@hayhor I don't think it's a question of badges proving who is better any more. Last season we had pre made pred teams wiping out golds and plats as cannon fodder in their lobbies, using that to falsely keep their place on the tables. That really did not prove their worth and that system needed to go.
Hopefully they will now end up in lobbies of a similar standard to their own and have to work for their end of season pred placement, where I think the rank emphasis will now change to. You will certainly know who are the better players by their end of season placement in the tables, as it should be and is in most compedative sports.
There are many different playing styles and it is important that ordinary players in the community have fun and get a sense of achievement imo, rather than just being cannon fodder.
Past badges are worth what they were in the season they were awarded and still are a valid award for that point in time.
@OldTreeCreeperCan you please explain the below from me, which is taken from Apex itself-
"Ranked is a competitive mode that lets you play with other players at a similar skill level. You need to be Level 20 or higher to access it.
Over time, you can rank up and play in higher tiers. During Ranked Seasons, you can also earn rewards based on your rank. At the start of each Season, your rank resets."
It sure seems to me that competitive mode would have some way of telling you how good you are. And the only way to do that is to show a skill rating. In this case that is your rank.
You mention last season. The issue with the high level MM last season had nothing to do with the scoring system. The issue was that time in queue was prioritized. I watch a lot of preds on stream. They were waiting a minute or two at most. On other games that have competitive modes, queues can take 15 to 20 minutes for the top players. This is the only way to match properly. This unfortunately has always been the issue with Apex and it continues now.
Preseason 13, three different styles could rank up. Aggressors could get their kills, placement types could play for zone and people in the middle could do that. There really was nothing wrong with it. The only issue was the pros complained that there were too many Masters. Really though, the issue was the queue time did not prioritize skill. They could have tweaked it so that at the very top the MM became more pred vs pred vs high level master.
This new MM is not working. This can be seen by countless thread and comments on here of bronzes facing masters. It will not work because it is not based on rank. I give them credit, they tried to fight the smurfing problem but this is not the way.
I would expect pre made squads of past preds to tear through lobbies at the moment if (I suspect) everyone has been reset to 0 for the start of the new system.
Last season I was hard stuck at plat VI and was facing pre made squads of current season preds. Being cannon fodder for preds and masters is not competitive. Nor does it give me or the predator a true reading of how good or bad either is, nor a true rank.
This is not the first season that I have faced a similar situation, so it's fair to say it that the time issue did not change things very much overall last season imo.
I think we will always see lots more threads on ahq about complaints than pleasantries. Conversely I've seen a few threads on here of players enjoying the new system.
I would like to know the full circumstances of the Bronze facing Preds? I think it unlikely we will ever know the full story. There may well be a lot of whys and wherefores that would give us a better picture, that we are unaware of. I didn't see many pred or master badges or trails until well into Gold. Seeing loads of them now in Gold 1 on a Saturday night.
I think we have to allow more than a few days to pass before we can say that the new mm system is working or not.
@OldTreeCreeperYou missed the whole point. They've never forced long queue times to get proper MM, other than season 13 split 1. If they did you wouldn't have faced them last season. And MMR did not reset for all this season. If it did, how did someone like Sweet get to pred in 10 placement games and only 40 ranked games without doing any damage.
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