The official Matchmaking blog post

unfortunate for me and Apex/Respawn/EA ranked and its challenging rank system and awarding rank system was before this season 17 the best rank system out there in any game but this season 17 has taken a dive into the garbage collector

Hey look, we are something like 7 months from the post and we've gotten absolutely nothing.  Hooray!

As I said during the last lan: Matchmaking seems to work just fine for people playing ALGS. I have never seen more evenly matched lobbies than what they have during ALGS.

It's still trash EOMM.

Instead of giving you a carry or dead weight, they adjust how unequal the other teams are against yours. The devs don't care, they've have done the final double downing of making it EOMM, so it must be people above their pay grade making demands to keep it the same as close as possible.

It's been appalling these past days. 7-8/10 times I'm on the joke team full of headless chickens, and the other team get to streamroll us. Sometimes the other team isn't even very good, but we lose anyway. 🤡 Then I get thrown a bone and the other team is the joke team for one game.

On the plus side though, I've had far far less PC's in my games.

Also, the queue times are all over the place. A few insta start, others fill up players very slowly, or just hang for 10's of seconds or even +1 minute on "connecting to match". Waited over 2 minutes for a Control game. Guess all the console players left due to PC players in the lobby. GG Respawn 

Seems like people only have two recourse here:

- Make a new account or swap to a months inactive one every 20 matches to abuse the EOMM system in your favor.

- Or simply quit. 

The devs intentionally stack matches against you more, the more you play. They offload the problem onto you to bait fresher accounts into playing more. This is separate from mmr. The only use of “engagement” metrics is to psychologically abuse player sunk costing. 

The devs know this and have done their final doubling down. They’re more worried about gaslighting new players just long enough with matches staked in their favor at the expense of others to snag micro transaction money. Normal players know this too which is why the game is full of Smurf accounts and you’re at a loss if you don’t do it too. 

The fact this is obvious and that the devs pretend otherwise is laughable. You wonder why I stay f2p and quit for year after playing only a handful to check if they still are using the same stinky algorithm. Literally bad mannerism by the company where they expect people to spend money when they know they’re being abused. 

I just uninstalled.  I'm done playing pubs against the top .5% of players.  Ranked is a dumpster fire where you can get Pred without killing anyone.  No point, not fun.

@Twizted3k_tv  same, this sh*t is insane. Wondering if this is a mistake by Respawn or they actually want it like this. I believe they will kill the population that is just out of reach of top 0.1% with this system. Why strict SBMM in pubs and ranked? Why even have two? To show inflated dive trails/badges that means nothing? Thanks, not for me.

“bUt yOu gUys jUst wAnT tO sToMp nOobs!”

lol

The crazy thing is, matchmaking was ALREADY tight for the top 5-10%, before the August 2nd update.

But now it’s SUBSTANTIALLY tighter and players are no longer afforded easier lobbies after losses. So now even the average to slightly above average players are feeling the crunch. I warned against this for years, as I think strict non-ranked matchmaking is a really bad idea. 

I typically avoid Reddit, but I went over there to check out how people were feeling. The overwhelming pattern is:

Below average players are enjoying the matchmaking and sporting outcomes (wins, KD ratios) that are now higher than some really strong players. Historically strong players are seeing big drops in outcomes, as they are now exclusive fodder for the very very very best players in the world.

I hate to say this but that is EXACTLY the goal of Respawn/EA, and every other modern day live service company. Although population skill does resemble a bell curve, there will probably always be more players on the left side of the curve (new players, players who play rarely, players who just aren’t that interested in practicing to get better). This is the largest group and this is the group that companies want feeling good— so they can spend money. 

I read somewhere that there is an interesting coincidence between EA publicly saying Season 17 underperformed, and the rollout of the new matchmaking. The more I think about it, why change the matchmaking a week before a new season? Why not just wait for the beginning of S18? I think they wanted to put the largest player group (left’ish side of the curve) in a good mood to prime them to buy S18 content.

@Axs5626Sxa5001

"This is the largest group and this is the group that companies want feeling good— so they can spend money."

I understand what you mean, and sure, it might be a good idea to cater to the herd of casual players so they can feel good - but they are also the least invested group and most likely the group that spends the least amount of money on the game on average. It's probably also the group that is most volatile, e.g. leaving the game for other releases, some come back to play some matches for season updates, others don't. Is it really a good business decision to f'k with their most invested and dedicated group of players? If that group leaves the game, what happens then?

These gaming socialism MM systems which has entered AAA multiplayer games are horrible. I still remember the hollow and monotonous feeling MW2 gave me with the BS approach and now Apex feels the same or slightly worse - SAD!

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@Trgg3r wrote:

@Axs5626Sxa5001

They are also the least invested group and most likely the group that spends the least amount of money on the game on average. Is it really a good business decision to f'k with their most invested and dedicated group of players?

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Do you have any data to back up those invented statistics of yours?

How do you know that that the most skilled 0.01% are the most "invested and dedicated" group of players? Isn't it more likely to expect that invested and dedicated players have a range of skill levels?

How do you know that "casual players," which I'm guessing you mean to refer to those with low K/D, spend less time or money on the game? Do you think that time investment + passion = high K/D/skill automatically?

Isn't it more likely that people who enjoy the look of cosmetics spend more money buying said cosmetics? There is probably a broad distribution of people who invest in game purchases, across a range of K/Ds, play times and habits. In fact, one may say that people who spend countless hours every day and have an army of alts are probably less likely to need to purchase Apex coins to obtain the things they want.

The following bit is just anecdotal, but in many other multiplayer games where I was involved with guilds, the players who spend the most (i.e. "whales") tended to be casual players in terms of skill, with average playing times. The most invested players, such as guild leaders who were on constantly, made guides, organized events, etc., were ironically the ones that ended up getting banned for taking advantage of exploits, selling gold to third-party websites, etc. They were the ones who knew about ways to avoid spending money, even though they supposedly "loved the game" so much.

Let's not pretend that all streamers do what they do because of a passion for the game. Many are happy to jump ship if they dislike the new direction of things.

@hayhorI think he means the individual people, not as a group. There are so many casual players that even one purchase from each casual player = more profits that what heavily invested high skilled players are spending.

I’m confident that the bulk of profits are from casual and or average players (as a group). He’s saying that the he thinks that higher skilled players typically have more play time, and that correlates with them buying more content (per individual).

Ye definately, as I've stated before they're catering for new players or preds/streamers who bring a new set of eyes to their game!