Matchmaking. Why is it so bad?

For the record, I am a Diamond player. (and this is a year old post)

Apex match composition could very well be what you say; they might only place people of somewhat close skill together. Its just psychology that you focus on that possibility. You are skilled and you know you aren't winning every match you join; its those other skilled players you play with that are beating you and winning. You see, though, that of Ranked players in Apex, only 1% make it to Masters and Predators and you are in the 1%. Only 30% of Apex players play ranked at all, meaning you are in a really really small group of very skilled players. Public matches, by just numbers, will contain far more players that don't play ranked than those that do. So by not controlling for ranked play and player skill, Apex matchmaking is introducing a highly toxic element to causal play.

Lets even say that Diamond players triple stack before queueing up for casual matches. The vast majority of Apex matches are queued solo (casual all the way to Platinum rank). Just by matching up with friends of similar skill, they increase their chances at pub stomping by a lot. This only gets worse when it is Masters or Pred players. Lets say that they only place 3 or 4 higher skilled players in an average lower-skill lobby. They have the skill, the knowledge of the map, the knowledge of the weapons, the instinct to reload or use abilities. They may not win every match they queue into, but they will get those 4k badges and they will farm kills on Lowe rlevel players who will, by all accounts, probably not enjoy being fodder every single match they queue up for.

I started playing Apex at launch and I would never recommend this game to a new player, not anymore. The bar to entry is excruciatingly high. Games to get into FPS don't exist anymore and casual play is definitely dead.