Request ranked match improvements, especially between Gold and Bronze

First of all I would say that above mentioned is 100% skill issue.

Me as "sweaty" player went straight to Plat 3 when first installing Apex years ago after like 5+ years of not playing FPS shooters at all and ever since been between D4-Masters (free to take seasons).

Also in the past few seasons when quitting Apex for a while due to cheaters running the game, I have been demoted to Silver -> took me usually 4h to get out of that into high Gold / Plat. For comparison my k/d is sub 1, my top kill count I guess is 13 (done in pubs of course, in ranked I guess it would be <10 but I do get 6-8 kill games regularly in Silver / Gold even Plat lobbies), no 20 bomb and I guess a few 4k badges... basically I am no crazy player based on stats, at the same time I have quite a good aim and above average game sense / like to IGL in game.

In current state of the game grind stats in Plat3+ as then basically every game has hackers in them and game is not so much about the skill (as you hardly ever have a chance to kill wallhacking / aimbotting teams) but more about who hackers will kill first. Same has been true before just in Diamond2+ lobbies.

As for badges I would and have been paying 0 attention given:

• there have been many random modes be it arenas or other type of pub games where you could farm kills, damage, ranked badges
• many buy ranked up profiles with badges included
• many buy boosts or ask for those in e.g. discord servers

Basically badges in most cases mean that a person wants to show off (more often than not) or if you see like multiple Pred badges = either profile has been purchased and person actually is at best Diamond level player which will still be a challenge for you as Gold, or just hacker that has been competitive in hacker (aka Master+) lobbies as you rarely see actually legit teams past Diamond 2.

My suggestion:

1. compare yourself vs yourself
2. do record your games and review those videos (yeah kinda boring) but it gives amazingly good results in a short time - you see how you make mistakes which during the game felt like right decisions or you see that hackers really outmatched you by clearly hacking (hitting all shots / finding you in situations they should have not)
3. don't stress about ranked, just do your best as game evolves, player base evolves, competition usually gets harder and harder (see CS as the best example = game is basically 20 years old and these days at higher ranks split second decisions matter and everything but perfect mechanics is automatic loss, Apex is far from that, even pros / streamers make bluntly bad decisions despite using hacks)