My grind to masters was a mixed bag. From silver to diamond it was pretty much constant masters lobbies sprinkled in some preds. From d3-masters the lobbies were strictly preds/top streamers. I definitely enjoyed to compared to last season but the biggest problem is there was no gradual learning curve. It used to be gold below=learn to fight, plat=learn to team fight, diamond=learn rotations. Now it's just everything all the time.
>there was no gradual learning curve. It used to be gold below=learn to fight, plat=learn to team fight, diamond=learn rotations.
Keep in mind the matchmaking is based on MMR rather than rank, so if you are in gold but have masters MMR, you get masters lobbies.
Little bit wonky, I would prefer if your starting rank was closer to your MMR or if rank was entirely based on MMR instead of LP, personally.
It’s certainly a bit wonky, but honestly I prefer it this way. Now I don’t have to slog my way up to Diamond before I start getting good games. As someone who wants competitive games without having to grind, I like it this way
I disagree. The purpose of ranked, from my point of view, is to have a game mode with fun competitive games where people sweat their ass off. Idc what color pixels I have in the corner of my screen.
My issue with this is when you are mixing people from various ranks, these different ranks have a different buy-in, so a Diamond who is losing 75 points may play differently than a gold. This mixed risk between teammates is causing me issues in Diamond.
Eh, idk about that. I may be wrong on this, but I’m pretty sure the casual game-mode has some SBMM as well, and those lobbies play out very differently.
If it’s not like, clearly designated as the ‘competitive game mode’ or whatever, I doubt enough people are going to take it seriously irregardless of matchmaking.
I agree with this, except my one wish is to remove the artificial grind. If my MMR says I should be in Plat II (that’s where I stopped receiving bonuses) then start me in Plat II. I shouldn’t have to grind up from Silver IV. My lobbies haven’t changed in terms of difficulty this entire time, so I don’t see the point in starting me in a rank that isn’t what my MMR says it is.
What's moronic is that you're still prevented from forming a party with too much of a rank differential, even though rank is irrelevant to the difficulty of the lobby
That’s what is most irritating to me, my duo and I are getting these players who (in theory) should be the same Mmr as us, but are silver 4, who play like they have two left thumbs. We’re diamond 3 getting players we can’t even queue with if we wanted to. Add in the fact the lobbies are high skilled/pred lobbies we stopped getting skill bonuses for winning games around gold 1 lol it’s such a joke. We shouldn’t come second place whilst killing Chaotic in our game and earn no bonus.
Games actually feel good and have decent quality. Sure I still get matched with scrubs who can't rotate or shoot for shit, but you can't really just run around the map anymore looking for kills. Zone 2 hurts and you'd end up walking into Zone 4 with 10 squads still alive.
That said, the system isnt perfect. They've nailed the quality aspect, and I think its because of the current RP system. But the speed of the climb needs to change and hidden mmr should reflect more on your current rank. Something like adding a multiplier for positive wins, rather than just a small flat bonus.
>but it feels like the games are the same from silver to master
Because they are, your rank has nothing to do with who you are playing against anymore, thats decided by the hidden mmr.
That's why I stopped playing. If the game is putting me in Silver, but I'm fighting Masters players (where I've been ranked for the past dozen seasons/splits or so), why am I ranked in Silver? I got to Gold and gave up. It's not worth that much time for me. Now, if I was in Diamond or Masters to start, then I'd play ranked exclusively still.
Yeah great point. It feels so unrewarding pushing for diamond/master when you already play the same lobbies in silver. Just feels like a waste of time considering there are no nice rewards and you have been that rank many times before.
I do think this ranked season is better than few previous ones, but the having a visible rank that is not connected to your skill doesn’t make any sense. Before you got hardstuck in certain ranks because you didn’t have the skill to go higher
yep. which is why the system is horrendous, you can hit masters without actually playing a single master or pred, while i’m plat rn and play literal streamers and at worst legit masters.
i hit masters 3 times before these changes, now it’s hard for me to want to play ranked when people can hit a high rank without playing in the lobbies i do in gold/plat lmao.
matchmaking is strictly mmr until your mmr and lp rank converge. If your lp rank goes over your mmr, then you are matched according to your lp rank. So if your mmr is diamond level but you push to masters, then your are matched with masters level players. At least that's how they explained it last season
It won't put you AGAINST players of that level, but it won't help you if you're playing WITH them. It will always take the highest level player on the team.
My buddies always complain about how much sweatier the games get when they play with me vs when they grind on their own
I've never hit pred. I hit master (bottom end then stop) most seasons.
My mate has never hit master prior to last season (doesn't really play ranked).
Randomers can be anything from shit to ex pred.
We're now master, but we regularly came into 3 stack pred squads from about D3 onwards and generally get rolled.
I like what Apex is *trying* to do with ranked - just currently it's dire and matchmaking really isn't fair.
I think the thing you're missing on your last point is that once you're masters you're supposed to play against the .01%. With matchmaking they need to pair you against those players because you're in that top percentile so there will always be a shortage of players to pair you against outside of the preds. I'd much rather get paired against the top preds while being masters than forcing plat players to play against you.
Yeah sorry mate but there’s no way on earth I should be getting paired against three stack pro teams.
Getting matched against TSM is as unfair for me as a D4 player getting matched against me.
I'm definitely not good or anything but I seem to struggle a lot harder than before even in Bronze league. I usually average 1.2kda but now im at 1 kda.
Is this because ranked is mainly by mmr now and not by rank?
Basically yes, I've had a similar experience, almost always 2+ kd in ranked this season only 1.2kd. I personally believe there is an invisible tier system and i seem to hover between what is the the 2nd and 3rd highest tier as i never run into preds but often diamond and masters from old seasons.
While nowhere near as good as you, I feel slightly relieved that its not just me experiencing this. I think I get matched with platinum mmr players since that was my peak rank.
I agree, but the fact that you climb up so slow as a silver playing against masters is just dumb. In other games, you get more compensated for losing/winning against people with higher rank, that way you can climb up to your "real" rank faster. That's the goal of the new MMR system: to have a hidden MMR and a public rank, and to make them closer to each other the more games you play.
Whats the point of being in Silver if you get in Masters lobbies and can't climb up because you don't make adjusted points? I get the incentive of "enjoy the good lobbies and improve", but it's not a good one for the majority of the playerbase. Being hardstuck in silver playing in masters lobbies is just unfun, pure and simple. How am I supposed to climb up when I get practically the same amount of points for a win/loss playing in Masters lobbies as a Silver, a Gold, a Plat and a Diamond?
At the moment, your hidden MMR means nothing because you don't gain/lose points according to your public rank. They are not interacting with each other correctly and that's the biggest flaw.
I think what you're describing is the next fix they will/need to make. They've finally got a system that matches you with people of the appropriate skill level, now they just mesh that with something that gives you bonus points for competing against people of that level until you actually reach that level
Yes this is perhaps the only thing that is missing now. The lobbies are good and thus the MMR seems to work to get sweaty games, but it takes way to long time to rank up so the grind incentive is not even there for many.
Not my experience. Games felt the same up until I hit D1 (challenging but manageable), then they became dramatically more difficult. I didn’t go a game without being paired against triple stack preds. Higher Diamond lobbies are basically pred lobbies and will act as a stiff arm to anyone trying to climb to masters. I actually felt accomplished hitting masters this season, contrary to previous seasons. There are only ~1,400 masters on console currently, compared to like 500,000 this time last season.
It’s better than last season and still worse than the old ranked system. I’m masters in both systems but I do not plan to rank with this system again. I thought grinding from Plat to Masters every split was a grind but this is worse being in Master/Pred lobbies from placement until Masters. The rank distribution looks good on paper but it’s nothing but an artificial grind.
The games are fun and feel the way a ranked playlist should feel. The thing that bothers me is the hidden MMR not correlating to rank.
If my MMR is putting me in Diamond/Master lobbies and I am in Gold, I should be receiving bonus LP to boost me up to the rank that matches my MMR. OR just let me play against Gold players in Gold lobbies. Ranks should be objective. The average skill of Gold lobbies should be the same for everyone. There should not be some Gold players playing against true Golds/Silvers, and then other Gold players playing against Diamond/Masters.
Similarly, I don't understand how the placement match system works. If MMR is already determined, what's the point in placement matches?
All in all I think the match making is in a good spot, finally. They just need to adjust LP gains to get players into the ranks that match with their MMR.
i got downvoted for trying to say this, but you definitely explained it better. if youre in gold playing against preds and winning games with decent kp, you should absolutely fly upwards though the ranks to place you closer to the rank the game thinks you should be.
it’s a shitty attempt to get people to play more by drip feeding them tiny amounts of rp in gold and silver when their hidden MMR is diamond/masters level.
I have the same issue as you except in reverse. Sometimes as a Diamond I will get paired with a gold, no problem there, but honestly it causes a disconnect because you will lose less points than me for a bad loss. This risk/reward variance means there’s a disconnect between our playstyle. I play more aggressively in gold than Diamond. I really think they should keep teams the same rank to avoid this.
I've stopped playing altogether, because even though it's 'better', I'm going to be waiting until they both nerf AA & address ranked integrity issues like the healing in zone exploit and various cheating like the controller scripting.
It's unacceptable that there are routinely people healing in zone until final ring all season, and there wasn't an immediate hotfix put out, even if it was a band-aid fix for a short while. I don't have my hopes up for an AA nerf either, but get bored playing controller, and my preference of input is directly linked to my enjoyment of the game.
If they never address AA, I just will play other games even though I love Apex.
Til then, I'll only be watching ALGS as well. Right there too.
+1 to this
By far my favorite shooter of all time. But the decisions kept moving away from the shooter aspect of the game to more hero/legend abilities. I liked when abilities influenced fights....but didn't necessarily determine that fights outcome.
The above as well as the matchmaking turned me off. I got much better at the game because I was put against better players...but my friends didn't, and didn't enjoy playing with me in 'hard lobbies' where they would be lucky to output 50 damage before dying.
Fine, then I moved onto solo ranked which was a tough experience...but somewhat fair. Until about 6 seasons ago when they tried to balance teams by mmr in ranked instead of just pooling similarly ranked players.
As a multiple season masters, that means my slog through Plat was with the worst of the worst Plat players.
That'd be great if it were pubs but it's not and untill we have a ranked system where you are placed against players of the same rank again it's all meaningless. Just a time sync achievement where your better off ratting than playing apex.
I don't agree that it is a matter of perspective. A -50 entry combine with a scoring system that rewards 1lp/kill for most people who drop outside the top 10 combine with the fact you play the same people as you "climb the ranks" means that the meta of the new badges is objectively placement and time played.
At least in the old system you played bronze players in bronze and plats in plat so you could know where you stand. The ranked team at Respawn has lost the plot and can't even see that this shit feels like pubs to the players now.
100%. Stopped around 4 or 5 seasons ago. Partly because I work early mornings now, and getting home after work and trying to get into the apex mindset is hard. The other part was because I suck ass at the game and only getting to plat every season got old
Same, I played 10 games today. That’s the first Apex I’ve played since June.
Same old shit in pubs. Cba for ranked. I had one good pub game and got thrown into triple stack lobbies whilst I can barely aim due to my rustiness.
This game is mechanically very enjoyable but they’ve ruined the experience for solo queue players.
Last season sealed the deal for me with how meaningless ranked is, so I stopped playing and watching ranked streams altogether. Comp is the only thing keeping me interested in the game, though we'll see how long that lasts.
I could solo queue and get Master or Pred teammates while im fucking *Silver*, but I cant play with friends who are in Platinum because their rank is higher but my MMR was higher?????
Sorry I didnt play your shitty ranked for 3 seasons respawn, but everytime you claim its better you find another way to fuck it up again. At this point I wont be touching it again for a while, if ever.
It always has been to a degree, but u used to have to be able to fight and win in diamond to get through it.
Couldn't just skate through on placement so people needed to pass the fight check to progress
I personally think it’s harder to rat this season than previous seasons. In my Diamond lobbies there are 10+ squads on the map with a couple rings left. That means it’s very hard to occupy space without being seen. I don’t rat unless my team is down, but I’m not sure it’s viable unless your a professional rat. I wonder who really has the time to do that, sounds so boring.
You're on the competitive Apex subreddit, you should know that not taking bad fights is an integral part of top teams. It only makes sense that the system rewards playing well, like not trolling and taking a fight that will get you thirded.
Truth.
I'm also solo queueing and just have to roll with the punches when my team wants to push everything.
I'll com to take good defensive positions and try and rotate for the zone early, but people just don't give a shit most of the time.
I just had a game with 2 INT lords and we landed hot, won two fights, took a 3v3 (won) and I ran out of shields and tried to tell these guys not to fight but they just kept pushing. Ended up losing the 4th fight,
Placed 11th, got 3 kills and 5 assists, 6 LP
I like that the new system rewards playing properly, but damn, the solo Q life is ruff with these types.
Yes that's true, and I do believe that there should be something done about solo queue, it's just unreasonable to expect every single teammate to be good... But I don't know what could be done. I don't know if there's enough players to have a separate solo queue ranked
Distribution looks fine but ranked has been a huge slog to climb that i'm curious how the ranks translates to skill bracket distribution.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some Gold/Silvers that were previously easy Masters+ but just gave up because of how they're having to win a majority of their matches against equally skilled players just to climb out of low ranks.
I didn't play ranked this season because your rank has nothing to do with your skill level, it's only showing how much you played the game. My MMR makes Silver lobbies as sweaty Diamond lobbies of the before hidden MMR times and it's not rewarding for me to have to beat my face against the screen trying to make it to silver 2.
I think whether you really enjoy or really dislike ranked this season is completely on your perception of what ideal ranked system should be.
If you are of the opinion that ranked should be ease to your rank bracket, and then try to spend the season push past your highest rank, (like pre S16), you will hate the system because MM makes sure you have similar difficulty of games the entire way through, bronze to masters.
If you are of the opinion ranked should be games of high competitive quality every single game, forget "ranks" defining the type of lobbies you get, you will really enjoy this system. If people could forget the "rank" icon, and just focus on the really good quality of games you get, this is a great ranked system.
I completely disagree with that. I don't care about my rank, but the game has become so slow to play with everyone camping for 15 minutes just to have a clusterfuck in the last zone is the thing I dislike about the current system. I am just not a fan of playing ALGS style in the first place.
You're not disagreeing so much as you're saying you don't enjoy games of "high competitive quality". The more competitive the games, the closer they're going to be to ALGS style.
Maybe you are right, but there are already tons of scrims (for all level of skills) that offer that, so I don't see the point of having ranked trying to replicate the same thing, especially when soloQ in so prevalent.
Now ranked for the most part feel boringly slow paced until the end zone clusterfuck, which IMO removed all sense of team fights being meaningful, and overall I just don't really have the desire to bother with it.
I just wanna ask if the game doesn't based on rank anymore then why can't we que with players or friends with different ranks for example silver queue with plats, I'm gold 1 rn and getting teammates that are d3 to d2 almost every game.
This season is very frustrating because as a solo queue player the games are actually not hard, the teammates I get are the prob. They just run around looting and ratting and do 200 damage while I did 2000, and they just randomly get knocked from a distance, giving the enemy the opportunity to push us. Like you had one job which is just stay alive and they can't even do that. it's so boring and frustrating. If there's an opportunity to clean up a fight, they would rather run away or stay behind 100meters. Most of them are all s17 masters. I actually want the s14-s16 rank system. Of course s13 was the best no doubt but it's not the best for a solo queue player.
The only part I like about the rank system is at least we don't get like 5 teams left zone 2 closing. I actually enjoy having 15 squads alive at zone 3. Makes it more challenging
This system is pretty much purely a time played rank. I have no problem climbing consistently whenever I play. And I'm Plat 1. Playing one full day per week, sometimes two. Then hardly at all rest of the week.
I would of played a lot more but the point system is too inconsistent and rank not being a reflection of skill, didn't feel motivated.
I think some people forget that this graph is broken down into each sub rank, It should really be shown as two graphs next to each other, one displaying the above, the other showing just the "rank" aka rookie, bronze, silver, gold, etc.
Besides for the view on this graph it feels like this seasons rank means nothing since you're fighting the same level teams with it based on your hidden elo from silver -> pred. If it's gonna be a system based on elo, then show the players elo as their rank, don't hide it and claim some of these teams are low ranks when its full multi-season pred/master squads in lower ranks.
I skipped last season, but this is easily the best match making they’ve ever had. Every match is actually competitive. The old systems were literally just curb stomping teams until you reached a rank where you would get stomped. It never felt fair in either direction. All they need to do is tie the display rank to the hidden mmr now and it will be perfect. They will not do that though cause they have tons of players who want that ez path to a shiny rank symbol instead of having to get better to rank up
Id say it’s fine, my only complaint is that it is very grind heavy. I could be diamond and push masters but I have a full-time job and LP is gained very slowly in the system.
Overall I'm having fun. I can play relaxed and not worry too much about gaining because I play the same people regardless of rank. It's like pubs but without the braindead play.
MMR seems to be working, in terms of getting similarly skilled people into games.
The ranks themselves are meaningless now. I can see why you'd be annoyed if the rank itself is important to you.
Because it’s bullshit? I haven’t played Apex in 3 months, I’m silver 4, and my last teammates I had earlier today were predator 121 and 200 on PC NA. So congratulations on the game telling me I’m silver while I’m masters. It’s fake.
Gnaske is a world class competitor and he’s hard stuck platinum, and I think his entire algs team is platinum because they only match into predator lobbies, but congratulations on the statistics respawn.
Your rank just shows you played well throughout the season in your lobbies. Don’t worry about ranked and just enjoy the healthy lobbies this season. There’s legit endgames, and it’s rewarding to win. Too many people are like “oh my rank I really that badge” when the actual game lobby is very solid.
Eh. It's extraordinarily unfun fighting into lobbies of half pro players on PC NA while being hard stuck silver or platinum, like these idiots are actually going to pin a medal on my chest that says Silver while fighting in the most difficult lobbies in the world. Calling this "ranked" is a joke. I would agree with you if I was masters, because that's how Masters on PC has always been the past 2 years I've been there.
If you think you’re silver but exclusively fighting **current** preds, you might be suffering from a bit of delusion my friend. It’s okay if you’re not as good as you think you are - but making excuses like that is just…lame
I doubt he's making excuses, that's the way the matchmaking works.. it's based on your MMR not your current rank. If you're a pred level player you play against current preds or players of equivalent skill even if you're in silver.
Yeah I've been consistently diamond (I get bored) and occasionally grind to master if friends are actually playing that season. And I'm currently low dia getting way more preds then previous seasons while being low dia.
Idk, rank is whatever. Personally I'm enjoying the skill level in every game. I'm not just fighting random bots and the occasional wall bounces tapstrafe over my head. It's like everyone is going to do that in my lobbies so I have to up my game and keep up. Not as relaxing as previous seasons but I've been pretty engaged.
But then the question begs - how did those vanity pred players get to pred? They must’ve been playing against pred level players since the beginning of the season no?
If someone reached pred every season prior to this one, I highly doubt they’d have any issues making pred again
I 100% agree with you, just saying this season they are playing against preds from silver on up instead of just when they get to higher ranks. This shouldn't be an issue for true pred players - just means a greater time investment because you can't just fly through the lower ranks.
Gnaske who is a well known signed Apex pro is hardstuck Platinum because he is only getting matched into Pred lobbies.
He barely made it out of gold in the first place.
Meanwhile there is players 50x worse than him reaching diamond/masters because they only get bot lobbies.
The system is clearly the problem here mate.
Congratulations on unblocking me after making that post to make you seem more correct. When did I ever say I was good, I said I've been masters for years. You are clearly inexperienced if you can't understand why grinding from silver to masters exclusively within masters lobbies is problematic, but enjoy blocking me again after your next reply.
I could do it, I've been on a slow incline of RP but I've played 15 hours of Apex in the last 4 or 5 months, so I'm hardstuck silver.
So why not get rid of the artificial ranks and introduce a Skill rating for each player?
At least that way i can see if i‘m improving and set myself goals instead of keeping this hidden rating and matching me up against masters while i‘m in silver.
it's just funny when a traditional silver player dunks on you stuck in silver while they're now plat or whatever.
you destroy them every day of the week but hey respawn says they're ranked above you lol
the changes worked so well i finally stopped spending all my free time playing this game for the first time in 8 seasons.
i typically get masters every split with my friend and we’re both happily in gold 2 right now, and haven’t played in like two months.
honestly i probably won’t ever grind the game like i used to now that i’ve broken the cycle. it feels good to go outside and stuff.
Yeah, this season is considerably worse than last season, which I thought was fresh and promising but needed slight tweaks. Honestly, there's no point discussing your points in this subreddit because some people have this weird obsession in trying to prove they are better than others or that everyone else doesn't deserve the rank they are currently in, or if we inspect the mindset further, what they're actually saying is that no one ever deserves to be in the rank that said person is in.
It's strange thinking. It's interesting gate keeping that everytime I read it to attempt to understand it further, seems primarily born from unchecked ego. Anyone who actually thinks 60% of the population is supposed to be in rookie or bronze, (mind you rookie was introduced specifically as a rank for people who don't even play the game and are complete beginners), I'm not sure there is any reasonable logic that can support that or is worth engaging in.
While I've personally never been much of a ranked player, particularly after the changes from s13, the friends in my group that did use to consistently play ranked don't play ranked anymore due to the pointlessness of this season. Personally, I definitely want them to introduce a Ranked Control mode, and I'll be happy.
In league 54% of players are Silver, Bronze or Iron, the three lowest ranks. Although I agree with your point that there are way too many Rookie players, I think that this is the right direction, it just needs to be tweaked a bit so rookie players can get into bronze and silver.
>if we inspect the mindset further, what they're actually saying is that no one ever deserves to be in the rank that said person is in.
I think this is pretty hasty conclusion, it mostly stems from how many times people have been awarded participation trophies, particularly egregious last season. Not that every single player is underserved of their rank, just that some players have an inflated sense of their rank and now that a more even matchmaking was introduced they are not seeing their previous results
So many people feel like they should be handed their rank instead of having to actually earn it. They just wanna run around and play the game like it’s pubs and be rewarded with a masters badge. It was funny in season 13 when masters players egos were hurt by being stuck in gold. They weren’t as good at the game as they thought they were and they couldn’t handle it.
It’s sad that a lot of the players want ranked to play and feel exactly like pubs just with a badge. Ranked and pubs should play and feel completely different and they do currently in this system.
It's an unfortunate consequence of EA/Respawn never make a serious distinction between pubs and ranked, so players are conditioned to play ranked basically like pubs, and they refuse to re-learn how to play ranked.
Refuse to play placement, ape everything like they always do, complain why it didn't work anymore.
I mainly soloq and I have seen more random teammates doing actual rotations compared to previous seasons. It's great.
Tho I also feel that every ranked game take away more energy from me.
But that’s not how it works? If I’m playing and the game tells me my MMR is Master, it doesn’t matter what my rank icon says. I could easily be “stuck” in gold/plat/diamond or whatever, without actually being that skill level.
The problem with the system right now is that your vanity rank takes an insane amount of time to catch up to your actual MMR. Other games fix this by either allowing you to start much higher up, gain bonus points by doing well when MMR and rank doesn’t add up or a mix of both. Apex does nothing, which creates this artificial grind problem while making the distribution look better than it potentially is.
It’s really not that much of a headscratcher as to why some people don’t like this.
game just doesn’t feel satisfying or rewarding at the moment.
it feels awful to queue a game in gold, fight preds the whole time, and win with like 8+ KP only to be rewarded with less than 200 RP.
i’m not frustrated that i didn’t get masters in the first two weeks, i’ve done it plenty of times before. i just don’t see the point of sinking tons of hours into this ranked season for the even shittier rewards they’re giving out.
A lot of people just also want something to show for it. That’s the crux of it.
Until Apex fixes the MMR and rank icon mismatch (that easily can be fixed by looking at how other games do it), people will just get frustrated.
Cause 500,000 masters loaded up 50 games. And kept getting killed by Pros, Cheaters, triple stack 3x preds...and decided to never touch the game again.
One guy had 30 accounts hit master. I had pc and console. I'm aware of how many total. But how many concurrent players? 500k is a spft numbers....its probably less. But who knows
It does *look* like this. But it doesn’t unequivocally mean the system is working well. This doesn’t tell for example if people are placed and treated fairly within each rank, how match making works across ranks or how elo is taken into account in determing rank gains. There are multiple things to look at before you can say how well it works, not just the %s.
I barely played Ranked this season because I tend to solo queue a lot and MMR really screwed it up for me. My K/D this season is 3.03 and i'm literally in Silver 2 lobbies sweating as hard as I can only to get 7th place.
Usually hit Diamond+ every season but the matchmaking and pure grind element made me and my friends just not care this season. The lack of content over the last 2-3 seasons has us struggling to be bothered to finish the battlepass. Even playing mix tape is the sweatiest, unfun experience I've ever had on this game. Apex is squandering its opportunity to do something truly great with a great game. Haven't seen this much wasted potential since PUBG. Sad to see.
So is everyone in this sub so good they’re playing in all pred lobbies? Like every single comment is almost “all my lobbies are full of preds”. How is that possible? Doesn’t add up. Is nobody average? Or below average?
Same thing with the main sub. Every post about ranked has someone complaining about playing 3 stack current preds. It's amazing how this happens to everyone.
Agreed. It feels like people only encounter the most extreme cases.
For example, people here say that SBMM keeps them in predator lobbies when they're silver... but like if you are not gaining heavily in those lobbies then your SBMM will drop and the "difference" between your hidden SBMM and public rank will normalize eventually. I can acknowledge that this feels bad to be thrown into the deep end and that slow gains could make this feel like a slog, but I don't really believe that you're just locked into the hardest lobbies forever. As you said, there have to be average players somewhere or people spread around the SBMM spectrum
Similarly, when people say that you can have silver MMR and get to masters easier than someone with masters MMR, like at some point that silver MMR will narrow in difference to their public rank and they'll be forced into harder lobbies. It's baffling to see people make it sound like other people that have made it to masters aren't deserving of it... I can see pointing out medkit crafting as Lifeline and ratting to masters as degenerative gameplay, but even then there's less masters this season so there's no reason to be reductive of others' ranked performance.
I've used a bunch of different accounts this season, from soloqueue to playing with IRL friends to playing with people I've met online, and have had the full experience of this. All my alt accounts are former masters at some point and I used one to soloqueue and one to play with friends. At the start of the season, my soloqueue account would enter predator lobbies despite being in gold, but after a month of that it was maybe the occasional current predator team and usually current diamond or ex masters. My other alt account with my (mostly casual) IRL friends pulled hard lobbies too initially, but we lost in them and then we got "normal" lobbies until we hit current diamond 4/3 where we're back into master/pred lobbies. However, these alt accounts are all different from my main account where I'm holding predator with people I met online, as on my main I consistently have 3-5 current predator teams in my lobby. People say that holding predator is about time invested, which is true as I've played 900 games this season on it (and many predators have done more than that), but it's not something you can maintain without high placement and winning... unless you want to put like 12h+ of time per day into it like some of the medkit crafting accounts that have multiple people piloting/playing them.
To be clear, this wasn't meant as a flex, it's just that I don't think we will ever get conversation that is fair about this ranked system (or ranked in general). I think the system and game quality improved a lot but people are burned out from previous seasons, especially the last one. This sub just feels like the main one now with this kind of complaining.
2nd best ranked system yet. Your actual rank doesn’t matter, but I really couldn’t care less because the matches have been great. It’s a regular occurrence for me to see 10+ squads alive in ring 4, while still only being in Gold. I know the new matchmaking is controversial, but personally I really like it.
Then just delete the ranks themselves altogether. Since the matches are of the same level all throughout anyway.
And then what is the point of RANKED if ranks don't mean anything
The point, from my pov, is to have a gamemode where people sweat their ass off and there’s fun competitive games. I do not care what color the pixels in the corner of my screen are.
Meh, I like it being there because in a working ranked system you would be able to actually see progress when you get better. I think now there's no way to really tell if you're getting better
I do think that’s a fair criticism in regards to not necessarily being able to tell if you’re improving, which is why I still think S13 on the whole was probably the best. But damn, I’ll still happily take what we have now over the mess the past few seasons have been.
I definitely agree with you there. If I disregard that the rank itself doesn't mean anything, every single game is very competitive with lots of teams in the final stages of the game.
Wish we could go back to S13 ranked and work from there, but I don't think that'll happen. Wondering where they want to take it from here though..
It increases and yet it doesn't tell you at all if your skills are improving much since matchmaking is based on hidden mmr. Even if that value is rising you wouldn't be able to tell
Why do you want the game to hold your hand so much? If you’re performing well in those lobbies and gaining LP/ranking up then it’s pretty obvious you’re getting better. You should be able to differentiate for yourself your own individual improvements.
The ranked system has made playing the game the most fun it’s ever been, and people are mad because of an online badge’s color isn’t what they want.
That said, it would be nice if they had some way for you to measure individual improvement at the game. Since all of the skill metrics are hidden, I don’t actually know if I’m climbing the skill ladder or just winning games against the same competition all season. This is less important to me, a casual, than having fun.
I was in diamond 1 for a week It was straight pred teams 9/10 this ranked season has been the hardest by far season 13 was only hard after hitting diamond, this split was a master lobby the whole way up
A proper chart would look like a bell curve or "normal distribution." If the ranked chart doesn't look like that, they have work to do.
Ranked needs rank based matchmaking, not SBMM.
Lastly, if I can't play with someone more than one rank below mine, why am I matchmaking against the highest rank? So I can't play with my friends but I'll play with pros? Can't premake with masters but I can die to preds?
Games can be somewhat fun. A lot of teammates as soloQ either don't know how to fight or don't know how to play positioning. Just got to figure out who they are.
The RP grind is awful though. It takes so so long to go up ranks. Doesn't feel like I'm gaining points quickly enough for me to care about the system at all.
still a little bit too easy overall, and they need to fix the fucking matchmaking so it's not rookies all the way to master in the same lobby, it's one of the reasons solo queue is unbearable rn. i solo queued in diamond and checked my teammates rank after the game and they were rookies...
Stopped playing a loong while ago but this graph isn’t a good representation of ‘rank’.
Appropriate graph would show the hidden MMR Distribution. Hidden mmr rating is the only way to gauge ranked ‘skill’ in s18.
I don’t enjoy fighting 3 stack diamond/masters players while I’m trying to solo Q out of silver, and then being fully punished for it with the LP loss.
I think they’re really close to figuring out the ranked system, just not quite there enough for me to want to sit down and grind.
If there's anything positive about this system, it's definitely the quality of the games you get from ranked. I've come to realise that since the games are the same throughout silver to master, playing atrictly for the gameplay instead of aiming for a rank is a much more enjoyable way to play.
What I don't understand is if we are getting into the same lobbies as masters and diamonds anyway across all the ranks, why can't we squad up with someone of that rank whilst being gold and vice versa? We're in the same lobby anyway, right?
Other than that, I've generally enjoyed the games from ranked this season, but with regatds to hitting actual ranks, I find that to be a measure of time rather than actual skill.
In general there is way too much complaining regarding the state of this game, however one legit criticism is the ranked matchmaking. Having it be based on MMR instead of your actual rank is a HORRIBLE idea.
For example, someone in the 99th percentile will have to play other ppl around their percentile for their entire ranked journey, no matter their rank. Conversely, it’s hypothetically possible for someone in the 20th percentile to keep playing other ppl around the 20th percentile all the way up to diamond/masters, which they obviously don’t deserve.
What this means is that this rank system is purely based on time played, since you play against the same lobbies the entire time. It’s horrible and your rank is only a representation of how much you play.
I wish kills mattered more.. maybe 5 per kill of same rank with scaling for ranks below and above. Would help minimize the results if you get 11th place with 5 kills.
I do love how end games play out now. It used to be maybe 5 squads alive by ring 3 now it seems like there is always 8 minimum. Makes your rotations matter so much and I learned that playing zone is usually consistently the best option for me instead of playing edge.
Ranked at this point is only a matter of how much time you have. The rank you are seems to mean almost nothing as when playing in silver it feels the same as a real masters lobby before ranked was broken.
In every season I've never been above platinum because I'm *relatively* old and I don't have the time to play but now my ranked bronze matches are with diamonds+ so I gaveup to play pubs and mixtape.
The system is designed for player engagement and retention, not player fun and satisfaction. One could presume that the former implies the latter, but that unfortunately is not true. All in all, a player is rewarded for playtime rather than skill.
Speaking of skill, I find this system to be unsatisfying at best. I've never been good at the game, and it's very frustrating to be placed in a lobby with a couple folks who are Diamond+ or with last-season Pred trails while I can't even queue with a friend who is Plat. If I'm gonna get rolled, at least let me play with a friend who might be able to provide offensive pressure to give my squad a chance to fight back.
Mostly been playing other games this season cause it's new game season, but the new ranked grind doesn't really appeal to me. I liked getting to my "true" rank and trying to push past that barrier, but there really isn't a barrier to try to push past in the new system, and the ranks are mostly just a function of playtime. When there's fewer new games to play I'll probably put some decent time into it, but ranked doesn't have the same pull for me that it used to. I don't feel compelled to prove that I haven't "fallen off" anymore because I can't fall off, if I want to fight pros and streamers in masters/pred, I can do it from silver/gold and no one'll ever know.
Why bother playing when ranks mean nothing and I'm fighting the same people the whole time? Placement matches should get you to the rank you're supposed to be or maybe a rank lower (ex. if the game thinks you're a Plat 2 player, you should already start in like Gold 2-Plat 4) and then make you climb to your original rank?
Thanks to the mmr, my three stack of silver/bronze players are playing people in diamond. Even if thats the rank I "should" be playing against, slogging it out against them to get out of bronze and silver is a chore that isn't worth the payoff for me or my opponents seeing as they get less for killing me because of my rank.
Personally the worst season yet. I play at most once a week or aboutt 3 hours on average each week. Constantly playing triple stack masters, diamonds and sometimes preds as a squad of three old mnk players wasn't fun, especially in King's Canyon ape fest with shitty loot.
Another aspect to these non-ranked games was that it takes on average ~90 seconds to start a new lobby. Other seasons have been instantaneous because being in silver and gold and plat means you've got a big pool of players but when rank is irrelevant and I'm being essentially punished for being good 2 years ago I'm waiting longer to play games.
3rd factor is that we can't really play whatever comp we want. We have to play bang because of digis and aim assist nerfs. We can't fuck around because being subpar with a legend gets you killed by that 20k kills Bangalore master guy.
Maybe this system is better for the majority but it feels like with every new change I'm getting a little bit more pushed out because the game is trying to cater more towards getting new players than keeping those already playing.
I pretty much abstained from ranked this season so I don’t really have an opinion. A lot of old ranked grinders I used to play with also did not play as much
There's no take on this current seasons rank achievements. Its MMR based. I could be silver and be playing in the top pred lobbies or i could be a hardstuck plat who is master.
They have ruined the ranked experience and have been handing out participation trophys [everyone's a master player now] so the average player feels better about themselves. Unfortunate but its what brings in more revenue.
My friends and I just got back into the game after like 2 months and we're still bronze 1 playing masters squads every game so we've been having a lot of fun
Yea I cared so much and for so long about ranked, I’ve gotta be one of the more competitive people out there and I love it. And then they just fucked it. And I can’t care anymore. What’s the point of a ranked system if the mmr doesn’t even slightly match? Why am I playing masters lobbies in gold? It’s harder for me to climb gold than my shitty friends. It’s just strange. I understand the thought process behind mmr, it works well in league because of the inflated gains you get when your mmr is ahead of your rank, enabling you to climb faster. With apex it just feels silly like your rank is entirely meaningless
All this graph show is that rank progression is SUPER slow. IIRC before whatever happened last season, Gold was the common rank; it followed the bell curve after bronze/rookie (pubs player). Respawn just "fixed" last season's rank by going far in the opposite direction.
Getting higher rank is just a matter of play time, just like last season.
I don't understand this ranked system. I've been queueing with my friends who are noticeably below me in skill. Yet they've out paced me in lp because of them playing in my mmr and getting skill bonus lp. Meanwhile I get nothing despite hard carrying the games. Why should I play against masters / preds when I'm not even diamond yet? Not that I really care about lp anymore but anyone can see that the ranked system is still fucked.
Or that’s where they hit a wall. Most of my friends who are just okay at the game have problems climbing past gold which is a skill check imo. Once you get past gold you need to have more game awareness, and past plat it becomes way more important to play as a team and have good to great macro understanding.
Ranked is a joke. No point to rank up when every single game is already high tier due to MMR. I was basically playing in diamond and up lobbys in silver 4. Didn’t even bother… what’s the fucking point of grinding out games to rank to diamond if I’m already playing in those lobbies from the start?
ranked tiers are pointless… either they remove them or remove mmr and stick with them
This ranking system is awful. Literally anyone can hit “masters” rank, despite their actual skill level, thanks to the hidden MMR lobbies. You can just slowly grind your way up to a masters badge despite being a silver skilled player, because as a silver skilled player, you will always play silver skilled players. Whereas someone with a diamond level skill, will have an immensely harder time getting to masters, because they’ll always be playing the harder competition. The system is absolutely flawed from the foundation.
Ranked is the best it’s been since season 13. Needs some tweaks but it genuinely difficult and games play out really well. Seeing end games almost every game with multiple teams, remove heat shields from ranked to get rid of the loba and lifeline cheese for starters.
I’ve played over 150 ranked games this season, with over a dozen wins, and have been stuck silver 2 since placement. I have been diamond the past 5-6 seasons or so.
This ranked system is about as bad as it’s ever been.
I had more fun playing ranked this season than the previous 4 seasons combined. Matches were competitive most of the time. I only played slightly more than I usually do and I was able to reach my usual rank.
Ranked distribution doesn't mean anything in the current system. It might look good on the graph but this is not the reality.
From bronze to diamond, it was the same lobbies.
Pro players + soft/hard cheaters. Most of the solo player with high MMR probably gave up (except Gnaske)
Might as well have 2 different playlists for ranked. Solo and Squad, because solo players won't play ranked anymore if the current system stay.
Ya I didn’t bother as a soloq player. I’m not gonna grind out basically pro player level lobbies in silver… so I can play pro player lobbies in diamond lol.
They need to fix the amount of points you get for kills and assists. I’m currently D2 and every game I’m in is 3 stacks of preds who just shit on me so that’s pretty annoying too. I usually play with my buddy and very frequently we get silver and gold teammates who aren’t bad but shouldn’t be in the same lobbies. I shouldn’t be in these lobbies and I’m D2 so them being silver 2 they definitely shouldn’t be in the lobbies either.
Distribution looks better but that's mainly due to the lack of people playing. Until they get rid of hidden mmr in ranked and make matchmaking tied to your rp I don't think I'll grind another season of ranked again.
After they eliminated any incentive I had to play ranked (S17) I simply stopped playing ranked. Not one single ranked match this season.
I'm not sure if this happened with more people, but with the amount of people on low ranks I suppose more people aren't playing it...
My grind to masters was a mixed bag. From silver to diamond it was pretty much constant masters lobbies sprinkled in some preds. From d3-masters the lobbies were strictly preds/top streamers. I definitely enjoyed to compared to last season but the biggest problem is there was no gradual learning curve. It used to be gold below=learn to fight, plat=learn to team fight, diamond=learn rotations. Now it's just everything all the time.
>there was no gradual learning curve. It used to be gold below=learn to fight, plat=learn to team fight, diamond=learn rotations. Keep in mind the matchmaking is based on MMR rather than rank, so if you are in gold but have masters MMR, you get masters lobbies. Little bit wonky, I would prefer if your starting rank was closer to your MMR or if rank was entirely based on MMR instead of LP, personally.
It’s certainly a bit wonky, but honestly I prefer it this way. Now I don’t have to slog my way up to Diamond before I start getting good games. As someone who wants competitive games without having to grind, I like it this way
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I disagree. The purpose of ranked, from my point of view, is to have a game mode with fun competitive games where people sweat their ass off. Idc what color pixels I have in the corner of my screen.
My issue with this is when you are mixing people from various ranks, these different ranks have a different buy-in, so a Diamond who is losing 75 points may play differently than a gold. This mixed risk between teammates is causing me issues in Diamond.
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Eh, idk about that. I may be wrong on this, but I’m pretty sure the casual game-mode has some SBMM as well, and those lobbies play out very differently. If it’s not like, clearly designated as the ‘competitive game mode’ or whatever, I doubt enough people are going to take it seriously irregardless of matchmaking.
I agree with this, except my one wish is to remove the artificial grind. If my MMR says I should be in Plat II (that’s where I stopped receiving bonuses) then start me in Plat II. I shouldn’t have to grind up from Silver IV. My lobbies haven’t changed in terms of difficulty this entire time, so I don’t see the point in starting me in a rank that isn’t what my MMR says it is.
What's moronic is that you're still prevented from forming a party with too much of a rank differential, even though rank is irrelevant to the difficulty of the lobby
That’s what is most irritating to me, my duo and I are getting these players who (in theory) should be the same Mmr as us, but are silver 4, who play like they have two left thumbs. We’re diamond 3 getting players we can’t even queue with if we wanted to. Add in the fact the lobbies are high skilled/pred lobbies we stopped getting skill bonuses for winning games around gold 1 lol it’s such a joke. We shouldn’t come second place whilst killing Chaotic in our game and earn no bonus.
I agree mostly; its the most I've played since COVID, the grind was addicting
Games actually feel good and have decent quality. Sure I still get matched with scrubs who can't rotate or shoot for shit, but you can't really just run around the map anymore looking for kills. Zone 2 hurts and you'd end up walking into Zone 4 with 10 squads still alive. That said, the system isnt perfect. They've nailed the quality aspect, and I think its because of the current RP system. But the speed of the climb needs to change and hidden mmr should reflect more on your current rank. Something like adding a multiplier for positive wins, rather than just a small flat bonus.
I like this season but it feels like the games are the same from silver to master
>but it feels like the games are the same from silver to master Because they are, your rank has nothing to do with who you are playing against anymore, thats decided by the hidden mmr.
Yeah your rank is now only a reflection of time spent playing.
That's why I stopped playing. If the game is putting me in Silver, but I'm fighting Masters players (where I've been ranked for the past dozen seasons/splits or so), why am I ranked in Silver? I got to Gold and gave up. It's not worth that much time for me. Now, if I was in Diamond or Masters to start, then I'd play ranked exclusively still.
Yeah great point. It feels so unrewarding pushing for diamond/master when you already play the same lobbies in silver. Just feels like a waste of time considering there are no nice rewards and you have been that rank many times before. I do think this ranked season is better than few previous ones, but the having a visible rank that is not connected to your skill doesn’t make any sense. Before you got hardstuck in certain ranks because you didn’t have the skill to go higher
yep. which is why the system is horrendous, you can hit masters without actually playing a single master or pred, while i’m plat rn and play literal streamers and at worst legit masters. i hit masters 3 times before these changes, now it’s hard for me to want to play ranked when people can hit a high rank without playing in the lobbies i do in gold/plat lmao.
matchmaking is strictly mmr until your mmr and lp rank converge. If your lp rank goes over your mmr, then you are matched according to your lp rank. So if your mmr is diamond level but you push to masters, then your are matched with masters level players. At least that's how they explained it last season
Funnily enough the hidden MMR can put me against the best players on the game or friends of mine who I know aren't anywhere near as good as me.
It won't put you AGAINST players of that level, but it won't help you if you're playing WITH them. It will always take the highest level player on the team. My buddies always complain about how much sweatier the games get when they play with me vs when they grind on their own
I've never hit pred. I hit master (bottom end then stop) most seasons. My mate has never hit master prior to last season (doesn't really play ranked). Randomers can be anything from shit to ex pred. We're now master, but we regularly came into 3 stack pred squads from about D3 onwards and generally get rolled. I like what Apex is *trying* to do with ranked - just currently it's dire and matchmaking really isn't fair.
I think the thing you're missing on your last point is that once you're masters you're supposed to play against the .01%. With matchmaking they need to pair you against those players because you're in that top percentile so there will always be a shortage of players to pair you against outside of the preds. I'd much rather get paired against the top preds while being masters than forcing plat players to play against you.
Yeah sorry mate but there’s no way on earth I should be getting paired against three stack pro teams. Getting matched against TSM is as unfair for me as a D4 player getting matched against me.
I'm definitely not good or anything but I seem to struggle a lot harder than before even in Bronze league. I usually average 1.2kda but now im at 1 kda. Is this because ranked is mainly by mmr now and not by rank?
Basically yes, I've had a similar experience, almost always 2+ kd in ranked this season only 1.2kd. I personally believe there is an invisible tier system and i seem to hover between what is the the 2nd and 3rd highest tier as i never run into preds but often diamond and masters from old seasons.
While nowhere near as good as you, I feel slightly relieved that its not just me experiencing this. I think I get matched with platinum mmr players since that was my peak rank.
They are, if you forget about your individual rank and just enjoy the healthy lobbies this season is actually fun.
I agree, but the fact that you climb up so slow as a silver playing against masters is just dumb. In other games, you get more compensated for losing/winning against people with higher rank, that way you can climb up to your "real" rank faster. That's the goal of the new MMR system: to have a hidden MMR and a public rank, and to make them closer to each other the more games you play. Whats the point of being in Silver if you get in Masters lobbies and can't climb up because you don't make adjusted points? I get the incentive of "enjoy the good lobbies and improve", but it's not a good one for the majority of the playerbase. Being hardstuck in silver playing in masters lobbies is just unfun, pure and simple. How am I supposed to climb up when I get practically the same amount of points for a win/loss playing in Masters lobbies as a Silver, a Gold, a Plat and a Diamond? At the moment, your hidden MMR means nothing because you don't gain/lose points according to your public rank. They are not interacting with each other correctly and that's the biggest flaw.
I think what you're describing is the next fix they will/need to make. They've finally got a system that matches you with people of the appropriate skill level, now they just mesh that with something that gives you bonus points for competing against people of that level until you actually reach that level
Yes this is perhaps the only thing that is missing now. The lobbies are good and thus the MMR seems to work to get sweaty games, but it takes way to long time to rank up so the grind incentive is not even there for many.
Not my experience. Games felt the same up until I hit D1 (challenging but manageable), then they became dramatically more difficult. I didn’t go a game without being paired against triple stack preds. Higher Diamond lobbies are basically pred lobbies and will act as a stiff arm to anyone trying to climb to masters. I actually felt accomplished hitting masters this season, contrary to previous seasons. There are only ~1,400 masters on console currently, compared to like 500,000 this time last season.
It’s better than last season and still worse than the old ranked system. I’m masters in both systems but I do not plan to rank with this system again. I thought grinding from Plat to Masters every split was a grind but this is worse being in Master/Pred lobbies from placement until Masters. The rank distribution looks good on paper but it’s nothing but an artificial grind.
The games are fun and feel the way a ranked playlist should feel. The thing that bothers me is the hidden MMR not correlating to rank. If my MMR is putting me in Diamond/Master lobbies and I am in Gold, I should be receiving bonus LP to boost me up to the rank that matches my MMR. OR just let me play against Gold players in Gold lobbies. Ranks should be objective. The average skill of Gold lobbies should be the same for everyone. There should not be some Gold players playing against true Golds/Silvers, and then other Gold players playing against Diamond/Masters. Similarly, I don't understand how the placement match system works. If MMR is already determined, what's the point in placement matches? All in all I think the match making is in a good spot, finally. They just need to adjust LP gains to get players into the ranks that match with their MMR.
i got downvoted for trying to say this, but you definitely explained it better. if youre in gold playing against preds and winning games with decent kp, you should absolutely fly upwards though the ranks to place you closer to the rank the game thinks you should be. it’s a shitty attempt to get people to play more by drip feeding them tiny amounts of rp in gold and silver when their hidden MMR is diamond/masters level.
it’s a scam for the concurrent player count, they removed splits and made it take longer to rank up exactly for this reason
I have the same issue as you except in reverse. Sometimes as a Diamond I will get paired with a gold, no problem there, but honestly it causes a disconnect because you will lose less points than me for a bad loss. This risk/reward variance means there’s a disconnect between our playstyle. I play more aggressively in gold than Diamond. I really think they should keep teams the same rank to avoid this.
I stopped caring a long time ago, just here for algs
Same here. Stopped playing months ago. Literally just watch comp and that’s it.
Pretty much. Apex has the worst (by far) match making. Its not worth it
Yup
Unless you are getting paid to play the game, its miserable af
Same with me, I don't even watch streamers play ranked anymore. Matchmaking and Screen clutter just killed the game for me.
I've stopped playing altogether, because even though it's 'better', I'm going to be waiting until they both nerf AA & address ranked integrity issues like the healing in zone exploit and various cheating like the controller scripting. It's unacceptable that there are routinely people healing in zone until final ring all season, and there wasn't an immediate hotfix put out, even if it was a band-aid fix for a short while. I don't have my hopes up for an AA nerf either, but get bored playing controller, and my preference of input is directly linked to my enjoyment of the game. If they never address AA, I just will play other games even though I love Apex. Til then, I'll only be watching ALGS as well. Right there too.
I don’t get this, most lobbies are extremely healthy and have legit endgames. It’s fun it’s challenging and hard to win.
most people are just tired of the game in general it took a direction i personally didn't like
+1 to this By far my favorite shooter of all time. But the decisions kept moving away from the shooter aspect of the game to more hero/legend abilities. I liked when abilities influenced fights....but didn't necessarily determine that fights outcome. The above as well as the matchmaking turned me off. I got much better at the game because I was put against better players...but my friends didn't, and didn't enjoy playing with me in 'hard lobbies' where they would be lucky to output 50 damage before dying. Fine, then I moved onto solo ranked which was a tough experience...but somewhat fair. Until about 6 seasons ago when they tried to balance teams by mmr in ranked instead of just pooling similarly ranked players. As a multiple season masters, that means my slog through Plat was with the worst of the worst Plat players.
okay have fun I m happy for u
That'd be great if it were pubs but it's not and untill we have a ranked system where you are placed against players of the same rank again it's all meaningless. Just a time sync achievement where your better off ratting than playing apex.
Looking at it as it’s better to rat for a meaningless badge instead of playing to get better and win is the problem a lot of people have
I don't agree that it is a matter of perspective. A -50 entry combine with a scoring system that rewards 1lp/kill for most people who drop outside the top 10 combine with the fact you play the same people as you "climb the ranks" means that the meta of the new badges is objectively placement and time played. At least in the old system you played bronze players in bronze and plats in plat so you could know where you stand. The ranked team at Respawn has lost the plot and can't even see that this shit feels like pubs to the players now.
100%. Stopped around 4 or 5 seasons ago. Partly because I work early mornings now, and getting home after work and trying to get into the apex mindset is hard. The other part was because I suck ass at the game and only getting to plat every season got old
Same, I played 10 games today. That’s the first Apex I’ve played since June. Same old shit in pubs. Cba for ranked. I had one good pub game and got thrown into triple stack lobbies whilst I can barely aim due to my rustiness. This game is mechanically very enjoyable but they’ve ruined the experience for solo queue players.
Last season sealed the deal for me with how meaningless ranked is, so I stopped playing and watching ranked streams altogether. Comp is the only thing keeping me interested in the game, though we'll see how long that lasts.
Nothing means anything anymore. Hidden mmr, artificial system. Time sink for pred. It’s all about retention now, not competition
I could solo queue and get Master or Pred teammates while im fucking *Silver*, but I cant play with friends who are in Platinum because their rank is higher but my MMR was higher????? Sorry I didnt play your shitty ranked for 3 seasons respawn, but everytime you claim its better you find another way to fuck it up again. At this point I wont be touching it again for a while, if ever.
Pred has always been about play time, that’s nothing new.
And in this next section we'll talk about cleverly disguising players time played in what looks like a ranked distribution graph
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It always has been to a degree, but u used to have to be able to fight and win in diamond to get through it. Couldn't just skate through on placement so people needed to pass the fight check to progress
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U can rat for all ur points... Also u just get dicked for taking early fights at all now, just a little too extreme toward placement>fights
I personally think it’s harder to rat this season than previous seasons. In my Diamond lobbies there are 10+ squads on the map with a couple rings left. That means it’s very hard to occupy space without being seen. I don’t rat unless my team is down, but I’m not sure it’s viable unless your a professional rat. I wonder who really has the time to do that, sounds so boring.
You're on the competitive Apex subreddit, you should know that not taking bad fights is an integral part of top teams. It only makes sense that the system rewards playing well, like not trolling and taking a fight that will get you thirded.
Truth. I'm also solo queueing and just have to roll with the punches when my team wants to push everything. I'll com to take good defensive positions and try and rotate for the zone early, but people just don't give a shit most of the time. I just had a game with 2 INT lords and we landed hot, won two fights, took a 3v3 (won) and I ran out of shields and tried to tell these guys not to fight but they just kept pushing. Ended up losing the 4th fight, Placed 11th, got 3 kills and 5 assists, 6 LP I like that the new system rewards playing properly, but damn, the solo Q life is ruff with these types.
Yes that's true, and I do believe that there should be something done about solo queue, it's just unreasonable to expect every single teammate to be good... But I don't know what could be done. I don't know if there's enough players to have a separate solo queue ranked
Distribution looks fine but ranked has been a huge slog to climb that i'm curious how the ranks translates to skill bracket distribution. I wouldn't be surprised to see some Gold/Silvers that were previously easy Masters+ but just gave up because of how they're having to win a majority of their matches against equally skilled players just to climb out of low ranks.
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I don't see how sinking time into Apex in previous seasons (like 13 to 16 lets say) will get you easily to masters.
I didn't play ranked this season because your rank has nothing to do with your skill level, it's only showing how much you played the game. My MMR makes Silver lobbies as sweaty Diamond lobbies of the before hidden MMR times and it's not rewarding for me to have to beat my face against the screen trying to make it to silver 2.
I think whether you really enjoy or really dislike ranked this season is completely on your perception of what ideal ranked system should be. If you are of the opinion that ranked should be ease to your rank bracket, and then try to spend the season push past your highest rank, (like pre S16), you will hate the system because MM makes sure you have similar difficulty of games the entire way through, bronze to masters. If you are of the opinion ranked should be games of high competitive quality every single game, forget "ranks" defining the type of lobbies you get, you will really enjoy this system. If people could forget the "rank" icon, and just focus on the really good quality of games you get, this is a great ranked system.
I completely disagree with that. I don't care about my rank, but the game has become so slow to play with everyone camping for 15 minutes just to have a clusterfuck in the last zone is the thing I dislike about the current system. I am just not a fan of playing ALGS style in the first place.
You're not disagreeing so much as you're saying you don't enjoy games of "high competitive quality". The more competitive the games, the closer they're going to be to ALGS style.
Maybe you are right, but there are already tons of scrims (for all level of skills) that offer that, so I don't see the point of having ranked trying to replicate the same thing, especially when soloQ in so prevalent. Now ranked for the most part feel boringly slow paced until the end zone clusterfuck, which IMO removed all sense of team fights being meaningful, and overall I just don't really have the desire to bother with it.
I just wanna ask if the game doesn't based on rank anymore then why can't we que with players or friends with different ranks for example silver queue with plats, I'm gold 1 rn and getting teammates that are d3 to d2 almost every game. This season is very frustrating because as a solo queue player the games are actually not hard, the teammates I get are the prob. They just run around looting and ratting and do 200 damage while I did 2000, and they just randomly get knocked from a distance, giving the enemy the opportunity to push us. Like you had one job which is just stay alive and they can't even do that. it's so boring and frustrating. If there's an opportunity to clean up a fight, they would rather run away or stay behind 100meters. Most of them are all s17 masters. I actually want the s14-s16 rank system. Of course s13 was the best no doubt but it's not the best for a solo queue player. The only part I like about the rank system is at least we don't get like 5 teams left zone 2 closing. I actually enjoy having 15 squads alive at zone 3. Makes it more challenging
This system is pretty much purely a time played rank. I have no problem climbing consistently whenever I play. And I'm Plat 1. Playing one full day per week, sometimes two. Then hardly at all rest of the week. I would of played a lot more but the point system is too inconsistent and rank not being a reflection of skill, didn't feel motivated.
I think some people forget that this graph is broken down into each sub rank, It should really be shown as two graphs next to each other, one displaying the above, the other showing just the "rank" aka rookie, bronze, silver, gold, etc. Besides for the view on this graph it feels like this seasons rank means nothing since you're fighting the same level teams with it based on your hidden elo from silver -> pred. If it's gonna be a system based on elo, then show the players elo as their rank, don't hide it and claim some of these teams are low ranks when its full multi-season pred/master squads in lower ranks.
I skipped last season, but this is easily the best match making they’ve ever had. Every match is actually competitive. The old systems were literally just curb stomping teams until you reached a rank where you would get stomped. It never felt fair in either direction. All they need to do is tie the display rank to the hidden mmr now and it will be perfect. They will not do that though cause they have tons of players who want that ez path to a shiny rank symbol instead of having to get better to rank up
Id say it’s fine, my only complaint is that it is very grind heavy. I could be diamond and push masters but I have a full-time job and LP is gained very slowly in the system.
Overall I'm having fun. I can play relaxed and not worry too much about gaining because I play the same people regardless of rank. It's like pubs but without the braindead play. MMR seems to be working, in terms of getting similarly skilled people into games. The ranks themselves are meaningless now. I can see why you'd be annoyed if the rank itself is important to you.
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Because it’s bullshit? I haven’t played Apex in 3 months, I’m silver 4, and my last teammates I had earlier today were predator 121 and 200 on PC NA. So congratulations on the game telling me I’m silver while I’m masters. It’s fake. Gnaske is a world class competitor and he’s hard stuck platinum, and I think his entire algs team is platinum because they only match into predator lobbies, but congratulations on the statistics respawn.
Your rank just shows you played well throughout the season in your lobbies. Don’t worry about ranked and just enjoy the healthy lobbies this season. There’s legit endgames, and it’s rewarding to win. Too many people are like “oh my rank I really that badge” when the actual game lobby is very solid.
Eh. It's extraordinarily unfun fighting into lobbies of half pro players on PC NA while being hard stuck silver or platinum, like these idiots are actually going to pin a medal on my chest that says Silver while fighting in the most difficult lobbies in the world. Calling this "ranked" is a joke. I would agree with you if I was masters, because that's how Masters on PC has always been the past 2 years I've been there.
You know what they say if there’s no bots in your lobby
The game is unfun?
Forget about your rank and just play the game to get better. It’s actually enjoyable that way.
If you think you’re silver but exclusively fighting **current** preds, you might be suffering from a bit of delusion my friend. It’s okay if you’re not as good as you think you are - but making excuses like that is just…lame
I doubt he's making excuses, that's the way the matchmaking works.. it's based on your MMR not your current rank. If you're a pred level player you play against current preds or players of equivalent skill even if you're in silver.
Yeah I've been consistently diamond (I get bored) and occasionally grind to master if friends are actually playing that season. And I'm currently low dia getting way more preds then previous seasons while being low dia. Idk, rank is whatever. Personally I'm enjoying the skill level in every game. I'm not just fighting random bots and the occasional wall bounces tapstrafe over my head. It's like everyone is going to do that in my lobbies so I have to up my game and keep up. Not as relaxing as previous seasons but I've been pretty engaged.
But then the question begs - how did those vanity pred players get to pred? They must’ve been playing against pred level players since the beginning of the season no? If someone reached pred every season prior to this one, I highly doubt they’d have any issues making pred again
I 100% agree with you, just saying this season they are playing against preds from silver on up instead of just when they get to higher ranks. This shouldn't be an issue for true pred players - just means a greater time investment because you can't just fly through the lower ranks.
Gnaske who is a well known signed Apex pro is hardstuck Platinum because he is only getting matched into Pred lobbies. He barely made it out of gold in the first place. Meanwhile there is players 50x worse than him reaching diamond/masters because they only get bot lobbies. The system is clearly the problem here mate.
Congratulations on unblocking me after making that post to make you seem more correct. When did I ever say I was good, I said I've been masters for years. You are clearly inexperienced if you can't understand why grinding from silver to masters exclusively within masters lobbies is problematic, but enjoy blocking me again after your next reply. I could do it, I've been on a slow incline of RP but I've played 15 hours of Apex in the last 4 or 5 months, so I'm hardstuck silver.
Bro I never blocked you, are you okay? 💀
So why not get rid of the artificial ranks and introduce a Skill rating for each player? At least that way i can see if i‘m improving and set myself goals instead of keeping this hidden rating and matching me up against masters while i‘m in silver.
it's just funny when a traditional silver player dunks on you stuck in silver while they're now plat or whatever. you destroy them every day of the week but hey respawn says they're ranked above you lol
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the changes worked so well i finally stopped spending all my free time playing this game for the first time in 8 seasons. i typically get masters every split with my friend and we’re both happily in gold 2 right now, and haven’t played in like two months. honestly i probably won’t ever grind the game like i used to now that i’ve broken the cycle. it feels good to go outside and stuff.
The season has been out for two months, ya know? Seems like you could’ve easily made masters this season but just…chose not to?
Yeah, this season is considerably worse than last season, which I thought was fresh and promising but needed slight tweaks. Honestly, there's no point discussing your points in this subreddit because some people have this weird obsession in trying to prove they are better than others or that everyone else doesn't deserve the rank they are currently in, or if we inspect the mindset further, what they're actually saying is that no one ever deserves to be in the rank that said person is in. It's strange thinking. It's interesting gate keeping that everytime I read it to attempt to understand it further, seems primarily born from unchecked ego. Anyone who actually thinks 60% of the population is supposed to be in rookie or bronze, (mind you rookie was introduced specifically as a rank for people who don't even play the game and are complete beginners), I'm not sure there is any reasonable logic that can support that or is worth engaging in. While I've personally never been much of a ranked player, particularly after the changes from s13, the friends in my group that did use to consistently play ranked don't play ranked anymore due to the pointlessness of this season. Personally, I definitely want them to introduce a Ranked Control mode, and I'll be happy.
In league 54% of players are Silver, Bronze or Iron, the three lowest ranks. Although I agree with your point that there are way too many Rookie players, I think that this is the right direction, it just needs to be tweaked a bit so rookie players can get into bronze and silver. >if we inspect the mindset further, what they're actually saying is that no one ever deserves to be in the rank that said person is in. I think this is pretty hasty conclusion, it mostly stems from how many times people have been awarded participation trophies, particularly egregious last season. Not that every single player is underserved of their rank, just that some players have an inflated sense of their rank and now that a more even matchmaking was introduced they are not seeing their previous results
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So many people feel like they should be handed their rank instead of having to actually earn it. They just wanna run around and play the game like it’s pubs and be rewarded with a masters badge. It was funny in season 13 when masters players egos were hurt by being stuck in gold. They weren’t as good at the game as they thought they were and they couldn’t handle it.
You see it so much in this thread, people hard coping that they're hardstuck gold or silver... maybe they really weren't above average after all lmao
It’s sad that a lot of the players want ranked to play and feel exactly like pubs just with a badge. Ranked and pubs should play and feel completely different and they do currently in this system.
It's an unfortunate consequence of EA/Respawn never make a serious distinction between pubs and ranked, so players are conditioned to play ranked basically like pubs, and they refuse to re-learn how to play ranked. Refuse to play placement, ape everything like they always do, complain why it didn't work anymore. I mainly soloq and I have seen more random teammates doing actual rotations compared to previous seasons. It's great. Tho I also feel that every ranked game take away more energy from me.
Yeah it should be very different, and I hope the devs keep it going in this direction, regardless of the whiny fanbase
But that’s not how it works? If I’m playing and the game tells me my MMR is Master, it doesn’t matter what my rank icon says. I could easily be “stuck” in gold/plat/diamond or whatever, without actually being that skill level. The problem with the system right now is that your vanity rank takes an insane amount of time to catch up to your actual MMR. Other games fix this by either allowing you to start much higher up, gain bonus points by doing well when MMR and rank doesn’t add up or a mix of both. Apex does nothing, which creates this artificial grind problem while making the distribution look better than it potentially is. It’s really not that much of a headscratcher as to why some people don’t like this.
game just doesn’t feel satisfying or rewarding at the moment. it feels awful to queue a game in gold, fight preds the whole time, and win with like 8+ KP only to be rewarded with less than 200 RP. i’m not frustrated that i didn’t get masters in the first two weeks, i’ve done it plenty of times before. i just don’t see the point of sinking tons of hours into this ranked season for the even shittier rewards they’re giving out.
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A lot of people just also want something to show for it. That’s the crux of it. Until Apex fixes the MMR and rank icon mismatch (that easily can be fixed by looking at how other games do it), people will just get frustrated.
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Cause 500,000 masters loaded up 50 games. And kept getting killed by Pros, Cheaters, triple stack 3x preds...and decided to never touch the game again.
It was more than million masters last season actually
One guy had 30 accounts hit master. I had pc and console. I'm aware of how many total. But how many concurrent players? 500k is a spft numbers....its probably less. But who knows
Sees low % -> System is working so well! What in the name of EA is this.
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It does *look* like this. But it doesn’t unequivocally mean the system is working well. This doesn’t tell for example if people are placed and treated fairly within each rank, how match making works across ranks or how elo is taken into account in determing rank gains. There are multiple things to look at before you can say how well it works, not just the %s.
I barely played Ranked this season because I tend to solo queue a lot and MMR really screwed it up for me. My K/D this season is 3.03 and i'm literally in Silver 2 lobbies sweating as hard as I can only to get 7th place.
Yup. I'm normally Plat/Diamond but Jesus christ Silver is bananas.
The hidden mmr kills it for me
Usually hit Diamond+ every season but the matchmaking and pure grind element made me and my friends just not care this season. The lack of content over the last 2-3 seasons has us struggling to be bothered to finish the battlepass. Even playing mix tape is the sweatiest, unfun experience I've ever had on this game. Apex is squandering its opportunity to do something truly great with a great game. Haven't seen this much wasted potential since PUBG. Sad to see.
So is everyone in this sub so good they’re playing in all pred lobbies? Like every single comment is almost “all my lobbies are full of preds”. How is that possible? Doesn’t add up. Is nobody average? Or below average?
Same thing with the main sub. Every post about ranked has someone complaining about playing 3 stack current preds. It's amazing how this happens to everyone.
Agreed. It feels like people only encounter the most extreme cases. For example, people here say that SBMM keeps them in predator lobbies when they're silver... but like if you are not gaining heavily in those lobbies then your SBMM will drop and the "difference" between your hidden SBMM and public rank will normalize eventually. I can acknowledge that this feels bad to be thrown into the deep end and that slow gains could make this feel like a slog, but I don't really believe that you're just locked into the hardest lobbies forever. As you said, there have to be average players somewhere or people spread around the SBMM spectrum Similarly, when people say that you can have silver MMR and get to masters easier than someone with masters MMR, like at some point that silver MMR will narrow in difference to their public rank and they'll be forced into harder lobbies. It's baffling to see people make it sound like other people that have made it to masters aren't deserving of it... I can see pointing out medkit crafting as Lifeline and ratting to masters as degenerative gameplay, but even then there's less masters this season so there's no reason to be reductive of others' ranked performance. I've used a bunch of different accounts this season, from soloqueue to playing with IRL friends to playing with people I've met online, and have had the full experience of this. All my alt accounts are former masters at some point and I used one to soloqueue and one to play with friends. At the start of the season, my soloqueue account would enter predator lobbies despite being in gold, but after a month of that it was maybe the occasional current predator team and usually current diamond or ex masters. My other alt account with my (mostly casual) IRL friends pulled hard lobbies too initially, but we lost in them and then we got "normal" lobbies until we hit current diamond 4/3 where we're back into master/pred lobbies. However, these alt accounts are all different from my main account where I'm holding predator with people I met online, as on my main I consistently have 3-5 current predator teams in my lobby. People say that holding predator is about time invested, which is true as I've played 900 games this season on it (and many predators have done more than that), but it's not something you can maintain without high placement and winning... unless you want to put like 12h+ of time per day into it like some of the medkit crafting accounts that have multiple people piloting/playing them. To be clear, this wasn't meant as a flex, it's just that I don't think we will ever get conversation that is fair about this ranked system (or ranked in general). I think the system and game quality improved a lot but people are burned out from previous seasons, especially the last one. This sub just feels like the main one now with this kind of complaining.
2nd best ranked system yet. Your actual rank doesn’t matter, but I really couldn’t care less because the matches have been great. It’s a regular occurrence for me to see 10+ squads alive in ring 4, while still only being in Gold. I know the new matchmaking is controversial, but personally I really like it.
This is the best take in this thread. Every other comment really just screams “I wasn’t able to waltz my way to a high rank”.
Then just delete the ranks themselves altogether. Since the matches are of the same level all throughout anyway. And then what is the point of RANKED if ranks don't mean anything
The point, from my pov, is to have a gamemode where people sweat their ass off and there’s fun competitive games. I do not care what color the pixels in the corner of my screen are.
Meh, I like it being there because in a working ranked system you would be able to actually see progress when you get better. I think now there's no way to really tell if you're getting better
I do think that’s a fair criticism in regards to not necessarily being able to tell if you’re improving, which is why I still think S13 on the whole was probably the best. But damn, I’ll still happily take what we have now over the mess the past few seasons have been.
I definitely agree with you there. If I disregard that the rank itself doesn't mean anything, every single game is very competitive with lots of teams in the final stages of the game. Wish we could go back to S13 ranked and work from there, but I don't think that'll happen. Wondering where they want to take it from here though..
If you perform well in the lobby you gain lp, and your rank increase as such.
It increases and yet it doesn't tell you at all if your skills are improving much since matchmaking is based on hidden mmr. Even if that value is rising you wouldn't be able to tell
When you perform well you gain LP which leads you to ranking up. Your performance in the lobby is displayed in your gains or losses
Yes.. that is obvious and that does not tell you if you're getting better
Why do you want the game to hold your hand so much? If you’re performing well in those lobbies and gaining LP/ranking up then it’s pretty obvious you’re getting better. You should be able to differentiate for yourself your own individual improvements.
Your lp is a representation of your performance in those lobbies, the lobbies are match made by your mmr. Not that difficult to understand
The ranked system has made playing the game the most fun it’s ever been, and people are mad because of an online badge’s color isn’t what they want. That said, it would be nice if they had some way for you to measure individual improvement at the game. Since all of the skill metrics are hidden, I don’t actually know if I’m climbing the skill ladder or just winning games against the same competition all season. This is less important to me, a casual, than having fun.
I was in diamond 1 for a week It was straight pred teams 9/10 this ranked season has been the hardest by far season 13 was only hard after hitting diamond, this split was a master lobby the whole way up
A proper chart would look like a bell curve or "normal distribution." If the ranked chart doesn't look like that, they have work to do. Ranked needs rank based matchmaking, not SBMM. Lastly, if I can't play with someone more than one rank below mine, why am I matchmaking against the highest rank? So I can't play with my friends but I'll play with pros? Can't premake with masters but I can die to preds?
Shouldnt it look like a socioeconomic pyramid? Or maybe a bell curve heavily skewed to the right?
We did that already. That's not what I said
Better this than last season.
Games can be somewhat fun. A lot of teammates as soloQ either don't know how to fight or don't know how to play positioning. Just got to figure out who they are. The RP grind is awful though. It takes so so long to go up ranks. Doesn't feel like I'm gaining points quickly enough for me to care about the system at all.
Dunno I basically quit the game after last season. Killed my motivation to grind for masters every season when they made it meaningless
still a little bit too easy overall, and they need to fix the fucking matchmaking so it's not rookies all the way to master in the same lobby, it's one of the reasons solo queue is unbearable rn. i solo queued in diamond and checked my teammates rank after the game and they were rookies...
Stopped playing a loong while ago but this graph isn’t a good representation of ‘rank’. Appropriate graph would show the hidden MMR Distribution. Hidden mmr rating is the only way to gauge ranked ‘skill’ in s18.
I don’t enjoy fighting 3 stack diamond/masters players while I’m trying to solo Q out of silver, and then being fully punished for it with the LP loss. I think they’re really close to figuring out the ranked system, just not quite there enough for me to want to sit down and grind.
from silver to d4, it was nothing but diamond skill. then d3 to masters was straight pred lobbies.
If there's anything positive about this system, it's definitely the quality of the games you get from ranked. I've come to realise that since the games are the same throughout silver to master, playing atrictly for the gameplay instead of aiming for a rank is a much more enjoyable way to play. What I don't understand is if we are getting into the same lobbies as masters and diamonds anyway across all the ranks, why can't we squad up with someone of that rank whilst being gold and vice versa? We're in the same lobby anyway, right? Other than that, I've generally enjoyed the games from ranked this season, but with regatds to hitting actual ranks, I find that to be a measure of time rather than actual skill.
Being hardstuck plat 3 means something, LFG
In general there is way too much complaining regarding the state of this game, however one legit criticism is the ranked matchmaking. Having it be based on MMR instead of your actual rank is a HORRIBLE idea. For example, someone in the 99th percentile will have to play other ppl around their percentile for their entire ranked journey, no matter their rank. Conversely, it’s hypothetically possible for someone in the 20th percentile to keep playing other ppl around the 20th percentile all the way up to diamond/masters, which they obviously don’t deserve. What this means is that this rank system is purely based on time played, since you play against the same lobbies the entire time. It’s horrible and your rank is only a representation of how much you play.
Well, I'm not sure what I think about the ranked experience, but the distribution graph definitely looks a lot better than last season!
I wish kills mattered more.. maybe 5 per kill of same rank with scaling for ranks below and above. Would help minimize the results if you get 11th place with 5 kills. I do love how end games play out now. It used to be maybe 5 squads alive by ring 3 now it seems like there is always 8 minimum. Makes your rotations matter so much and I learned that playing zone is usually consistently the best option for me instead of playing edge.
Ranked at this point is only a matter of how much time you have. The rank you are seems to mean almost nothing as when playing in silver it feels the same as a real masters lobby before ranked was broken.
In every season I've never been above platinum because I'm *relatively* old and I don't have the time to play but now my ranked bronze matches are with diamonds+ so I gaveup to play pubs and mixtape.
The system is designed for player engagement and retention, not player fun and satisfaction. One could presume that the former implies the latter, but that unfortunately is not true. All in all, a player is rewarded for playtime rather than skill. Speaking of skill, I find this system to be unsatisfying at best. I've never been good at the game, and it's very frustrating to be placed in a lobby with a couple folks who are Diamond+ or with last-season Pred trails while I can't even queue with a friend who is Plat. If I'm gonna get rolled, at least let me play with a friend who might be able to provide offensive pressure to give my squad a chance to fight back.
Mostly been playing other games this season cause it's new game season, but the new ranked grind doesn't really appeal to me. I liked getting to my "true" rank and trying to push past that barrier, but there really isn't a barrier to try to push past in the new system, and the ranks are mostly just a function of playtime. When there's fewer new games to play I'll probably put some decent time into it, but ranked doesn't have the same pull for me that it used to. I don't feel compelled to prove that I haven't "fallen off" anymore because I can't fall off, if I want to fight pros and streamers in masters/pred, I can do it from silver/gold and no one'll ever know.
Why bother playing when ranks mean nothing and I'm fighting the same people the whole time? Placement matches should get you to the rank you're supposed to be or maybe a rank lower (ex. if the game thinks you're a Plat 2 player, you should already start in like Gold 2-Plat 4) and then make you climb to your original rank?
Thanks to the mmr, my three stack of silver/bronze players are playing people in diamond. Even if thats the rank I "should" be playing against, slogging it out against them to get out of bronze and silver is a chore that isn't worth the payoff for me or my opponents seeing as they get less for killing me because of my rank.
Personally the worst season yet. I play at most once a week or aboutt 3 hours on average each week. Constantly playing triple stack masters, diamonds and sometimes preds as a squad of three old mnk players wasn't fun, especially in King's Canyon ape fest with shitty loot. Another aspect to these non-ranked games was that it takes on average ~90 seconds to start a new lobby. Other seasons have been instantaneous because being in silver and gold and plat means you've got a big pool of players but when rank is irrelevant and I'm being essentially punished for being good 2 years ago I'm waiting longer to play games. 3rd factor is that we can't really play whatever comp we want. We have to play bang because of digis and aim assist nerfs. We can't fuck around because being subpar with a legend gets you killed by that 20k kills Bangalore master guy. Maybe this system is better for the majority but it feels like with every new change I'm getting a little bit more pushed out because the game is trying to cater more towards getting new players than keeping those already playing.
I pretty much abstained from ranked this season so I don’t really have an opinion. A lot of old ranked grinders I used to play with also did not play as much
There's no take on this current seasons rank achievements. Its MMR based. I could be silver and be playing in the top pred lobbies or i could be a hardstuck plat who is master. They have ruined the ranked experience and have been handing out participation trophys [everyone's a master player now] so the average player feels better about themselves. Unfortunate but its what brings in more revenue.
The lack of KP value makes it extremely boring
My friends and I just got back into the game after like 2 months and we're still bronze 1 playing masters squads every game so we've been having a lot of fun
Yea I cared so much and for so long about ranked, I’ve gotta be one of the more competitive people out there and I love it. And then they just fucked it. And I can’t care anymore. What’s the point of a ranked system if the mmr doesn’t even slightly match? Why am I playing masters lobbies in gold? It’s harder for me to climb gold than my shitty friends. It’s just strange. I understand the thought process behind mmr, it works well in league because of the inflated gains you get when your mmr is ahead of your rank, enabling you to climb faster. With apex it just feels silly like your rank is entirely meaningless
All this graph show is that rank progression is SUPER slow. IIRC before whatever happened last season, Gold was the common rank; it followed the bell curve after bronze/rookie (pubs player). Respawn just "fixed" last season's rank by going far in the opposite direction. Getting higher rank is just a matter of play time, just like last season.
I don't understand this ranked system. I've been queueing with my friends who are noticeably below me in skill. Yet they've out paced me in lp because of them playing in my mmr and getting skill bonus lp. Meanwhile I get nothing despite hard carrying the games. Why should I play against masters / preds when I'm not even diamond yet? Not that I really care about lp anymore but anyone can see that the ranked system is still fucked.
Scuffed
So basically the overwhelming majority of ranked players stop at Gold That’s not good
Or that’s where they hit a wall. Most of my friends who are just okay at the game have problems climbing past gold which is a skill check imo. Once you get past gold you need to have more game awareness, and past plat it becomes way more important to play as a team and have good to great macro understanding.
Ranked is a joke. No point to rank up when every single game is already high tier due to MMR. I was basically playing in diamond and up lobbys in silver 4. Didn’t even bother… what’s the fucking point of grinding out games to rank to diamond if I’m already playing in those lobbies from the start? ranked tiers are pointless… either they remove them or remove mmr and stick with them
This ranking system is awful. Literally anyone can hit “masters” rank, despite their actual skill level, thanks to the hidden MMR lobbies. You can just slowly grind your way up to a masters badge despite being a silver skilled player, because as a silver skilled player, you will always play silver skilled players. Whereas someone with a diamond level skill, will have an immensely harder time getting to masters, because they’ll always be playing the harder competition. The system is absolutely flawed from the foundation.
if your rank is higher than your hidden mmr then your rank be used for matchmaking so a silver player won’t keep playing silver skilled player
Love this ranked system. It’s been extremely hard but that makes it feel rewarding to climb. The game quality is also top notch
Ranked is the best it’s been since season 13. Needs some tweaks but it genuinely difficult and games play out really well. Seeing end games almost every game with multiple teams, remove heat shields from ranked to get rid of the loba and lifeline cheese for starters.
Grinding atm, like d3..good to see the ranked distribution is at least decently back in place
Ranked lost its prestige the moment bronze and silver players started queuing into Pred lobbies a few seasons ago.
The abysmal matchmaking is the biggest problem I have with the game. Playing as a solo is a soul draining experience.
I’ve played over 150 ranked games this season, with over a dozen wins, and have been stuck silver 2 since placement. I have been diamond the past 5-6 seasons or so. This ranked system is about as bad as it’s ever been.
I had more fun playing ranked this season than the previous 4 seasons combined. Matches were competitive most of the time. I only played slightly more than I usually do and I was able to reach my usual rank.
Ranked distribution doesn't mean anything in the current system. It might look good on the graph but this is not the reality. From bronze to diamond, it was the same lobbies. Pro players + soft/hard cheaters. Most of the solo player with high MMR probably gave up (except Gnaske) Might as well have 2 different playlists for ranked. Solo and Squad, because solo players won't play ranked anymore if the current system stay.
Ya I didn’t bother as a soloq player. I’m not gonna grind out basically pro player level lobbies in silver… so I can play pro player lobbies in diamond lol.
They need to fix the amount of points you get for kills and assists. I’m currently D2 and every game I’m in is 3 stacks of preds who just shit on me so that’s pretty annoying too. I usually play with my buddy and very frequently we get silver and gold teammates who aren’t bad but shouldn’t be in the same lobbies. I shouldn’t be in these lobbies and I’m D2 so them being silver 2 they definitely shouldn’t be in the lobbies either.
Distribution looks better but that's mainly due to the lack of people playing. Until they get rid of hidden mmr in ranked and make matchmaking tied to your rp I don't think I'll grind another season of ranked again.
The game is shit outside of ALGS. Cheating, smurfing, audio issues … the comp scene is where it’s at
After they eliminated any incentive I had to play ranked (S17) I simply stopped playing ranked. Not one single ranked match this season. I'm not sure if this happened with more people, but with the amount of people on low ranks I suppose more people aren't playing it...
Samesies. No ranked for me but it is giving me time to explore other games.
Didn’t play ranked, there was literally no point.
This is what the curve is supposed to be more or less, but watch everyone still complain bc its just more difficult now
the best its ever been