SBMM makes it impossible to play with friends.
I've had the same friends I play games with for years. We played games like Blackout, The Division, Warzone, Ghost Recon, Battlefield, all kinds of shooters. Between me being really good at shooters and them being semi decent we had alot of laughs and made alot of good memories. Fast forward to this November and I discovered Apex Legends. The sweatiest most frustrating game that I couldn't seem to put down. Not gonna get into details since we all know what make Apex so great. My friends love it. I've never wanted to do so well in a game I was so clearly bad at. I kept practicing and now I'm a diamond player. The problem is that now because of all my hard work and practice it's made the game literally unplayable with my friends. One of them is at best a hard-stuck Plat 4 player and the rest are maybe gold 4 in terms of skill level... with respawns SBMM were dropping into matches against other sweaty diamond and master/preds essentially leaving my friends as fodder to these players while I'm stuck trying to carry them to the odd victory. Tensions are high on both sides as I'm trying to correct bad behaviours and teach them how to play the game at a high level while simultaneously sweating my * off just to stay alive and them going down after maybe doing 100 damage to someone and getting * on. I recently got called a * by one of my friends because of the way I was trying to explain to them not to stay peeking the same angle for too long because you'll get team shot. And he did. And we argued because I apparently was being a * about it. After we both turned the game off in a huff I realized I don't think I can play Apex with them anymore because the skill gap paired with the SBMM is just too much. They made a fantastic game but the SBMM is destroying it in my opinion. I understand it helps new people get better and keep them wanting to play but Jesus does it have to be so strict at the high levels? I don't wanna sweat my * off every single public match I play. I just wanna be able to play with my friends and have them get some decent games and kills so we can all have fun again.
@DangleKing666SBMM really does make it more necessary to play with people of similar skill level, you're absolutely right! It sucks for them, playing against the players that your SBMM pulls in, but on the other side of the same coin, it would suck for lower-skilled enemies that you trounce, if SBMM pulled more people around your friend's levels. I am lucky enough to not have to deal with this on Apex, as me and my two buddies are very close in skill level. I do, however, deal with this issue on Halo. Me and one of my buddies have been playing Halo since CE (20+ years), and one of our other buddies is very new to Halo in general. We literally can not play ranked when he is on, because he is just not up to par, and that is in no way an insult to him! He just doesn't have the experience that we have, and cant hang with us in competitive modes.
From personal experience, I found it worked best to just be honest with him, and let him know that it's nothing personal. He didn't take any issue with it, and we just stick to either other playlists on Halo, or we play one of the multiple other games that we all play together. You sound like you have a similar group of gaming friends as me, and have been gaming with them for numerous years, so honesty may be the best policy here. Considering how long you've been playing together, a simple conversation could solve everything.
Best of luck to you!! I know how great it is to have a group of close friends to game with, so hopefully it all works out for the best!Edit: For giving advice about gameplay, just a bit of advice from my own experiences with it. I have the same issue with my buddies from time to time. I have noticed though, that it really helps when we offer advice when we are not currently in a match. Tensions/adrenaline run high in the heat of combat, so even a simple suggestion or piece of advice, can come across as insulting/degrading to their skill/ego/pride. I have much better luck when I wait until the lobby, once we are more relaxed, and then it is much easier to discuss what happened, and what we could/should have done different.