Re: Matchmaking destroying the ability of new players joining

@EryxApexI agree. Just to be clear I do not suggest using level to determine skill with accuracy, I just used it as an example where I am fairly new to the game and playing with veterans, that should never be the case.

For me, 1/10 games is enjoyable, 1/50 is good. You are always going to have bad games, so the target for design should be 9/10 enjoyable, 1/20 good. That is very far off atm.

@SirChapwick 

But where do we draw the lines? Keep in mind that "skill" is a continuous variable.. How can we design a SBMM that makes ALL players, at ALL skill levels, NOT have to play against someone much better than him? Its not possible unless we have a super narrow SBMM, but that is not practically possible since the queue times would be too long for both the high elo and low elo players since skill distribution is most likely normal distributed.

And I think the current SBMM will sort out the really bad players in a separate queue where new players or just really noobish players are allowed to learn the basics. But when you hit a certain skill level, probably measured in K/D, you will have to fight with the big boys. 

I honestly feel that most SBMM complainers want public games to be like ranked games. So a much easier and better solution would be for Respawn to FIX RANKED by making it super hard to smurf in ranked. Then, people who want to play vs players his own skill could do that in ranked, regardless if he is in silver, or master.

I think the problem is that the player skill distribution most likely is normal distributed with a mean surprisingly low and a standard deviation probably also low. I wouldn't be surprised if the mean K/D of active players <1. 

So lets say, for the sake of the argument, that they would create public lobbies of all players >2.5 k/d

Here are just some problems of the top of my head: 

1) Super long queue times. Last season, only 4.68% of the active ranked players were Diamond or better, and you dont even need to have 2.5 k/d to reach diamond. So from that, maybe we can say that there are actually FAR LESS players than 4.68 of the player base with 2.5 K/D, and creating public matches with less than 4.68 % of players will probably not even be possible in the smaller regions (20 min queue time?). Is our goal to make it impossible for good players to play this game?

2) And even if these "high elo" public lobbies could be created; ALL players in them would drastically drop in K/D. We must remember than skill is relative. Take me for example. I have 2.4 overall k/d now but only 1.63 K/D last season I played ranked (reached D2) and this number is including my silver-platinum games (started in silver that season). My "diamond" k/d was probably far less than <1.

 So how would this work in this SBMM you are suggesting? Bottom line is that if we have a narrow SBMM, EVERY player, regardless of skill level, would have a k/d going towards the same value (theoretically, the value would be 1 in super narrow SBMM)  because, once again; skill is relative. So after a while, how would this sbmm know what player was good or bad, since good or bad is determined what opponent we are playing against.

But on the subject of ranked, I totally agree. Ranked is a mess and is designed to make people come back and play (ebmm?) , not to provide a competitive game mode. Remove the smurfs, remove or reduce soft reset, enable both demotions between divisions and fast promotions. When someone clearly is playing on a much higher skill level than his corresponding rank, there is nothing wrong with moving him up several ranks. If demotions where enabled, anyone who is moved up too far will eventually be demoted back down to the rank better corresponding to his actual skill.

@BalladalidilaWell the solution would be not to use K/D as a stat to create lobbies, but as a guide. My K/D is well below 1 and so is a lot of players, because anyone who is higher needs someone who is below them for the maths to work. I will offer a suggestion although I am not knowledgeable.

I don't know what the target K/D should be, for arguments sake let's say 1. Make 6 lobbies: Trash, Bad, Average, Intermediate, Good, Beast. Now if you have a lower K/D than 1, bounce one lower, If you have higher, bounce one up. Over time you will find a spot where you sit and if you get better you will advance.

I am not saying I have the answers, I am not the designer of this game, however, this game will die if this does not get solved. Same thing happened to Mordhau, nobody plays it anymore, it had a few issues but the radical difference in player skills made people quit.

* I will also add that the problem is not that there are people better than me or worse in the match, the problem is that there are people so much better than me that it feels like they are cheating with aimbots.

@SirChapwick 

It would be interesting to try out such a "dynamic" SBMM but I honestly think that would be a worse experience for everyone. Having a lobby full of players close to your own skill level would feel super sweaty for everyone, regardless of skill. Everyone would probably go +/- 1-2 K/D every game. 

My experience of the current SBMM (even though some wont agree on this)  is that the matchmaking try to create lobbies according to a certain template, with only a very few high elo players in each lobby. It isnt perfect but due to all the problems Ive mentioned earlier with a "narrower" SBMM, I think its the overall best option. And yes, most of the time I die post early game, is from a predator death squad but I just think its a little bit ridiculous to demand a SBMM where I never have to have much better players in my lobby. I rather have 2-3 predators in my lobby and play with two mediocre teammates, rather than being in a lobby of 10-20 predators/masters but with better teammates tbh. If I want that, I just play ranked. 

@SirChapwick  

Yeah I can understand this SBMM situation can be frustrating for "below average" players, i.e those just too good to play with the matchmaking for new accounts and real newbies, but too bad to be able to win a single 1v1 in the normal lobbies. But if I am right about the fixed template of skill distribution for every lobby (few super bad, many mean, few, good and very few pros), this might be the best solution of a situation. As a "below average" player, you then have plenty of opportunity to face people just slightly better than you, and you will hopefully pretty fast improve towards average skill level. 

But once again; im not saying SBMM is perfect but I think its a little more complicated than many people on this forum realize, those who just say "fix sbmm" =)

@SirChapwick 

Well, I was pretty terrible when I started Apex. I had played alot of PUBG so I guess my "general" aim was Ok but that game is ofc something completely different than Apex in most other ways. The first season, I dropped Skulltown/Thunderdome/Artillery, got stomped and dropped again. I did this the entire season and I dont think I got my first 2k banner until S2. The first Ranked season, I only reached Platinum and I really tried hard to get to Diamond but failed.  For ranked S2 up to now, Ive had no problem at all reaching >Diamond 4 without even having to grind. I now have a 2.4 k/d, 3k banner on most legends I play and at least 2k on those I hate to play and also a 20kill bomb. 

So I can only speak for me but I got stomped pretty hard for a long time, maybe for 5000 games, but instead of being sad about that, I tried to learn from my mistakes and improve, which I also did. And I dont disagree with most things you say. What I DO not agree on is that its impossible for average players to become better in the current matchmaking.  Just by not dropping hot where all the predators trails are dropping, an average player could play in the same lobby as predators, get a few fights vs other average, become better, and maybe even win once in a while if the predators get eliminated early, for instance by fighting each other in said hot zone.

@SirChapwick 

Doenst really bad players get sorted with the "new account" lobbies? In the early days, you always got to lvl 10 to play in those lobbies but that was changes. I created a smurf pretty recently when my account was banned for 72 h (said the C-word =) and got 3600 dmg, 20 kills the first game. The very second game, I was back in the same level of lobbies that I usually play in with my my main.. But another guy at my discord, who is at a level that couldnt get out of gold4 (before I carried him hrmm), said he was in the "noob lobbies" for at least 20 matches.

I dont know but I just think much of the entire SBMM-discussion on this forum seems so unreasonable.  People talk about level and kills and say things like "I, at lvl 100 (which is what? 1000 matches?) shouldnt have to play against lvl 500 players. Or people with a 2.5k dmg badge going like "I shouldnt have to play against a 4k dmg guy".  I mean, should I, a 2+ K/D typical "high diamond but not master-material" casual player complain about Predators in my matches? Well first of all, then I have to be equally upset every time I 100-to-0 some "gold skilled" guy, but things like that are something these people conveniently forget.

Also, this isnt a 1v1 or 5v5 game with one winner and one loser. SBMM in BRs cant just be treated like in LoL, Valorant, CS etc. I mean, if you hypothetically only play entire lobbies of exactly equally skilled players as yourself, your K/D would be 1 and win rate 1/20=0.05. So a guy that has 1+ K/D shouldnt even complain in the first place since he statically is better than his average opponent i.e he conveniently ignore all players he kills that are actually worse than him and just complains about those who are better than him -.

@Balladalidilathe new player lobbies last for such a small amount of time, you finish them in 1 day.

The argument about "level doesn't matter" is absurd, ofc it matters, the more time you play the better you are and you get more xp the better you do.

Once again you skip the point entirely, I am not arguing for a perfect matchmaking system, I am arguing for A matchmaking system. The problem is NOT that some people are stronger or weaker, the problem is it feels like they are cheating. BTW, I have 0.61 K/D, 965 games, 17 wins (<2% win rate), 146 hours in the game. So I am not one of those people who complain about it not being perfect.