Re: Apex has got a lot harder in the past couple of weeks!

I noticed that in season 8. I figured it was because all the casual players had finished their battle passes and were taking a break or playing less.

@Marge010 Yup it’s always like this on the last few weeks of the season. Like what @B0n3SawMcSizzla said the casuals play less because they have finished everything and just waiting for the next season to come. I also play less around the end of the season and I suggest you play other games as well!

Since the 'legacy' LTM my season KDR has dropped from 2.01 to 1.85. My theory is that a lot of good Apex players came back when they heard the original maps were available again, and quite a few of them hung around. Also, I still prefer to play Fusey in BR (I play Octane, Mirage and Rampart in Arenas, depending upon the map) and he's better in the twisty spaces of Olympus than the wide open spaces of the original maps.

I went about 10 days without a win, too, although I won twice yesterday.

I'm a S0 player too and I've definitely noticed this. I always thought it was the 'sweats' revving up before the next season but your theory also makes sense. I like it 🙂

@Axs5626Sxa5001 not only am I in master and predator lobbies of late, they are on my teams. I'm getting mauled none the less, as are they.

My theory is they have done their bit with ranked and are now happily stomping pubs till the end of season to have a holiday so to speak. It's hot drop heaven..... And as mentioned above average player has finished their BP, collected their treasure packs, doing the arena event and seems to be waiting patiently for S10, playing the odd very hard pub game. 

It was murder over the last while to get the last tick on my S9 bucket list, to get my Wraith to 300 wins, but I finally got there. 

All I know is that SBMM is not actually SBMM, it is just a matchmaking system in place to manipulate the userbase into higher engagement. For example my GF is the epitome of an average player (.8kd). Better than a lot of casuals but not nearly on the level of tryhards that have been playing as long as her (season 0). Lately she has been telling me how much fun she has been having playing both in pubs and ranked. But if she tries to play with me she gets into my lobbies and wants to instantly quit the game forever lol. So unfortunately we never get to play together any longer. I watch her play and it seems so boring, so much less fighting. Maybe finally coming up on a squad, 3rd parties only once in a while in her lobbies. Totally relaxed. When I play it is a completely different game with nonstop fighting and constant 3rd 4th 5th parties. Sometimes I will have a bad set, drop and die a few games in a row and then all of a sudden I go ape on an entire lobby, get double digit kills and around 3k damage. I feel good for a second but then I am like wait a second, was I just playing worse players? I proceed to drop into my next game where the champions, If I am not it, is a 3stack squad of 4k, 20 badges or predators with 10s of thousands of kills. I proceed to get 1 kill in the next game playing my * off lol. And then I have a game where I get 2 kills, same type of lobbies. Then I have 2 games no kills. Suddenly the next game I have 6 kills 2500 damage or so and then back and forth. So I never actually know how good I am at the game vs how much my endorphins are being manipulated by having good games just at the moment I am getting very frustrated. The sbmm in these games is just there to entice engagement and is completely unethical in my opinion.