This game has stopped being about fun
I've played Apex with my friends since launch and this is the worst it's ever been due to the horrid matchmaking. I'm a casual gamer who plays maybe once a week with my friend who's long distance and...
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Taggerung11 not gonna lie first impression of your message is contradicting. First you say you are casual and play once week -> then you reference ranked game (kinda not the place for casuals if you ask me) and Plat level (which again is at least intermediate rank in terms of Apex)...
If you casually can make to Plat, be happy, that is not what 50% can do in this game. Should you face Preds...sure not, but that's where our view and Respawn view clash for past 5? seasons since they started this bs where Preds feed on much lower enemies to post 20+ kill games IN RANKED ON REGULAR BASIS. Aka Pred nr.1 used to be world record achievement if player reached 100k RP, now it is basically a norm, people regularly passing even 150k mark.
Also if you are legit Plat level player, not sure you should complain about pubs. Yes there are many better players that grind it "for fun", but still most of the time especially if you duo / trio pubs it should be easy experience for you.
vVv_Bjoergen_vVv what do you mean "chill" :D this is COMPETITIVE FPS... it is all about COMPETITION. I mean you can go to bot lobbies and chill there? Why would you/many people require other worse players to have equally negative experience as you do for the sake of satisfying your "chilling"? Does not that sound a bit egoistic?
The point of any SBMM is that people with similar skills are matched together = games become actually super competitive and hard for EVERYONE if this is implemented correctly. Best examples would be long gone pickup games = modes where X number of players are in the pool, everyone sees their MMR and captains of teams pick one by one to form a team (used in good old Quake days).
Something non competitive / chill I guess is closer to Arc raiders mode where you play vs NPCs but somehow people like to "abuse" other people instead forgetting that other people also have emotions, feelings, ego, expectations.
People who want to have "fun" and "chill" should NOT come to competitive games as we can clearly see in case of Apex what happens if they do = Preds demand chill -> now we have situation where Pred 3stacks fright Gold/Plat soloq players and everyone (objectively) complains about it.
Chill = play single player / non competitive games where there are no winners or loser is NPC not a human. :) Or just man up and suck it up accepting the fact that in 20 team lobby you have a 5% chance of winning and each fight is 50/50.
The casual player base is the base that made this game, and lined rEAspawn with billions. The casual player base makes up the highest population of this game by a large margin. Like you said SBMM should pit players against similar skilled individuals - period.
That is not happening anymore... especially in Pubs. Similar combatants would make for stressful game play and challenging yes. It also makes winning and losing sit around 50/50 - and every fire fight you come across depending on your game sense and tactics (not that those are relevant anymore) you should always have a chance to win. You should prob win your battles 5 our of 10 times, or 10 out of 20 and so on... you should have to work to walk away from a battle.
However... especially in pubs, but all modes mainly because of the increased amount of smurf accounts and appeasing the 5% or just rEAspawns unwillingness to actually combat cheaters ... casuals are going up against players so far above their skill level. At least that is now my predicament as well as so many others that report it. Its at a point of it being impossible to win a fire fight against someone so insanely far above your skill level.... a level we have no business being in. Like a gold player constantly facing unlimited amount of pred and master smurf players - IN PUBS! I get the "grind" for ranked, even that is laughable. Endless smurfing in ranked because rEAspawn feels thats just fine.
Why is it for 4 years or more, this was not a problem, always playing against a mirrored player to myself, slightly better or slightly worse. It hasn't been this way for years but now, there has been some form of switch up somewhere along the timeline where casuals have been made fodder for lobbies far above for whatever reason.
From a casual stand point... its very frustrating. Your idea of just don't play... well, if every casual player did just that... what do you think would happen? Seeing as how they are about 95% of the player base. You yourself would not have a competitive game in Apex left to play.
A brutal rephrasing of what you said from my perspective:
- Casual gamers are paying for this game to be online - yes. E.g. me as a person who is competitive, tries hard, goes extra mile, thrives / enjoys competition on hard level -> I have not spend and will not spend a cent on this game as:
a) I don't understand why someone would buy something that actually hinders competitive advantage - bright skins, heirloom that covers 1/5 of a screen and distracts attention with animations
b) I don't spend money on virtual stuff that based on ToS is not even mine at any point in time - Casual gamers per se are mostly 9 to 5 dads or their kids that are not interested in "sweating" -> they want to come to Apex, look at the "bling", get easy rewards including dopamine.
That creates current tension(s) between "sweats" like me demanding casuals to be kept out of Diamond as e.g. playing with D4+ who does not know map locations, rotations, basic game mechanics is just infuriating. (mind you it was not the case till like season 11/12, Diamonds before that actually were very very adequate people). And on the other hand "casuals" like potentially you and few more in this discussion asking for actual easier level of the game...for yet unknown reason(s) and without a clear vision of how to combine "having fun" with "everyone does not lose / win"... - I am not sure about the fuzz on Pubs - yesterday was testing newly introduced fps lags after cyberpunk update -> went to pubs (last game I played was god knows how long ago) -> my squad was top 1% -> I easily 1v3 one squad and almost 1v3 another squad who tried to 3rd party us. My teammates in the meantime landed in 2 different directions despite me being jump master (they de-attached and died instantly as per usual khm khm 1% top squad...). Idk for me Pubs is pubs and they seemed as easy / hard as always. Ended up with 1000 (or there about damage) and 4 kills in under 2 min of gameplay at 13th place. So yeah I am not sure what is the issue with Pubs.
- My experience in ranked always has been the same - total blast through Gold/Plat -> moderate difficulty in Diamond mostly depending on teamwork (not present) thus mission impossible = do 1 vs multiple while being in same skill lobby. Diamond2+ = mission impossible as going vs Master/Pred 3stacks who in most occasions exploit something from cheats.
<=Gold - don't need to outsmart, can easily outgun as D4+
Plat - some can outgun me but I can outsmart most and outgun some
D4-D2 - semi impossible without exploiting something on EU+PC+MNK, super hard grind as most of the time result relies on matchmaking more than your skill
Masters - only possible via 3stack as imo it should be - Only major change that has happened over 20+ seasons = more and more cheaters are in the game (ranked) and more and more casuals camp/rat their way in Diamond+ which creates super unequal lobbies, adding to the insult recent matchmaking that sprinkles Masters/Preds to already trash lobbies.
- I come from Quake 3 days = EU in insta-gib (railgun only) mode had like 20 teams with active 100-200 players, there were pretty much no days in a span of 5? years when I wouldn't have like 4h grind = scrims + pub servers were filled with at least 20 players 24/7. Fine by me. Quality over quantity. I would be ok playing with or vs same players as long as matchmaking would be skill based on engagement based. Also have no issues with queue times over 2-5 min. Rather have that vs current instant requeue with same teammates that landed fragment on their own and died under 1 min into the game while being diamond4.
- Even if Apex dies, sad, but I play Valorant and would (if Apex dies) explore CS2 or silently hope that Deadlock will fix their issues as that game is amazing minus hackers and horrendous matchmaking.
- Casual gamers are paying for this game to be online - yes. E.g. me as a person who is competitive, tries hard, goes extra mile, thrives / enjoys competition on hard level -> I have not spend and will not spend a cent on this game as:
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