This game has stopped being about fun

For me personally this game removed "fun" in following ways:

1. introducing cross-play = make most fights "me and my controller (input) will push into your face and just AA mailto:sh@# out of you"
2. making ranked system less competitive (used to be 3-8% in diamond, now it is 30%+) on the one end and squeezing it from the top end by limiting number of masters / preds per lobby which is apparent and filling rest with low diamond/plat
3. totally losing grip on cheaters, before that I quit only once during famous season 22 or was it 24 when people just ragehacked left and right and anti-cheat team took more than a season to do basically anything about it -> now since season 25 I have quit playing like 5+ times already. Come see how it is...realized same s#$T -> go to the next game. I am not entertaining some losers on one end and some on the other (if you know what I mean you know)

Otherwise changes like new maps, drop zones, new legends, new weapons...were fun, welcome...but those were few and far between unfortunately and did not change ranked drastically.

Changing argument from fun and casual play to matchmaking and ranked... :)

Adding touch of personal / emotional insults... ok.

Totally wrong about matchmaking - there are even official topics about it being changed because Imperiahal and other influencers of the game were too tired to queue for too long and demanded ... wait for it ... exactly the same as you = fun and casual games, so now they are casually added to plat lobbies and stomp them. And it is NOTHING to do with player count.

How do I know it -> if you take even EU Apex legends FLG there are constantly at least 50-100 diamond+ players on in peak time and like half of that in off times. So that's already a server or two. Battlecord discord -> add few tens more + higher ranked (cheaters mostly there for sure) and you have servers! where plats are not needed.

So educate yourself ;) or just be quite :)

What I defend is that assuming from what was written we both have invested 1000+h into the game which is let's call it equal amount.
Yet you can't get out of gold or so you say and have no fun.
I got out of Plat 3 to D4 previous split in 3 days, split before that with duostack in 2 days. With duo / tristack reached D2 even with all **bleep** hackers and Preds in my lobbies, have a video proof how we won 2!!! Pred lobbies in a row. Yes it was **bleep** lucky but we still did it and with 5+ KP including in one game aping successfully looting Pred 3stack.

Long story short - you are demading Apex to be what it NEVER was. Maybe back in the days competition was lower...yeah I would say so. Cheating was not so spread - 100%, now you even see some gifted empty head ppl cheat in gold, plat is littered with cheaters and Diamond4+ was always about cheating just how much = be it RC filters or radars or aimbots with wallhacks.

Comparison to what you are demanding is to get into boxing ring with superheavyweight and ask him not to hit you too hard... forgetting that even his not too hard will knock your brains out :)

Adjust or just leave the game, don't make Mario Karts out of Apex Legends :)

p.s. you don't need to be "9 to 5" in Apex to be good. I came to play it after 7 years of not playing basically any games and instantly went to P3 and season later to D4 (soloq) and ever since I have been only D4+ almost reaching Masters once (season 12) and multiple times being in D3-D1 depending on how much I try / if I have duo/trio.

Not being able to play with friends is so dumb. I just got to diamond and probably won't play anaymore since why would I solo queue and play with randoms. This will only cause more smurfing in the lower ranks and more hardstuck diamond players that can't team up. This moght be the worst upate in a while.

Please explain how "Respawn should remove SBMM from pubs and other game modes (except ranked)" is the solution to "It's all about sweat, fighting unfair matchmaking and cheaters."

Because I just can't make that one add up in my head.

I can't help but chuckle at all your responses because you clearly play the game enough to know all the issues I am complaining about and have listed back all my complaints including adding the cheaters and hardware abusers (which I decided to not mention because it's a lost cause).. despite that you are taking a stance defending the game because you enjoy it and I respect that and am very happy you do. I just have grown tired of it after the years I've played it and this season feels especially bad. It's obviously all due to lack of player base and argue all you want in defense of Apex saying it's functioning as it's supposed to, it doesn't have enough people to and that's why plat lobbies are full of predators and masters players. I'm not enthralled by badges, I'm just stating the fact that they have a rank I've never attained and whether earned fairly or not I should be forced to play against them in every lobby I'm in because I have never attained those ranks myself. 

As far as the "receiving end" players, I have multiple times said I'm not trying to curb stop lobbies or be the person I'm complaining about. I want fair matches and having an even KD doesn't mean nobody else is having fun, I can maintain a 1.0 and not even win any fights let alone any games. It doesn't take much to get one kill in a game to break even before you die and trust me nobody would be crying in a truly competitive matchmaking system. (Besides the false boosted press who would have to play against their own kind perhaps). 

I've had a lot of fun in many seasons of never making masters and I don't care at all about that either. I've (until now) thoroughly enjoyed most of the seasons of ranked grind but this season feels so much worse which is why only now, after playing the game since day one, I am choosing to voice a complaint. I'm not some newbie to school on how the game is, I have plenty of hours and have played through all the seasons of this game. I know when it feels way worse to play than ever before. 

So going back to the OP, it's not fun anymore and despite you defending it as a "competitive game", it should still be fun. It's a **bleep** video game, not a 9-5. People play them for fun, which can include competition and challenges, but still fun. Of note I am not the person who said it should be chill and I don't need the game to be easy, that is no fun for me. I just want to get a chance to play and not get rolled by cheaters and preds every time I queue. 

A) you did not reply (directly) regarding how you check actual current player rankes

B) I can clearly see the typical "omg he has badges" judgement... Dude I can give you link of how CURRENT 23+K RP masters play IN RANKED: https://youtu.be/_fyXDgk2KjE?si=68ZMqWt2FNbDNOOj

I had equally bad experience with current Pred nr. 226 (at a time) and something around 450. One did 159 damage and 0 kills, other did 1000 damage and 1 kill, no comms or typical slur, no teamwork, 1000 damage dude imo wallhacked but I was not able to spectate him.

C) you ignored my main question - why you don't think about "the receiving end" players? Or do you really vouch for the game where someone has to have a really bad day just because you want to play casually? :) Aka you 1+ KD = you kill more players than you die to. E.g. my lifetime ranked (D4-D1 every season) K/D is like 0.7 or something close to that. And I DONT complain :) Also it takes me less than 2 days to get from whatever rank to P1/D4 at any split except season 25? was it where hacking was just insane in Plat and I just quit after P3 because I could not bother to entertain cheaters any longer. Again not saying I am amazing but given stats said by you and complaints vs my stats and no complaints :)

All those badges are irrelevant given how easy it is to get Masters since season 13 and even more so how much people buy boosts or boosted accounts. In this split I can't tell you enough how many multi-master teammates I had in PLAT! lobbies and they still there.

Those badges mean 0, absolute 0 in 99.999% cases. Given half or more are boosted, other half or less are just cheating and "covering" their cheats with those badges so people (like you unfortunately) see them as "amazing" and not report even though their results are provided by software.

p.s. I did not say it was easy in pubs, I said it is same as always + that stupid chart always shows me that I am top squad even though I get braindead land and quit teammates 99.999% of the time...

It's exactly as you say. Thanks for the feedback.

Pubs hasn't been the casual mode in a long time. I don't know what lobbies you're in that aren't hard in pubs, we played 5 games last night because I enjoy KC (crazy I know) and didn't see anyone that wasn't three stacking masters and pred badges.. faced a top 200 pred one game and then someone with 80k kills on one legend and a full masters team the next. We used to play pubs way back when the game had a big player base, but now it's unplayable and way worse than ranked is competitive wise. We literally only started playing ranked because at least some of the people were reasonable skill level in the gold and platinum area. We were happy to have competitive fights and intense end games and I love when Apex is that way. That's what I mean when I say it's not about fun anymore, the competition and skill that apex requires is my favorite thing about it and why I love the game. Ranked gave that to us for a brief period of time, but that is not the case anymore though.. In gold ranks I face smurf accounts and the second you hit platinum it's all masters and pred badges. I'm happy to face a competitive lobby and I am not looking for an "easy win" or to roll through lobbies every game, I do want to have some fun though and maybe have a positive or at least 1.0 KD at the end of the season.

My main issues is I almost never die to someone without a masters, pred, or 4k 20bomb badge and you agree with me on the point that I shouldn't have to face those people as someone who has never been at that skill level, but that is where apex thinks my SBMM is so that's all I can play against in either pubs or ranked and it's just not fun anymore.

I don't know how you tell levels of players in casual modes, as far as I know they were not displayed.

Also in pubs it has always been like that as far as I can remember = totally random people allocation.

e.g. since the intro of the whatever bar that shows your squad I have NEVER been below like top25% squads since when I randomly dabbled into pubs, 8 out 10 games I will be like top squad or fraction away from it. Did it make pubs for me significantly easier? NO!

And as competitive FPS player I just don't get it why people complain. In comparison you go to Valorant and there is deathmatch mode (random 20? people play free for all with instant respawns after kills) -> top level ranked players and pros constantly use that as a warmup and post like 90%+ Hs rate with amazing number of frags per game. Like that vs Apex pubs is like hardcore mode on super ultra hard settings :D
I still play it as:
a) I set to myself a goal to at least match my rank level players
b) try not to bottom frag
c) it is a good training vs the best, you can gauge how far are you from them
d) you can record your games and review where did you fall short, figure out how better players play

Is it fun...for me it is. Is it chill - for me probably 80% not BUT I don't believe in combo chill+competitive game.

As I said not sure why people these days demand this combo ignoring the other humans on "receiving end".

Do you even play pubs/Wildcard?

The game now mixes Bronze and Predator in the same lobby.

One team can have three Masters, and you'll be assigned to a Silver-level Casual team.

That's why SBMM should be removed, since every game and every mode is designed to feed three stacks of Masters.

End of the story. Matchmaking has always been a mess, but this season we're experiencing the worst of it again.