Matchmaking sbmm hasn’t changed in season 20

@Benjamin8894For the "SBMM", (if we can even call it that), everyone got reset to rookie, and so we're in the same lobbies as preds. Its best to wait a week or two before getting into ranked.

As for the crafters, that was changed to prevent zone healing, which they also changed zone to now go, "hey... you're camping", before it kills you.

What I would of done if I was able to, was make the crafters turn off when out of the ring, making them fully unuseable, even when its in a heat shield. It won't stop crafting if it was activated before being engolfed by the ring, but it will stop any future crafting while its outside the ring. Disabling the crafter outside the ring was even suggested by several players and pros, as disabling it solves the out of ring camping.

The problem they created is that not only would you get squad wiped by a fast closing ring, but you can't craft anything useful to survive while in the ring, and any weapons locked in Rampart's town takeover on World's Edge is fully up for grabs by anyone. I heard its limited to one per player, however imagine full sweat teams landing there, but still. Part of the charm was earning the crafting materials.

Other changes they could of done are:

- Disabling the heat shields in ranked
- Make healing items less and less effective, the more its used outside of the ring, until the player moves back into the ring
- Make the ring damage slowly increase for those camping outside of it
- Certain crafting options becomes disabled while the crafter is out of the ring, or is crafted by the team too many times; aka med kits

Instead we got:

- Make team survival, (in a game where players mainly play as a solo anyways), more impossible. I thought we'd all have one use at the crafter, but if its going to be one use for the whole team, that's not it chief. However, even one use per player would be too limiting as well.

I don't do ranked. I started playing arenas only. Was pissed when they got rid of that. Mixtape took a bit to adjust, but I play that. BR and LTM play is maybe 2%of my overall play. The matchmaking used is abysmal. If I am in a party, I'm sent into God level PC lobbies, and I am on a switch. Avg final scores for TDM. 8 to 50 and I'm on the losing team with 6 kills. Gun run, I'm lucky to make it to shotguns. Control, final scores avg 52.5% to 100% I'm on the losing team. 

My kdr was 2.4. Since S20 dropped, it is now down to 0.9. Thanks in part to game / console crashes, ALC malfunctions, severe server lag, no audio feedback and * poor matchmaking.  I'm top dog usually on my team, so not necessarily a skill issue. I'm not god, but I can hold my own. 

The cheating is way worse. Reporting just takes away from the game. Only streamers can get someone live banned. Just a gndn feature so the devs can claim They are doing something about the cheats. 

Pubs should have better matchmaking. Or, at the very least, made so one has a chance to win a match, rather than being cannon fodder for cheaters and preds. Never get to do a full match like that anyway since everyone quits in disgust.  I dare not leave, even if the last man standing, as I get abandoned penalties. So I run around trying to get killed as fast as possible just to end the madness. And my kdr goes to crap. 

EA was complaining that their revenues are down. Do they honestly believe this crap will take in the cash?  I'm not inclined to spend anything unless they do something to improve the issues of the game that have been posted about for years. 

@AldeberaRanked got fully reset so MM on Day 1 was as close to random as we'll ever get. I'd wait at least 2 weeks for the sweats and streamers to clear out before jumping in.

The evo shield & crafting systems need some tweaking. The evo requirements for leveling up just seem off. For example, you need 450 evo to get a blue shield when it was 150 damage before. Basically winning your first 1v1 before got you blue but you have to win a solo 1v3 now to do that. In addition, the harvesters don't get you a blue shield if you drop alone and just loot whereas before if you dropped on a replicator you could get blue armor guaranteed before you rotated out. The balance between damage earned evo and teamwork earned evo is off. I'm OK with the idea, but the point values are out of whack.

The loot pool is also worse and they thought they'd be improving it. They put more things into ground loot (weapons and items that were in the replicator) than they took out (shields). Helmets and optics (already scarce before) are now harder to find. I've gotten to later rings with worse armor (blue or even white) and even white helmets more times in my week of Season 20 than I did for the past month of S19. What's the point of even trying to fight at that point?

Matchmaking is still completely broken and I think it feels worse with all these changes. Your first fight is all or nothing and now lesser skilled or solo queue random teams can't even luck into a shield advantage against the 3 stack they will run into just as often. MM still ignores that you got destroyed for your last 10 to 15 games before it even considers dropping you down a lobby. Just feels bad.

It feels better, but I still get teammates of questionable skill. It gone from feeling like a bunch of bots to a bunch of casuals who are too casual for the rank scene. (Like the ones you'd find in pubs that would disconnect the second they're knocked).

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@Palette24carats wrote:
@Midnight9746predators are a very very tiny minority so it doesnt matter we supposedly are in their lobbies because there are way more rookies, silvers, gold than predators.

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Wanted to respond to this with some good ol' math 🙂

Suppose we consider "high skilled players" to be the top 5% of all of Apex (diamonds, masters and preds) and the "top players" to be the top 1% (preds and masters).

Then the chance (under complete random matchmaking, aka rookie) that a player is not a "high skilled player" is 95% (remember we defined a "high skilled player" to be in the top 5% of Apex). And the chance that there are NO high skilled players in your lobby at all is (95%)^57 (that is 95% multiplied for each enemy in the lobby). This is roughly 5.4%.
This means there is a 94.6% chance of at least one player being in the top 5% of your server.

For the top 1% this changes to (99%)^57 = 56.4% chance that there are no top 1% players in your lobby and thus a 43.6% chance that there is at least one top 1% player in your lobby.

This does not take into account that the highest skill player play this game more (which makes them more likely to encounter), that active high skilled players quickly move out of the lower ranks (which makes them less likely to encounter), that active high skilled players are more likely to smurf (making them more likely to encounter), and that the winner of a fight is often the higher skilled player (which means that they survive longer and thus makes them more likely to encounter)

Due to the large number of players in a lobby, it is actually rather likely that a low skilled player encounters (and perishes at the hands of) a significantly higher skilled player.

I really want a "whoops, you died to somebody way outside of your skill. Have 100 free Apex coins." penalty to EA. Just to watch them bleed money for 5 minutes (after which they miraculously solved it).