The official Matchmaking blog post

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. 

Im Diamond rank curently always solo q ,but why i get ppl from silver or lower in my lobby.

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.

Matchmaking is give me terrible players. Literally bot humans and between level lv5-lv75 and zero game sense. Aimassist is DESTROY my fun. I leave game soon. Downloading and try Halo multiplayer.

“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.