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.
"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."
You had me going... what... then you had me rolling.
But yeah, this ALL rolls back to my "5 Types" thesis.
