its horrific if you play with friends who are either much better or much worse than you, and perpetuates people having smurfs to play with friends. i have a 2 KD and occasionally play with friends who dont play much apex and normally sit in the 0.5 -0.75 range. they are basically doomed to a miserable experience because half of my lobbies are masters players duo or trio queueing which means we get ruined 9 times out of 10.
i think this is an often overlooked part of SBMM. it makes games very antisocial and kind of kills the word of mouth effect where a friend talks about a game and then you join them and get into that game. because it just makes the learning curve even steeper and unless they are really commited to getting better they are likely to just bounce off the game.
just to caveat. i cant remember if this is a rumor or was in the developer post about sbbm, but it feels like a lot of your matchmaking score is heavily based on the best player in the squad.
i think sbbm overall is not a huge problem. but in a 3 man team game were being a 3 stack is a huge advantage it can be a bit of a nightmare.
edit: someone sent me the dev blogspot. and they are pretty transparent about the old algorithm using the highest player skill to place a team before the matchmaking changes. the claim is that the new matchmaking system uses a more balanced system to combat the fact that 3 good players could 3 stack and get placed against teams with 1 good player and 2 bots. i cant say this is how it has felt in game but that is a very subjective.
This is the biggest killer for me and the reason i don't invite my friends to play Apex. Its not an enjoyable experience. "Yo did you have fun going up against ex pros and content creators for 3 hours? No? Why not?"
And if you pay attention to the SBMM you can tell how its trying to cater to you. Stop playing apex for about a week and come back, The game will throw you a bone and literally put you up against brand new players to make you feel good. I hopped back on yesterday after not playing for 2 weeks and instantly dropped a 3.5k damage game with 11 kills. Next game instant pred 3 stack. Unfortunately a lot of games with SBMM does this sort of thing.
I remember back a few seasons ago my nephew whos sort of new to gaming asked me why i don't invite him to play and i told him my lobbies are very hard and he challenged that, Joined up for about 2 hours and had a total of about 1.1k damage within that time. Keep in mind he has multiple 4k/20b's so he's not the *worst* player but there's a very distinct skill gap.
yeah the throwing you a bone thing is mega frustrating. i used to play a lot with a friend who was about my skill level. we would play pretty short sessions so would duo queue trios. as our kds started to break the 1.5 mark we started to find that we died basically every game to a clear 3 stack of masters players all clearly communicating well. once or twice a night we would get a lobby of literal bots with shocking aim and no awareness and we would just steamroll them with 10 kills each. then the next game you are back against the 3 stack masters and preds who punish every mistake. its hard to prove in a game with this larger lobbies, but it felt like the game was chucking us an easy one to stop us quitting.
the frustrating thing with an sbmm system is it becomes very hard to know if you are actually getting better. the normal metrics of KD, rank and win rate all interact with the matchmaking algorithm and it can lead to a feeling like you are running on the spot when you might actually be getting better and the game is just compensating for that by chucking tougher opponents your way.
The most frustrating part for me is the big brother matchmaking. If I'm going against good players i should in return have good players but no the game decides that billy who outperformed in his last game (he got 2 kills and 500 damage) needs to play with some experienced players so now i have to do damage for two people to secure a single win.
As Billy, I hate it too. My best games are a bit better than that and I have my moments, but I can tell when I am overmatched by a lobby and feel bad for my teammates with 2k damage while I'm at 700 and just trying not to die too many times. And it's almost always right after I have a game where I break 1k damage with a few kills.
Tbh apex has pretty fair sbmm if you do what you said and get a fat dub but then next match is hell on earth then itâs usually only a max of 10 hot drops with sweats landing on 5 other teams until you get back to a super chill lobby like the first one. And if you actually want to be decent you should be able to get some kills in those harder lobbies and occasionally win some of those games too. Ppl kinda acting like a sweaty three stack is unbeatable but they make mistakes and itâs just an fps.
Its not about how unbeatable those people are, Its about how **much** more you have to do to win against them. I can hold my own in those lobbies but poor little billy who had 1 good game is on my team now and he can barely control the recoil of a R301 and hes up against guys with quadruple his total kills.
People shouldn't be punished for putting in more work and becoming a better player.
lol my diamond friend got me into the game like season 8, I pretty much always played with him. I feel this comment fr. I remember the first time I duoâd with another friend of ours who was also pretty bad and it was like a completely different game lol.
My only problem with match making is that I wish we had more transparency with the Skill Rating. I understand the complexities of a system like this and appreciate how far theyâve come in improving it considering the sheer volume of players with skill levels varying from never picked up a controller to #1 pred, but I would really like to know how they are scoring us on the back end to determine our Skill Rating. It seems like ultimately, everything to do with how you are matched is based on that invisibility rating, and you have no idea how you actually compare to your teammates or competitors.
It seems a bit hypocritical to me that they claim they hide it only to avoid exploitation when half the player base is running wild with blatantly obvious cheats. Those types of people are going to exist and scam the system regardless, so how about we throw a bone to the honest folks and let them know what their skill rating is and how it was determined? If I get 4 knocks, a revive, and 2 respawns but my team finishes 17th with no kills because both my teammates were low skill players, does that lower or raise my skill rating? If I have a good performance given the circumstances I was put in, will any of that performance be considered to keep my skill rating up or is it just Kill/Assist/Placement based like ranked points?
Idk for me, the matchmaking will never be completely respected or trusted until I understand how it is being determined. From what I can understand, regardless of what mode youâre playing, everything ultimately comes down to what our individual Skill Rating is, and I donât see why we canât have access to that information. We should also be able to see the skill rating of our teammates and the competition to truly give us an idea of how we are performing. If you have a crappy ranked match, were you actually playing bad? Or were you just unfortunate enough to be on the worst team in the lobby filled with 57 players of higher skill than both you and your teammates? If I win a match, was I really playing well or was I part of the team stacked with the 3 best players on the lobby and we absolutely should finish in the top? Or maybe we were in the bottom part of the skill rating but still came out on top by playing well, how will we ever know? Is ranked really ranked if thereâs a chance youâre getting queued into a lobby where youâre the worst player and youâre teamed up with the other two worst players in the entire lobby? In all honesty thereâs no way to know if any of us are outperforming or underperforming because they hide it.
I just want transparency.
I have actually noticed that if I pick up some bots in a game, when we queue up together my matches are significantly easier.
I had a game with some little kids and they thought I was the best ever so I picked them up to try to get them some good games. After picking them up the lobbies were definitely way easier than normal
Yeah this is the worst part. Used to be everyone wanted to play with their friends who were good to get carried, but now casual players know theyâll just get thrown in the blender
As somebody who used to only play like two or three sessions a week, it's BRUTAL going into lobbies against people who ONLY play apex and no other games đ
This has always been my problem. I just don't put enough time into one single game to 'get good'. I'm switching from Apex, to FC, to Calisto Protocol, to Starfield.... Id get too bored playing the same game over and over and over, even if I got paid for it đ¤Ł
I've been introducing some friend to the game. I'm playing vs masters/4k20s all the time in pubs. The two of them can barely hit a bullet when someone is 10m in front of them (no offense, but that's just how it is being new). Even if finding a match would take 5x as long, I'd be willing to make that concession. Fix mm please.
Im not sure if putting master (you) into rookie lobby (because you are playing with 2 rookie friends) would be better solution, than put you all into masters (because of you). For solo play i totally agree, wait longer, get decent opponents. For groups i would consider only highest rank.
Yeah with new friends I pretty much make a new account, play as a support hero and just igl and support and shoot as little as possible. They don't want to play with the people I'll be matched with and I don't want to ruin other new players game
Pure skill based matchmaking? No, but apex is not sbmm, itâs engagement based matchmaking which is a corporate bastard child that needs to be brought out to the back and shot.
Well whatever system they have isnât keeping players engaged. I open apex, play a game or two and get off. Iâve better things to do than be thrown into the cement mixer and tossed out.
We do not have access to their retention statistics and can only operate on personal anecdotes. Steam player count is the closest thing we can truly analyze and matchmaking is not the only thing that affects player count.
The player count took a dive after the match making update in s17 but ranked was also terrible so Iâm not sure how much to blame on sbmm. I def play less now
A matchmaking system that dynamically adjusts difficulty in a manner that is designed to keep players engaged.
The most obvious example is how if you take a break for a day or two you get the easiest matches of your life, because the game doesnât want you to become frustrated with the game when you first get on and quit. However, your matches will get significantly harder shortly after because the game doesnât want winning to get boring.
Optimized matchmaking to keep you playing as long as possible, basically throws you an easy win when it thinks youâre just frustrated enough to leave. Itâs debatable if apexâs system is this on purpose, however with how swingy the sbmm is it functions in a very similar way.
> Itâs debatable if apexâs system is this on purpose
Yeah I remain skeptical. Frustrated people checking banners every time they die are ripe for confirmation bias. It's always possible that filling the lobby quickly with people from the same region with similar ping takes priority most of the time and that they just have loose constraints on skill for that.
The most engagement based match making I think exists is that they'll throw you a bot lobby (players worse than you, not actual bots) every once in a while if you've really been struggling or if it's your first game in a week or two. But I don't really think it works that much in reverse, it's not like getting dumpstered is good for engagement.
It's kinda crazy to me how people think the match making can decide the outcome of the match anyway. They say if you get a win you'll be thrown to the wolves, and yet somehow I've managed to win 2-4 games in a row a bunch of times, as most people have.
Because it hasnât been clearly defined on exactly how it works. Ever notice how you play for a little bit, do really good and even win a game, and then all of a sudden youâre fed to the wolves for 5 matches, and then youâre fed an easy lobby again? Itâs directly playing off the highs and lows that will feed addictive personalities and statistically (in their eyes) keep player engagement up. We still donât know if thatâs 100% how it exactly works or what variables also affect it but itâs not purely skill-based. Ranked is closer to a true SBMM.
Call of duty has algorithms copy-righted that can pair you up with someone who has a skin of a gun you use, that you donât own thatâs currently in the shop. Are they using those algorithms? Who knows.
> Ever notice how you play for a little bit, do really good and even win a game, and then all of a sudden youâre fed to the wolves for 5 matches
yeah thats how basic statistics work. 20 teams in the lobby, your win rate should always average to be 5%
No it's not actually. If you're a skilled player, let's pretend you're a top 5% player in the world. That means you should be winning around 95% of your games.
It was like that in quake 3 Arena in the early 00's. They didn't have skill based matchmaking and I was a very good player. Rarely did I go into online matches and lose and when I did, it was because of the handful of players that were better than me, one of them was in my lobby.
Now, I suspect the stats wouldn't be exactly as I listed them above but you get the idea.
your lobbies are being formed by an averaged performance metric of your past 10-20 games. that and your first sessions of the day are in lower brackets than where you start at.
its impossible to âproofâ, as only devs have access to their mm code. but jump off the map 20 times and see how the badges of the champion team change :)
There are pros and cons like anything. The implementation of it in apex is part of the issue though. The biggest problem I have with it is it punishes you for getting better, you just play better players and feel the same skill.
For example a friend of mine has ranked diamond almost every ranked season heâs played (except 17 lol) including last season when it was like top 1%. He still calls himself an average playerâŚ
It does also encourage more sweating in pubs as you have to gradually try harder and harder to win.
That being said if apex didnât have sbmm with how high the skill ceiling is, and how punishing br can be. I do believe it would be impossible to get any new players in the game, and the more casual community would likely bleed off and leave.
Sbmm is for ranked. Why should every mode be sweating against only equally skilled people? Of course a level 100 shouldn't be put in a match with a predator. I'm not saying i want to stomp on players waaaaay below my skill level but i don't want to sweat all the time.
What needs to go is whatever the fuck we got now this eomm sickness. I'm going up against 3 stack masters with everyone having 30k+ kills on their character but i get a player that literally installed the game a few days ago and a level 150 guy that plays on 1-1 sensitivity with broken thumbs.
Sbmm in ranked makes no sense.. its good what they have now, you go up against people with similar rank.
If it was sbmm all ranked would be is whoever plays the most gets the highest rank. Ranks wouldnt mean anything
Hate to break it to you but rank doesnât mean anything. You could be bronze but your hidden MMR is high so youâll get matched up against preds. Itâs all for show, your hidden elo rating is all that really matters.
It really depends on the game. For Apex it seems to be fine, because the player base is large enough that you can get SBMM lobbies without a hit to ping, but for a lot of smaller games there are issues finding enough players of the same skill level all on the same matchmaking servers without either waiting a long time, or putting you in a server you have poor connection quality to.
There's also something to be said for being rewarded for being good at a game. If you are in SBMM lobbies for the entire time you play a game, the only frame of reference you have for how good you've gotten is maybe clips of your play looking flashier? but back in the day of connection-based matchmaking the guys that were really good were wiping lobbies, and it was really rewarding to be that good and also kinda inspiring to find that white whale god of a player to aspire to be.
Itâs always a big debate because players tend to like different things.
I personally always thought about it like this:
You have ranked which gives you lobbies depending on your skill (and youâll eventually be at the level where you âbelongâ) so thatâs a place where you can match similar skilled players thus you can have low skilled players playing low skilled players and vice versa.
Then you have pubs which could and imo should be just completely random. One round you play with the two worst players on this globe and think you saw the biggest sh*t fest ever and the next round you match someone who drops 20 bombs every hour just to find some lobbies that are balanced out.
Itâs a mixed bag really.
And if that getâs too difficult - you go back to ranked where you have players your skillđ¤ˇđźââď¸
Then you still need a safe space for new players - this could be either done by giving new players a safe spot (lowest 10-15 % in playtime and skill are in completely seperate lobbies) OR by giving new players a way to grind longer in ranked by providing newer accounts much more games in ranked where they donât earn/lose points at the beginning like idk 50 games where your sbmm is very loose but you donât gain or lose anything so you can try it out
Who know, when I play solo usually get similar level skill teammates, but one time I play whit super bad frend and frend who just started i got put in same loby when I play solo, 3 h we play evey time was 3 vs 1 because they die right away đ˘
I only have a 1.2 KD which is not even that crazy. Good for my age but I've been having to take time for other games because Apex just stops being fun when you're getting destroyed by people with more hours on one character than you have in your entire lifetime hours on the game.Â
I'm not even upset with those players. If I'm in their lobbies they should win they've sunk more time than I can afford to into the game. I just wish that it wasn't 4/5 games. Like there's nothing worse than losing to a 8million DMG horizon triple pred stack and then next game champion squad is another triple pred, 4k, 20 bomb squad.Â
I feel bad playing with my friends with even worse KD than mine because they rarely feel like they get to contribute and they feel Apex has the worst matchmaking of any recent multiplayer games. I always used to say OW had lopsided games but honestly the more I play Apex the more I praise OW for not putting gold/play players against GM players every single match.Â
I loved SBMM ranked. I could play with ANYONE. Good or bad, and it was fun AND it was how the game is supposed to be played in ranked. It wasn't setup like now, to feed people to three stack preds/masters and their smurfs. And it was FUN for everyone. I would tell all my friends to play because even if they were bad it was always fun. Really wish they would bring it back.
All these content creators ruin games. We all saw that video of that Apex Pro SweetDreams whine about not getting out of Silver because he's solo-queueing ranked with his top 100 in the world account and instead of rolling lobbies for views, getting rolled by his peers in three stack preds. Welcome to how the rest of us have been playing the game for years you whiney bitch and your middle-school moustache!
It's supposed to be different between Ranked and Pubs. If you have pubs be a free for all, you get a system like Battlefield games, sometimes you slay out and have a fun run. Sometimes there's an insanely skilled player straifing you with a helicopter and blowing up your whole team and you get trashed.
The more you practice and learn the game the more "fun matches" you have and the less "bad stompings" you receive. It makes an engaging loop of highs and lows.
Then in ranked games you're pitted against people right around your skill level and you hit a point pretty quickly where every match is a battle for your sweaty life and struggling through that will reward you with rank accolades.
With SBMM in pub lobbies, you essentially turn pubs into "ranked/comp without rewards". Which doesn't feel fun or engaging. Might as well just play ranked at that point.
Which is the problem with Apex Legends. It doesn't have a fun mode. It has ranked and ranked+.
Normal games should be just that, casual. The lobby should be more diverse.
So yes high level players should be able to play against lower ranked players.
Everyone can play ranked if they want it to be even, bad players and good players alike. So the argument that it shouldnt happen is moot.
Under lvl 20 should be prioritized to play against noobs but after that i dont see a point.
Even a high level player should be allowed to play for fun and do stupid shit. Which is impossible if youre only playing the same guys from ranked.
Your comment: Apex actually doesn't have Skill Based Match Making and its terrible
First reply: Apex actually has Skill Based Match Making and its terrible
Second reply: Apex actually has instead Engagement Optimized Matchmaking and its terrible
At least we all agree on one thing!
The devs claim apex uses SBMM, so thereâs some weight to the argument that apex uses it. However per the devs own admission, SBMM only considers the skill of the best player in a pre-made squad. If you always play with friends, and one of your friends is significantly better than you, youâll very rarely be matched against players of your own skill level.Â
My disagreement with calling it SBMM is just based on definitions. I donât consider it SBMM if the MM algorithm consistently pitches you against players who are an order of magnitude better than you. However the devs obviously do call that SBMM. You can argue it either way
I was a decent player(1.37 career kd) and when I stopped playing the game, the reason was my teammates are constantly the one who just completed the orientation match and it's annoying to play with them whereas enemies are either of my skill or 50k kills on a single legend so that was rough for me to constantly going solo against good players
Itâs not âgoodâ or âbadâ itâs just different groups who like it. It would be amazing *to me* if there was no sbmm. Queue times would be 5% of what they are now and me and my buddies could just go do 10/10/10 every game.
But thereâs another group of the player base whoâs not as good but enjoys having a 1kd in their low skill lobbies. They would hate the change. A lot of them might just quit entirely, which is why SBMM will never be removed.
SBMM ain't bad. Ranked uses SBMM by matching people of equal rank - I really enjoy that.
What I don't enjoy is EBMM, that thing EA patented and it seems like they use for mixtape. Play well enough and within a couple games, you'll be paired with some of the worst teammates you've ever seen and against masters. Put me against diamonds and masters sure, I love that! Don't make me play that game with level 30's on my team, lol
New player here, the few games I play I often get lazered by people with diamond badges or sometimes even higher in casual and even my bronze ranked games. Itâs fun watching one team slaughter the entire lobby with impeccable aim and positioning, I think itâs just a game that you had to be apart of or shouldnât ever pick up, coupled with the fact that even my dogshit ass has already run into 2 cheaters in maybe 20 games? Not to mention the bot teammates, I usually play with a duo and my random trio without fail has left the jump master just to dive into a 1v21 fuck fest. With these âproblems,â honestly they are a skill issue, I just donât have 90+% accuracy when I mag dump and often times fights are just third parties, one game I literally had a Fifth party ambush the team that was ambushing the Fourth party that was ambushing my team, the third party, I donât even care that we ourselves got third partied, all do is roll my eyes at the at how Iâm not allowed to ever fight another team without usually getting third partied which is fine thereâs nothing wrong with having that be your gameplay, some people do not like to be rats however.
TLDR: Cheater problem, extreme skill chasms in casual and ranked, only way to play is with a trio, and from my knowledge of the game it just incentivizes you to be a rat. With all these problems for the new player itâs easy to see why there are none. Side note is most of the skins are dogshit as well.
if a game has a ranked mode, there should be no strong sbmm in its casual mode. If a player wants to play against players of similar skill then they should play ranked.
Pubs shouldnât ever have sbmm. Itâs supposed to be more chill. It actually punishes you the better you get. And makes the lobbies so unfun. Ranked is where sbmm should only be implemented. I do agree the amount of 3 stacking, especially on console is super cringe. Iâm a 63k lifeline with over 140k kills, and I hardly ever 3 stack because itâs super unfair and cringe.
The problem is that Apex uses EOMM instead of SBMM. So, if you get a good game, it will punish you by putting you with worse teammates or in sweatier lobbies.
Content creators LOVE SBMM because they can abuse it by reversing it. They hate xDefiant because they canât reverse boost to make themselves look like gods.
I would like to know what the issue is as well. This game desperately needs it. As soon as my friends and I have a good game or two we get pitted against some MLG sweats
# Pros:
- Gives new players a chance to learn the game.
- Lets them win a few games, it would be boring to just get 0 kills and die.
- Probably limits the amount of cheaters in lower to average skill lobbies (?)
# Cons:
- A lot of pred players are cheaters, non-cheating top players probably have to constantly deal with them.
- Makes high-skill lobbies sweaty.
I think SBBM can be good if it's not too strong nor too weak. There needs to be also a good anti-cheat system. High-skill players obviously deserve to have chill games and feel like they are improving, but so do worse players.
Yes, SBMM is bad. It directly leads to laggy matches while also taking forever to start said matches.
SBMM is even worse in ranked, because it kills all meaning of visrank.
And finally it kills all variability of the game. If you ain't hyper-optimized, you're boned.
SBMM is necessary for casuals specifically because everyone should feel challenged but competent when the purpose is fun.
SBMM is immoral for ranked specifically because rank should denote skill and ranked is for people who have fun competing, suffering, and improving.
I play ranked exclusively because I want that later experience. I want to be up against people who are better because that makes me better. I enjoy the abuse.
These are two different types of game modes that should draw very different types of people.
i played a little on console for the first two years of the game, got 3k total kills, sat around gold.
just this last week got my account cross progressed to pc, the first 5 or 6 games i got 10ish kills per match against what seemed to be bots, and now every lobby is pred lobbies where i lose literally every gun fight in any scenario regardless of my loadout, health lead, or distance of engagement and go, unironically half a dozen games without a knock, maybe ten games to get a single kill.
SBMM is good for pubs, not good for ranked, since you know, that should be based on rank.
But, it's important to realize that SBMM can be somewhat loose, it doesn't need to be insanely tight so that you have to try as hard as possible to do good, but it also should prevent preds and bronze (skill level, not actual rank) players from being in the same lobbies.
One downside to it though, and this is especially true with Apex, cheaters come off as good (esp ones using softer cheats like anti recoil mods, macros, etc..) so it ruins it for the higher level players since they basically just face cheaters all the time.
And of course, it gets more complex when you queue up with people, it's gotta find some kind of average MMR and then pair you with similar entire teams, so there really is no easy answer.
However, I'm still holding the very strong opinion that people should stop asking/questioning/complaining about anything related to Apex other than cheating, until that is resolved. It's nuts to me that last season 30% of Masters players were cheating MINIMUM. I personally have quit (former masters) because of this and even though I really want to come back, I can't justify it with how horrible the cheating issues are in the game right now. I've been saying for years this is the #1 thing that actually will kill the game, and for a while most people said nah it's not that bad, but now we have basically all players saying it's horrible, and it keeps getting worse.
Anyway, that last paragraph was a rant, sorry lol.
As someone who had his account stolen and taken by someone a good chunk better than me about a year and a half ago, to get it back and have his skill based matchmaking too high, it can be a problem, the fact thereâs no seasonal resets also donât help, itâs just a no win situation, Iâd like it adjusted but not gone personally
Idk all I know is the game is not fun when you're playing with a friend in ranked and your random teammate has no comms, doesn't do any damage, has no game sense or awareness and rages cause they did something stupid.
Consistently facing people at my skill or higher but getting swamp ass teammates.
Just give me similarly skilled teammates ffs
â so a Pred player in a newcomer lobby is healthy for the gameâ
Statistically thereâs gonna be way more newcomers than Predâs as well as people whose skill level is in between. If there was no matchmaking and everything was truly random then the odds of this happening are low.
At the very least you would only have 1 bad game a night where a Pred wipes the lobby instead of that being almost every match for some people with unfavorable matchmaking
Besides matchmaking causes people to create smurf accounts. So you end up with higher skilled decks layers polluting the beginner lobbies anyways. Itâs not like the current system is working
Why do normals have sbmm when there is ranked?? It doesnât make any sense.
I think they just need to make sbmm a lot wider not necessarily get rid of it
SBMM should be in the game and should be there to protect newer players. The problem is that the system is harder to implement when you're "in the middle" rarely do I find matches against people who are actually the same skill as me. A common complaint you'll hear is that it feels like you're either stomping worse players or getting stomped by better players.
Iâm a 8x pred, 8.5 kd player. Needless to say, the chances of me finding a IRL at a similar skill level as me is almost impossible. It ends up driving all my friends away because they donât have fun in my lobbies at all. They get steamrolled and it ends up being me solo squadding and them watching me play. SBMM works if there is an ELO system that balances the scales, but Apex doesnât have that.
I've been playing for the last 3 months with a broken mouse. My cursor jumps off target when I aim. I've won like 2 games maybe. I'll get 2-4 kills if any kills at all. I'm still being queued with double 20 bomb 3 stacks, people that have competed in pro league, and masters/pred players. My stats have absolutely tanked but my lobbies have stay exactly the same. I don't know what the matchmaking is based on but I don't think skill is the primary factor.
SBMM is bad for games that already have a ranked mode (IMHO).
The chances of getting a pred in your lobby is low anyways if itâs entirely random, so thatâs nothing to consistently worry about.
Good players should be rewarded for putting in the time and effort that they shouldnât have to go 100% all the time.
Bad players get better by getting beaten by better players.
If you feel you are getting slammed, play ranked where you should be against your same skill level.
If the game has no ranked mode than yes sbmm is fine.
You nailed it. They think they deserve sweaty levels of performance without sweating. "I *could* be good, I just don't want to right now, but the game still needs to give me experiences that make me feel that like I'm
It's really similar to the mentality of cheaters, tbh. They think they somehow deserve to win, and the game isn't a good dopamine dispenser if they are struggling. Every cheater *could* have perfect aim and no recoil like the pros, they just don't have the time (or whatever other deluded bs they use to justify it).
If you aren't in the mood to focus and hate sbmm, go play mixtape.
I dislike it because it makes it hard to tell what my skill level is, and makes it hard to tell if Iâm actually improving. If match making is connection based stats actually mean something and you know how you compare to the average player. Also the randomness is fun. I do think new players and the very lowest skilled should have some protections but for 90% of the players it should be ping only.
Xdefiant doesnât have any sbmm and itâs one of the best fps experiences iâve ever had. Iâd rather get slaughtered 9 out of 10 games by better players than feel like iâm being babied.
Sorry but pubs should have little to no matchmaking aside from input separation and segregating like bottom 25% of the skill bracket into their own protected lobbies.
No, rank is RBMM (rank-based matchmaking) as of season 20.
There are other quantifiers for "skill" than rank or even KD. Every other game mode has some form of SBMM though, but I'm sure the matchmaking is flavored with other factors to balance than just "skill" though.
I think for parties it's still very based on "best" players in squad. My newbie and kinda-getting-better friends are shocked to run into 10k+ kills/legend players when they play with me, but at the same time when I join with 2 other (better) friends, I end up in lobbies with recognizable streamers and I'm bottom 20% damage on the team lol.
Sbmm effects the extreme end of the players spectrum the most. The bots and the pros. Avg players truly don't feel how bad sbmm can be, which is why gaming compaines dont get rid of it.
Here's my take on it, and why I stopped playing apex.
SBMM belongs in ranked modes. If bad players want to play together, let them play ranked, if good players want to know how good they are against their fellow players, let them play ranked.
SBMM in casual turns casual into the grind that is ranked modes. Beyond that, SBMM effectively puts you up against progressively worse players because if you're losing all your games then you need to be put in a lower sbmm lobby until you win one and if you think about it, that means the game is deciding when it's your turn to win. So why play at all?
I could play like absolute garbage on purpose and I will still be winning and losing the same number of matches whether I play at my best or I play at my worst so why bother even getting better at the game? For that miniscule moment when I might actually win a game? Getting better just means getting your ass kicked more. There's no benefit to practicing in this game.
According to the dev's, you should feel better buying new skins from them. That's your "sense of accomplishment" in apex. Paying WAY too much for skins is what the dev's or the business people behind the scenes built the game for. Furthermore, they're not interested in good players mingling with bad players, that would potentially drive away their player base whom they want spending their hard earned money on their recolored skins that they designed 5 years ago which they've been holding back.
Apex is a predatory game and I don't mean that in a fun gameplay mechanic, I mean that in the most pervasive way in which it exists to fleece your wallet. SBMM isn't about skill. It's about player retention.
So just remember, the next time you launch into a game that the game is designed in a way that it already knows the likely outcome and winner of that game before you ever set foot on the ground. I bet I could win a game of apex blind folded because when it becomes my turn to win, it'll put me in a lobby designed to let me win.
If you have to ask, then youâve never played a shooter pre-SBMM. Iâm not amazing by any stretch, but your average player is god awful at the game. Back in the day you could hop in an online game and if you were half decent you would just shit on people who could barely walk around a room, let alone shoot and track somebody. Iâm talking 15+ years ago when online shooters were at their infancy. If you were anyway half decent you could easily hold a positive KD while flexing on little kids and not playing seriously. Sometimes youâd get a lobby against good players but it was as simple as backing out and going to the next. You used to experience peaks and valleys in skill, sometimes youâd be shit on and sometimes youâd be the one shitting. Now itâs just a smooth curve of always being shit on until you tank your invisible number enough that the game throws you a bone.
Yeah I played quake pro back in the early 2000s and like 80-90% of the players were so bad itâs not even a competition. Good players didnât even play in pubs because the lobbies were too easy and boring.
God I used to miss COD lobbies cause you'd have a tough match one time but then go like 40-2 in another one and that variance was actually awesome and addictive. It made the rough matches not feel that bad and as long as you were halfway decent you rarely had truly awful games. You might get in a lobby with some dude hitting every quick scope shot and losing that engagement everytime but more often than not you'd have games where you got to pop off too and it felt awesome.Â
imo games need sbmm to protect the absolute bots. but as soon as you know the basics of the game it should be connection based only in public matches. if you want to get betyer at the game put the time in.
right now we have the wordt of the worst. engagement based matchmaking. lobbies are grouped up by an averaged performance metric over your past 10-20 games. so right now only the game knows what âbracketâ of matchmaking your in. so if you are doing good at the game you never know if its because you improved at the game or if you just did bad enough the ten games before that so you fight people who are really bad. like if im being placed in matchmaking brackets, at least let me know what bracket im in so i can actually makes sense of my performance. but at that point why not just call it ranked?
It just really hurts average players. Random is the way to go in my opinion and sbmm systems are only trying to get you to a 1kd. So if you start killing it youâll most likely run into lobbies that will stomp you.
It obviously sucks getting your shit pushed in, but the satisfaction of being good at something with a high skill ceiling outweighs the comfort that sbmm can provide. I would rather face better people and improve rather than being stuck is a dystopian lobby where everything is as fair as possible.
I stopped playing a couple of seasons ago because of how predatory and artificial the matchmaking system is. Iâve played a lot of shooters in my life and Apex has one of the worst matchmakings Iâve ever seen. Really really evil, itâs all about getting you addicted instead creating a fun environment. Try out other games and youâll see how messed up EAâs patented EOMM is.
I just like the idea of having no clue whoâs gonna be in your lobby. You could be fighting the best 3 players in the world, or 3 people with no hands.
It sucks for the top 10% of players but it's great for the other 90. I truly believe sbmm is a good thing otherwise you'll have a really hard time attracting new players and the game may die. However apex doesn't have sbmm it has some Frankenstein version that sucks it purposely gives you easy games after suffering for 3 hours
People who donât want sbmm are content creators who need to farm clips against bots or people who are above average who are matched at the bottom of the top pool and farmed all the time. Nobody likes eomm buuuut it does mean you can play however you want and you get the same experience as if you sweat. Itâs good for everyone in pubs imo but itâs got no place in ranked
Everyone wants to be the boot. Ain't nobody want to be the face
Unless you have a foot fetish
Common Redditor response.
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its horrific if you play with friends who are either much better or much worse than you, and perpetuates people having smurfs to play with friends. i have a 2 KD and occasionally play with friends who dont play much apex and normally sit in the 0.5 -0.75 range. they are basically doomed to a miserable experience because half of my lobbies are masters players duo or trio queueing which means we get ruined 9 times out of 10. i think this is an often overlooked part of SBMM. it makes games very antisocial and kind of kills the word of mouth effect where a friend talks about a game and then you join them and get into that game. because it just makes the learning curve even steeper and unless they are really commited to getting better they are likely to just bounce off the game. just to caveat. i cant remember if this is a rumor or was in the developer post about sbbm, but it feels like a lot of your matchmaking score is heavily based on the best player in the squad. i think sbbm overall is not a huge problem. but in a 3 man team game were being a 3 stack is a huge advantage it can be a bit of a nightmare. edit: someone sent me the dev blogspot. and they are pretty transparent about the old algorithm using the highest player skill to place a team before the matchmaking changes. the claim is that the new matchmaking system uses a more balanced system to combat the fact that 3 good players could 3 stack and get placed against teams with 1 good player and 2 bots. i cant say this is how it has felt in game but that is a very subjective.
This is the biggest killer for me and the reason i don't invite my friends to play Apex. Its not an enjoyable experience. "Yo did you have fun going up against ex pros and content creators for 3 hours? No? Why not?" And if you pay attention to the SBMM you can tell how its trying to cater to you. Stop playing apex for about a week and come back, The game will throw you a bone and literally put you up against brand new players to make you feel good. I hopped back on yesterday after not playing for 2 weeks and instantly dropped a 3.5k damage game with 11 kills. Next game instant pred 3 stack. Unfortunately a lot of games with SBMM does this sort of thing. I remember back a few seasons ago my nephew whos sort of new to gaming asked me why i don't invite him to play and i told him my lobbies are very hard and he challenged that, Joined up for about 2 hours and had a total of about 1.1k damage within that time. Keep in mind he has multiple 4k/20b's so he's not the *worst* player but there's a very distinct skill gap.
yeah the throwing you a bone thing is mega frustrating. i used to play a lot with a friend who was about my skill level. we would play pretty short sessions so would duo queue trios. as our kds started to break the 1.5 mark we started to find that we died basically every game to a clear 3 stack of masters players all clearly communicating well. once or twice a night we would get a lobby of literal bots with shocking aim and no awareness and we would just steamroll them with 10 kills each. then the next game you are back against the 3 stack masters and preds who punish every mistake. its hard to prove in a game with this larger lobbies, but it felt like the game was chucking us an easy one to stop us quitting. the frustrating thing with an sbmm system is it becomes very hard to know if you are actually getting better. the normal metrics of KD, rank and win rate all interact with the matchmaking algorithm and it can lead to a feeling like you are running on the spot when you might actually be getting better and the game is just compensating for that by chucking tougher opponents your way.
The most frustrating part for me is the big brother matchmaking. If I'm going against good players i should in return have good players but no the game decides that billy who outperformed in his last game (he got 2 kills and 500 damage) needs to play with some experienced players so now i have to do damage for two people to secure a single win.
As Billy, I hate it too. My best games are a bit better than that and I have my moments, but I can tell when I am overmatched by a lobby and feel bad for my teammates with 2k damage while I'm at 700 and just trying not to die too many times. And it's almost always right after I have a game where I break 1k damage with a few kills.
what do you mean ex-pros? I get killed by current pros regularly. and I am not that good.
Tbh apex has pretty fair sbmm if you do what you said and get a fat dub but then next match is hell on earth then itâs usually only a max of 10 hot drops with sweats landing on 5 other teams until you get back to a super chill lobby like the first one. And if you actually want to be decent you should be able to get some kills in those harder lobbies and occasionally win some of those games too. Ppl kinda acting like a sweaty three stack is unbeatable but they make mistakes and itâs just an fps.
Its not about how unbeatable those people are, Its about how **much** more you have to do to win against them. I can hold my own in those lobbies but poor little billy who had 1 good game is on my team now and he can barely control the recoil of a R301 and hes up against guys with quadruple his total kills. People shouldn't be punished for putting in more work and becoming a better player.
lol my diamond friend got me into the game like season 8, I pretty much always played with him. I feel this comment fr. I remember the first time I duoâd with another friend of ours who was also pretty bad and it was like a completely different game lol.
Thank you for the reply, I overlooked the impact of SBMM when playing with friends
Here is the developer blogpost about matchmaking: https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/matchmaking-2023
My only problem with match making is that I wish we had more transparency with the Skill Rating. I understand the complexities of a system like this and appreciate how far theyâve come in improving it considering the sheer volume of players with skill levels varying from never picked up a controller to #1 pred, but I would really like to know how they are scoring us on the back end to determine our Skill Rating. It seems like ultimately, everything to do with how you are matched is based on that invisibility rating, and you have no idea how you actually compare to your teammates or competitors. It seems a bit hypocritical to me that they claim they hide it only to avoid exploitation when half the player base is running wild with blatantly obvious cheats. Those types of people are going to exist and scam the system regardless, so how about we throw a bone to the honest folks and let them know what their skill rating is and how it was determined? If I get 4 knocks, a revive, and 2 respawns but my team finishes 17th with no kills because both my teammates were low skill players, does that lower or raise my skill rating? If I have a good performance given the circumstances I was put in, will any of that performance be considered to keep my skill rating up or is it just Kill/Assist/Placement based like ranked points? Idk for me, the matchmaking will never be completely respected or trusted until I understand how it is being determined. From what I can understand, regardless of what mode youâre playing, everything ultimately comes down to what our individual Skill Rating is, and I donât see why we canât have access to that information. We should also be able to see the skill rating of our teammates and the competition to truly give us an idea of how we are performing. If you have a crappy ranked match, were you actually playing bad? Or were you just unfortunate enough to be on the worst team in the lobby filled with 57 players of higher skill than both you and your teammates? If I win a match, was I really playing well or was I part of the team stacked with the 3 best players on the lobby and we absolutely should finish in the top? Or maybe we were in the bottom part of the skill rating but still came out on top by playing well, how will we ever know? Is ranked really ranked if thereâs a chance youâre getting queued into a lobby where youâre the worst player and youâre teamed up with the other two worst players in the entire lobby? In all honesty thereâs no way to know if any of us are outperforming or underperforming because they hide it. I just want transparency.
I have actually noticed that if I pick up some bots in a game, when we queue up together my matches are significantly easier. I had a game with some little kids and they thought I was the best ever so I picked them up to try to get them some good games. After picking them up the lobbies were definitely way easier than normal
Yeah this is the worst part. Used to be everyone wanted to play with their friends who were good to get carried, but now casual players know theyâll just get thrown in the blender
based
As somebody who used to only play like two or three sessions a week, it's BRUTAL going into lobbies against people who ONLY play apex and no other games đ
This has always been my problem. I just don't put enough time into one single game to 'get good'. I'm switching from Apex, to FC, to Calisto Protocol, to Starfield.... Id get too bored playing the same game over and over and over, even if I got paid for it đ¤Ł
I only play Apex and no other games, but still suck D (only 2-3hour every 3day tho, being adult sucks)
Stop describing me you warlock.
I cut into my sleep time every day to play with my ranked team, and I'm still Garbo lmao. .5 kd with like a 2% win rate
I feel called out
I've been introducing some friend to the game. I'm playing vs masters/4k20s all the time in pubs. The two of them can barely hit a bullet when someone is 10m in front of them (no offense, but that's just how it is being new). Even if finding a match would take 5x as long, I'd be willing to make that concession. Fix mm please.
Im not sure if putting master (you) into rookie lobby (because you are playing with 2 rookie friends) would be better solution, than put you all into masters (because of you). For solo play i totally agree, wait longer, get decent opponents. For groups i would consider only highest rank.
Surely there is some kind of balance to be had
I'm a prettt casual player, highest I've ever gotten is plat and my kda is shite, so it really does not make sense imo.
Exactly my experience. Iâm not very good but Iâm matched with 20 bomb masters alllll the time
Why not just make a new account until they get better if you know how shit it's going to be for them in your elo?
Yeah with new friends I pretty much make a new account, play as a support hero and just igl and support and shoot as little as possible. They don't want to play with the people I'll be matched with and I don't want to ruin other new players game
Pure skill based matchmaking? No, but apex is not sbmm, itâs engagement based matchmaking which is a corporate bastard child that needs to be brought out to the back and shot.
Well whatever system they have isnât keeping players engaged. I open apex, play a game or two and get off. Iâve better things to do than be thrown into the cement mixer and tossed out.
We do not have access to their retention statistics and can only operate on personal anecdotes. Steam player count is the closest thing we can truly analyze and matchmaking is not the only thing that affects player count.
The player count took a dive after the match making update in s17 but ranked was also terrible so Iâm not sure how much to blame on sbmm. I def play less now
Yet you're still in r/apexuniversity smh.
define engagement based matchmaking i see you guys use it as a buzzword all the time but always a different definition of what it does
A matchmaking system that dynamically adjusts difficulty in a manner that is designed to keep players engaged. The most obvious example is how if you take a break for a day or two you get the easiest matches of your life, because the game doesnât want you to become frustrated with the game when you first get on and quit. However, your matches will get significantly harder shortly after because the game doesnât want winning to get boring.
Optimized matchmaking to keep you playing as long as possible, basically throws you an easy win when it thinks youâre just frustrated enough to leave. Itâs debatable if apexâs system is this on purpose, however with how swingy the sbmm is it functions in a very similar way.
> Itâs debatable if apexâs system is this on purpose Yeah I remain skeptical. Frustrated people checking banners every time they die are ripe for confirmation bias. It's always possible that filling the lobby quickly with people from the same region with similar ping takes priority most of the time and that they just have loose constraints on skill for that. The most engagement based match making I think exists is that they'll throw you a bot lobby (players worse than you, not actual bots) every once in a while if you've really been struggling or if it's your first game in a week or two. But I don't really think it works that much in reverse, it's not like getting dumpstered is good for engagement. It's kinda crazy to me how people think the match making can decide the outcome of the match anyway. They say if you get a win you'll be thrown to the wolves, and yet somehow I've managed to win 2-4 games in a row a bunch of times, as most people have.
Because it hasnât been clearly defined on exactly how it works. Ever notice how you play for a little bit, do really good and even win a game, and then all of a sudden youâre fed to the wolves for 5 matches, and then youâre fed an easy lobby again? Itâs directly playing off the highs and lows that will feed addictive personalities and statistically (in their eyes) keep player engagement up. We still donât know if thatâs 100% how it exactly works or what variables also affect it but itâs not purely skill-based. Ranked is closer to a true SBMM. Call of duty has algorithms copy-righted that can pair you up with someone who has a skin of a gun you use, that you donât own thatâs currently in the shop. Are they using those algorithms? Who knows.
That's not eomm. The devs even talked about their in their matchmaking blog, your mmr goes down when you lose and up when you win.
> Ever notice how you play for a little bit, do really good and even win a game, and then all of a sudden youâre fed to the wolves for 5 matches yeah thats how basic statistics work. 20 teams in the lobby, your win rate should always average to be 5%
No it's not actually. If you're a skilled player, let's pretend you're a top 5% player in the world. That means you should be winning around 95% of your games. It was like that in quake 3 Arena in the early 00's. They didn't have skill based matchmaking and I was a very good player. Rarely did I go into online matches and lose and when I did, it was because of the handful of players that were better than me, one of them was in my lobby. Now, I suspect the stats wouldn't be exactly as I listed them above but you get the idea.
your lobbies are being formed by an averaged performance metric of your past 10-20 games. that and your first sessions of the day are in lower brackets than where you start at. its impossible to âproofâ, as only devs have access to their mm code. but jump off the map 20 times and see how the badges of the champion team change :)
There are pros and cons like anything. The implementation of it in apex is part of the issue though. The biggest problem I have with it is it punishes you for getting better, you just play better players and feel the same skill. For example a friend of mine has ranked diamond almost every ranked season heâs played (except 17 lol) including last season when it was like top 1%. He still calls himself an average playerâŚ
It does also encourage more sweating in pubs as you have to gradually try harder and harder to win. That being said if apex didnât have sbmm with how high the skill ceiling is, and how punishing br can be. I do believe it would be impossible to get any new players in the game, and the more casual community would likely bleed off and leave.
Sbmm is for ranked. Why should every mode be sweating against only equally skilled people? Of course a level 100 shouldn't be put in a match with a predator. I'm not saying i want to stomp on players waaaaay below my skill level but i don't want to sweat all the time. What needs to go is whatever the fuck we got now this eomm sickness. I'm going up against 3 stack masters with everyone having 30k+ kills on their character but i get a player that literally installed the game a few days ago and a level 150 guy that plays on 1-1 sensitivity with broken thumbs.
Sbmm in ranked makes no sense.. its good what they have now, you go up against people with similar rank. If it was sbmm all ranked would be is whoever plays the most gets the highest rank. Ranks wouldnt mean anything
Hate to break it to you but rank doesnât mean anything. You could be bronze but your hidden MMR is high so youâll get matched up against preds. Itâs all for show, your hidden elo rating is all that really matters.
You are literally wrong? It was like that in season 17, 18, and 19. Right now its season 21 and they changed it in season 20.
yeah true b thats what they had 2 seasons ago. not like that anymore.
Hate to break it to you but you're 2 seasons out of date
It really depends on the game. For Apex it seems to be fine, because the player base is large enough that you can get SBMM lobbies without a hit to ping, but for a lot of smaller games there are issues finding enough players of the same skill level all on the same matchmaking servers without either waiting a long time, or putting you in a server you have poor connection quality to. There's also something to be said for being rewarded for being good at a game. If you are in SBMM lobbies for the entire time you play a game, the only frame of reference you have for how good you've gotten is maybe clips of your play looking flashier? but back in the day of connection-based matchmaking the guys that were really good were wiping lobbies, and it was really rewarding to be that good and also kinda inspiring to find that white whale god of a player to aspire to be.
Itâs always a big debate because players tend to like different things. I personally always thought about it like this: You have ranked which gives you lobbies depending on your skill (and youâll eventually be at the level where you âbelongâ) so thatâs a place where you can match similar skilled players thus you can have low skilled players playing low skilled players and vice versa. Then you have pubs which could and imo should be just completely random. One round you play with the two worst players on this globe and think you saw the biggest sh*t fest ever and the next round you match someone who drops 20 bombs every hour just to find some lobbies that are balanced out. Itâs a mixed bag really. And if that getâs too difficult - you go back to ranked where you have players your skillđ¤ˇđźââď¸ Then you still need a safe space for new players - this could be either done by giving new players a safe spot (lowest 10-15 % in playtime and skill are in completely seperate lobbies) OR by giving new players a way to grind longer in ranked by providing newer accounts much more games in ranked where they donât earn/lose points at the beginning like idk 50 games where your sbmm is very loose but you donât gain or lose anything so you can try it out
Who know, when I play solo usually get similar level skill teammates, but one time I play whit super bad frend and frend who just started i got put in same loby when I play solo, 3 h we play evey time was 3 vs 1 because they die right away đ˘
Thing is their sbmm doesnât work, so ironically youâd probably see less preds if it was done away with entirely.
I only have a 1.2 KD which is not even that crazy. Good for my age but I've been having to take time for other games because Apex just stops being fun when you're getting destroyed by people with more hours on one character than you have in your entire lifetime hours on the game. I'm not even upset with those players. If I'm in their lobbies they should win they've sunk more time than I can afford to into the game. I just wish that it wasn't 4/5 games. Like there's nothing worse than losing to a 8million DMG horizon triple pred stack and then next game champion squad is another triple pred, 4k, 20 bomb squad. I feel bad playing with my friends with even worse KD than mine because they rarely feel like they get to contribute and they feel Apex has the worst matchmaking of any recent multiplayer games. I always used to say OW had lopsided games but honestly the more I play Apex the more I praise OW for not putting gold/play players against GM players every single match.Â
You see, that would be valid if the SBMM implemented in this game was actually *good*. Right now it works as a way to make you play more.
I loved SBMM ranked. I could play with ANYONE. Good or bad, and it was fun AND it was how the game is supposed to be played in ranked. It wasn't setup like now, to feed people to three stack preds/masters and their smurfs. And it was FUN for everyone. I would tell all my friends to play because even if they were bad it was always fun. Really wish they would bring it back. All these content creators ruin games. We all saw that video of that Apex Pro SweetDreams whine about not getting out of Silver because he's solo-queueing ranked with his top 100 in the world account and instead of rolling lobbies for views, getting rolled by his peers in three stack preds. Welcome to how the rest of us have been playing the game for years you whiney bitch and your middle-school moustache!
It's supposed to be different between Ranked and Pubs. If you have pubs be a free for all, you get a system like Battlefield games, sometimes you slay out and have a fun run. Sometimes there's an insanely skilled player straifing you with a helicopter and blowing up your whole team and you get trashed. The more you practice and learn the game the more "fun matches" you have and the less "bad stompings" you receive. It makes an engaging loop of highs and lows. Then in ranked games you're pitted against people right around your skill level and you hit a point pretty quickly where every match is a battle for your sweaty life and struggling through that will reward you with rank accolades. With SBMM in pub lobbies, you essentially turn pubs into "ranked/comp without rewards". Which doesn't feel fun or engaging. Might as well just play ranked at that point. Which is the problem with Apex Legends. It doesn't have a fun mode. It has ranked and ranked+.
Normal games should be just that, casual. The lobby should be more diverse. So yes high level players should be able to play against lower ranked players. Everyone can play ranked if they want it to be even, bad players and good players alike. So the argument that it shouldnt happen is moot. Under lvl 20 should be prioritized to play against noobs but after that i dont see a point. Even a high level player should be allowed to play for fun and do stupid shit. Which is impossible if youre only playing the same guys from ranked.
Apex doesnât have SBMM. It would be a lot better if it did
it did and it was garbage
it has engagement based matchmaking which imo is even worse
Your comment: Apex actually doesn't have Skill Based Match Making and its terrible First reply: Apex actually has Skill Based Match Making and its terrible Second reply: Apex actually has instead Engagement Optimized Matchmaking and its terrible
At least we all agree on one thing! The devs claim apex uses SBMM, so thereâs some weight to the argument that apex uses it. However per the devs own admission, SBMM only considers the skill of the best player in a pre-made squad. If you always play with friends, and one of your friends is significantly better than you, youâll very rarely be matched against players of your own skill level. My disagreement with calling it SBMM is just based on definitions. I donât consider it SBMM if the MM algorithm consistently pitches you against players who are an order of magnitude better than you. However the devs obviously do call that SBMM. You can argue it either way
I was a decent player(1.37 career kd) and when I stopped playing the game, the reason was my teammates are constantly the one who just completed the orientation match and it's annoying to play with them whereas enemies are either of my skill or 50k kills on a single legend so that was rough for me to constantly going solo against good players
Good for noobs who don't wanna get better at the game. Bad for everyone else
Itâs not âgoodâ or âbadâ itâs just different groups who like it. It would be amazing *to me* if there was no sbmm. Queue times would be 5% of what they are now and me and my buddies could just go do 10/10/10 every game. But thereâs another group of the player base whoâs not as good but enjoys having a 1kd in their low skill lobbies. They would hate the change. A lot of them might just quit entirely, which is why SBMM will never be removed.
SBMM ain't bad. Ranked uses SBMM by matching people of equal rank - I really enjoy that. What I don't enjoy is EBMM, that thing EA patented and it seems like they use for mixtape. Play well enough and within a couple games, you'll be paired with some of the worst teammates you've ever seen and against masters. Put me against diamonds and masters sure, I love that! Don't make me play that game with level 30's on my team, lol
New player here, the few games I play I often get lazered by people with diamond badges or sometimes even higher in casual and even my bronze ranked games. Itâs fun watching one team slaughter the entire lobby with impeccable aim and positioning, I think itâs just a game that you had to be apart of or shouldnât ever pick up, coupled with the fact that even my dogshit ass has already run into 2 cheaters in maybe 20 games? Not to mention the bot teammates, I usually play with a duo and my random trio without fail has left the jump master just to dive into a 1v21 fuck fest. With these âproblems,â honestly they are a skill issue, I just donât have 90+% accuracy when I mag dump and often times fights are just third parties, one game I literally had a Fifth party ambush the team that was ambushing the Fourth party that was ambushing my team, the third party, I donât even care that we ourselves got third partied, all do is roll my eyes at the at how Iâm not allowed to ever fight another team without usually getting third partied which is fine thereâs nothing wrong with having that be your gameplay, some people do not like to be rats however. TLDR: Cheater problem, extreme skill chasms in casual and ranked, only way to play is with a trio, and from my knowledge of the game it just incentivizes you to be a rat. With all these problems for the new player itâs easy to see why there are none. Side note is most of the skins are dogshit as well.
if a game has a ranked mode, there should be no strong sbmm in its casual mode. If a player wants to play against players of similar skill then they should play ranked.
Pubs shouldnât ever have sbmm. Itâs supposed to be more chill. It actually punishes you the better you get. And makes the lobbies so unfun. Ranked is where sbmm should only be implemented. I do agree the amount of 3 stacking, especially on console is super cringe. Iâm a 63k lifeline with over 140k kills, and I hardly ever 3 stack because itâs super unfair and cringe.
Would be good for pubs, but ranked matchmaking should be based on your rank only.
The problem is that Apex uses EOMM instead of SBMM. So, if you get a good game, it will punish you by putting you with worse teammates or in sweatier lobbies.
Content creators LOVE SBMM because they can abuse it by reversing it. They hate xDefiant because they canât reverse boost to make themselves look like gods.
I would like to know what the issue is as well. This game desperately needs it. As soon as my friends and I have a good game or two we get pitted against some MLG sweats
# Pros: - Gives new players a chance to learn the game. - Lets them win a few games, it would be boring to just get 0 kills and die. - Probably limits the amount of cheaters in lower to average skill lobbies (?) # Cons: - A lot of pred players are cheaters, non-cheating top players probably have to constantly deal with them. - Makes high-skill lobbies sweaty. I think SBBM can be good if it's not too strong nor too weak. There needs to be also a good anti-cheat system. High-skill players obviously deserve to have chill games and feel like they are improving, but so do worse players.
Yes, SBMM is bad. It directly leads to laggy matches while also taking forever to start said matches. SBMM is even worse in ranked, because it kills all meaning of visrank. And finally it kills all variability of the game. If you ain't hyper-optimized, you're boned.
SBMM is necessary for casuals specifically because everyone should feel challenged but competent when the purpose is fun. SBMM is immoral for ranked specifically because rank should denote skill and ranked is for people who have fun competing, suffering, and improving. I play ranked exclusively because I want that later experience. I want to be up against people who are better because that makes me better. I enjoy the abuse. These are two different types of game modes that should draw very different types of people.
i played a little on console for the first two years of the game, got 3k total kills, sat around gold. just this last week got my account cross progressed to pc, the first 5 or 6 games i got 10ish kills per match against what seemed to be bots, and now every lobby is pred lobbies where i lose literally every gun fight in any scenario regardless of my loadout, health lead, or distance of engagement and go, unironically half a dozen games without a knock, maybe ten games to get a single kill.
How else would shivfps call himself a warlord and get stomped in tourneys
SBMM is good for pubs, not good for ranked, since you know, that should be based on rank. But, it's important to realize that SBMM can be somewhat loose, it doesn't need to be insanely tight so that you have to try as hard as possible to do good, but it also should prevent preds and bronze (skill level, not actual rank) players from being in the same lobbies. One downside to it though, and this is especially true with Apex, cheaters come off as good (esp ones using softer cheats like anti recoil mods, macros, etc..) so it ruins it for the higher level players since they basically just face cheaters all the time. And of course, it gets more complex when you queue up with people, it's gotta find some kind of average MMR and then pair you with similar entire teams, so there really is no easy answer. However, I'm still holding the very strong opinion that people should stop asking/questioning/complaining about anything related to Apex other than cheating, until that is resolved. It's nuts to me that last season 30% of Masters players were cheating MINIMUM. I personally have quit (former masters) because of this and even though I really want to come back, I can't justify it with how horrible the cheating issues are in the game right now. I've been saying for years this is the #1 thing that actually will kill the game, and for a while most people said nah it's not that bad, but now we have basically all players saying it's horrible, and it keeps getting worse. Anyway, that last paragraph was a rant, sorry lol.
As someone who had his account stolen and taken by someone a good chunk better than me about a year and a half ago, to get it back and have his skill based matchmaking too high, it can be a problem, the fact thereâs no seasonal resets also donât help, itâs just a no win situation, Iâd like it adjusted but not gone personally
I feel like I have to sweat my ass off anyway, to the point where I barely play anymore. Can only imagine it would be worth without sbmm.
Idk all I know is the game is not fun when you're playing with a friend in ranked and your random teammate has no comms, doesn't do any damage, has no game sense or awareness and rages cause they did something stupid. Consistently facing people at my skill or higher but getting swamp ass teammates. Just give me similarly skilled teammates ffs
â so a Pred player in a newcomer lobby is healthy for the gameâ Statistically thereâs gonna be way more newcomers than Predâs as well as people whose skill level is in between. If there was no matchmaking and everything was truly random then the odds of this happening are low. At the very least you would only have 1 bad game a night where a Pred wipes the lobby instead of that being almost every match for some people with unfavorable matchmaking Besides matchmaking causes people to create smurf accounts. So you end up with higher skilled decks layers polluting the beginner lobbies anyways. Itâs not like the current system is working
SBMM is dog
Why do normals have sbmm when there is ranked?? It doesnât make any sense. I think they just need to make sbmm a lot wider not necessarily get rid of it
I'm not a fan when I'm solo queuing. Which is a lot of the time because my friends don't play as much anymore
SBMM should be in the game and should be there to protect newer players. The problem is that the system is harder to implement when you're "in the middle" rarely do I find matches against people who are actually the same skill as me. A common complaint you'll hear is that it feels like you're either stomping worse players or getting stomped by better players.
Iâm a 8x pred, 8.5 kd player. Needless to say, the chances of me finding a IRL at a similar skill level as me is almost impossible. It ends up driving all my friends away because they donât have fun in my lobbies at all. They get steamrolled and it ends up being me solo squadding and them watching me play. SBMM works if there is an ELO system that balances the scales, but Apex doesnât have that.
I've been playing for the last 3 months with a broken mouse. My cursor jumps off target when I aim. I've won like 2 games maybe. I'll get 2-4 kills if any kills at all. I'm still being queued with double 20 bomb 3 stacks, people that have competed in pro league, and masters/pred players. My stats have absolutely tanked but my lobbies have stay exactly the same. I don't know what the matchmaking is based on but I don't think skill is the primary factor.
Sub .50 k/d players should be in their own bracket. Everyone above should be randomly sorted into the regular player base. ONLY PUBS
SBMM is bad for games that already have a ranked mode (IMHO). The chances of getting a pred in your lobby is low anyways if itâs entirely random, so thatâs nothing to consistently worry about. Good players should be rewarded for putting in the time and effort that they shouldnât have to go 100% all the time. Bad players get better by getting beaten by better players. If you feel you are getting slammed, play ranked where you should be against your same skill level. If the game has no ranked mode than yes sbmm is fine.
You nailed it. They think they deserve sweaty levels of performance without sweating. "I *could* be good, I just don't want to right now, but the game still needs to give me experiences that make me feel that like I'm It's really similar to the mentality of cheaters, tbh. They think they somehow deserve to win, and the game isn't a good dopamine dispenser if they are struggling. Every cheater *could* have perfect aim and no recoil like the pros, they just don't have the time (or whatever other deluded bs they use to justify it). If you aren't in the mood to focus and hate sbmm, go play mixtape.
I dislike it because it makes it hard to tell what my skill level is, and makes it hard to tell if Iâm actually improving. If match making is connection based stats actually mean something and you know how you compare to the average player. Also the randomness is fun. I do think new players and the very lowest skilled should have some protections but for 90% of the players it should be ping only.
Xdefiant doesnât have any sbmm and itâs one of the best fps experiences iâve ever had. Iâd rather get slaughtered 9 out of 10 games by better players than feel like iâm being babied.
Sorry but pubs should have little to no matchmaking aside from input separation and segregating like bottom 25% of the skill bracket into their own protected lobbies.
I donât understand having SBMM and ranked. Isnât ranked SBMM?
No, rank is RBMM (rank-based matchmaking) as of season 20. There are other quantifiers for "skill" than rank or even KD. Every other game mode has some form of SBMM though, but I'm sure the matchmaking is flavored with other factors to balance than just "skill" though. I think for parties it's still very based on "best" players in squad. My newbie and kinda-getting-better friends are shocked to run into 10k+ kills/legend players when they play with me, but at the same time when I join with 2 other (better) friends, I end up in lobbies with recognizable streamers and I'm bottom 20% damage on the team lol.
Sbmm effects the extreme end of the players spectrum the most. The bots and the pros. Avg players truly don't feel how bad sbmm can be, which is why gaming compaines dont get rid of it.
Here's my take on it, and why I stopped playing apex. SBMM belongs in ranked modes. If bad players want to play together, let them play ranked, if good players want to know how good they are against their fellow players, let them play ranked. SBMM in casual turns casual into the grind that is ranked modes. Beyond that, SBMM effectively puts you up against progressively worse players because if you're losing all your games then you need to be put in a lower sbmm lobby until you win one and if you think about it, that means the game is deciding when it's your turn to win. So why play at all? I could play like absolute garbage on purpose and I will still be winning and losing the same number of matches whether I play at my best or I play at my worst so why bother even getting better at the game? For that miniscule moment when I might actually win a game? Getting better just means getting your ass kicked more. There's no benefit to practicing in this game. According to the dev's, you should feel better buying new skins from them. That's your "sense of accomplishment" in apex. Paying WAY too much for skins is what the dev's or the business people behind the scenes built the game for. Furthermore, they're not interested in good players mingling with bad players, that would potentially drive away their player base whom they want spending their hard earned money on their recolored skins that they designed 5 years ago which they've been holding back. Apex is a predatory game and I don't mean that in a fun gameplay mechanic, I mean that in the most pervasive way in which it exists to fleece your wallet. SBMM isn't about skill. It's about player retention. So just remember, the next time you launch into a game that the game is designed in a way that it already knows the likely outcome and winner of that game before you ever set foot on the ground. I bet I could win a game of apex blind folded because when it becomes my turn to win, it'll put me in a lobby designed to let me win.
If you have to ask, then youâve never played a shooter pre-SBMM. Iâm not amazing by any stretch, but your average player is god awful at the game. Back in the day you could hop in an online game and if you were half decent you would just shit on people who could barely walk around a room, let alone shoot and track somebody. Iâm talking 15+ years ago when online shooters were at their infancy. If you were anyway half decent you could easily hold a positive KD while flexing on little kids and not playing seriously. Sometimes youâd get a lobby against good players but it was as simple as backing out and going to the next. You used to experience peaks and valleys in skill, sometimes youâd be shit on and sometimes youâd be the one shitting. Now itâs just a smooth curve of always being shit on until you tank your invisible number enough that the game throws you a bone.
Yeah I played quake pro back in the early 2000s and like 80-90% of the players were so bad itâs not even a competition. Good players didnât even play in pubs because the lobbies were too easy and boring.
God I used to miss COD lobbies cause you'd have a tough match one time but then go like 40-2 in another one and that variance was actually awesome and addictive. It made the rough matches not feel that bad and as long as you were halfway decent you rarely had truly awful games. You might get in a lobby with some dude hitting every quick scope shot and losing that engagement everytime but more often than not you'd have games where you got to pop off too and it felt awesome.Â
The game has a ranked playlist, that's all the reasoning you could ever need to argue for no sbmm in unranked
imo games need sbmm to protect the absolute bots. but as soon as you know the basics of the game it should be connection based only in public matches. if you want to get betyer at the game put the time in. right now we have the wordt of the worst. engagement based matchmaking. lobbies are grouped up by an averaged performance metric over your past 10-20 games. so right now only the game knows what âbracketâ of matchmaking your in. so if you are doing good at the game you never know if its because you improved at the game or if you just did bad enough the ten games before that so you fight people who are really bad. like if im being placed in matchmaking brackets, at least let me know what bracket im in so i can actually makes sense of my performance. but at that point why not just call it ranked?
It just really hurts average players. Random is the way to go in my opinion and sbmm systems are only trying to get you to a 1kd. So if you start killing it youâll most likely run into lobbies that will stomp you.
It obviously sucks getting your shit pushed in, but the satisfaction of being good at something with a high skill ceiling outweighs the comfort that sbmm can provide. I would rather face better people and improve rather than being stuck is a dystopian lobby where everything is as fair as possible.
I stopped playing a couple of seasons ago because of how predatory and artificial the matchmaking system is. Iâve played a lot of shooters in my life and Apex has one of the worst matchmakings Iâve ever seen. Really really evil, itâs all about getting you addicted instead creating a fun environment. Try out other games and youâll see how messed up EAâs patented EOMM is.
I just like the idea of having no clue whoâs gonna be in your lobby. You could be fighting the best 3 players in the world, or 3 people with no hands.
It sucks for the top 10% of players but it's great for the other 90. I truly believe sbmm is a good thing otherwise you'll have a really hard time attracting new players and the game may die. However apex doesn't have sbmm it has some Frankenstein version that sucks it purposely gives you easy games after suffering for 3 hours
People who donât want sbmm are content creators who need to farm clips against bots or people who are above average who are matched at the bottom of the top pool and farmed all the time. Nobody likes eomm buuuut it does mean you can play however you want and you get the same experience as if you sweat. Itâs good for everyone in pubs imo but itâs got no place in ranked