Forum Discussion

5 years ago

Ranked seems broken for bad players

I have the opposite problem to a lot of the other people posting here. I'm bad at Apex (415 games, average damage of 130.29!) - but I enjoy playing it any time I can get matched against other simila...

gameplay discussion

Tamyndris

5 years ago

@Babbediboopi It HAS to be Respawn's policy to give us a good mix of skill levels in the matches. Else, they would install different mechanics, especially for ranked.

As the OP I am one of the weak players, average 0.22 k/d ratio around my time in ranked matches. While in other games, like Overwatch, I reach that sought after 50/50 w/l ratio within my skill level, APEX does not give me that kind of a balanced battlefield. They seem to follow a WIDER match making idea. By purpose. Like, I have to deal with getting stomped 90% of my fights, and better players have to deal with mates beneath their skill level.

I decided to see this as a special quality in APEX. And live with it. For more thoughts on Silver players see also:
https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/Sorry-there-are-true-Silver-players-in-the-game/td-p/8770284/jump-to/first-unread-message

eyemessiah

5 years ago

@Babbediboopi

@TheJumpingJawa

I think there is something to the idea that BR's are different and maybe wide variance in mechanical skill is just part of the game and also to some extent its possible for "strategic" skill to win out of mechanical skill and thats a good thing.

Just accepting this is probably a good idea but... I don't know, maybe its also arguably a flaw in the genre?

Last night I got a win with a Nox and a Mirage. We spent most of the game looting and didn't encouter other squads. We ended up in the middle of final rings by chance - inside the harvester. At one point we got pinned between three squads comming from different directions. The Mirage got downed and we couldn't safely get to him to the Nox and I went out a side door and healed up while hiding. Then we took a few more shots while moving and again, ducked into a hidden spot to heal. The ring was closing so we were forced to take the steps down into the lowest bit of the harvester and basically got stuck under the stairs while the other squads fought it out above us. The nox surrounded us with gas traps. Eventually the last remaining enemy who had fought his way through (at least) a three way cross fire (we heard a lot of grappling) was forced to limp down stairs to get into the ring - I panic sprayed him, but with some nice movement he evaded my (poorly aimed) fire and knocked me down with some very clean head shots while the nox was trying to get more traps down. The pathfinder seeing the nox at that point backed off (I think he was somehow still just inside the ring but somehow out of sight - maybe he grappled away for a moment to a different level?) and the nox tried to get me back up. I think this was the pathfinders plan because he appeared out of no-where and killed me and interrupted the rez. The Nox tried to fire but maybe need to reload so either started the reload or weapon switch animation and I thought we were done for but the pathfinder died to gas and we won. On the summary screen we had 2 kills (the other from the fight where the Mirage went down) and maybe 300 damage between us. I ranked up after that.

Its a long story but for me its a great example of a scenario where I won but didn't feel like I contribute. In this case, though, I also felt like our team didn't really deserve the win? In some crude sense we did of course. The Nox used his area denial strength in the exact right spot. The other teams, seeing the ring collapsing & knowning that harvester is awkwardly multi-level shouldn't have gotten into a multi-party shoot out and at least one of them should have used their probably superior mechanical skill to kill us and take the low ground for themselves before stairs etc. were outside of the ring. A win is a win.

All the same...

If gunplay isn't the be-all-end-all though then why do we spend so much time gathering, equiping and swapping weapons and weapon mods?