Predators back in season 8 had 3-minute queue times

Started around the same time, allocated some time to watch some streamers a bit later (season 8/9/10 or there about) -> in most cases watching streamers = waste of time (especially live where I saw queue times reach even 5+ min for Preds)

Always was and always will be especially in Apex:

1. most of them are just clowns - but I guess some people like that type of content where people scream, overreact, use some shallow tiktok buzzwords while playing the game and adding 0 value to the audience...I guess it is comparable to doom-scrolling (same people do both I would assume)
2. most if not all of them hack producing now standard 10-20 KP games one after another even in lobbies which are filled with cheaters as legit players who get as far know oh so well
3. even back in the days watching Preds did not impress me...yeah you might learn a rotation or two or some game exploit place to rat but that's about it = few seconds / minutes of valuable content vs hours upon hours of trash comparable to AI slop

For me personally only content worth watching was people like coach Nihil = concrete goal oriented tutorial videos with clear comments on what was done right or wrong and why. Very educational, applicable and instantly boosted my skill from Plat to Diamond level. Thanks again coach! superb job done and was glad to see you make it to pro league and even win an event! Well deserved!

If I wanted to learn how to fight in situations when 2+ teams cross-fire me I just watched some ALGS footage yet in my 10k+ hours of Apex it was applicable maybe once or twice as such intense fights almost never happen in regular ranked game even at Masters+ level, yet it was again nice to see how to manage heals, abilities and combo things together.

p.s. I will not even mention my thoughts on people who send money to streamer clowns :D

Most current streamers use at least soft cheats. The number of times Apex #1 pred has been banned in history only shows how incompetent the developers are and how nonexistent the security measures are. Most streamers are safe because they're "advertising" the game. It's a shame it seems that way.

Now we're seeing battles between 3stack preds and 3stack plats. It's not even funny. It's pathetic. That's why no sane person plays solo q ranked after reaching D4. Unless it's because SBMM doesn't exist in pubs and you'll get 3 stacks of people with 100k kills every time. Then I understand. Otherwise, I don't.

Pathetic is the fact that there are many many many people that somehow find the pleasure in such streams and donate money to them, later go to game and buy cosmetics because of that influence. And in this case Apex is not even insane - I just lately was made aware of the fact that some cosmetics in CS2 fetch 6 figures... I mean I am speechless if someone spends 6 figures on a cosmetics even if that is Elon Musk caliber billionaire...it is still insanely stupid imo.

And I am sure EA could go something like this:

1. first automate bans that would address bot farms to avoid situations where new players actually play vs bots all the time and have very negative first impression
2. then manually review TOP ranks because of advanced hacks and just make human decision (might be faulty at times yet still better than no action) regarding bans and actually ban more players that are not blunt or ratted on by someone else

I think this way people on TOP would be discouraged to hack as they might be banned and all hackers would probably cluster around mid-tier and mostly there would be people who are just bad and even with hacks would lose to top players as well as / most importantly lose interest in hacking as they never get out of "mid pack".

Adding to that in ranked e.g. mid-pack is at best 1/3 of a player base AND people who see by top player's example that it is possible to put in time and effort and overcome let's call that potential mid hacker cluster and ELO HELL.

These days and Apex for me from day 1 (season 7) was exactly as said above = reach D4 and quit because there are 0 chances unless you transfer to dark side, same as in sports and many more pro level industries. I just kept grinding because I love to grind and push my limits for a short moment so I would not quit entirely just after say month of a grind with 2-3 weeks still left in split / season.
These days I quit after 2-3 weeks and leave months of no grinding because of hacking and matchmaking.