@OldTreeCreeperWould waiting 5 minutes for a BALANCED match really drive you crazy? Rather than playing 10 minutes of a one sided poorly matched game, why would waiting for a game that was fun be so bad? I honestly think most people would rather wait for a game than be put into the first available options in a very short waiting period. Waiting 5 minutes with access to the firing range would be fine.
@SunlessMeridian
I mean, it does sort of make sense that the algorithm wants to keep matches as balanced as possible, but waiting that long for a casual match does not afford further incentive to continue playing Arenas. My time is becoming more and more limited these days and sometimes (not all the time) I want a casual experience and want it fairly quickly.
I think Apex needs some sort of non-SBMM fast paced mode for players to just drop into— perhaps as a warm up for the regular modes. Stats don’t even have to count in said mode.
I just want a mode that doesn’t make me feel like I’m in league tournament. Constantly playing your equal and stressing out every single moment you engage in an activity is just not sustainable for mental health.
@Axs5626Sxa5001 I think that you're missing the point of my lead post here. My main issue is with RANKED games...these are the closest to competitive we have and are not supposed to be casual. Casual games do not grade your performance afterwards whereas ranked games do, and when that rank is determined in a haphazard and poorly ordered way this leads to dissatisfaction and player drop out. As this goes on fewer people play and it becomes worse.
Apex needs some form of SBMM...there's no argument against that, and at off peak hours that becomes harder to balance in a 60 person lobby. For regular casual play the matchmaking is fast paced and whilst it's clearly balanced more towards engagement than skill (which is a shame as it makes a mockery of trying to improve) the waiting time is fast. Constantly playing someone who is your EQUAL is fine...it's not fine when three stacks are put against solo players or when the skill balance is all over the place. Ranked Arena should not have this problem as it's only looking for 3 people of equal skill out of everyone queuing for one match (instead of another 57 people). The fact that ranks are hidden and it's clearly unfair in terms of matching skill is not really in question. Anyone who plays for a while can see what's happening.
In Ranked BR the RP rewards are such that you ALWAYS can stand a chance of getting good gains, there's always a chance to get lucky. In Ranked Arena once you get a few poorly balanced matches (on several occasions peppered with wins) you will be stuck getting +12 then -12...then there's no point in playing further....there is none of the instant win feeling you can get out of BR. It feels like as it is now Arena is doomed to fail in it's Ranked state because it's so poorly balanced and scored.
Oh, and EA support on Twitter assured me that the Community team read and forward concerns to the Respawn dev team. If that's the case please can someone acknowledge the problem? And if that's not true I'm going to assume the continuing silence is a mark of this forum being ignored and EA reps on twitter deliberately mislead to placate angry voices.
Remarkable how totally ridiculous the matchmaking remains.
Obfuscating Ranks doesn't work when people stream - If i'm a plat player in Ranked Arena I don't think it's fair to punish me for losing to a Diamond player. Ranks should go against each other, with increased waiting to balance skills properly. The fact that there's no selectivity in matchmaking is really ruining things.
Losing to a Diamond Arena team then having to face a Pred three stack then another Diamond squad makes zero sense (The amount of people streaming makes this easy to verify) If I have a personal MMR why is it not being used for anything except to calculate my 12 point AP reward (or -19 loss) and not for determining the difficulty of my opponents.
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