Is Apex MM Fair? A Critical Look at How Casual Players Are Left Behind

Totally understand the frustration, you're absolutely right that the system has been abused and ignored for too long, and that money is what drives change at EA. No doubt about that.

But I also think it's important not to give up on discussions like this. Not because EA will suddenly "see the light", but because these conversations shape community sentiment. When there's enough visible pressure, like forums, Reddit, creators speaking up, data showing decline in retention It creates the "perception" of dissatisfaction, which can be just as impactful as sales drops.

Also, let’s not forget: matchmaking itself is the biggest manipulator of all. It controls the outcome of your games more than most players realize. A huge part of the community judges others based on K/D ratio — as if it were an absolute indicator of skill — while in reality, K/D often just reflects "the quality of lobbies you’re being placed into". You farm silvers? Your K/D climbs. You’re in Pred lobbies as a gold? You struggle to get one kill.

So yeah, matchmaking is broken. But it’s also misleading. It creates performance illusions, divides the community, and makes players blame each other instead of the system. That’s exactly why we "need" to keep talking about it.

And yeah, maybe a part of the player base will always buy cosmetics regardless, but others do notice when the fun disappears. The real danger isn't vocal players getting tired  It's them quietly leaving. So raising our voices might not fix it instantly, but silence guarantees nothing will change either.

The revenue stream from this game has been affected dramatically by the game's inability to retain players. The last six months have caused a lot of pain at EA. I too would like to think that pain is all that's required to motivate them to fix the problems. But I honestly think it will only cause them to address the fact that they exist. Whether they are even capable of understanding the why of the problems is up in the air, much less if there is anything they're willing to do about it.

And if I was them? I'm not sure I'd poor money into this game at the six year mark. EA's best move right now is to lay the groundwork for a replacement. They've already talked openly about Apex 2.0 and said that it's probably two years out. A: still not convinced they have any understanding at all of what Apex 2.0 would have to be or do in order to solve the problems of Apex 1.0. And B: two years is about 23 months too late. Their cash flow is already a shadow of what it was, and a two year wait won't even hold things steady where they are now. It will just dry up to nothing. Sooner rather than later.

This is just text book greed and mismanagement. It's what happens when developers hand over control of their properties to a publisher. Epic doesn't have this problem and that's why Fortnite goes from strength to strength while EA starves Respawn of the resources they need to maintain the game. But hey, late-stage capitalism at its finest. A company churns out a good product which it then neglects into obsolescence, but no one in command cares because they still get their ludicrous, board-approved pay packages, until they screw up so badly that they get fired. Then they get their golden parachute buyout. What idiot created a system where failure is rewarded as much as success? If only the game worked that way....