Re: Unplayable for casual. Smurfs, leavers and sabotage every game.

Of course Asmodeus566 is back to imply that since he's having a good time, everybody is having a good time.

I did go through many other post stating the same kind of issue I'm having with the game and you're in every post saying how you are having a good experience and there is nos issue and "get good, find friends" as your solution. You are just coming of rude every time dismissing other players issue. Don't you believe one single second that if so many of us come here and take the time to write a post on a forum there must be some kind of issue ?

"The needs of the many,
outweigh the needs of the few or one." 

We are not only a few. A LOT of players are stating that solo queueing is impossible to play this season. I've been playing since the first season and never had that kind of issue. And believe it or not, some people have a life outside of Apex Legends, have work and some have children, and it is not always possible to  queue with a team. Does that mean that we should not play the game ? Smurfs, cheaters, leavers, solo players queuing with a team, 3 randoms put against 3 stacks, silver against diamond and pred trails. It is absolutely not welcoming to casual players and it has been the worst season in the past 3 years. 

You are misunderstanding the message from Respawn and EA and created a little scenario in your head instead of even trying to understand the words in front of you. The message is very obvious when they choose to ignore a huge portion of their player base and the issue they are experiencing in the game. If they don't do anything to fix those issues, they are getting rid of the player of are experiencing them. Players have voiced these issues and Respawn choose to ignore it. 

We are not a few, we are a big portion of the player base being only casuals solo queuers and nothing has been done to improve our gaming experience, as all the other post about the game being unplayable for casual are saying, cause there just wouldn't be any other posts if the issue didn't exist for casuals. You even said it yourself that we are more than a few casual players :"[...]get rid of their biggest costumer base, that is also their biggest source of income."  

It is not because YOU are not seeing these issue that they don't exist. It is not because you have food in your fridge that other people are not starving. It is not because you have a warm coat that others are not cold. You and your experience are not the definition of everybody else and their game experience in apex. 

Congratulations on having a good time in the game. You can get back to it and stop commenting casual player's post only to say how YOU are having a good time. 

Here is a non exhaustive list of things that can be done to improve casual player's experience :

Matchmaking :

- A better balance of matchmaking is needed. Silver players should go against or teamed with diamonds and preds, in pubs and ranked. It is not fun for anyone in the team, the higher level needs to carry someone that can't follow their gameplay and the lower level simply can't play.

- Quality over quantity. It shouldn't be an excuse to get into a match faster if it means you will just die right away to a much higher level to be back in the queueing lobby. Let players play a balanced game even it means longer wait. The wait time is already under 15 seconds, we can deal with longer queue to be able to play an actual match.

- Solo queuers shouldn't go against full squads. A team of random will always have a HUGE disadvantage facing a three stack. Other games have already sort this out : full squads play against full squads, teams of randoms against teams of randoms. 

Punish bad behavior :

- More severe punishment is needed for sabotaging players.

Leavers in pubs should be automatically suspended for increasing time when they keep leaving games before being killed, just like in ranked. 

Solo player not playing with their team should be punished. If a player spend all game away from their team, engaging solo fights and not trying to come back to the team, they should be punished for that and they should be automatically queued alone for the next games.

Reports of sabotage should be taken into account and go through a more severe verification when received against a player.

Multiple reports of the same category should have an automatic system of suspension until more review.

- More severe suspension against harassment, toxicity, insults, sexual attacks, sexism, etc. Players being rude in text chat are getting the bans but vocal chat is not monitored. Players are excessively toxic and should get voice banned more often. Women are getting massively harassed in this game and it should be zero tolerance towards that kind of behavior. It is the worst online experience I have witness for female gamers in my decades of playing online.

- Add report categories for : Playing Solo away from the teammates instead of unchecking "fill team", vocal toxicity, teammate sabotage and/or un sportsman like behavior (using abilities to prevent teammate to loot, stealing all dibs, preventing teammate to get into a building when facing an enemy, etc)

Smurfs :

- Linking a phone number to the account to prevent multiple accounts

- Increase the minimum games played or player level to get into ranked (you need 50 WINS in some other game to be allowed to queue in ranked)

- Some kind of skill to ranked monitoring. A new player in bronze should not go wiping a lobby with 20+kills, no matter how good they were at some other shooter. 

Hackers :

- Better anti-cheat

- Automatic suspension after multiple reports of using cheat.

- Better monitoring from Respawn through stream watching, game replays, youtube videos, etc. to determined where the major cheating issues are

General improvement :

- Give the player the possibility to actually write a detailed report against a player to facilitate the review afterward. A report team should know right away what to look for as we now have to choose what seems the closest to the report category instead of reporting the detailed situation.

This is not the complete list of things that can be improved but it's definitely a good start to improve the casual players experience. There are solutions and many ways to make the game better for a vast part of the player base. Respawn and EA only need to acknowledge the issues players are voicing and actually do something to work towards solutions.

I feel like you are trolling each and everyone post these days. 

@DestineeQc 

I see that you did kinda take offense to what I replied and I apologize for that as it was not intended.

I did not imply that everyone is having a good experience and that their issues are not real issues.

The game is a team based game and yes solo's are teamed with other Randoms to play as a team and that does not always go well.

Finding others to play with would mitigate this.

For those that cannot find others to play with it will always be tougher for them.

For those that do not want to play with others well that is their problem.

I agree with you on a lot of points:

Smurfs need to be squashed. If it were possible I would say each player only be allowed to have one account. However this would be very hard to enforce. One could limit the amount of Smurfs by using phone verification when making an account.

Raising the entry level to play ranked to 50 or even 100 would also discourage but not eliminate Smurfs from ranked.

As far as how players play the game we can not change how others play the game only how we play with others. I do not like hot dropping with 3-5+ teams in ranked or pubs for that matter if the JM decides to do this most of the time I will do my own thing and drop close by in case they survive, otherwise it is their own bed they made and I can not change that and should not be punished for not joining them in their foolhardiness. 

For ranked play I believe that it would be best if a player can only play with (team up with) other players that are not more than 2 tiers above them or below them and should also not be matched against any other players that are more than 2 tiers above or below the team rank tier avg. this would tighten up ranked play and actual have similar skilled players playing against one another. Pubs MM needs to also be tightened up. I have been in matches where I see the previous champion sqd state and they have a player with 15K kills on their one legend, I am not in that skill level and should never play vs such players but it happens and I agree with you it needs to stop. 

While we are at it EA/Respawn needs to stop catering to the pro players and streamers and also to the masters and pred players they may be the best players but they make up less than 5% of the player base. 

Soo you see I do see that the problems exist and need fixing. I am a casual player and  yes I solo play a lot also, and not every solo game I play is a good game I am just lucky enough that most of them are satisfactory.

I do not think I have ever used the term "Get Good" and like I said I am not trying to be rude or offend anyone.

However I do think that this was a little rude on your part "Congratulations on having a good time in the game. You can get back to it and stop commenting casual player's post only to say how YOU are having a good time.".  I can look past that for now.

Please do keep highlighting these issues as they do need to be fixed however I will keep telling players that the easiest way to fix the issue regarding solo Q is to find friends to play with because until EA can improve the Solo Q experience this is what one would have to do to mitigate that.

I do know that EA is working on some MM balancing that should be coming out in late December/early January lets hope it helps and is not just another a pro mentioned a problem that they perceived and makes things worse for casual players. 

Best of luck to you @DestineeQc 

@XxColdFangxX 

I suggest a fix that will help players out immediately, in order to alleviate the pain solo Q'ing can be at times.

I am not suggesting that there is no problem that needs to be fixed. EA really needs to tighten up MM.

You have been here on the forum for a while and there are some other of the members that you might reach out to in order to try out playing with them. I know that some of them do this sometimes with other forum members. Could be you get lucky and find one that plays to your style and has the time to play more often with you. I would volunteer myself but I already have a group of 5.

Like I said I do see the solo Q problems because I do solo Q a lot but that is also by Choice playing with my friends is fun and all but can be tiresome so I do like to be able to play more my style and or try to learn how to better myself by playing with Randoms and learning different styles of play or using Legends I normally do not play to get better with them.  

@Asmodeus566 you literally changed your speech 180° when you realized everyone else was calling you and your trolling comments on other casual players' posts out.

And then you went on listing the solutions I posted in my comment, with slightly different words.

You started with "ah the solo Q's complaints" and ended with "I totally agree with you". You are incoherent from a message to another.

What I said wasn't rude. Your oblivious attitude is coming off rude to every "solo Q complainers" while you're dismissing our experience because yours is different.

It is very obvious from other comments that you have been doing this for a while and that it is not appreciated by other people on the forum. This forum has a nice little XP button showing how appreciated (or not) comments are. 

"I can look past that for now." I suggest you look past the next posts about this subject as well. The casual players' trying to discuss about the issues we are experiencing will be happy to not have to argue with someone spreading how much they have a good time and stating that the issue is the actual casual player for not having friends online at the same time as them to play with.

@Asmodeus566

I might try Apex for a while tomorow, just to see how bad it has gone since S13. :D

@Asmodeus566
"For those that do not want to play with others well that is their problem."
Apex is a game. It should NEVER be a problem to want to enjoy a game by yourself and it certainly shouldn't be a punishing experience.
And waiting for someone to reply to a lfg post, is not an immediate solution, it takes time for people to answer them, and there's always issues beyond the short sightedness of just finding people to play with.
For instance, different time frames, work schedules, outside lifes, and being introverted/antisocial as *--and I can already tell you, trying to force yourself to get along with a group of strangers just so you can have a good gaming experience, doesn't make things any better. Not to mention the time it takes to actually find a set of people you actually like, get along with, and play well enough with. Definitely not immediate.

 Also as I've already mentioned, joining up on a team where they stick you in an even sweatier lobby is not an enjoyable causal player experience.
We want to play the game, not get melted even faster than we do in a regular lobby.
There are many reasons people solo que, we shouldn't have a * gaming experience just because we prefer playing alone.

And if you really want to stick with the whole "it's a team game" argument, then it's time Apex starts holding the leavers, hot drop Henry's, and run off on your own players accountable via gamethrow-because solo quing shouldn't mean playing with people who have no interest in the team aspect.

@XxColdFangxX 

I think you misunderstood my statement there.

I meant players that want to play all by themselves, no teammates at all. The 60 team all solo sweat fest. It was tried in the past and has never came back. I do not think Respawn or EA will bring it back in the future.

I solo Q a lot. Just today, this morning I Solo Q ed about 12 games in trios and only had one bad experience with a JM the dropped us next to a team but as far away from bins and doors as he possibly could. I was disgusted and had to run off and do my own thing because the other two got boxed in about 10 secs and facing a team of three with no weapons is not happening. 

Leavers should def have penalties if they could possibly be respawned.

I know it is hard to find good teamates to play with on a regular basis, and playing with friends does not mean insta sweat ultra hard lobbies. They do tend to be tougher because mm tries to mm 3 stack vs 3 stacks as much as possible.

I agree that it would be much better if every Solo Q’er played with the team mindset as well as 2 stacks in trios trying to play with their solo.

Thank you for your post, I enjoyed reading it and your well thought out response. 

I do not know how to fix the solo Q exp outside of getting rid of smurfs and tightening up the mm.

since I do not work for EA or Respawn all I can do is make suggestions just like you and all the others here. Or give people advice on how they might be able to help themselves.

Again thank you for your reply.

@XxColdFangxX 

Thanks for the reply and a very nice post you put together there.

Yeah maybe EA/Respawn does need to give that old solo play mode another chance. Maybe bring it back as an LTM and see what the results are and if they are positive for the players and EA/Respawn then maybe make it a permanent option.

However I do believe that when the event ran for the first and last time there was a lot of issues. Rampant teaming, a lot of camping until last circle and totally random end circles because of that. Some legends abilities are also pretty much non-viable in a pure solo mode, Mirage's passive, Lifeline has no one to res, etc because a lot of the legend abilities work best in a team format. Yes a lot of the others can use abilities for self benefit and are still viable. 

Maybe EA should give it a try though. 

With all that in mind I played the solo mode back then and it was just a total sweat fest or a total sneak and peak camping trip. The third party was worse, if you got unlucky there was no teammate to res you or respawn you, Snipers were def a thing. That mode was very unforgiving and seemed that you spent more time loading into a game than actually playing. 

But that is just my take on it.

Again many thanks for your well thought out reply and kudos to you for your points of argument.

Happy Friday.