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.
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.
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