Unplayable for casual. Smurfs, leavers and sabotage every game.

@DestineeQc 

You said this "The message from Respawn and EA is very clear : they are trying to get rid of casuals as they don't want us in their player base."

EA Accountant dials the phone to Joe at Respawn HQ "Hey Joe there seems to be a lot of money coming in this season what shall I do with it?'

Joe replies "Git rid of it we do not want that", "and while you are at it see if you can reach out to someone and try and git rid of all of those casual players, we do not need them either". 

Your statement is way off base, why in the world would a company especially a gaming company alienate or actively try to get rid of their biggest costumer base, that is also their biggest source of income.

"My teammates are all ignoring any kind of communication, solo landing over 800m away. They will steal all dibs and won't share ammos when they know very well how low on ammos their teammates are. Most of the time they will simply leave the match when they get hit by a bullet. It seems like all Randoms want to do is hot drop die and  start over without even trying to get a single kill. They don't care about playing the game, they just want to waste other player's time."

Ah the laments of a solo Q'er, try finding some steady teammates to play with. This helps a lot.

I for one am enjoying this season, I do agree that matchmaking does need to be tweaked a bit because I really do not belong in any type of lobby with Diamond or above players as I am your basic solid gold player. I do play a lot of Solo Q games and they have been mostly (90%) good games with decent Randoms, yes there are outliers and that is what it is, I cannot control how they play but I can control how I play with them.  I also have a set of friends and we have dates and times to play together, which is a lot of fun. We don not always play well and lose more than we win (like everyone else) but we have fun.  

Please do not take offence to my comments as I am not trying to offend but rather trying to be a bit humorous. The game can be a bit tough at times and for me when it seems that way a take a week or three break and come back refreshed and rejuvenated. 

Of course Asmodeus566 is back to imply that since he's having a good time, everybody is having a good time.

I did go through many other post stating the same kind of issue I'm having with the game and you're in every post saying how you are having a good experience and there is nos issue and "get good, find friends" as your solution. You are just coming of rude every time dismissing other players issue. Don't you believe one single second that if so many of us come here and take the time to write a post on a forum there must be some kind of issue ?

"The needs of the many,
outweigh the needs of the few or one." 

We are not only a few. A LOT of players are stating that solo queueing is impossible to play this season. I've been playing since the first season and never had that kind of issue. And believe it or not, some people have a life outside of Apex Legends, have work and some have children, and it is not always possible to  queue with a team. Does that mean that we should not play the game ? Smurfs, cheaters, leavers, solo players queuing with a team, 3 randoms put against 3 stacks, silver against diamond and pred trails. It is absolutely not welcoming to casual players and it has been the worst season in the past 3 years. 

You are misunderstanding the message from Respawn and EA and created a little scenario in your head instead of even trying to understand the words in front of you. The message is very obvious when they choose to ignore a huge portion of their player base and the issue they are experiencing in the game. If they don't do anything to fix those issues, they are getting rid of the player of are experiencing them. Players have voiced these issues and Respawn choose to ignore it. 

We are not a few, we are a big portion of the player base being only casuals solo queuers and nothing has been done to improve our gaming experience, as all the other post about the game being unplayable for casual are saying, cause there just wouldn't be any other posts if the issue didn't exist for casuals. You even said it yourself that we are more than a few casual players :"[...]get rid of their biggest costumer base, that is also their biggest source of income."  

It is not because YOU are not seeing these issue that they don't exist. It is not because you have food in your fridge that other people are not starving. It is not because you have a warm coat that others are not cold. You and your experience are not the definition of everybody else and their game experience in apex. 

Congratulations on having a good time in the game. You can get back to it and stop commenting casual player's post only to say how YOU are having a good time. 

Here is a non exhaustive list of things that can be done to improve casual player's experience :

Matchmaking :

- A better balance of matchmaking is needed. Silver players should go against or teamed with diamonds and preds, in pubs and ranked. It is not fun for anyone in the team, the higher level needs to carry someone that can't follow their gameplay and the lower level simply can't play.

- Quality over quantity. It shouldn't be an excuse to get into a match faster if it means you will just die right away to a much higher level to be back in the queueing lobby. Let players play a balanced game even it means longer wait. The wait time is already under 15 seconds, we can deal with longer queue to be able to play an actual match.

- Solo queuers shouldn't go against full squads. A team of random will always have a HUGE disadvantage facing a three stack. Other games have already sort this out : full squads play against full squads, teams of randoms against teams of randoms. 

Punish bad behavior :

- More severe punishment is needed for sabotaging players.

Leavers in pubs should be automatically suspended for increasing time when they keep leaving games before being killed, just like in ranked. 

Solo player not playing with their team should be punished. If a player spend all game away from their team, engaging solo fights and not trying to come back to the team, they should be punished for that and they should be automatically queued alone for the next games.

Reports of sabotage should be taken into account and go through a more severe verification when received against a player.

Multiple reports of the same category should have an automatic system of suspension until more review.

- More severe suspension against harassment, toxicity, insults, sexual attacks, sexism, etc. Players being rude in text chat are getting the bans but vocal chat is not monitored. Players are excessively toxic and should get voice banned more often. Women are getting massively harassed in this game and it should be zero tolerance towards that kind of behavior. It is the worst online experience I have witness for female gamers in my decades of playing online.

- Add report categories for : Playing Solo away from the teammates instead of unchecking "fill team", vocal toxicity, teammate sabotage and/or un sportsman like behavior (using abilities to prevent teammate to loot, stealing all dibs, preventing teammate to get into a building when facing an enemy, etc)

Smurfs :

- Linking a phone number to the account to prevent multiple accounts

- Increase the minimum games played or player level to get into ranked (you need 50 WINS in some other game to be allowed to queue in ranked)

- Some kind of skill to ranked monitoring. A new player in bronze should not go wiping a lobby with 20+kills, no matter how good they were at some other shooter. 

Hackers :

- Better anti-cheat

- Automatic suspension after multiple reports of using cheat.

- Better monitoring from Respawn through stream watching, game replays, youtube videos, etc. to determined where the major cheating issues are

General improvement :

- Give the player the possibility to actually write a detailed report against a player to facilitate the review afterward. A report team should know right away what to look for as we now have to choose what seems the closest to the report category instead of reporting the detailed situation.

This is not the complete list of things that can be improved but it's definitely a good start to improve the casual players experience. There are solutions and many ways to make the game better for a vast part of the player base. Respawn and EA only need to acknowledge the issues players are voicing and actually do something to work towards solutions.

@HappyHourSumwur My complaints are indeed solo queue complaints, as this is my gaming experience. What you are saying is that solo queuers shouldn't play ranked. So should be even play at all ?

I don't play pubs precisely because of the leavers. Randoms will engage 1v3, not use any kind of communication to say where they are going, or simply just quit to lobby after a few seconds in the game because of whatever bad reason, as you just admit to do yourself.

Leaving the game like this is ruining the game experience for every teammate that cross your path and actions should definitely be taken against leavers such as time outs, just like there is in arenas. If you feel like queueing and leaving and requeueing just to leave again after a few seconds, please uncheck the fill team box and stop ruining other gamers experience.

There literally is a report category for leaving the game early, why do you think it's there in the first place ? 

I feel like you are trolling each and everyone post these days. 

@DestineeQc 

I see that you did kinda take offense to what I replied and I apologize for that as it was not intended.

I did not imply that everyone is having a good experience and that their issues are not real issues.

The game is a team based game and yes solo's are teamed with other Randoms to play as a team and that does not always go well.

Finding others to play with would mitigate this.

For those that cannot find others to play with it will always be tougher for them.

For those that do not want to play with others well that is their problem.

I agree with you on a lot of points:

Smurfs need to be squashed. If it were possible I would say each player only be allowed to have one account. However this would be very hard to enforce. One could limit the amount of Smurfs by using phone verification when making an account.

Raising the entry level to play ranked to 50 or even 100 would also discourage but not eliminate Smurfs from ranked.

As far as how players play the game we can not change how others play the game only how we play with others. I do not like hot dropping with 3-5+ teams in ranked or pubs for that matter if the JM decides to do this most of the time I will do my own thing and drop close by in case they survive, otherwise it is their own bed they made and I can not change that and should not be punished for not joining them in their foolhardiness. 

For ranked play I believe that it would be best if a player can only play with (team up with) other players that are not more than 2 tiers above them or below them and should also not be matched against any other players that are more than 2 tiers above or below the team rank tier avg. this would tighten up ranked play and actual have similar skilled players playing against one another. Pubs MM needs to also be tightened up. I have been in matches where I see the previous champion sqd state and they have a player with 15K kills on their one legend, I am not in that skill level and should never play vs such players but it happens and I agree with you it needs to stop. 

While we are at it EA/Respawn needs to stop catering to the pro players and streamers and also to the masters and pred players they may be the best players but they make up less than 5% of the player base. 

Soo you see I do see that the problems exist and need fixing. I am a casual player and  yes I solo play a lot also, and not every solo game I play is a good game I am just lucky enough that most of them are satisfactory.

I do not think I have ever used the term "Get Good" and like I said I am not trying to be rude or offend anyone.

However I do think that this was a little rude on your part "Congratulations on having a good time in the game. You can get back to it and stop commenting casual player's post only to say how YOU are having a good time.".  I can look past that for now.

Please do keep highlighting these issues as they do need to be fixed however I will keep telling players that the easiest way to fix the issue regarding solo Q is to find friends to play with because until EA can improve the Solo Q experience this is what one would have to do to mitigate that.

I do know that EA is working on some MM balancing that should be coming out in late December/early January lets hope it helps and is not just another a pro mentioned a problem that they perceived and makes things worse for casual players. 

Best of luck to you @DestineeQc 

@XxColdFangxX 

I suggest a fix that will help players out immediately, in order to alleviate the pain solo Q'ing can be at times.

I am not suggesting that there is no problem that needs to be fixed. EA really needs to tighten up MM.

You have been here on the forum for a while and there are some other of the members that you might reach out to in order to try out playing with them. I know that some of them do this sometimes with other forum members. Could be you get lucky and find one that plays to your style and has the time to play more often with you. I would volunteer myself but I already have a group of 5.

Like I said I do see the solo Q problems because I do solo Q a lot but that is also by Choice playing with my friends is fun and all but can be tiresome so I do like to be able to play more my style and or try to learn how to better myself by playing with Randoms and learning different styles of play or using Legends I normally do not play to get better with them.