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

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.