Matchmaking is broken!

@Sand_spitterI am new to Apex, but I am not new at all to FPS games.

That argument that someone is hit harder is purely subjective and not worth discussing. If you want to measure how good or bad something is performing you need data and objective criteria for measuring e.g. win percentage, number of higher/lower/same rank people in the lobby, number of lobbies with higher-ranked players vs total lobbies you entered, etc.

Unfortunately, I don't see people gathering that data, they rather complain that SBMM is not fair, and Respawn in turn does not comment at all... So we need to make our own surveys like one player here in forums did by playing 30 games and posting outcomes or just stop talking about who feels what and why.

As for the kills - in my opinion, that is the biggest f up thing with this community = people think that kills equals skill, yet if we look at it a bit more and ask ourselves the following questions:

• how are kills awarded in Apex? does the fact that I did 1 damage and knocked the enemy who got then killed be someone else make me more skilled because I will get the kill in such case, been there done that, so far my most efficient game was <800 damage with 6 kills. in my opinion, no, it is more luck than skill or I did benefit the team's progress towards the win but the fact that I got the kill means nothing, teammates/other enemy team could have done the majority of the work for me
  
• are support players rewarded in this game - no not really, you can push enemy into bad position, shoot at them for multiple minutes, do all the works so that someone can just laser them from the back or just tap the last shot, and unless that happens within 5 seconds? time interval you get NOTHING for it. Here I would say a system like in hockey where all people on the ice get +1 or -1 when goal is scored/lost would be more fitting. E.g. yesterday I had a game where I had 600 damage and 0 KP, other teammate had ~300-400 damage and I guess 1 assist, finally the 3rd member of our team had 6 kills, was the kill leader and mainly because of the help from our side and other 3rd party teams = was lucky (most of the success here) and skilled enough to collect not only kills from our fights while enemies were healing but also steal them from other team's effort. Soon enough he messed up major from a tactical perspective and when I pointed it out to him, he immediately pulled out the argument "hey dude how many kills you have?!" like it would make my obviously correct feedback about his tactical mistake any less correct.
• do kills help in this game to win - yes. can you win without kills - yes. So are kills = high win rate? Not necessarily. E.g. I had a game where we were in ~15th place and a Predator guy was in my team. He had 7 kills by that time and kept pushing everyone. It was a Public game. Eventually, he rushed into 1 vs multiple, got killed, we could not take his banner and because we did follow him (hoping for the best, supporting the team) we were surrounded and aped by two teams 2 vs at least 4 people, lost it. So I beg to question that this Predator guy did any good to us with all his kills?! Most in this community would say seeing stats "damn you s#@%, you are bots, you did nothing", and we finished in 10th place. 7 kills and 10th place - hurray, congrats!

How I approach ranked in this game:

1. I go into the game with the goal in mind to not mess up tactically (coms, rotations, decisions when to push or run away from the fight, take the hight before fighting, agree on whom we focus fire as a team, what is our escape route etc.) and do my best mechanically (aiming)
2. My goal after point 1 is the win - I want to be the best in the lobby even if I have 0 kills and enemies fail to rotate and escape the ring / prowlers, it still makes me the winner and winners get praised not judged as they say. Plus I get 100 RP basically for free
3. I am ready to get punished for my mistakes, thus I record all my games and review them given during the battle it always feels like you did all correct and team f-up, enemies hacked. It is true sometimes, but sometimes it is a valuable lesson that well no I f-up
4. My expectations of winning the game are set according to the level I am playing - if I go into public game, I e.g. expect to have a good chance like 5+% maybe even 10%+ of winning, dealing 1000+ damage, have at least 3 KP. If I go into Gold lobbies, my expectations are lower yet I still think that I can do it. When I get into lobbies where I see recent Master and Predator trails - I don't set myself for failure at the same time I do not expect to win that game, I am not pushing most of the fights, mainly focusing on 3rd partying and am not very sad if I do my best and get shot - it is like competing vs much better athlete = even if you set your PR you still might/will lose because your PR result will be sub average for the athlete and until you reach that level you will lose 100% or close to that of the cases

Feel free to send me the link to the material you mentioned about exposing SBMM I will gladly look into it. Use private messaging I guess EA can't ban you for that 🙂

@quantum400ideal another thing I would like to mention - from my experience already in Platinum lobbies now I keep hearing that the big part of the success in ranked is not to play with randoms - solo q as it is called here - instead at least get people with mic from the discord that will at least communicate, not abandon team already during the jump phase. So to say discord community is still random but not as bad random as you will get most of the time when solo q.

This leads to my next point - people complain that there are too many premade squads in their lobbies and most of the time those are Master/Predator/high Diamond players.

Given the above said I guess it is clear that that kind of makes sense - the player is smart enough to play with a set team, is lucky enough to have one, and repeatedly sticks with the plan that clearly provides the expected results, thus they are in the ranks you see them.

You can also see that from player streams - they hardly ever solo q, they almost always have a set squad or at least very good players to invite to their party if they are missing one or two players from the usual lineup.

And if say 50% of Master/Pred players do that they still have to be put in some lobbies, ok one, two servers might be filled with such squads only, which seems to be the case when you spectate pro players and their streams, yet there will be a few squads always left waiting... so the question here is either they now have to wait for 20+ min to get into the game or they are just put in the next best server even if they will be the best team there. I guess and it is fair enough to them that the latter happens and we see those squads in lower-ranked lobbies.

You can camp the whole match and 3rd party the last team with semi decent loot, doesn't make you a good player. I'd rather feel like I earned that win by doing enough damage and getting some kills. By actually playing. Being able to compete and participate and not feel outclassed in 9/10 matches. That's the fun win OR lose. Not one sided matches that are being tilted in some people's favor. 

There is little reward in this game by winning, I guess people just get addicted to the adrenaline of it all. It's a revolving door tbh. 

Seeing pred trails on jump and not expecting to win is fine. I don't either. The problem is that when this happens over and over again. It gets old. 

Kills alone doesn't mean you are good, but usually that's the case.

We as players shouldn't have to gather anything in terms of data, we should be playing and enjoying the game. We shouldn't even be having this discussion. 

People complain because they love the game and want to keep playing it and still have fun and not just walk away. They miss how things were in the beginning. 

I don't really know why you would stand up for this idea of sbmm, but seeing that you haven't been around long enough and haven't invested so many hours, money etc only to be screwed over later on I'm not surprised. There are small time streamers that had to abandon their accounts as they simply became unplayable. Many others had to do the same. This is why smurfing became a thing in this game to begin with. Do you not understand why the system was designed this way? Money. If you are ok with a game manipulating you to play more and spend more then that's fine. If the Matrix is your home so be it. 🙂 to be fair, most online games do this, but with this game it wasn't always this aggressive.

I used to be excited about everything they did - new skins, ltm's, maps, characters, guns etc, but what use is any of that to me now if the experience is no longer fun like 80% of the time. 

You can Google the sbmm thing. The keywords are pretty obvious. It's on YouTube, can't miss it. I think jmiles did a vid about it too and it was all over Reddit as well. 

SBMM is and always has been a joke.  That's what ranked play is for.  Pubs should just be a free-for-all of randomly filled lobbies.

This season is particularly terrible for SBMM.  Typically I get to Diamond every season then stop ranked play, but have grinded to Master in a previous season (not fun to do).  This season, 9/10 of my pub matches are against 3 stack pred/master teams.  May as well be playing ranked, why even have the distinction between the two?  My win rate, which has averaged 20% since the game launched, is down to 12% this season.

Between that and dying behind closed doors or around wall cover, this season is the most frustrating for pub play.

You wanna play like that go right ahead. Don't come posting here when you reach a kdr of 0.5 because of it though.

I didnt change anything. The game USED TO BE FUN. MM IS SCREWING US. 

Your're right, having fun is not what it's supposed to do. It's suppose to retain players by making them lose on purpose and throwing them into bot lobbies every now and again.

Can you understand this concept? It's not about math, or player qty or anything else. It's to keep you addicted by turning you into a try hard throwing you a bone every now and again  to keep you from leaving.

Please, no one is asking to win every fight. Why is this so hard to understand for you? No one even said that.  And if you honestly think becoming pred is gonna make it easier on you than keep playing and see, the game would only become harder as a result - keeping you at your 5% or below. So what incentive is there even to become better? A badge? You'll just be screwed by MM anyway. Ask around. Read the forums more. Some of the top streamers and players have a dkr of between 1-2.

FYI - game deleted / 

@Sand_spitterwhy would I post about k/d being 0.5? I mean mine currently is ~0.7 in ranked (don't play much pubs, even less pay attention to those stats).

Look at competitions and competition stats - players with k/d over 1.2 are pretty much top of the top, just read the news that s1mple in the latest tournament went 1.51 in one map but he is know as the GOAT aimer in CS:GO... and you are talking about 2?! I mean if your k/d is 2 in ranked games of your highest level then you better be earning money with Apex.

For most FPS players in ANY FPS game, positive k/d is already a success, basically, you then can call yourself as you made it. Not counting public, ffa and other modes of the game where players don't care, have nothing to lose.

For me FPS games are all about competition, if I win by any means, tactics a better player - I am having a great day. I don't care how bad or well others do, how many kills they have, even less so pointless rewards that by now all games have introduced (mindf#%$ tactics if you have read some books on how human brain and modern marketing work).

I actually like that feeling when you come in, know you will be beaten yet time to time you actually prove that feeling to be wrong. And even more so improve during the process and when the time comes to show off skill in a competitive environment - be it in a local LAN party or minor competition where you don't have any prizes - that's what matters to me in FPS games.

If you want to come into competitive spirit BR game without any training, understanding of game dynamics, ability and willingness to teamwork (like most players in Apex sadly, especially pubs) and just point and kill everyone... well I don't know a game where even a single-player provides such experience... Maybe Apex bot lobbies are more suitable for you and people alike?!

What even is this matchmaking anyways?

@EREGDSMaybe I'm being too hard on myself then. I had a kd of 1.5 I think back in season 3 and a win rate of 7-10%. I must be good then. Should've stopped playing and called it good. Ha.

That's before sbmm kicked in for me and placed me in these impossible lobbies. Now a lesser skilled player can have better or similar stats than I do just bc of how things are set up to work this way. You think it fair that the mm, by design, get to decide that for us all hmm?

Not to rain on your parade, but a kd of 0.7 is pretty bad. I would be angry if I was you. I wasn't doing much better this season though, as mine was 0.9 or close to it last time I checked and I'm playing on ~180 ping.

If you enjoy it the way it is that's fine. But do not discount the misery it's causing other people. It's like you just don't care or don't want to accept that what's happening is quite underhanded. Look at the screen shots people are posting here. You really think anyone would complain if they thought they actually had a chance against said player?

What you don't realize is that you could be doing much better if things were random. That's my issue. It's no fun knowing that you're placed into certain lobbies as a way of "fixing" the matches to keep everyone engaged. I believe that in pubs everything should be random by default, or at the very least less aggressive. Ranked is there for playing people of equal skill, having it in both modes is pointless.

But whatever, you seem like one of the few people that like the game the way it is. There's the link you wanted earlier.

https://youtu.be/DyO-WL_L3K8

@Sand_spitter 

Getting back to your/my points:

1. k/d ratio - clearly you have expectations to either be a pro or have a field-day in the game, because that's what 1.5 k/d is and have been in a competitive environment. In "fair" skill-based game your opponent(s) should be pretty much exactly your skill level or about that translates into EACH AND EVERY fight being 50/50, meaning that you will win one and lose one = 1 k/d not 1.5 on average!
   
   The fact that mine is below 1 only says two things about me at least to myself: I am not kill oriented type of guy who will finish their knocks while team is fighting still alive players and sometimes I pay the price for that if we are 3rd partied and the 3rd party eliminates my team and enemy team getting all the kills/me not getting kills for the knocked-down players of the first squad we fought, and in quite a few cases my opponents are just better than me.
   Also what it says to me looking at my death/assist stats in particular in Apex = system is just not ideal to use k/d ratio as something to gauge the skill level given you can have a kill just by doing 1 hp damage in this game and we all have had those situations when you have a teammate with say 500 damage and 6 kills while you have 1500 and 5 assists and the dude is bragging how good he is...I mean right.
2. I already commented on the exception teams which usually are 1-3 per lobby, for me that is ok, I don't care, I still believe that good teamwork can overcome that plus in my experience rarely have situations where I see such teams actually winning, usually, they just push like crazy, yes get a lot of KP and RP but they rarely win games given they just take too many risks probably because they underestimate the competition and power of 3rd party in this game.
3. What does "random" mean? If that is something that usually is happening in Gold lobbies at the beginning of the season - that contain all type of players starting from B4 ending with P1... well I rather take current matchmaking and more "fair" lobbies as I feel really bad when I distroy B4-G4 players who are waaaay worse than me, even with my 0.7 k/d :D I just don't have fun, reminds me of the days when only mode was single-player and you played vs bots e.g. in CS go, where you could single-handedly kill 20 enemy team bots alone.
4. Forum is the place where A DISCUSSION takes place - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forum <- educate yourself, you are welcome!
5. Thanks for sharing the video, comments on that:
   - I did not find much of a proof in the material, referenced reddit posts and materials were not shared - can't say is this fact or fiction/authors interpretation of data
   - author mentions that game rigs you up with a bad team and better opponents which is in my opinion flawed logic given how then it deals with me if I play with a set party as it can't push some randoms into my team, nor I am getting crazy hard lobbies every time. The only thing I noticed is that indeed if you win a game the next one will be in a very competitive lobby, but that might actually be needed to gauge my skill = if I won lobby my next challenge would be to the next level not remain at the previous one which I will probably win again. Only questionable part here is how hard the next lobby is, is it one step or multiple steps above...
   - also author mentions that the game keeps you playing while making a mix of win/lose cases for you, but if that is true and I am say losing games, it means that someone is winning that in turn means that the next game that team should be set up for losing and I for winning = creating a win/lose situation aka 50/50 case aka normal, fair matchmaking. Not sure what is the problem... problem would be only if say X number of players would always be granted an easier lobby so they have crazy win percentage k/d ration etc. while everyone else suffered and were below 1 k/d and 3-5% winrate

So yeah... that's my take on the situation and given we are exchanging views on our personalities I would like to add that you have to learn how to treat other people opinions with respect even when you don't agree with them.

@Sand_spitter So assuming that video is indeed what Apex is doing (which its quite obvious that it is that), we're being lied to with this message here, as the mismatch of players happens in any mode:

:

@Midnight9746I'm not too sure how ranked works tbh, I only know what I know from other comments I've seen. But I've said in the past that lets say someone starts out in Bronze, how do we know that player won't make it all the way to Pred? (basically pred in disguise if we're only looking at his latest rank). Will he be grouped in lobbies of actual similar skill while in Bronze or will he just stomp those lobbies thereby getting out of Bronze quickly? Otherwise what would be the point of "climbing" the ranks if he's already matched with other Preds in Bronze? That would make him stay there forever basically. Personally I just think he'll be stomping his way through and I think where this "similarly skilled" mechanic kicks in in full bloom is when said player keeps grinding a certain league and basically stagnates there or progresses very slowly along with the rest of the players doing the same. It keeps working if everyone keeps grinding at their skill ceiling basically. I could very well be wrong, but that is my understanding of it.

In essence what I mean by that is I think lobbies start out random and gets increasingly similar in skill the higher you go and as time passes.

Went to que up for rank today, and saw this message, while reading it, I took a screenshot and a match started up anyways. It was very weird.

100,080 / 24h = 4,170 hours and 37 minutes.... lol what?

This message shows up everytime I ready up. Matches are still matchmaking though.

This took me into this kind of match:



They need to change their matchmaking and stop making it hell for solo quers.