"This leads to frustration, lower retention, and a growing perception that Apex just isn’t fun unless you’re already cracked."
This has already led to all of the above. The population crash we're in right now is, I would wager, largely due to all the problems you laid out. And I'll take it further. Respawn's atrocious matchmaking has been a huge driver of the smurfing problem, and very likely a factor in the cheating epidemic as well. One, after all, begets the other.
In their defense: the population decline was probably inevitable and can only make a bad matchmaking situation worse. That's partly on them, but also largely just a fact of gaming life. I will also give them a huge nod for showing the pubs lobby make up prior to the start of the match AND for allowing a player to leave the match immediately rather than sit through legend selection. I'm not sure how many people are using this information to pick and choose their matches, but I'm using it aggressively and the quality of my matches has gone up materially by doing nothing other than quitting matches with a 50% or more skill range.
At the end of the day, if you want better matches then you have to use the tools the dev has started providing. No, it shouldn't work this way. But at least it can work if the individual player is willing to actively beat matchmaking into submission.
Completely agree. Honestly, I really appreciate how well you put this. You're absolutely right that the decline we’re seeing was probably inevitable to some extent, but the matchmaking system certainly accelerated it. And yes, the rise of smurfing and cheating absolutely feeds back into that same broken loop.
I also give Respawn credit where it’s due: showing the pre-match lobby skill makeup and letting players skip out early is a small but meaningful change. I’ve been doing the same, bailing on 60/40 lobbies where I know it’s just going to be a one-sided grind. You’re right: it’s not ideal, and it shouldn’t be on us to fix the system manually… but at least there’s "some" agency now.
But even that comes with a hidden penalty. When you dodge too many bad lobbies, the system seems to “punish” you by placing you in a match with a missing squadmate. So you load in as a duo while facing full trios. That’s not a bug, it’s matchmaking flexing its control, trying to coerce you back into accepting unbalanced games.
Also, in my case, I'd say 80% of my lobbies show my team in the bottom third of the skill distribution. And it’s baffling, I’m a top gold / low plat player, which is supposed to be where "most" of the population sits. It shouldn’t be that hard to place me with people of similar skill and throw in an occasional challenge. Instead, I’m in constant uphill battles.
And honestly, I believe !!this unfair matchmaking is one of the biggest root causes of toxicity in games!! When players are constantly thrown into impossible fights, frustration builds. That frustration turns into toxicity, blame, and eventually players either quit or lash out. EA keeps promoting *Positive Play*, but if the system itself is what creates negativity… then what’s the point?
Agree almost across the board.
Not sure about this though: "But even that comes with a hidden penalty. When you dodge too many bad lobbies, the system seems to “punish” you by placing you in a match with a missing squadmate." I used to think this was a matchmaking mechanism, but I quit a lot of matches, both in lobby and in the game, and over the six years I've noticed that there doesn't seem to be any direct correlation, unless there's a varying delay in the reaction of the system. Yes, I get a lot of two-man squads, but I don't think it's the game. I think it used to be people leaving here and there for whatever reason. Now I feel pretty confident that a lot of it is people like me leaving the lobby before the game even starts.
No, I think what the matchmaker does is put you into matches with teammates (one or two, doesn't seem to matter) who have a skill level near to the bottom of the floor. But I don't think that's a reaction to match-leaving. It's just business-as-usual. This game has always beat up on experienced solo queue players by matching them to newer, less experienced players. Cynical me says it's to go easier on stacks, and optimistic me says it's an informal mentoring system. Who knows? If the later, then more fool the game since I long ago stopped dying in vain attempts to save stupid people. Now I won't even wear a mic. More of Respawn's famous unintended consequences.
And I completely agree about the failing system feeding toxicity. To some extent that's baked into the battle royale formula. Who would ever have imagined that a game type where 57 people out of 60 lose by design would somehow create an army of satisfied players... drank very heavily at lunch that day. I mean, I still love the game type, but I can find other things to entertain me in the course of a match. Most other people seem to drop hot, die quickly, and rage quit. Not what I would imagine to be the behavior of a satisfied customer. Next stop, extraction shooter? Fewer live enemies, less frustration? Who can say? All I know is that I've never seen a game or a developer get matchmaking right, not once in twenty five years of competitive multiplayer shooters. Yes, Apex is worst, but none of them were good. And the cheat industry isn't their fault. Their fault lies in their inability to deal with the problem, but the problem itself is not on them. And what multiplayer game these days doesn't have a crippling cheating problem?
Wow, depressing.
Really appreciate your take, you’ve clearly been around the block with this game (and genre), and it shows.
You might be right about the duo squads not being directly caused by lobby dodging, it could easily just be others leaving silently, like you said. I guess where it feels like a punishment is when it happens multiple times in a row, right after dodging a few unbalanced lobbies. Whether it’s the system reacting or just unfortunate timing, the result still ends up reinforcing that same frustration loop: either play an unbalanced match, or face the next one missing a teammate. Lose-lose.
Your point about experienced solo players being paired with underperforming teammates is spot-on, though. I’ve seen that pattern too, and whether it’s intentional (to protect stacked teams), or an accidental side effect of skill pools, it still contributes to that feeling that the game just isn’t on your side unless you’re in a trio.
Now, about your comment on battle royale always having 57 losers: you're absolutely right, but that’s not the problem. I don’t expect to win every match. What kills the experience is when I’m dropped into lobbies with players so far above my skill level that I get knocked in under a second without even processing what happened. At that point, it doesn’t matter whether they were cheating, smurfing, or just an actual D1+ monster, the outcome feels exactly the same. From my perspective, the game becomes unwinnable, not because I played badly, but because I was simply never meant to compete.
A few seasons ago I had a 1.4 KD. Now I sit at 0.6–0.7 after over a thousand matches. That’s not just me getting worse, that’s matchmaking putting me in places I don’t belong.
Which brings me to K/D itself, one of the biggest illusions in this game. People use it as the gold standard for skill, but in reality it mostly reflects what kind of lobbies you're in. If the system were truly skill-based, K/D ratios across the board would converge around 1.0, regardless of your rank or account level. The fact that they don’t, and that mine has been tanked despite consistent play, is the clearest sign that the system doesn’t match by actual skill.
In my opinion, the only place where fair play exists in Apex is in ALGS, where everyone is roughly the same level, and surprise, you don’t see 4K damage or 20-kill games there either. Why? Because the playing field is actually balanced.
So yeah, maybe battle royale was always going to be brutal, but it didn’t have to be this brutal.
"A keeps promoting *Positive Play*, but if the system itself is what creates negativity… then what’s the point?"; the epitome of 'truer words have never been spoken'.
They just report me for abusing the kd system when they specifically say there's no EOMM involve. So who's lying now ?
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