KD 0.5 from 1 ... the state of Apex

Might need a bit more info than that.

Technical issues?
Matchmaking?
Game play changes?
Altered settings?
Your mom works at Respawn and now you've been beaten with the Chancla of Doom for not cleaning your room?

Let me guess – Wildcard and you're playing a Legend with low or no mobility? No surprise there. When it comes to rankeds, it's also no surprise if you're playing a legend without a good movement ability. I can't imagine playing Axle or Octane and having a 0.5 K/D. Am I right?

Last season, I started with a K/D of 4.0, but after Octane's buffs, I finally dropped to 2.99 (29k kills).

This season, I started off much worse with Axle (~1.5). I've gotten above 2.0, but I'm not satisfied because I think I can do better. This is the legend meta, and you can't create something out of nothing (main Caustic).

Overall, I'm trying to play only sporadically now to maintain muscle memory, etc. I'm hoping those "better" changes for solo q that are supposedly planned for this season will come soon. Maybe things will be better then? I don't know.

I'm not trying to defend Respawn here - most of what they do is indefensible - but they never made any secret of the fact that they always intended over time to evolve the game. Evolve it to the point where it would eventually be a completely different game than the one we started with. I'd say we're there. A few season ago they did an O.G. Kings Canyon ltm and the differences between that and the then current version of the game were stark. And in the few seasons since then the game has "evolved" twice as fast as it was evolving back then. This really is a completely different game now.

And I don't know about you, but I'm that guy who keeps beating his head against the wall, doing the things I learned to do twenty seasons ago and expecting the same results. I'm not evolving with the game at all. Mostly because I disapprove of the changes on a philosophical level, but also because they're making the game more rigid and predictable and boring, and also continually raising the mechanical skill ceiling - something which AT LAUNCH was already too high, imo. And something that serves only to create differentiation amongst the very best players. Everyone else is left behind with a game that becomes unplayable if sbmm can't do its job. And it's no secret that sbmm in this game is disastrous on its best day.

Which is all a fancy way of saying that the things we used to do don't always get us there now, and the ways we used to measure success in the past (like k/d) mean just a little bit less in the new environment. Sure, it still means what it means, and we all still want that big fat number. But it's time for all of us to start looking at different ways of defining success. In a game type where 95% of players in any given match will lose, you've always had to measure success by something other than winning. Defining your abilities and satisfaction by k/d is almost as problematic. At least it is now.

If I had to guess, I would say the KD drop is probably mainly due to the hundreds of thousands of smurf accounts you face every single match. 

And when you are constantly going up against these level 1 - 50 smurfs who are miles above your own skill level.... well, KD does tend to drop. 

It is disheartening.

My K/D is dropping because my matchmaking in stupid pubs takes 5-10 minutes just to play with the same people over and over again.

It's gotten boring a long time ago. It feels like there are 100-200 people playing this game.