[PUBS] 1 year later and matchmaking feels worse.

There are simply no players left. The average person is forced to play against the best 3-stacks, and that's why the game is dying.

Nowadays you only play against 3 stacks of masters/preds, or you get a level 10, 20, or 50 player who plays like a pred. It's interesting what's happening on the EU server and that no one cares.

PS. I'm only talking about the "Joker" mode, which is currently a hotbed of cheaters.

Update: I'm being forced into around the top 2000 players in the entire world. 30 matches and there's no sight of it returning back. Mind you I haven't won or had ANY games above 4 kills for the last 100 matches.

A few seasons ago, I once died maybe 100 times on purpose just to get into the bot lobby.

After that, I actually had two easier matches, but then I'd run into the strongest players again.

So if someone is above average, there's no point in playing like that. You waste hours dying over and over just to get one easy match, and then it's back to the same old story. xD

I have no problem playing with strong players, because with my KD, it's understandable. My problem is that the game constantly punishes me by frequently encountering cheaters, because they have the same skills as me...

It's obvious that there won't be any cheaters in weak lobbies, or there will be some who can't even play with cheats. Above the diamond and in sweaty pubs, it's been a real drama for several seasons, and it's only getting worse.

Yes, no, I get it. I'm just saying that if you start sandbagging, as you suggested, to get easier lobbies... they don't really get that much easier. Because of all the hard stuck diamonds who quit playing on their main because of exactly the thing you're dealing with right now. There are no more silver/gold lobbies. There are only stacks, cheaters, and smurfs. Right now you get the former. Start trying to sandbag and you will get the latter. If you have the patience to get your mmr down. It takes a LOT of matches. And the results will be exactly the same as now.

I also have problem with this MMR in this game, but if you're above average, you're often automatically placed in lobbies with the best players in the game.

The game severely penalizes above-average players in solo queue.

I can win 10 games in one day, and the next few days the game will want to treat me like I'm just trash and die in every fight.

Then I automatically go crazy and constantly change settings because I have the feeling it's maybe the graphics settings, my mouse DPI and sens in game. XD I don't know if anyone else feels the same way. XD But I have to stop doing this and get used to one setting, because I know that my aim or character tracking will suffer even more later.

Even though this is another season where I broke my K/D record for the entire season, I'm still having huge problems with audio (footsteps) and encountering cheaters.

I know the audio will be improved, and I hope it will help me a lot, but I'm afraid the cheating situation will get even worse again. :/

It's not smurfs. I'm stuck at the HIGHEST end of the skill curve. Smurfs are not the issue for me, and never have been.

Sandbag all you want. In this game it doesn't really seem to make a lot of difference.

But here's the thing about pubs: they SHOW YOU the lobby skill curve before the match starts and you are free to quit the match on the spot and try again for a better, tighter curve. And unless you're typically on at 6am you'll probably get that tighter curve in just one or two re-rolls. But here's the thing: even if you get your nice, narrow gray bar, your match will still be filled with smurfs. Meaning that you're gonna play against those high tier players no matter what. In one version of matchmaking Respawn knowingly throws you into the deep end with them. In the other version Respawn doesn't realize the sharks are still in the pool, but they are. Maybe fewer of them, but that really doesn't make the experience better in my opinion.

Sorry for the bad news, but this is the nature of all shooters, and the older they are then the worse the Smurf problem gets. But I bet you anything that if you queued up in BF6 right now you'd find a lot of the same problems. Maybe not the smurfing, but trust me when I say it's coming to that game too. Inevitably. Probably sooner rather than later.

As long as PC player numbers continue to decline, and they are rapidly declining, this problem will only worsen.

This isn't just about you, it's about everyone. Solo Q is getting worse month after month.

Wildcard - Sweat like you've never seen + a lot of cheaters at low levels (A moment ago, I was level 58 in Wildcard mode, and of course, he cheated and had 2,000 kills on one character. Congratulations on your anti-cheat measures, which are nonexistent.)

Pubs - Matchmaking that never existed

Rankeds - Above D4 for solo queues makes no sense

Overall, this game is going in one direction, but that's what they wanted.