I truly don't understand the matchmaking in this game.I'm constantly being matched with strange players. I'm not here saying I'm great I'm average but in most games, I hit 1000 plus damage and my team will get 300 or 500 at best. I join a lobby and I get level 6 and 40 players yes that doesn't mean they're bad but I just don't understand it at all. Last week out of 8 games my squad best was 684 and 326 and I'm 1826. Again not saying im amazing but out of 8 games, this is what was the best lobby I got. We won the match but again that's the best I gotI'm just trying to understand how it works.

@NickBeam27 So just so I understand you correctly; you experience that the game is rigged because your aim assist sometimes appear stronger and sometimes weaker? Well, I cant speak for that since I dont play on controller BUT consider this:Apex is one of the most popular PvP games out there with a competitive pro league. If this was the case, then this would without doubt NEVER has gone unnoticed. Remember that the very best controller players in the world have such good control that the controller stick pretty much is an extension of their arm. They would definitely notice if something was manipulating the aim assist.Imagine if there was similar, hidden features in games lik CSGO, LoL, Valorant etc etc... There just just no way such thing would remain hidden from the community and there is no way the devs would survive such scandal. A serious competitive game with hidden rigging systems built into the game would dig its own grave. I find it much more likely that such experience has do to with server quality, but perhaps even more important; the skill level of the opponent you shoot at. A low elo player will react much slower when you start shooting at them, and when they finally react, they lack the movement skill and instincts to minimize the incoming damage. A high elo player will always move in a way that reduces incoming damage, even when being attacked from the side. This become very obvious if you play casual and then switches to Master/pred ranked lobbies. In casual, you will one-clip people left and right but as soon as the opponents are top 0.4% percentile in skill, then your damage output is like 30% of your usual.

it doesn't matter if it's eomm or sbmm because what every they use is absolutely terrible. Out of the FPS games this has the worst IMO.

@Balladalidila i complain only about teammates that clearly arent my skill level ... it makes no sense to pair me up with complete noobs, it just angers both parties.idc if i win or not, but i care if my mates dont do dmg and arent there where the action is, i dont play the loot simulator game.

@MagnumSkyWolf People will say that the matchmaking is rigged against you but I think that people over-exaggerate the "rigged" argument. I think the empirical evidence points at that the matchmaking is more towards totally randomized than it is rigged, most likely with SOME elements in the algorithm that "mixes" with it so perhaps not 100% randomized. But all and all, the average causal lobby (for solo queuers) seems to follow the normal distributed player skill distribution, i.e a very few really bad and really good players, a few bad and good players and the majority around average +/-.I play almost exclusively public lobbies as a solo queuer and I have 700ish average dmg dealt and 2.8 Kills per matched played (i.e NOT Kills per deaths since this doesnt count early leaving). So obviously, this matchmaking allows a player at my skill level to have pretty decent games most of the time. My IRL friend who is quite better then me has a K/matches played of 4.8 and I know players who has KDs below 1.. So if we use our brains, the "rigging" of the matchmaking is obviously not that hard since it allows players so have so varying KD values, right? I think its much more likely that if you are very average skilled, your KD will end up around 1 and if you are below average, <1 and if you are above average >1.And in your case, if you hit 1000 dmg in most of your games that means that you probably are quite above the average so if we assume that the matchmaking is mostly 100% randomized, than this would make perfect sense. If you are way above the average, the probability of having WORSE teammates than you is high, just based on normal distribution logic. As a matter of fact, Those matches that you randomly get two randoms that also hit 1000 + dmg is usually enough for you to win the match. That shows how low the average skill level of a public lobby is.

@Midnight9746 But if the matchmaking is strictly rigged, either by a EOMM or SBMM; how do you explain that different players in the same matchmaking system can have everything from 0.2 to 6+ kills per matched played? I currently have 2.7 kills/matches played and 13% win rate this season and like I said; I play only pubs with randoms. Someone on his forum theorized that the matchmaking was rigged to lock you towards a KD of 1 and win rate of 7% but obviously, this so called "hard rigged OEMM" matchmaking allows me a quite high K/D and win rate without even trying super hard? It doesn't add upp from a logic POV. Much more likely that the matchmaking is random --> above average players will, in the long run, have more good games, average players will have average games and below average players will struggle.I am not saying that there ISNT elements of "rigging" or EOMM in the matchmaking. I just think that people over-exaggerate. IMO, I think the matchmaking is much more random than it is rigged. The short queue time (usually 3-4 seconds) reflects this. No offense to anyone but all these rigged MM complains seems to me that its mostly average or worse players that just complains that they are having average or worse performances in the current matchmaking. Those players who are above average will have above average performances in most their matches and those who are at the top percentile will have mostly top performances.. That is actually a good argument: all high elo streamers like Aceu or ItzTimmy always have good games, like 3k-6k dmg games, when they play solo. How is this possible if the matchmaking is so rigged? =) Example: The most common theory that I see on this forum of this "rigged" matchmaking is that you can have multiple bad games with bad teammates in a row and then get "rewarded" with a good game and good teammates that you perhaps win, just to be "punished" by bad teammates again after that. But now just assume that the matchmaking is NOT rigged but rather RANDOM, i.e it randomly put together teams from the currently queuing players... Then this pattern will make perfect sense, based on how the player skills are normal distributed.

Matchmaking its terrible | EA Forums

30 Replies

r1ggedgame
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
@Balladalidila i also wonder how i did my marksman badge with a 977meter shot ... seems very unrealistic since i dont use sniperguns that often and i dont know many spots from where one could land such a shot.
r1ggedgame
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
@Balladalidila i complain only about teammates that clearly arent my skill level ... it makes no sense to pair me up with complete noobs, it just angers both parties.
idc if i win or not, but i care if my mates dont do dmg and arent there where the action is, i dont play the loot simulator game.
Balladalidila
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
@r1ggedgame

Yeah thats a valid opinion. Some people wish for a stricter SBMM in casual, i.e more equally skilled teammates AND more equally skilled enemies.... But that last part is something that people usually forget. Because I dont think you complain about enemies that "clearly arent your skill level". Its easy to only notice how bad your teammates are but forget how bad some enemies are. What people must realize is a lobby of 60 players at equal skill level is NOT a causal lobby but rather sweaty. Such lobby would make everyone go towards 1 KD and 5% win rate and if you ask me, that is a rather sweaty lobby.
But once again; A strict SBMM in casual is a valid opinion. Me personally would hate that and the main reason for that is that I have reached a level where I can have decent games regardless of my useless teammates. If I want to play WITH more equally skilled teammates but also against more equally skilled enemies, I play ranked. For me, that type of lobbies usually is somewhere around Diamond 3. But personally, I see no reason why I would want Diamond3+ lobbies for my casual games too. I like the option to have a more causal and YOLO mode as an alternative to ranked. Also; stricter SBMM would ofc also increase the queue times significantly, especially for the very worst and very best players.
But I understand that players who havent reached that level would wish for a stricter SBMM. I think you can summarize the situation by saying that players above average in skill benefits from the current system and players below average would benefit from a stricter SBMM.
r1ggedgame
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
@Balladalidilai dont think you get the point, solo-rank is very much the the same.
mates might have that rank badge but clearly cannot keep up, how did they climb so fast in relation to me after a rank split ? makes no sense ...
also on the topic of queue times : my matchmakling says : 3xx players in queue and it still neeeds them up to 5 minutes to find me a game, i guess they wait until they found the worst they can find for me to match up, literally !
so the potential speedup doesnt apply to me ...
From all the stuff i read and experienced so far, they def. treat some ppl different than others and it would be very nice to know why, but as usual Respawn doesnt tell you for some fricken reason !
This is maybe the thing i hate the most about Apex and Respawn, missing TRANSPARANCY !
And a lack of transparancy always fuels speculation up to where you might accuse them of rigging the playfield. That twitter post of that dev is a laugh , first saying there is no EOMM and then saying the game is optimized for Engagement ... hello?!?! did someone hear a politician speak ?
Balladalidila
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
@r1ggedgame
I am NOT talking about ranked. I think Ive explicitly said "pubs or casual" the entire time.. Ranked is a total mess in this game and is ONLY designed with player retention in mind, at least below Diamond. In no other competitive game as popular and big as Apex is the correlation between a players actual skill and that players current rank so weak. The rank system is a total joke since it allows a player to climb way, waaaaay above their actual skill level just by avoiding fights at all cost and grinding alot. For most players, the difference between a silver4 player and a Platinum 4 player is just a matter of how many hours they played that split.. I've always said that the "real" ranked mode starts at Diamond4.
So all Ive ever said in this thread is about public games.. But speaking of ranked; I don't think its rigged, I think its just badly designed for the reasons I mentioned above. And as a solo player, you will always have a disadvantage since most players at any given rank, whos skill actually match or even exceeds their current rank, usually team up in premades. So when you play solo, I think its safe to say that you statistically more often than not will end up with the players with lowest skill in each lobby. Thats why I never play ranked above Diamond4. You will almost always end up with two hardstuck Diamond4 players, who hid their way through platinum with like 0.3 KD.
PS
And yupp; I coudnt agree more about the lack of transparency and general bad PR by Respawn. Someone from Respawn actually tweeted the reasons for the lack of communication but I cant remember what the main points were but I think its easy to find by just googling.
Midnight9746
Hero+
4 years ago
@BalladalidilaDo you mind explaining to me why this happens? I thought bronze and silver players can't ever be in a lobby with plat and up players (unless those players got deranked). I have a gold and a silver teammate, and the champion team is flat out a bronze, silver, and gold. That doesn't seem right in terms of how the ranks are suppose to be matched up. I had to crop the video down to remove player names.

Edited: It appears rank doesn't care if you're bronze or diamond... it pairs them all up - when it shouldn't be. I had File Explore open when I was recording, then I had noticed the champion team were two plat players, and a diamond player last minute, that's why this one is saved differently. I got two silver teammates - as shown on the squad tab. Again, its cropped to remove names.
Balladalidila
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
@Midnight9746
I have no idea =) Like I said; the rank system is a mess. All I can say is that Respawn seem to experiment with the upper and lower thresholds for each rank lobby every split so the rules change all the time and I have no idea how it is this split. I guess they use statistics and data when they try out new things, like the total net reward of RPs each lobby. I think the "goal" for a balanced and healthy ranked system is to have a net sum of 0 RPs for each lobby, i.e equally many RPs is lost as is rewarded etc. This is ofc impossible in this stupid ranked system and its utterly stupid no-demotion rule.... But I can imagine that especially silver and gold lobbies are extra broken and are probably giving out a huge positive total amount of net RPs. So perhaps they tried to fix this by widening the threshold, allowing a couple of plat4s in gold lobbies and Diamond4s in Plat lobbies etc.
Midnight9746
Hero+
4 years ago
@Balladalidila

Interesting. To me it just seems like people are just glitching the matchmaking. After 2 more rounds, everyone was plat or gold players. Then this afternoon, I got back on, and this switched back to having bronze players in the lobby. One match had two bronze IV champions with the 3rd being a plat.

I don't know what's going on. However, after looking more into it, apparently there's not enough plat players queing up.

I just jumped into an arenas match, and... yup... seems broken... although both players seemed to not be new to the game. I'm guessing they're pred players on their main account. However, arena's matchmaking is completely different and we all already know that its "matchmaking" isn't even a thing, as both pubs and ranked modes are the same exact thing, reguardless of rank or skills. Just... interesting. Also, the enemy team didn't even put up much of a fight, which was weird. *shrug*
Balladalidila
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
@Midnight9746
Yeah people found a way to glitch into lower ranked lobbies but still make the game think they played in their true rank (like a Diamond, playing in bronze lobbies but gains RP towards master etc) but Respawn allegedly came up with a detection system for this and insta-banned all of them.. But anyhow; I see no real meaning of glitching your way into a lower ranked lobby below Diamond if your motivation is to rank up. Due to all smurfs and rats who just hides and never learns to fight, it doesnt really matter. Well, perhaps for some hardstuck plat4 who reaaaaally wants to reach D4 so he can brag for his friends =)
But on the matter of having mixed ranked lobbies; I know that some people on this forum are very upset about this but I actually think this makes sense. If a, lets say, Gold lobby ONLY had gold players in it, this would mean a continuous lowering of the required skill to get out of gold as the split goes on. The first days of the split, all the "good" golds would fight amongst each other to reach Plat but as time goes by, all these good player gradually advance out of Gold and the "next best" goldies now becomes the "new best" goldies and the circle is completed and starts over. So I think it makes perfectly sense that in a "gold lobby", maybe 20% are high silver1s, 20% are low plat4s and the remaining 60% are golds..
Another way of handling, or at least slow down this, would be to have only players in the same division in the lobby BUT increasing RP entry costs as you rank up through division, like Gold4 = -24 RP, Gold3 = -28 RP, Gold 2 = -32 and Gold 1= -36 RP.
MagnumSkyWolf
New Traveler
4 years ago
This is what I'm on about over and over I get bad teams finally get one good team and this was it. Again I'm not an amazing player I do get games where I only drop 300 damage but shouldn't I be matched with players on my level?
Again I'm not great compared to many out there but if I was to play 10 games in a row I'd be lucky to get one good game with a good team. You have to play so many before you get one that's good