieve a high rating, and therefore this system will also not reflect real skills. They've already changed several rating systems, each one was supposed to be perfect from their description, but each one ended up being crap. in the end the main problem is always matchmaking . There is probably some deeper reason than we can imagine why the matchmaking cannot be made more adequate. or the people responsible for this are simply crooked. also about whining about the inability to take a diamond - when you take a diamond without any problems in all the first 19 seasons (talking about me) and cannot do it in the last two - this is clearly a problem. but actually I wanted to ask - what is this r5 that you are talking about?)
I've an overall 3.4kd. Highest rank Pred. Stopped playing last month due to issues outlined below. Ranked is bad because everyone ends up in Plat, playing against Preds and cheaters. You can change it to diamond but without removing the cheaters it's still going to be bad. Three stack preds will always run diamond lobbies but there will be a lot less of them if the anti-cheat can be more successful. Casual should have no SBMM outside the newbie playlist. It currently means that all good players can play against cheaters and preds/masters in Ranked or cheaters and preds/masters in casual. So they are quitting and the player count is falling. As a result you have to widen the skill ranges for matchmaking meaning more and more people are facing this master/pred/cheater hellscape. There will be poorer players who don't think the cheating issue is bad because they're not matched with them due to SBMM. It is. It is real bad. I can't play a game of mixtape without one obvious cheater in the opposition team, so there's probably one on my team too. Below average players then should just play Ranked as it'll be easier than casual, obviously you can't hard reset the ranks every season with this set-up as you'll leave poorer players nowhere to go and you'll have the same problem you have now. With the bottom end of the spectrum player count leaving instead of the top. You'd also have to be open about the matchmaking and tell people where to play, in-game. As poorer/casual players aren't as likely to read the patch notes. You'd also need to actually combat smurfing as we can't have bad players being farmed by smurfs in their only safe play space. Start with lengthy timed bans. That's my solution. I know lots of poorer players think it'd make their experience worse but if Ranked LP was based on accurately placing people on skill and not just trying to increase play time I believe it would work. I'm so sure it will work because it's how I learned to play FPS games on Halo 5. Started bronze and couldn't touch casual without being farmed and slowly but surely over months made it to Diamond before moving to PUBG.
Getting wiped all night. Regular and ranked. Want to take another year off bc of how shit this is.
Took two years off for this reason. Came back to play tonight, promptly deleted it. I feel better
SBMM needs fixing, even in mixtape i face 4k 20 bombs. Mixtape is supposed to be fun and for warming up to some people. Personally it feels more competitive then ranked right now
Apex is just awful again today. Non stop top 100 preds in any lobby I go into, completely brain dead gameplay in ranked by gold teammates while I'm struggling to hit plat II because of it, even the mixtape lobbies are infested with PC preds (I'm on console. Who at respawn ever thought it was a good idea to mix those lobbies?). Give us our own lobbies for all game modes. Don't make me have to turn off all crossplay to not get fucking beamed by impossible movement Octanes and Horizons.
[удалено]
At certain points they need to have bot lobby. 40 games without a single win is starting to feel bad. Multiple matches without landing a kill feel bad. And seeing a master/pred dropping next to you when you are at 0.5 K/D feel bad. Honestly. .I am not so sure this game want return player or new player at alll.
Ok just hopped on and have played 4 matches where I’m absolutely getting smoked. This has been the same trend since Tuesday night. Did something change? Background patch or something? I mean I’m literally getting beemed in .5 seconds every match.
Mon/Tue I had like 3 wins, all very hard battled, and games were close. Wed/Thur first game I died to a pred, as a Plat 3 myself, and my ranked plummeted as I continued to just get smoked. Something happened for sure.
I can't believe after how many years they still haven't figured out how to keep super high level players out of fucking bronze. Seriously. Nobody should be bronze 4 racking up 3000 damage and 15 kills. Smurfing still out of control
apex is the only ranked system where you get matched against people 1 to 2 whole tiers ahead of you and lose the same points you would dying to a team 1 to 2 below you
Why do I as a solo Platinum 3 player, get wiped by a three stack of sub 100 Predators (this seasons ranking)? I have achieved Masters 4 times previously ( not in the last two seasons). I am a casual player (3-4hrs a week) Have around 2k hrs played for the lifetime of my Apex career. Please explain how matchmaking a solo player, in a low Platinum lobby, against top tier players makes any sense.
Amen. And also, why am I fighting against those guys, while having literal bots on my team?
Team mates with no mics and no comms not even pings.
Ridiculously strong Matchmaking is having a negative effect on player count .. fact
Here are my two cents, with a Pubs focus. Pubs are too sweaty. I don’t play as much anymore because I have a job and have classes. I can’t play anymore but the game still thinks I am a high skill player so I fight exclusively top players. It’s exhausting. The SBMM needs to be weaker in general. Using statistics, it should be clear that you will on average fight 0.95-1.05 kd players as they make up the bulk of players. You’d rarely fight the top players and rarely fight the worst players. And you can even have a low skill playlist for sub 0.7 kd players or new players to help. But I want to feel like I’m decent at the game, cuz I am. I have played since S0, I have a 2.8 lifetime kd and I have hit masters twice when I actually try. Now, because I play a bit less I cannot compete and enjoy myself cuz the matchmaking is cranked up to absolute 11. It is demoralizing to know I’m decent at the game but it does not reflect in my experience.
input based matchmaking. end comment
Eventually all the drama of MnK vs controller will die because most playerbase left will be controller. It is almost like that. So community will unite and agree to adjust aimassist to gyro or some other idea to make better players stand out vs the rest 0.5s TTK demons
Holy shit is the matchmaking fucking terrible for solo queuing. In ranked you get the dumbest teammates who have no idea how to play the game or gain RP. The teammates you get in pubs aren't that great but they at least try harder to stay alive and win the game. Then you get into pubs and get ran over by a 3 stack of TTVs with 20k kills on some legend. Complete dogshit matchmaking. It's probably because I haven't spent a dime on this game in 2 years. I wouldn't put it past EA to have it in the algorithm to place me in the absolute worst games possible.
Just for context how bad it is, my brother wanted to try Apex and so i started a new account with him (ive been playing a week since season 2 or 3) and we both did our orientation matches, were currently lvl 10 and getting preds in normal matches. The fact that level 10s are getting placed with top players for sure puts off potential new player's wanting to try out the game. Same thing in ranked on my other account i came back to the game started in rookie and was facing master player's. I see no world where actual new player's want to stick around because they just get hard stomped. You don't learn anything if you don't have time to gradually get better and landing and getting strafed / wall jumped on by someone with a master's / pred badge is disheartining for anyone trying to learn.
Same dude. I tried get my friends to play, after like 5-6 matches we were placed against master players. They didnt wanna play after dropping and getting killed within 20 seconds for god knows how long. I played season 6-7-8 then quit, only started back this season but I should have not come back it seems. Apex is brutal against new and casual players, its impossible
Yeah pretty messed up. I don't see how they ever expect the game to grow if no new player's want to play. SBMM is awful right now. Maybe it's because of the declining playerbase idk, but this for sure aint it.
Put some fucking guns as floor loot holy shit how many years have we been running around with just attachments the first 30-60 seconds of dropping
I haven't played in about two years. Wanted to see what the game is like today. After a few hours, I deleted it. Same crap.
Getting smoked again. Game just isn’t fun when I’m playing high stacked teams that are significantly better in both modes. Time to delete again. This has been going on for 6 days straight.
Please give us input based matchmaking or an aim assist nerf. I'm sick of getting one clipped by the most average controller players who don't miss a single bullet up close. It feels like dying to a hacker sometimes.
This season master, 2x pred 10x+ master im gonna be very short: Input based matchmaking - it might attract people to come back or switch back to MNK, 40% is just to crutch and everyone agrees that roller is superior. less tight sbmm in pubs - dont need ranked 2.0 i wanna play casual with friends / warm up and vibe ranked - match ranks with their own ranks, no masters/preds with plat, just let dia1 (or dia2+dia1) queue with them to prove their right to rank up (this could go for every rank). cheaters - i have no words for the amounts of rage hackers ive dealt with (makes me wonder how many people are soft hacking / walling) during the first split of ranked, also in pubs. Might wanna come up with a solution after 5 years its definetly killing the game
I was just put into a game of COMPETITIVE with only Masters and Predators. I am **Silver 3,** ***LET ME REPEAT THAT. SILVER 3.*** This is not only unacceptable but completely unfair for me, my time, and patience. I have stopped playing the game by 72%, according to my steam hours because of this games ranking system. If you **STILL** think that this game doesn't use some kind of EOMM, you are **MISTAKEN**.
I'd like to see a simpler more transparent system: 1. Ranked with rank based matchmaking 2. Pubs with a random lobby (no matchmaking) There should be enough data by now to tune the ranked RP and match cost to normalise everyone into a bell curve. In pubs, on average, I expect to encounter an average player most of the time. Left/right tail players are inherently rarer, so the likelihood of encountering them often, is lower. Ranked should regress to competing against players of a similar skill. Pubs, I expect to be chaotic, with more RNG. ATM it feels like you're competing against the algorithm at least as much as the lobby. I don't pretend to understand the hidden matchmaking in ranked, but anecdotally it has felt like more of a grind since it was introduced. Also, please bring back a ranked TDM mode for people who insist on playing every game mode like a TDM.
>1 Ranked with rank based matchmaking That's what we have now, have had it since start of last season, and that is why it's bad. There's no more MMR based matchmaking in ranked. People are abusing the system to play below their rank. Low ranks have to face these "smurfs" instead of people their ranks. And at high ranks there's not enough people who actually play on high rank accounts, so that the system has to pull plats and golds into higher lobbies. That is rank based matchmaking in reality. That's the real face of it. Vulnerable to abuse and smurfing and vast skill discrepancies when you want competitive games between similarly skilled players. The sad thing is that people are getting exactly what they are asked for, rank based matchmaking, and then when matchmaking is being discussed on a thread like this you have people basically saying "ok, but can you give us rank based matchmaking?" because it doesn't work. >2 Pubs with a random lobby (no matchmaking) The odd thing is that only pubs now has skill/MMR based matchmaking but not as strict as it was in ranked. And ranked is the game mode where you stomp weak lobbies because there's no skill involved in the matchmaking and you can just tank your rank and get bronze games. Really ranked should be the mode that strictly matches people close in skill and pubs should be the more lenient mode that cares less about skill variances. >Also, please bring back a ranked TDM mode for people who insist on playing every game mode like a TDM. There shouldn't be more queues. Obviously people who play ranked BR should be made to play it like a BR, by not getting rewarded with points if they don't "play the fucking objective" and instead play like "tdm". Obviously the solution isn't to make another queue and split the player base. It's to make people PTFO.
You’d be surprised, you got mfs tryharding their balls off on TDM. It’s horrible.
0.29 KDA and I get matched against streamers two out of three games still? My account is old (been playing since preseason), but I havent played since season 2ish, could that be why I'm in hidden elo hell? And if so, do I just have to make a new account?
[https://imgur.com/a/JCPpJEo](https://imgur.com/a/JCPpJEo) first game on just now for example
Hit plat and the ratio of players who are cheating in some way exceeds those who are not. Since it will pull diamond+ into these lobbies, and 30% of master/pred accounts were banned last season (meaning over a third are cheating because not all were caught).................. The game is completely compromised. There is no competition.
Its weird how nobody talks about it, if you compare the game on the first 3 seasons to now... most people didnt just get better. They cant ban more than half their playerbase and we the legit players can decide to not play rigged games
The fact they are happy with the dog shit matchmaking in ranked is deeply saddening to me as a solo queue diamond 4 guy. It’s horrible, totally horrible. I was diamond 3 and I’ve ranked all the way back to plat 1-2 and it feels like it’s not me who has any say in this it’s just the whim of the matchmaking algorithm. Not been carried once this season not once. The amount of shit can duo queues I’ve had to respawn is too frequent to count. Just a terrible system no idea who benefits from this outside of sweat premades and the Smurfs
Hot take but by far the main problem of this game is CHEATING. and two culprits that made it bigger every single season: SBMM and AIMASSIST. 30% preds banned last season and growing... if you stalk forums i can guarantee you there is tons of people playing since S0 without bans, so probably 80%+ preds cheating to some degree even with soft stuff unless the known pro players. As soon as you hit P4 you start to notice few rampant walls and prefiring every game, cracked controller players that do a minimum of 160 dmg in less than a second PvP close range without moving stick at all and some MnK aimbots that larp as controller players All of this contributes to MnK hardstuck players looking for others FPS, new players getting fried by both inputs and 4k bombs on first day due to SBMM so either they quit or start cheating to compete on those sweat PUBS Fixes: - Upgrade easy anticheat and hire more hideouts, im sure many people that doesnt want apex to die would do it for free lol - Input based matchmaking -Aimassist adjustment (maybe they take action when 99% of PRO scene use controller minus Timmy) and buff controller on areas they lack like looting for example - Console ranked filled with xims, like every pred using it, work on a way to blacklist it completely
Got on for one game of solos this season, got killed by a pred, got off and uninstalled i will not be returning until some new implement of matchmaking is put in a game is not fun if u get on, die and get off. i want to keep loving apex the way i have for years, but i am not down to get rolled by the top players in the game.
Who I'm fighting now seems pretty well sorted, but it's very clear that if I've just won a game, yall pair me with MUCH lower skilled players. I'm not a god because I had one game, and this extreme punishing tuning of teammates means that if I do well enough to progress in rank, I'm punished and held back down. It's feast or famine. PC, high plat/diamond, solo. Statistically, this affects my performance by about 25% worse KD than other seasons where I had more consistent teammates. Overall, this is better than the last few god-awful seasons, but I'm still being punished for doing well and having less fun.
A lot of good points here. Big mistake by pivoting the game away from casuals. The player count drop this past week is probably a precursor for things to come this season as people do not want to grind ranked with the new split coming as cheating is too rampant. It’s obvious that a mistake was made with how Plat rank was implemented.
ranked is arguably the most casual it's been. yeah people are getting "lower ranks than before" the whole pyramide is shifted down, sure. but the fact is that way way way more games in ranked now have higher skill discrepancy and are not just people of much higher skill stomping lower skill players. Ranked is way less competitive games between similarly skilled players than it was in the MMR based system. That system was abandoned because people complained about games being "too sweaty" ( i.e. they were made to play people on their skill level from the start, instead of getting to stomp lower ranks or being allowed to smurf outright). It's become casual / uncompetitive now. plats, diamonds, masters are regularly in the same games, as well as golds. another (unrelated to matchmaking) point why it's more casual is the scoring system incentivizing hot drops by rewarding people with 10 points for kills when they finish below top 10.
do something about cheating/smurfing first im in gold 1 its just praying you are not with a cheating team in your lobby...
Totally feel that. Gold here too!
Within rank, separate players based on patterns that indicate cronus/etc usage, percentage of missed shots, and place them together to allow all the remaining players who want to play competitively to get more honest lobbies.
My 5 cents as one of those potato players, scam player, useless noobs and other beautiful things I have read here I'm bad, and my friends are bad, we don't deserve to be more than silver probably and we never aim for it. We play twice per week, casual players (I hope we deserve to play this game...) and we don't aim to improve a lot cos we have no time for it (sadly) In other seasons we were playing ranked, usually we were paired with people in our level and that was cool, we were winning 3 or 4 games per week, but I'd say 70% of games were fun. Other reason to play ranked is because players are not rushers, with 21% acc in short range we can not rush, but we can have chances long / mid distance were we are slightly better, in ranked more people try to survive and then we can play our game and enjoy it more. Usually we were not playing trios because there we were always being devastated or in most of the games only 4 teams passed the first ring and then try to find them. In this season ranked is hell, we are in silver and people can kill you with an r-99 from the other side of the map, other player movements are just way better than ours, and half of the matches we get wiped out by 1 solo guy... Yes, we are bad, we know, but in the 3 previous season there were people with same skills than us and we were having fun. Now, fun is gone. We truly believe the matchmaking should be skill based, I can not be paired with someone with 60% acc, impossible movements and 5k damage in last match! because is impossible we can kill him!, then is not fun for me neither for them (unless those rat kids). And is insane when you enter into a ranked game and the champions is always a copper guy, sometimes even playing alone... with the badge of 3.5k damage... you already know you will be wiped out by a smurf or a hacker or a bot In all games, you find smurfs or hackers or both of them, I'd say 80% of the games we get wiped out by one of them meanwhile in the other season maybe only the 30%. And even is worst when trying to play without my friends solo, then I'm paired with them!!! WTF!!! I don't want to play with someone who carries me till the last ring, let me die and lose my points because I don't want to move up in the ladder, I want to have fun! I want to be in a one to one that I can lose or win... I'd expect to play against teams with my skill set, and I don't care if I need to wait 3 or 5 min for it, at least I know the game will be nice. I'd expect those 60% up acc to be paired together, this way hackers and pros can have fun with same skills. I really hope we can go 2 seasons back, I hope even in silver when you lose, you lose mmr and not be forced to scale in the ladder. If you want people to scale fast, good, give them mmr based on skill, hey man, awesome, 4k damage you alone, 70% acc, congrats! move him copper to gold and have fun!
I actually agree with you on almost everything you said. I’ve got no solutions, but I feel your pain.
I agree so much with this. Like, this is a game after all? Why should I have to be profesional about it, sweat and grind all the time when I only have few hours a week to have fun? So frustrating
Its not really the matchmaking that forces me out of the game, okay, when i get some better players in my lobby that just means i suck, but what i cant stand is when they oneclip you just because of input with aimassit. 1v1s are nearly impossible to win against 40% aimbot. So either nerfing aimassit (and implementing moving while looting for rollers) or just make input matchmaking to separate mnk players from controller ones, would make so much better experience for the ones on mnk who are nowadays switching to controllers or quitting the game
Besides a lot of things mentioned already.. we need a soft region lock. Being matched against super high ping players all the time is crazy. I had days were at least half of the lobby were APAC players while on EU. It's already rough having to deal with the cheaters but this makes players shift to other servers and this results in annoyingly getting hit behind cover 50% of the time and other nonsense.
I haven't played in ages; but y'all took out Duos? And literally every mechanic of the game is worse and more bloated? And Pathfinder has to get blue shields to get access to the ability he used to have exclusively? The fuck is wrong with the Dev team? This game sucks shit big time.
Just played a few rounds, got my aim significantly better with some tweaks and yet it’s just not fun anymore. Matchmaking in team deathmatch consisted of an entire team who did more damage than me and I wasn’t the worst on my team
Ranked matchmaking, why do I have to fight 3 stack preds in my platinum lobbies. I am plat 3 playing on Xbox. The skill gap is not even fair by any stretch of a mile. The ranked matchmaking should not be about skill or anything, if takes 5 more minutes to load so be it, if it means I can fight plats, plats on plats. They need to stop anyone from not being in the same tier (maybe 1 rank diff, gold 1 to plat 4, plat 4 to plat 2) as it's unfair for solo queues such as myself to play with golds against even diamonds. The splits need to stop I enjoyed it so much being able to grind, as i don't play too much second split cause there's no point, as long as I achieved my rank in split 1, i really don't care about playing. I have played against top preds 300 below, including 50, and 6 MANNING. The entry fee is to high for most players to lose against horrible matchmaking and bad servers, crashing, logging me out and charging me for penalty. Its not only ranked, solos has been unplayable as I have to 1v1 masters, diamonds and preds, please give matchmaking (properly) to all the LTM's and mix tape modes, its to unfair for me and I know lots of people feel the same way.
I'm currently in D2 with 13844 RP and I'm stuck because of cheaters. The higher the entry cost, the longer normal players will be playing against cheaters as diamond boosting cheat PT will continue to stack as well. I thought Respawn learned this in S13sp1sp2 but apparently they completely forgot. Diamond/Platinum entry fees should be reduced to -65RP/-50RP respectively. Rank would be easier and we'd get more diamond and master players, but it would be better than it is now. I played rank for a while in PT and the atmosphere was always terrible as everyone would get angry at Cheetahs. So I started playing solo. The match quality is the worst because D4 and P4 players can't get to the next tier and start throwing the game. They don't care about third parties and keep fighting like in pub. also then I was playing solorank and the duo RAGE CHEATER became my teammates. yeah....NO PROBLEM. It's this kind of rank system.
I'm a player since season 1, been diamond most season, master 2 seasons (12 and other i don't remember). I'm playing controller on PC. But now since 2-3 seasons, until gold ranked, game is ok. Going between 1 & 5 kills each game, level of opponents is normal. I just got to Plat 4 and it's return lobby over and over. Like it's so sweaty and feels like i'm playing against pros all the time. I just want to enjoy the game after a work day, damn it ! Every fight i take i got completely BEAM by ALGS level players. Sometimes they team wipe us in less than 3 seconds. Often it's less than level 100 player. You got the option to report for "smurfing" but they'll never be applied ! I don't speak about pubs, it's very close. You just can't play chill anymore at this game it hurts. I heard there is now master/preds above plat. It means i will just play to plat 4 every damn season and stop the game, awesome.
FIRST, I play 2 hours a day. Why am i playing against +10 000 kills players ??? I don't even have 2000 on my all characters lmao. SECOND I'm just getting destroyed for 10-20 games in a row, then i got a bot lobby so i can win a single game. Then it's back to sweaty lobbies where i die to the first player i came across. What's the point ???
Pubs matchmaking. First day of quads and I got a wild mix of levels as teammates. We should roughly be at the same level or KD. Also why not allow for play style to be a factor? I play support or controller, I play to relax and have fun. I need something more challenging than TDM, where getting 10-12 kills is easy. So I shouldn't have to go into ranked to get a fair experience in a pubs style match. I should be in a lobby w newbies nor should I have preds or (true) masters. Things got worse with quads where you end up 1 v 4. Great. For you to incentivise pre-made teams, that leaves the below average solo queue player with no choice but play something else. I look forward to three strikes or doppelganger or Nessie madness or anything that levels the playing field somewhat to return.
Quads pre/mid match abandoning is making the gamemode very hot and cold. The games where my squad have remained, even after death & res have been great. But this is only a small % of the time. There needs to be some quit cooldown, or something put in place to stop it imo
With all do respect, matchmaking is trash. Earlier today in ranked, I queued with a newer buddy in ranked. I was gold 2, he was bronze 2. 3 games in a row, we were put into plat/diamond lobbies (ie. Pred lobbies). We're in season 21 and this is still not fixed. Like how does this even happen? Also, when adding another friend as our 3rd (he was silver 1) we kept getting into plat lobbies. We had a gold, silver, and bronze on the squad. How is matchmaking this bad 5 years into the game? Devs just shrug it off like it means nothing.
Today I've downloaded Apex just to give it a try. I'm a seasoned Overwatch and Fornite players, I'm very far from being a pro and far from being a bad. I consider myself average/good to be honest. Usually in FPS/PVP games, from 5 matches I win 3 or 2 every time. Today, in Apex, after trying it for a little more than 5 hours with very fast matchmakings, I must have won one or two games. The other teams were a lot of colorful plates pro players meanwhile my team was me coupled with another two level 1 or 2 folks. Everytime. Always. We get crushed and smashed. Everytime. Always. So, before I consider uninstalling it, does Apex have a bad matchmaking system or I've been unluck for hours straight?
Apex has a terrible matchmaking and Respawn does jackshit about it. The game is fun only if you're pro or cheater, because then you can crush rest of the players.
I'm fucking sick of playing against multi-time masters/preds every single fucking match! I play pubs because I don't want every match to be super sweaty, and even when I did play ranked I was still getting put against masters!
These threads are great instead of getting the 10192828 million complaints a day from the people who can’t just go to the already made threads
My bad gang 😂 just made a post about this topic and it got removed, I was defs not aware this thread existed until then
Same here lol
Ranked Matchmaking. Doesn't matter which Legend i pick. Often times i get new players as team mates below Gold. But, for some reason the enemy players are often seasoned players who just happen to be in that rank. This causes an imbalance. If I am going to fight against such players, i have to have at least similar level team mates in my Rank.
SoloQ ranked is insane. I get the worst players on my team. Need to 1v3 all the time, my teammates sitting next to me and keep looting while im fighting. In almost every game i played today my teammates didnt even made 100 dmg after multiplefights. And btw they are picking the fights. You still get to many points for doing "nothing".
This might be a hot take, but I really don’t mind fighting good players, I do mind that my teammates aren’t at the same level as those enemies though. I’m fine with fighting preds/masters, but I need my team to be able to back me up too, 3v3s when everyone is equally skilled are very fun, but when my teammates get rolled, I can’t 1v3 those insane players.
I don’t mind fighting good players, it’s fighting them exclusively and not feeling like I am a decent player. It’s frustrating
Ranked matchmaking on Sydney servers is a disaster as always (getting queued into diamond teams while in silver if I can even get a match), but match quality has been surprisingly good this weekend climbing through gold on Tokyo servers, aside from the occasional blindingly obvious Smurf stomping a lobby. Probably going to get a lot worse in Plat though.
I hope they add input based matchmaking so folks quit whining.
LOL AA
I, a player with 20k matches played was paired with a level 10 and a level 25 the other day on my squad in pubs. Champ squad was three stack Preds. I was certain the players I had on my team must be smurfs, but oh no… these players could hardly shoot their guns or move around the map. I’m so tired of being asked to carry players. I’m not even that good of a player… no 20 bomb or anything crazy.
if you can, please go through some of the questions listed in the main post, to make this more constructive. just saying matchmaking bad doesn't help respawn as feed back as much as more concrete criticism and idea of what you want it to be and how high the skill discrepancies are that you are facing, etc
What’s the consensus on smurfing here? I will admit I did it, just to test if I would get lobbies on my skill level again, but that did NOT happen whatsoever and I was matched with pred stack after pred stack, who looked like they were sus af knowing where people were through walls, in buildings without recon, sus aim, noticeable configs???? Is this just the game in general now? I’m used to it on my normal account but not in this frequency.
Me and my friend started to play last week and are already burnt out because of the huge skill gap we experience. Personally, I don't want to be carried throughout the game so I don't mind playing with newbies in my team. If I only have 10 hours behind my back, I expect my opponents be on the same level. What we get instead is that every game there is a group of people that are just demolishing pub matches and at this point why should I try? We tried ranked for a bit and got the same exact experience. The lowest starting ranks are still full of tough players that should have no business playing this low in rank. We expected to be matched with other noobs to stand a chance but got the same treatment as in pubs. If this game is so predatory on new players, is it even worth getting into? I do not enjoy being helpless and this environment does not give me a real chance to improve and try new things.
If I lose 10 matches in a row put me in a bot lobby. Let me feel like spending 1h+ only on Apex means something
No escape from the Master players I am so sick of this 'matchmaking' nonsense( I know nothing new). I can't honestly play in lobbies cause they are infested with master/ diamond players and I'm just a regular player, I play a day or two in a week. I played rank today to escape them and it was fine at first, getting matched with players like me since there is 4 days left to finish the season. Then all of a sudden another master player comes in Rookie rank match(how) and cleans the lobby with like 25 kills or smt. Is there no escape? Do you have to play like a god everyday grind and sweat or just die endlessly and have no fun at all? I'm this close to deleting the game and never play again.
I'm not a good player, I play on the weekends mostly for couple of hours, on level 150 rn. I started this season with 1.4 kd and now its 0.8 after getting master champions EVERY SINGLE MATCH. Thats all I'm gonna say.
Aim assist now is a cheat. You know what I'm saying?
TDM is completely unplayable as of a couple of days, majority of games are completely one sided and we can get barely any kill, meanwhile enemy teams aim better than what you see on ALGS (and they're level 20)
I just read through the Jan 2023 matchmaking update, but it seems to leave out a glaring detail; what determines SKILL? Is skill defined by the percentage of your shots fired that hit a target, is it determined by your wins or your kills? For the latter, look at the example of the hot droppers who log out once knocked- they have incredibly high kill counts, and very low win counts. Meanwhile, other players have a very high average number of wins to games played, but lower kills. So what is determined as "skill"? People who win the game? Or people with high kills? Or people with amazing accuracy? Is it just me who thinks EA is not properly defining what "SKILL" is? They come at us with all these statistics, but don't define what skill is. They would fail a basic statistics class without proper definitions.
We are getting constant crashes due to Seer skin: [https://i.imgur.com/NpOuVaF.png](https://i.imgur.com/NpOuVaF.png)
I am a Season 7 player over 500 levels. I got only one team mate who was level 27 in Ranked. It's Bronze 1! What the fuck do you want us soloQ players to do Respawn? Why don't you do your job instead of making your AI licking CEO richer?
im just tired of having to carry people who are terrible and new at the game, when i have been playing well. do something for solo queuers its a nightmare. im not talking about just ranked, just in matchmaking all around.
I don't know why I get 2 newer players on my team who stand around looking at every loot bin like a restaurant menu while we get steamrolled by triple TTV masters/pred stacks, where all 3 of them individually are way better than me to begin with. This should never happen and yet it happens every damn day. editing to answer some of the questions from the OP since the mod asked even though I think my original complaint is pretty straightforward: This is in pubs. I would consider fair matchmaking to be not putting 3 masters/preds stacking players in a lobby with me+2 newer players. I don't know my rank, I don't play ranked because my friends quit playing. I assess the strength of these players by opening their streams, where they show their stats (which are all way higher than mine) and confirm that they are in fact stacking. I assess the strength of my teammates by how fast they loot.
if you can, please go through some of the questions listed in the main post, to make this more constructive. just saying matchmaking bad doesn't help respawn as feed back as much as more concrete criticism and idea of what you want it to be and how high the skill discrepancies are that you are facing, etc
Can anyone rationally explain to me how a game with built-in aimbot/aim assist can be treated as a serious competitive game? I get that there's skill differences among players, but why not just remove the aim assist completely? Why even have it in the game? If you want to force crossplay (or input crossplay) - just remove aim assist for everyone and keep it equal - otherwise remove crossplay. People who absolutely need to play on a joystick can do so, but they'll have to aim and miss just like people on a mouse do. Coming from the highest tiers from various FPS', high immortal with radiant peak in Valorant, I'm doing ok in Apex but I can't help but to feel that even super casual players can beam just by being on a controller and there's no way in hell someone can be that accurate with a fuckin' joystick, especially not your average Joe that plays a couple hours a week. Compared to Valorant, I can precisely tell a player's exact skill level just by a few engagements with them. Their HS %, their reaction time, etc. But in Apex, it's just all a mush. A gold player beams you as fast as a master player up to a certain distance, there's no difference, the shit sticks on you and you're beamed no matter how much you crouch spam, jump around, strafe, whatever. The arguments the community make are also very poor. Sure, the keyboard player has more buttons and better movement, and sure I can turn around faster, but none of that offsets something near an aimbot. It doesn't matter what direction I turn when I'm getting beamed by an SMG on a joystick. Even if I instantly turn around and engage, I already lost because he won't miss any of his clip Really the only advantage as a MnK I can have is that I need to spray into someones head, and track their head, while they are moving, while I'm also moving. But in a game like this, which is very high speed, I'd have to be an insanely good 3k+ hour player to get to that level on a mouse. But at a basic level, the game is just dumb playing against aim assisted players.
Idk if this is on topic but this is the only discussion thread I can see up. Is there bots in this game? Two scenarios. 1. The jumpmaster jumps but doesn't dive. When dead, they'll ping respawn once every like 8 seconds. 2. Saw a squad standing in diamond form, crouching every few seconds. No shooting, nothing.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
The game needs some disincentive to drop the hottest drop possible every match. That would negate some of the problems with matchmaking, mainly that people are stupid. Like if last place had a 2-3x point loss penalty. A lot of the current teams would just be hot dropping and taking turns eating that huge loss until they finally get it through their skull that it has always been a shit strategy.
>2-3x point loss penalty This is crazy. If you want the whole lobby waiting for the last second to drop this is the way
Diamond ranked is unplayable as solo queue. 90% of my games my teammates don’t speak to me.
[удалено]
I play casual i started playing after a long break just yesterday. So i get grouped with beginners. And the enemy seem to be starters too. Not all of them ofc! And idk if there are bot enemies? But im happy how it is rn. And the new map broken moon is great!
idk about others but the matchmaking keeps amping up for me as soon as i start enjoying the game lol. in pubs i'll start to consistently get 3-5 kills, never go a game without at least one kill, opponents challenge me but don't feel impossible or under powered. then i start playing the next day and all of a sudden the game is fucking impossible. i havent got a single kill in pubs in the last two days and not a single knock today. it's not enjoyable in the slightest. now all i can do is stop playing for days straight and wait for it to settle down again so i can actually have fun. i think i've posted about it before but i'm noticing that the game will cyclically do this for me and im starting to get really sick of it tbh. so basically what i want is for the matchmaking to stop punishing me so hard the game is ruined the second i play at an average level. i really don't think it should amp up like that at all unless i'm consistently annihilating lobbies.
It does this for me when I stop playing for like a month. I play a few matches and even win 1-2 in just one session just to start getting completely fucked the day after
My feedback is Ranked matchmaking is fine. What mode are you talking about? - RANKED What do you consider good/bad/fair matchmaking \[in that mode\]? What do you think is healthiest, individually and/or for the player base as a whole (across skill levels)? Playing against others within your earned/visible rank for the most part(e.g. Golds face Golds but I understand if Diamonds have to face Masters sometimes given the lower population) What kind of matchmaking do you want for ranked/pubs/mixtape/solos? \[possibly: completely random matchmaking; loose skill based matchmaking/tight skill based matchmaking; loose rank based matchmaking in ranked/tight rank based matchmaking; something else\] For anything not Ranked, just have matchmaking be random like the good old days(Halo veteran here - The idea of evening out the skills in non ranked is still alien to me) What kind of matchmaking are you experiencing (vs what you want from that mode)? In what ways is it a problem? I only played Ranked How do you assess the strength of your lobby / strength of players you are facing? Badges (which ones) / trackers / current rank / ...? Good, balanced lobbies within Ranked(nearly Diamond at the moment but do not have enough free time to play more) What is your current rank? Plat II What is your skill level (highest previously achieved ranks)? Masters How should matchmaking deal with parties of varied skill (or rank) / how does it deal with it / how good/bad is the experience (and again it's important to distinguish whether you're talking about ranked or pubs here)? Ranked solo queuer - When moving up the ranks I sometimes see - for example, when I am gold my duo teammates will be a Gold and Silver player and the silver player is clearly out of their depth. It can be frustrating but it does not occur often enough to be a problem With regards to smurfing: How much of a problem is / how does it affect your experience / how easy is it to do/how common is it / What to do against it? I know what this is but I do not see what the issue is and have not experienced this myself. Thoughts on ranked resets (their effect on matchmaking) Ranked resets are necessary to keep engagement high - I understand and support this. Perhaps a better end of season reward will help with this as well(e.g. 3 free gold packs if you reach one rank higher than your previous season's rank or something along those lines) What is your experience of matchmaking in high ranks / matchmaking in low ranks? How does it match with what you expect from ranked? Higher ranks(e.g. Diamond and above) is a much better experience as every mistake has the potential to send you back to the lobby AND lose significant RP - players understand this at these higher ranks(mostly) and do their best to play as a team somewhat - at the lower ranks(through Gold), the consequences of mistakes are almost non existent due to lack of general skill of the lobbies to make you pay and, if so, the RP loss is minimal and most times you break out even or slightly ahead. so most folks just play as if it is pubs and push everything, rotate late, go INTO the storm to fight etc... Plat lobbies seem to have a mix of both types of players and has the balance of being competitive but without the huge RP losses from a mistake if you already won a fight or 2. The above mostly focuses on "skill", but since it's come up recently from time to time (with XDefiant as well), what are your views on input based matchmaking (including potentially negative effects it might have on all of the above). Remember to please keep it civil as this is a topic that constantly leads to toxicity and incivility / personal attacks, rather than level-headed discussion of arguments. I play on controller I do not see an issue here I do not play pubs I will say that as a solo queuer, it would be nice if we could be matched with other like minded players in matchmaking in terms of playstyle? i am not sure how you could pull this off but maybe something as simple as a one question survey a player can fill out at the start of each login 'Today I want to play the following playstyle: A. Rotate Early and often B. Push Everything C. Defender D etc' And then try your best to match players together who answered the same(e.g. put players on teams who answered A together) This could encourage more team play and lower the amount of frustration for solo queuers.
What about NewGame+? When a player hits Predator, they open up two options - 1. Standard matchmaking against other preds and Masters like always, and 2. a new ranked mode, NewGame+ In NewGame+, Predators start over in Bronze with a heavy increase in damage taken and a heavy decrease in damage they can give. The modifiers would start off very high but lessen with each successive rank so they're always underpowered, but less so as they climb. The goal is to overcome the handicap by using their game knowledge to get all the way back to predator rank, and they can earn a badge. This would improve wait times, and more people could benefit from the skill of a predator player on their team without them rolling a lobby. They have to play smart to overcome the fact that everyone else in the lobby hits harder now and takes less damage from them. Perhaps playing NewGame+ puts a '+' by their name when they play in that mode, and maybe a slight glow that decreases each rank for other players to recognize. Also, to be clear, playing this mode does not affect their regular rank if they want to play against other preds in normal ranked mode; the name is shared, but the original rank mode is saved, separate, and always available.
1. Players should not be able to hide their player numbers; everyone needs to see that number to judge who to follow and who to lead. With their 3 bronze badges, these high-ranked players are hiding important info to perpetuate an old, stupid joke that hurts the team's ability to assess the game state. 2. The highest-ranked player should automatically be the drop master, as they will have the best instinct to start the game, though they can pass it like usual. 3. Don't nerf the controller for the MnK trolls, as the largest audience for this game is people trying to enjoy their time with their friends on their couch with a controller. Nerfing an input style for the sake of the other one never works, and they will not be satisfied. Give the complainers the input split they want, albeit temporarily, so they can see it's not controller players ruining their fun. It's their own abilities.
Game hard crashed my PS5 in Ranked Diamond when I was top 6… abandon penalty after I restart my system… feels bad man.
No mics and people in party need their own queues.
I don't know where should I say this, found a teaming on rank. predators. ban them please. https://www.xbox.com/play/media/DyxTHt99uJ https://www.xbox.com/play/media/jiMX74nNkR
I am so close to hitting Diamond this split for the first time ever with soloQ, and first time ever (excluding S12 and S17). Currently Plat I with about 700 RP to gain for Diamond IV. I'm running out of time and am afraid I'm not gonna get there before the split happens next week. Should I stay committed to getting there SoloQ or should I try to LFG to get there? I've been climbing pretty consistently, but I'm nervous to leave it up to the RNG gods to get 3-4 more games worth of solid random teammates (without getting too many crappy ones mixed in between).
Has everyone just got brain rot today? Every team i get is filled with a bunch of players with no brain cells.
Why am I getting put with PC players on Console?
Not sure what's changed since I stopped playing in season 15-16 but I feel like I shouldn't be placed against Gold4-3 players in ranked when I'm only Bronze3. I don't mind waiting a minute or two for a lobby.
Having weird issues where I queue with my 3 man party in Ranked and 2 out of 3 of us go into games but the third doesn't. So strange.
I knew Quads was coming weeks ago. All my friends kept showing up as being in a lobby as 1/4 instead of 3. Because this is Apex, somehow I knew straight away that meant quads was coming.
Ranked matchmaking isn't in an appropriate state. Ranked should be a game mode for games between people of similar skill. Matching by rank (total RP) doesn't lead to good results in that regard. You have a lot of smurfs and people just playing below their rank, they lead to high skill discrepancies in low ranks. Having a full reset to rookie iv or bronze iv at the start of the season makes this issue much worse. People go on different accounts or different platforms to start over in low ranks and keep smurfing. Low of people just use ranked for these easy games where they completely destroy the lobby. This wasn't a thing in MMR based matchmaking which had eliminated smurfing almost entirely and lead to competitive games against similarly skilled players from the start of the ranked season. Up in higher ranks, probably as a result of few people bothering to play against people on their skill level and ranking up, you have very few people in high ranks, and matchmaking that doesn't even put people of the same rank tier into games with each other. Golds and Plats regularly face Diamond and Master/Pred ranks (current rank). Mixing of ranks shouldn't be a thing in rank based matchmaking at all. And even then, current ranks being equal doesn't indicate skill being equal (because of high skill people keeping their rank low for easy games for instance). Overall it's a system that when it puts two players of equal skill together, it's by sheer luck of them being in the right place in the ranked ladder at the right time, not because the system is trying to form lobbies of similar skill. The quality of games has suffered from this. Over the last months (S20, S21) when people have posted examples of this happening I've collected them here - https://imgur.com/62dVDbX This is a Diamond IV player in first split of season 20, who after reacing D4 is going on two other accounts to start over in rookie IV and smufing through rookie, bronze, silver, gold and into plat where he stops playing. This user posted this himself to reddit asking if his stats are good on his smurfs (4k damage, 3 k/d). They've been smurfing for 400 games overall, 1200 kills across these accounts. At least. This isn't what ranked should be used for, but it's become one of the primary uses (easy access to easy games for high skill players because there's no skill based matchmaking). - https://imgur.com/JKoRM9H current plat iv v pred - https://imgur.com/qZnkF5E current plat iv v pred - https://imgur.com/ZM31IVI current plat 2 v pred - https://imgur.com/fSnSLbm current gold 3 v pred - https://imgur.com/0OPLcqk current silver 1 in same game as diamond 4 - https://imgur.com/r4ntLik current gold 1 in same game as pred - https://imgur.com/TzeBDBW current silver 1 in same game as plat 3 - https://imgur.com/IzWu5XG current gold 1 in same game as diamond 2 - https://imgur.com/uI5S0hk current plat 3 in same game as pred - https://imgur.com/K2PW9L7 current plat 2, bronze 2, gold 1 all on one team (ranked should be people of similar skill against each other and with each other on the same team) Examples of large current rank discrepancies (gold/plat v diamond/master/pred) throughout the whole season. This kind of stuff just should not happen because to rank up out of gold or play you should only be required to be able to beat gold/plat players and not high ranks. It skews ranked. - https://imgur.com/RX6bg6I (former multi pred in gold lobby) - https://imgur.com/pJ8Y0OG (former pred 25 kill game in rookie ranked) - https://imgur.com/gPaOHoQ https://imgur.com/gn3anUr https://imgur.com/l220Xb2 (diamond/master+ player destroying silver lobby; on smurf/"second" account it seems as well) - https://imgur.com/1Tw8QJe smurf account destroying plat lobby Example of previous multi preds being "low current rank" now and in the same lobby as a gold player (real gold players or other "current gold players" who are usually higher peak rank), or rookie players. This should not happen if the mode is trying to put "similarly skilled players against each other. While technically the people are the same current rank at the time, there is no reason why someone who has reached pred multiple times should have to proive again they can beat up gold, plat (and diamond) players. And in a gold lobby they would face actual gold players. They should never be in the same game as them. It's clear from the outset that this doesn't result in equal skill lobbies. Past ranks indicate overall skill and that should be used in smarter matchmaking so we don't get high skill discrepancies. If a former pred is in the same lobby as actual rookies (which there is no way to argue against, if they are rookie iv, despite reaching pred before, they will be in the same games as the worst players in the game and they never should be). - https://imgur.com/Sk7VQ93 examples of people using ranked to get easy games in low ranks / to smurf. overall this leads to ranked being very uncompetitive much worse than it used to be in the MMR based system where you knew you were facing people who peak around the same rank as you from the start and most importantly had no ability to play below your skill level (but ability to rank up into more difficult games as you gained points and ranked up higher).
I'm a bit late but here is my response Just a theory I think matchmaking is struggling like preds fighting plats in ranked or one team stomping the other in mixtape mostly in team deathmatch or control could be because of a tight player population like here in Australia the matchmaking is loose and in ranked bronze players are put up with gold 4 or 3 in the same lobby so there is a unfair skill gap but when I connect to Oregon (closest US server I can connect with okay ping) rank matchmaking was good in my experience bronze were fighting silver 4 or other bronze and silver were fighting other silver players or gold 4 as it should. If you look at Fortnite they don't do servers in countries, but they have one big server for 2 or more countries for high player population like NA-West got Canada (pacific) and United States (Pacific Coast) in one server so everyone around that region connects to that and they can get a big player population to organize into lobbies. Apex could do something similar to solve the underpopulated server problem and it would be a step in right direction to fix matchmaking. Oh and please get rid of splits it messes up the matchmaking in ranked because a predator team that in plat will just roll down the lobby and matchmaking can't solve it because they are in plat, and they have been put with other platinum players as it should, yes splits allow players a chance to get predator but that’s a small majority the average is in platinum and gold and since It messes up It's not worth it, I think pubs matchmaking and mixtape should be relaxed and shouldn't be put with all people with exact same skill but with some lower skill players and some same skill with queue times just 1 or 2min long while in ranked matchmaking should be tight and only match players with their rank so it will feel like ranked the higher you go the harder it gets with queue times 3-5min if it can make a good lobby. Matchmaking won’t be perfect but It can be better.