Forum Discussion

SirChapwick's avatar
SirChapwick
5 years ago

Matchmaking destroying the ability of new players joining

Hello Apex Legends community, I love this game. It is leagues above the competition in both character and technical aspects, but there is a giant problem here and that is matchmaking.  From all o...
gameplay discussion
EryxApex's avatar
EryxApex
5 years ago
@SirChapwick Level is only an indicator of how long the player has played the game, it says nothing about the skill level. KDR is a better indicator, but most players manage to keep it near 1, so it's still useless for proper matchmaking, as a team of average KDR of 1 might still contain a better skilled player, who will still win a 1 vs 3.
I encounter players with fancy drop trails frequently, and those games often end before I find a weapon, even... So my short term "skill value" skewed my long term, more realistic "skill value" and set me up against people who kill me by sneezing in my general vincinity. Then it's rinse repeat a couple more rounds, before the game decides it's MY turn to nuke-sneeze a lobby, then it's right back in the victim queue...
Soooo basically, the matchmaking isn't granular enough to balance players, it just teams you up with someone better than you to simulate matchmaking, or if you're in a premade, tries to find other premades just to get a game going, no matter how terrible the team balance really is...
The game sometimes feels like you're rolling a pair of dice, and the lowest value gets you eliminated, nothing but random numbers to decide the outcome...
  • SirChapwick's avatar
    SirChapwick
    5 years ago

    @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.

    • Balladalidila's avatar
      Balladalidila
      Seasoned Ace
      5 years ago

      @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.

      • SirChapwick's avatar
        SirChapwick
        5 years ago
        @Balladalidila Well that's the trick isn't it. You want to balance out queue times with matchmaking. Currently the queues are almost non-existant, so the answer is clearly more SBMM. Overall I would say SBMM>queue times, not so much for higher skilled people (for them its fun to blast newbies), but for the lower skilled people - definitely so. When you have a choice of insta death and re-queue or a longer queue, it's an easy choice.

        Ranked doesn't work in this game at lower ranks, at least the way it is and I cannot imagine a better solution. Problems with it: 1. Smurfs 2. You can get to gold by hiding 3. Ranks reset every so often. You still end up playing with the same crowd you play like in normals anyways.

        Smurfs are easy to solve with a paid-only option of play in the game. With proper SBMM they would not be a problem though.

        You have to also remember that long queue times are an inevitability, as more and more casuals quit the game, slowly the intermediates are going to start quitting and eventually even the streamers will go, since they rely on a broader casual community that cares about the game. Hopefully that's not anytime soon, since I would prefer the game fixed, but the main reason why people tell me they do not play - is the matchmaking. If that was fixed, I sincerely believe this game would have the highest player-base of all multiplayer games. 🙂

About Apex Legends Feedback

Give feedback about the Legends, maps, weapons, loot and more in the Apex Legends community forums.33,532 PostsLatest Activity: 2 minutes ago