Let’s talk about Apex Legends Matchmaking

It is not that the rules for matchmaking are less strict, it is that there are less players in LTMs and therefore the skill difference between players can be higher. The matchmaker still attempts to make the closest match it can within the time constraints we have provided with the current population of players. When there are less players in the pool, the matchmaker has to use who is available to form the lobby.

We're always trying to tune the matchmaking to strike the balance between skill gap and queue wait times, and this is something that is very dynamic based on mode population so the effects will continue to be felt when pops are lower.

For the second part of your question, I am assuming that you are referring to Unranked Trios vs. Master Ranked. Not a simple answer without looking at exact match data and knowing what the matchmaking conditions were at that exact time. By default though, you can always assume that a fast match queue time is because there were enough players queuing at the same time as you, within the skill bounds set by the matchmaker based on the amount of time you have been waiting.

We are looking at a bunch of options on how to improve the solo q experience, but our least favourite and least feasible options are to 1) make a dedicated solo q and 2) create a different RP economy for solo q players.

The first separates our players into 2 very distinct playstyles and would dramatically increase queue wait times, especially at the high end of play for solo Q players. The majority of squads at Diamond+ at are premade, which would leave a very very small pool of solo Q players to match with and all players would have an extremely long wait time to find players.

The second creates a lot of complexity in our RP economy, which can easily unbalance where the overall distribution of player ranks fall and can create more of a gap between a player's actual skill and their RP values. This can lead to a poor match experience based on skill gap, even though some players have the same Rank Tier.

It also creates a different expectation and understanding of RP. Is your RP value a "solo", "premade" or "mixed" RP value? Can RP gained by each be compared equally? I don't believe so.

The approach that we're taking in the immediate future is working on squadmate matchmaking, to get better alignment on player motivations and playstyles. Being the same skill doesn't mean that they will be a good teammate, because there is so much nuance of high-end play and communication plays such a large role in successful teams.

The challenge for us is finding a way that captures and matches expectations of players, and gets you dialed into what you think are good squadmates.

Yes! We are looking into how we can support keeping the party together via requeue. Can't confirm when that'd go in but we are all for keeping great squads together!

For LTMs it is sometimes necessary to force merge some low population regions together. This is especially important for LTMs where player engagement declines over time. While we understand that it isn't as ideal as playing on a closer datacenter, it allows the queue times to remain consistent. If we did not merge those regions, matches would only be made during that region's peak hours (and sometimes the LTMs still struggle).

We are in the process of testing a more dynamic merging technology, which will allow matches to form in the low population regions at peak hours while still merging those players during off hours. We will share more about this at a future time.

First off, congrats and thanks for playing Apex since day 1! Second, we don't have EOMM in Apex.

I think something important to remember about badges is that all 20 kill or 4k damage badges aren't equal. These badges currently lack a bit of context on the season they were earned, the meta they were under. Some of these badges were much easier to acquire when early in the life of the game as players learned the game - but have become increasingly challenging as players have gotten better.

There are lot of factors that would lead you to the lobbies you are being matched in including things like region, MMR, premade/solo queue, queue time, mode and more - so our system is likely putting you in the best match we've been able to find. That being said we are continuously looking / actively working on how we can help players like yourselves feel like they are matching in more skill appropriate lobbies.

For Unranked Trios, the skill distribution indicator placement is based on average (hidden) skill values of the squad. This means that this value is high enough to be on the far right side and your squad has a higher skill value that you think they should have.

Matchmaking does not take into consideration playstyle, as it is very very tricky to turn playstyles into math that is predictable and repeatable, especially with 20 squads all in the same match and when players can adapt their playstyle at any time. Playstyle might be able to impact who you can match with as a squadmate, but this would not be determined mathematically and would be a system where players can self-identify as a particular playstyle and we could use that information to see if we can find you similar players. Something that we're examining through the lens of addressing one of the primary concerns we hear about Solo Q players, which is that they get bad teammates.

Out of curiosity, why do you think your squad skill is average or lower?

No lower threshold to keep you at a specific MMR. As you play matches, our understanding of your skill increases and that does lead to fewer and smaller updates for each match.

Yea this is definitely something on our minds, especially those folks on our team who love ALGS. It's something we are looking into but can't confirm anything apart from that!

We have tried using a more skill based approach to Mixtape matchmaking. Due to the lower population of the mode it just artificially inflated queue times without providing tighter skill matches.

For now, we're going to keep the matchmaking in Mixtape based on your recent damage in the particular game mode (Control, TDM, etc).

We have actually done testing with matchmaking like this. Our analysis of the test didn't show any improvements in match skill width or queue times. This was primarily due to splitting the populations (especially when solos/duos don't matchmake with trios at all).

As we continue to test our dynamic merging capabilities, we do have plans to revisit separating solos/duos and trios when populations can sustain that.

This is definitely something we are very interested in tackling but unfortunately it is not falling in our priority list at the moment. This year in particular some of our priorities include looking into improving our matchmaking experience for players, improving on the solo queue experience, better ranked rewards/progression and more!

Here is a link back to a previous blog post that calls out our various matchmaking models, how they work and when/where we use them: https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/apex-legends/news/matchmaking-update-0924

We've had conversations about bots in various parts of Apex, but we are not planning on introducing them into Ranked matches as they don't match the vision for competitive Apex, which is about determining the most skilled (human) players.

Bots ARE currently deployed into Unranked Trios on the lower skill band, to help our lower-skilled players be protected from higher skilled players as they don't have to look "up" into higher skill buckets to fill a lobby. We'll see how this works out for these players and will help determine how far we can use Bots in unranked modes.

The matchmaking system is the same for both situations. As these are random players, I would expect to be high variance in their playstyle and motivations, not all of which will align with yours.

1. Oooh yea - I 100% get what you are saying and it's something we are actively talking about within the team. There are multiple ways to tackle this and you'll likely see us making small steps of progress towards this in the coming year.
2. Regarding EOMM, we understand that matchmaking is something people of all skill ranges are passionate about and that inevitably leads to speculation on how it works - but no Apex does not use EOMM. EOMM is a system with a lot of edge cases because you've got to take into account a players personalized experience which is especially challenging in the context of 60 player BR game mode with a mix of premade squads or solo queuers. For modes like ranked it goes against the goals of the mode which is to provide a competitive space for players.

I'll let u/RSPN_KM02138 tackle 3 & 4!

3. The MMR ranges between 0 and 70. For matchmaking, KDR is not something we rely on.

That said - checking the data for the current season - a KDR ~ 1 is what most of our players have, which is great as it suggests that you are playing in matches appropriate to your skill. Our highest skilled players, those who tend to end up as Masters in ranked or are represented on the right-end of the pubs match skill display, tend to have a KDR above 3 and a MMR above 35.

4. Appreciate the feedback and forwarding back to the team.

Unlikely we'll move away from SBMM. The data on our end shows that without SBMM we'll have widely imbalanced lobbies. This can sometimes be a fun experience for players at the top end of the skill spectrum as they can dominate lobbies but for everyone else that is normally a very poor experience. That being said we are always evolving how matchmaking is working under the hood to help create a better experience in not just unranked trios/duos but all our game modes - across skill bands.

For Unranked Duos and Trios,

Our aim is to allow players to find as balanced matches as possible within a reasonable amount of time. This hinges on how many players are wanting to play the mode at any given time. Trios is a more popular mode than Duos and this impacts our ability to make the same type of matches in both. For duos, we just have to allow for wider matches as to ensure that all players can have a good experience whenever they want to play a match.

Not related to matchmaking, but we are looking to host an AMA for anti-cheat (smurfing incl) soon.