Rank's "Hidden MMR" & Matchmaking

Let me summarize some statements from my other posts:
If the MM was really excellent, then even hordes of cheaters would not bother.
The worse the MM is, the better the anti-cheat measures would have to be.

Unfortunately, Apex seems to have neither. Rather both a bad MM from also bad anti-cheat methods.

Oh well, have you tried my suggested experiment? What did you get out of it?

@saurerDropsXXL I've seen that in action before when I dropped off the side of the map to complete the "play as <legend> 10 times" challenges. It unfortunately still works, which can be observed by having several bad games of placing top 10-20, and then suddenly players run around like bots. Its honestly not worth it because I don't feel like I'm overcoming any challenges given by players of similar skills.

Respawn also said that the hidden MMR places you in higher lobbies when you win because your MMR gets "higher", but even when I was on losing streaks, I would see preds in the match. Not as many this season, but I still saw them.

Which, if you ask me, I still think the game uses EOMM, (at least some form of it now). Although que times have been a lot longer to get into. I'm still seeing weak teammates vs pre-stacks or higher ranked players that are actually better in almost every match.

I've also noticed that I'd get my teeth kicked in by cheaters and better skilled players over and over again, then once I get that match that's "easier" and I win it, I get shoved into lobbies for the next 10 or so games where players are clearly aimbotting or playing like a TTV no life bald Wraith hyped on energy drinks who is able to just Thanos snaps my health away by looking at me for a split second.

I will never understand how winning a match, even with getting zero kills, (I usually support my teammates to try to keep the team alive), gets me into a match where the champion team is a full pre-stack pred squad. I was literally in WeThePeople's, ImperalHal's and HisWattson's matches last season after winning a few games. I ended up in WeThePeople's matches 3 different times, (that I know of), and most likely got into Faide's, Timmy's, etc. without noticing, including this season.

Sure pro players need people to go up against, they're the top 1% after all, but there's far better players than me that they can go up against. I'm decent at the game, but nowhere near the skill level as a pro, let alone the lowest skilled pro player at that.

@Midnight9746
Honestly, you cant tell how the matchmaking works, based on that approach. You can never collect even the majority of the data necciserly to make such claims since you only experience your pov. What I mean is that its MUCH, MUCH more likely that the reason why some lobbies feel crazy easy and some feel crazy hard depens on which players you run into. Even in a insta-w go for every fight-strategy, you will only fight max 8-10 of the squads and those games are very rare. Most "good frag matches" ends with like 10-15 squad kills i.e you only met 4-5 other teams.  And even in those kind of perma-fight matches, some players you fight will die before you really can assess how good or bad they really were. Its never good to start speculating based on gut feeling tbh and I say this for everyones personal sake because basing your perception of the game on theories like that will only * you off. As long as the MM keeps promotes good players and keep bad players in low ranks, then Im good with it

If you wanna make some kind of bad assessment of the MM, you have to at least conduct long series of consecutive matches with similar playing style where you record the stats etc. At least then, you use some kind of scientific methods but even then, I wouldnt draw too many conclusions 

For me, I would want to state that the MM has been changed for the worse. The basis on which I make this statement is over 3000 hours of play experience since S3 (up to and including S17).
It's not a scientific basis, but I wouldn't call it a gut feeling either.

So, I'm sure that there has been significantly more emphasis on EOMM in recent Seasons. Because, and I've said this a few times, if the MM was really good (excellent), the forum wouldn't be full of so many identical complaints.

This means to me that for the MM either only a few "strange" indicators (like the length of survival in the last 5 rounds) are used, or for the "important" indicators thresholds are applied that were set without sense.
But it doesn't matter, because the bad result of this work is described in detail since a few months at least here in this forum.

I am also in favor of a system that after a certain time separates good and bad players more or less. But that would also include that there is no blatant mixing of the different classes after a certain time. Promotions and relegations must of course be possible, but soft. A gradual approach to the sweet spot (of one's own skills).

A hectic back and forth between lobbies with only beginners or experienced ped/master players is demotivating for the broad middle of the players and does not show good work of the developers.

And here again I repeat myself: at the moment the only thing that is really interesting is whether the developers lack the skill or the will to finally improve this state of affairs.

I, for one, have not regretted my decision to take a break from Apex and play another online shooter. The other shooter makes me realize how much fun I used to have with Apex. And how much it has deteriorated.

I suspect I'll be taking a very long break from Apex....

Without even saying if the new system is OVERALL better or worse than before, a few differences is very noticeable:

1) More teams/players survive until round 4 and 5. Even in bronze to gold matches,  its not uncommon to see 10-15 teams remaining in the later stages of the match. This must be seen as something positive; people care more about actually trying to win the match.

2) Enemy teams are much more likely to play together than before. This must also be seen as something positive.

3) Hiding/jumping safe/avoiding fights is still a very effective strategy to effortlessly climb in ranks. This must be seen as something negative since this incentivise bad players, i.e players that are very unskilled in shooting, moving, fighting, to keep doing this because this is the only way they can gain LPs. And ofc, the further they climb with this strategy, the more will they also have to rely on this strategy. This is also something negative. Its not a healthy sign when some players will lose 10/10 fights against other players in their same lobby. 

4) Because of 1,2 and 3 on this list, the game is even worse for solo Qers now. Random duos are even more likely to just leave you, often using you as bait to escape, and you have to stay and watch them run for their life with 0 dmg dealt as you wait for your banner timer to run out.

The game seems to think I can beat pros like ItsTimmy, Faide, etc. based on how I'd see preds as the champion team pre-stacking, while my teammates play like bots. That alone already suggests a problem as I didn't have this many "bots" until around S16-S17.

Also, one of Apex's "rules" is "no smurfing" which they defined as "the act of stomping players of lower skills on a new account". If there's no problem with the matchmaking, then why are casual players being put in with the top 1%, and why are these players in my matches? (This player is a smurf, and yes this was in ranked):



What would be helpful is:

- Going back to the old matchmaking, completely trashing the idea of the "hidden MMR" since it only made things worse for everyone.

- Punish cheaters, bot accounts, smurfs, exploiters, and console players who use xim, strikepacks, etc.

- Require players to deal damage and get kills to even be able to earn points, or some other method that discourages ratting. Like, even Ash's rat is in the fight.

- Require players to actually move and play the game, temp banning players who do next to nothing since that's sabotaging the other two's match, (we have report options for "inactive during the match" and "abandoned the match", so why not implement an auto-detector? Overwatch already has this function).

- Hate to say it, but remove survival items, mainly the heat shield and evac towers from ranked. Players use heat shields to camp out of the ring. As for the evac tower, if you really want a competitive ranked system, there shouldn't be towers you can use whenever. Use the map or Valkyrie. As for the mobile respawn beacon, removing it or leaving it be wouldn't quite change much.

- Ranked level requirement should be raised to at least 100, 50 is too low.

@GoSoxAV8 

Yes definitely harder. Ive been playing from rookie4 to about gold4 over 110 matches and my ranked KD and average dmg dealt is 1.5 and 1024 in this new system. In the old system, I would have gone from rookie4 to gold4 in like 50 matches with 6-7 KD. Surprisingly, I think the average dmg dealt is about the same as in the old system, probably due to a more mid range oriented meta. 

But does harder means worse tho? A problem in the old system was that everyone could get to at least platinum. So even if I think the ranked system still need alot of work, I at least applaud the effort to change it. Like I said, more player in every lobby at least try to win the game now than before which I think is a sign that they are going in the right direction. I think they just have to find a healthy balance between the need to fight and get kills and survive long into the game to actually rank up. Now its too easy to just avoid fights to rank up