new skill distribution curve

The more narrow the skill range is and is on the far right side, the more sweaty and full of cheaters the lobby is.

Such lobbies are the most difficult.

The white line that rises from left to right until it hits the middle and then falls off again... that's the skill curve for the game and represents the typical number of players at a given skill level. The line is low on the left, meaning there are relatively few completely unskilled players. It rises to a high point in the middle, the statistical average, where most players live. And then it falls off again to the right, representing a dwindling number of players who are higher-skilled. And cheaters.

The grey area represents the span of skill within this particular match. It's a team average, not individual skill. There will normally be individual players who fall outside the grey area, most commonly in "average" skill level matches, where also worth noting, the grey area is typically much wider than in the above example.

The red line represents the average skill of your squad. In this example it's a tight average because the entire lobby is tight. In more typical "average" skill matches things are much more all over the place. People seem to assume that the red line is their personal spot on the scale and are puzzled at why it moves so much from match to match. Again, it's an average, not an individual. If you want to know your individual place on the curve, your hidden mmr if you will, then just go into a no-fill trios match. The red line will represent only you and it will be in the same place every time. Basically, this tells you your rank without having to go through the grind and humiliation of playing ranked matches. Maybe that's not a selling point for you, maybe it is. You be the judge. I personally hate ranks, so for me it's a great short cut.

The most important thing to remember about the data they're showing you is that it all represents team averages, and again, that means that in a lobby of normal players (not the masters and predators in the above example) you'll see a wider grey area. This means a wider array of skills in the match, and many players who are both above and below the range of averages. Basically it's telling you that the matchmaking in the part of the skill range where most players live... is shockingly loose. Which explains why you will destroy some squads and turn around only to be instantly vaporized by another. It also reaffirms what all solo queue players have always known: the matchmaker "balances" a lobby of solos by putting together a squad out of one highly experienced player, one moderately experienced player, and one inexperienced player. Assuring that if there's any three stack in the lobby at all, even a stack of moderate skill, they will probably dominate the match. Unless the randoms mic up and have common match goals and play styles. Which they don't, don't, and don't.

Best of luck. You're gonna need it. We all will.

Haha thanks.  My main question is, how do they measure skill?🤔

I mean, is it how many kills I get in a **bleep**ty team, or how many I get in a good team?  Or how many kills I get full stop?  Not factoring in EA's matchmaking "skill".

🤣

Or wait, if I cheat, am i more or less "skilful"?

😱

They will never openly state how they assess skill because players would use that information to manipulate their match quality (at least in theory they would - the truth is that the matchmaking in this game is too loose to allow for much active manipulation, and is even worse now with seemingly everyone playing on a secondary).

But it really isn't too hard to reverse engineer their formula by simply playing the game and observing the effects of your performance on your match quality. It was a lot easier to do this early on in the game before all the secondaries took over. Now it's harder. And the dev changes the secret sauce every now and then just to mix things up even more.

But essentially it's all the things you would expect it to be plus one that you wouldn't. The obvious: k/d, win rate, maybe accuracy, and I'm pretty sure also your quit rate. The unexpected data that I'm pretty sure they use is your average match length.

And when all is said and done, the game doesn't have a picture of you that says, "Okay this guy's good at cqc, bad at midrange, doesn't know how to drop, but does know how to rotate, etc." It simply averages all the data and assigns you a number. Then that number has a stickiness to it where it will change if it thinks you're improving, but will change more slowly if it thinks you're deteriorating. Because players don't typically get worse over time. They sandbag to try and convince the matchmaker that they're less good than they really are, but it mostly won't work unless you are seriously tenacious. And quit a lot. And fire your weapons randomly into the air for no reason. And then if you have one single god-like match then you'll snap right back to the mmr you had before you put weeks into lowering it.

Anyone please add if I've forgot anything, or tell me I'm full of it if this doesn't describe your experience.

Respawn has said in the past that they will not disclose how they measure skill because it could then be exploited.

However they do it is complete garbage though.  Based on the skill curve in my matches, I'm apparently a very good player which I know is not true.  I have a KDR <0.8 (and going down the last 4 seasons!) and get repeatedly melted match after match after match.  Somehow I get put in the same lobbies towards the top of the skill curve over and over again, too.

My conclusion is that the skill curve, MMR, and matchmaking are all complete BS in Apex.

It's interesting. I've been watching that player skill range thing like a hawk since they introduced it. And one thing I've noticed is that it seems to react much more quickly to my intolerance than I would have expected. If I quit the match, early or late, I can almost be guaranteed that the next match will see the grey area on the curve move significantly to the left. The funny part though is that the actual difficulty of the match remains exactly the same. Which I'm assuming is down to two things: Thing one, the game is full of people on secondaries who are not yet recognized as anything other than new. And thing two, there are always many individual players in a match whose skill is outside the grey area on the curve. And being a player who only gets involved in the match when it's down to three squads, I tend to find those players. And the result is that even a match with a curve far to the left of the center... feels more or less unplayable. Or at the very least it feels un-fun enough that I won't bother to hang around just to give a free kill to some **bleep** diamond tier player who's on the second day of his 54th account. No thanks, Respawn.

I really wonder if that curve is simply a placebo and it's just random. I was in teams ranging from the middle near the peak of the curve all the way to the right and I had only one game where I could say that my teammates weren't NPCs every other game looked exactly the same. Whole season is just smoke and mirrors and the game is still really anti-solo player-oriented. Mixtapes are particularly bad, I haven't had a single close or 'balanced' game in any of the mixtape modes since forever, it's always one-sided stomp. It's not fun on either side. But no worries 14 battlepasses for 10 bucks each are here to fix everything 😂

Yeah I'm getting super annoyed cause I'm new and I keep getting put into lobbies at the far right of the graph and playing against people who have tens of thousands of kills. Like come on how is it fair, I don't even know what half of these heros do