Ranked solo-queue only mode
Thoughts on Respawn doing this just for one season? To clarify, it would still be ranked trios but with no pre-made duos nor trios. It could serve as a longer LTM and would be a good way for the devs to see how it impacts other modes' queue times and amount of play.
Why? There is a non-trivial number of players in this game who primarily solo-queue. As one of those solo-queuers, I'm paired up with a pre-made duo usually 80-90% of the time. While I have had many amazing duos as teammates (better than me in skill, good with callouts, non-toxic), the majority of the duos I play with are at least one of the following:
- one my rank, one in the rank below mine, so my team is already at a "rank" disadvantage (which feels even worse when you are the solo, as you didn't choose to queue with them)
- both not using in-game comms and are probably on a Discord call
- except when we lose or they go down for ape-ing in alone, then they'll unmute to scream at me
- won't ping anything and don't ping helpful loot so their duo can take it
Also, some say Apex is a team game, which I'd agree with. But your rank is not your team's rank - it's your rank. Most other AAA games only allow you to queue with <50% of the team size (usually just one other player). I think the best example of what this could look like would be League. There are 2 queues for ranked: one for solos and duos only (<50% of the 5-player team size), and one for flex. Even in the flex mode, they don't even allow 4-stacks as to prevent that 5th player (solo) from being ganged up on. So something like a solo-queue only ranked mode in Apex would have good precedent in ranked modes for other titles.
Just to clarify - I am not saying to remove 3-stacking in ranked. It's super fun to jump in with your friends as a three-stack and do your best to climb. I'm just hoping others agree that a solo-queue only mode in addition to the regular ranked mode would be worth a trial and that Respawn will care enough about their solo-queueing playerbase to give it a go.