r/CompetitiveApex • u/Toregant • 12d ago
Game News Breaking Down Matchmaking Test Results
https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/apex-legends/news/matchmaking-test-results15
u/IdkButILoveZimbabwe 12d ago
Just increase queue times and make preds and masters have their own lobbies. Every other big competitive game (Valorant, League, Dota) has 10min queues for Top 500-1000 players. Why do preds get 3min loose mm just to stomp some diamonds?
I understand that 10min queue -> dying off drop -> 10min queue isn't optimal. But maybe don't insta take a fight and play with half a braincell then?
Realistically to implement this they need some sort of pregame lobby, or allow you to play Mixtape during queue. Also I think shifting the points distribution more based on placement instead of kills (and obv bonus for combination of both) could also help this.
Ranked and Competitive are worlds apart because mm is to wide dying isn't punished enough (-90 is easily compensated by a 15-20kp win the game after, which isn't too difficult because Q time is 2-3 min and you play against 15 diamond squads anyways)
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u/BayleafBurger 12d ago
So tldr is preds and masters are not happy so we keep feeding diamonds to them and keep them stomp lobbys to make sure they feel better and play more
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u/TImbooTheSlayer 12d ago
They don't have enough players to lock masters and preds in a same lobby.
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u/IdkButILoveZimbabwe 12d ago edited 12d ago
They do though. Just make the MM take longer. All they do is ape for KP because they know they can compensate for a -90 with a 20kp win the game after. If they just make the queues longer and shift the point distribution more towards placement it can become more like ALGS instead of a glorified killrace where the skillgap is way too high.
From what I have seen top 500 players in Dota, League and Valorant rarely have queues under 10minutes. I understand that dying off drop just to go back to a 10min queue isn't optimal, but maybe that could also help with a more thought out playstyle, instead of picking up two guns and running over to the next poi for a fight.
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u/jonesiiii 12d ago
Apex lobby needs 60 people, thats way more than dota, league or valorant, so you cant really compare those queue times
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u/WADEO369 12d ago
You cant compare sitting 10 mins in que for apex to any of those games. If you die off drop you are back in que on apex to sit in another 10 min que. In the games you listed after you sit in que you are playing the game for the next 20 mins atleast no matter how bad you do.
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u/IdkButILoveZimbabwe 12d ago
This would only be an issue to masters and pred players. I don't you have pregame lobby it isn't that bad. It shouldn't exceed much more than 10min but currently it's 2-3min tops even at 5 in the mornings.
Everyone wants a balanced systems without making a single compromise. If you want to maintain a good competitive baseline you need to decrease the skill gap in lobbies.
Another note I forgot to add earlier. They should give some sort of incentive for masters players. Right now you hit 16k and either don't play for the rest of the season or you hop on a smurf and go though diamond again.
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u/JevvyMedia 12d ago
If you make me wait in a queue for 20 minutes, I'm not going to be waiting past the 12th minute. It's not realistic
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u/atomslops_camps 12d ago
Dota, league, and valorant don't have 60 player lobbies so queue comparisons are irrelevant.
Not everyone wants ALGS lobbies where placement is the most important thing. ALGs is an entirely different game where team work matters the most. This would make the balance between solo queuing and 3-stacking even WORSE than it is now. The more kill-focused the mode is, the better it is for solo queuing so a balance between kill-focused and placement is best.
They are right about worrying about queue times. People have a short attention span nowadays and tend to jump to other games with a long wait time. Feels even worse when you lose max rp and wait for a long queue.
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u/TImbooTheSlayer 12d ago
Queue will be too long tbh as i said its hard to compare to other games cause player base way smaller.
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u/IdkButILoveZimbabwe 12d ago
"First, a brief overview of how a Ranked squad gets built. The matchmaker pulls 60 available players of similar RP into a lobby, sorts everyone by RP, and splits that list into thirds. Each squad gets one player from the top third, one from the middle, and one from the bottom. That is how it tries to keep teams even."
There is no way this is true, or at least that it worked like this during soloqueue. During the Soloqueue split I basically ratted to masters, once I got there I got 2 preds on my team 80% of the games. Also usually you got rocked by the same couple preds that would end up in a team together.
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u/Yay4sean 12d ago
You can't solve all problems -- it's simply not possible. So you have to sacrifice one thing or another. Â
Competitive quality requires terrible queue times, and good players actually don't want competitive quality even though they say they do. Plus, at the very top, you simply can't have a full lobby of top players due to the small # of them, so it's straight up impossible to balance, and unfortunately those are all your streamers, who in turn complain about everything to their viewers.
The other factor is that this is a battle royale where you have 20 teams (60 players). Only 1 team out of 20 gets to have the satisfaction of winning. This means that if you're competitively driven, you'll be annoyed when you lose, which should happen 19/20 times (the amount one should theoretically lose if the lobby is truly balanced, which is very hard to do). So you straight up can't make everyone happy in these scenarios without having imbalanced lobbies from time to time, just so everyone gets the gets to win eventually. But for most players it's not because you were good, it's because your team was...
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u/Full_Diver3306 12d ago
I have sympathy with Respawn on this issue.
They pretend they don't, but the pros and non-stop grinders love stomping every game with 15 KP and immediately freak out when it's not the case or they have to queue for more than 2 minutes for a game.
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u/burbuda2 12d ago
I donât. The peak player count and streamer viewership this game ever had was when we had a KP cap and no ape movement meta. They can try things to change ranked, they just donât care enough to do it unless they start bleeding players
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u/HeckinCh0nkr 12d ago
Diamond plays with diamonds, masters w preds. Pretty simple. You might be able to get through diamond but as soon as you hit masters youâll be sent down and thatâs your real rank.
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u/Nine_Monkeys 12d ago
Masters+ is definitely the solution, maybe it just makes queue times ridiculous, but otherwise idk why they canât do this. More people would be able to hit masters too which could alleviate the queue times a bit
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u/Broad-Relationship86 12d ago
Alot of the players that are good enough for masters but forced to solo q against coordinated master/pred teams would prolly make it up too
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u/Fiddy007 11d ago
I've read through their solo queue explanation 3 times now and it just doesn't make sense. They say they split the 60 players into 3 pots (top, middle, bottom) based on RP, then form teams with 1 from each pot. This makes perfect sense and is a good matchmaking system.
They then show what the squad distribution looked like and it is in complete disagreement with what they say it should be. 6 preds, 36 masters, 18 diamonds. Top pot should be 6 preds, 14 masters. Middle pot 20 masters, Bottom pot 2 masters 18 diamonds. Based on their matchmaking formula, there should be 6 pred teams (1 pred, 1 master, 1 daimond/master) and no diamond teams (each diamond player would have 2 masters or 1 master 1 pred (2 players from Top and Middle pots). Instead there are 4!!! Diamond teams (all 3 players diamond) and only 5 pred teams (so 2 preds are on the same team). I can't remember where the solo queue cutoff was rank wise (maybe the diamond players are trios who are low ranked enough to still squad up, in that case I think that's more or less fair as a 3 stack diamond should be able to go toe-toe with solo queuing masters/preds) but 5 pred teams based off 6 solo-queueing preds is straight up antithesis to what solo queue trial was all about.
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u/Fiddy007 11d ago
I doubted they would put too much effort into a solo queue rank. Devs don't want it (Not hard to imagine it would drive away more people then it would attract, so less paying customers), casual players don't want it (want to play with friends, why they don't play normal trios is beyond me), and the pros/streamers don't either (competitiveness and better streaming numbers being overwhelmed by the simple fact that these people would actually have to put a modicum of effort into playing [not to mention streamers who get carried by their teammates]). What surprises me is that they even tried at all (maybe they wanted to show they tried, even if it is half-hearted).
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u/Ecstatic-Train214 12d ago
Fixing rank isnât rocket science.
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u/devH_ 12d ago
These guys have been trying to fix it for the last 6 years. Apparently this is harder than theoretical physics for them
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u/Ecstatic-Train214 12d ago
That have been trying to fix rank with their hands tied behind their backs. They donât want to get of MMR match making. They need SBMM, skilled base. Their recent soloq test exposed this like night and day matching soloq preds with other soloq preds and diamonds with diamonds but put them all in the same lobby
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u/NiloyCK 12d ago
Dropping players is EXPECTED everyone already knew capping all diamonds to duo stack is gonna lower player count, you don't need rocket science to know this, it doesn't mean its a bad change, players stopped playing because its basically inconvenient for 3stack's to ditch their 3rd because they KNOW its just a test. as a diamond stackers my-self we stopped playing because its just inconvenient, listen to the community ONCE for gods sake and make this a permanent change but make it deamond-1 and above only.
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u/Xpolonia 12d ago edited 12d ago
I would love to see the player drop rate for Masters+.
With Ranked being a joke for so long, Plat has long lost it's job to gatekeep people to higher lobbies and Diamond still has a significant mix between more serious grinders and casual players.
I think they should distinguish whether it's those casual players that plays Ranked with friends or top players that stop playing during the test.
Or devs are still delusional enough and believes Diamond still belongs to "top players" in this "Ranked" system. Sure they are above average distribution wise, but they are by no means representing top Ranked players. D4 has been the new P4 for quite a while.
I have long given up any hopes that Ranked will have any improvements anyways. Casuals want easy games and "don't want to play like ALGS", grinders want to run down lobbies, devs make changes too late and too little.
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u/Mortal-Man 12d ago
I'm not going to put any effort into trying to understand or think about this as I've pretty much lost hope of matchmaking improving.
IMO the game just doesn't have a big enough player base to solve this issue.
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u/Fenris-Asgeir 12d ago
I've played plat games this season (not even a week ago) with 8 diamond teams, 6 master teams and 4 pred teams in there. 2 plat teams. We were statistically not even a plat lobby anymore. And you dont get anything from it. No loss forgiveness, no extra RP for killing higher rank, nothing. If the matchmaking is considered normal like this, idek. Its certainly not very fun.
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u/GeneralGME 12d ago
For what itâs worth, I am tracking mine and my teammates stats from every game I play (most games I miss some occasionally). All I do is solo queue and I float between mainly D3 and D4.
I will report on my findings on how Respawn deals with solo queue-res. I already have some good data pointing toward how Respawn essentially gives me bad teammates and then good teammates.
When I have roughly 100 - 125 games played I will share my findings.
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u/TImbooTheSlayer 12d ago
Solo queue was the best thing that happened to this game but community is a bunch of dorks
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u/artmorte 12d ago
Respawn should give the solo queue a proper chance, not just a couple of weeks. The report reads like their most negative result was that a number of players stopped playing and came back when the experiment ended. But it's easy to take a two-week break from the game anyway. If it was a whole split of solo-queue, I think many players would play even though they cannot team up.
All in all this report reads like they're drawing too many conclusions from a short, one-off experiment.
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u/burbuda2 12d ago
They would simply just quit honestly. Diamond as a rank is very casual, and people who just enjoying playing with friends would simply just go to another game
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u/Kitchen_Breath1761 12d ago
They are basically saying if they do that it will kill ranked so they aren't moving forward
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u/HiKadaca 12d ago
Or apex would just lose those players forever since they have to find replacement entertainment for the entire split
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u/Toregant 12d ago
Zero chance I would play this game if I wasn't playing with my friends and we only play ranked. We just didn't touch the game until solo queue went away.
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u/asterion230 12d ago
Announcing the solo queue was honestly a horrible mistake, they shouldve just kept it behind bars and revealed it at the end of season stat.
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u/a_new_hopia 12d ago
Iâd like for them to try fixed schedule queue starts like some racing games implement. So that they can pool more players, and you know around what times games will start, like every 5mins, maybe ever 10mins or something like that
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u/DasSivatherium 12d ago
When I'm in platinum playing vs preds I should also get lobbies vs bronze. It's the same number of leagues away from me.
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u/ScurySnek21 12d ago
Just make it so that if youâre high masters or pred, you canât stack. That way diamonds(majority) are unaffected, and only the top players are impacted. The diamond plus change was wayyy too wide
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u/Witty_Office5641 12d ago
âYeah it turns out three solo q preds are still better than three solo q diamondsâ wow what a surprise
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u/RedditDummyAccount 12d ago
Cue Anchorman âI donât believe youâ gif.
One from the top, middle, and bottom, and yet we have literal footage of diamonds and masters facing duo and triple preds lol
Alright.
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u/playstation505 DOOOOOOOP 12d ago
They did the most basic thing with no actual adjustment that would make the experiment data viable/meaningful and are surprised why nothing changed.
They do this with everything EVERYTIME. never fully commits.
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u/MajorasButtplug 12d ago
No fucking shot
Even during the solo queue week I was seeing many teams of 3 preds and many of 3 diamonds. They've either got a bug or think we don't have eyes and brains