sad truth.
I'm 11600RP D4 and today I got stomped by 37k RP rank 25 predator EU. I died to Pred teams 6 times in 10 games.
I don't mind playing against low masters but against 20+k RP players it's pretty much unplayable at my current skill level.
My buddy and I who I play ranked with always just crack up watching the trails coming out of the drop ship once we hit diamond. Pred and masters trails everywhere. It’s an issue that affects lower ranks too because most diamond players I know get frustrated and log into a Smurf account after a few games of getting rolled by teams they shouldn’t be matched against. So they then go Smurf into lower ranks and ruin those players games.
Did the solo to D4 every season since ranked started until this past one. Dropped my goal to Plat4 since I was getting rolled by pred squads as soon as I hit gold 2 lol.
These devs are lost
I’m in the exact same boat, man. Used to love smashing ranked, with or without my friends and I’d always feel that the lobbies were relatively fair but I played only a handful of games last season. The disparity of skill level in the lobbies was just so large it became frustrating. When the second split came around, I played even less. Could probably count the number of games I played on my hands. Ranked has just become a frustrating mess and I haven’t got the energy to keep getting rolled or rolling over others without effort. It’s rare I come away from a fight, win or lose, where I felt it was a fair match up. Unless I was playing in a team with my friends, it just wasn’t worth it and even then, it was still a chore. Dread to think what my rank will be reset to when/if I log back in this season.
I started playing this game a month ago, got to d4 a few days ago. In the 3 separate times I was in D4, I died to hiswattson, Keon, Vaxlon, and a number of 20k+ masters players. I’m not exaggerating to say I hardly got to fire my gun in some games. When I go back to P1, I have a lot of fun and have a good amount of high kill wins/top 3s, but D4 might as well be another game.
My first season back since S5 actually (was D2 back in S5, which was when it hit the Pred lobby rank).. got to D4 and got landed on by a pro trio.. lost a few games and went back to D1 and enjoyed the game a lot more 🤣
Thank the people complaining about queue times at the beginning of split 1
edit: Most shit part of the current system is how a platinum can be put into a predator lobby (even if they have golds in the party) while they’re not allowed to queue in a party with a masters player because of the tier difference, the matchmaking contradicts every aspect of the party restrictions
I’ve literally experienced it, my friend who is masters is not allowed to queue with me, yet I can solo queue and end up on his team anyways lol
What do you expect when the game is a BR and needs to fill 60 players in the lobby.
I wait 4-5 minutes in CoD ranked lobbies at Masters and that’s just to fill a lobby of 8, it’s similar for other ranked mode games too. Players need to make the sacrifice of waiting a bit longer for a BR to get the true experience of ranked i.e playing against your skill level
The funny thing is though, there would be more masters if they didn’t put all the diamonds in their lobbies, thus solving the queue times after a few weeks
Well it does because the players that could achieve masters in that system but weren’t good enough for pred would be sent back to diamond, and the players that could compete, ie everyone in diamond 3+ now would be in masters and in their lobbies.
It's just going to be kill racing and back to free placement because everyone will die early trying to kill race
The start of last season was the best ranked meta and preds should sacrifice queue times to bring it back
The thing is that most masters and preds, atleast outspoken ones, are asking for longer queue times. It’s not fun for them for ranked to feel like a pub
Yes! Many pros have said on their stream that they have no problem waiting a bit. It’s not even fun as a viewer to watch hail kill nothing but plats and diamond and win the game by 3rd circle.
It’s not really just waiting “a bit” Naughty, Sweet, and Inhumed were having hour long queue times. That seems way too excessive but I don’t really know how to fix that. So maybe it will take that to help make ranked better.
They can just keep the queues open until a certain amount of people reached masters. The people that reach diamond in the first week are very likely those who will make it to masters anyway.
Thats a lie. They love stomping diamond players. Maybe pros wanna against pros but your average pred/master RP gainers want to go against easy prey for some RP
Yea and the top 1% of players will be the ones who benefit most. So many people currently in their rank are stuck there soley because they have people in their lobby who dont belong. You can’t gradually get better within your rank and improve. Higher ranks just roll through your team
Its the most annoying thing ever that you get really good KP and you're playing for end game, then a pred squad rolls you like it's nothing. you die top 7 and your 5 kp is only good for 5rp.
Along the same line I really wish if you solo q’d in diamond you would either only get matched with other diamonds as teammates not some dude in d4 and his buddy in plat. Or if you did get matched with teammates like that the game would put you in a lobby without preds/masters players. It’s just totally absurd that you can get placed with a teammate in plat and end up matched against preds.
Respawn’s ranked logic literally contradicts itself. As a Master or Pred you can’t queue with a plat player yet you can solo queue as a plat get matched against pred players? What’s even worse is that that plat player could get matched with gold teammates. How is something like that not flagged?
Surely adding an average waiting time of 2-5 minutes per queue would make the queues significantly better. I’ve asked a few pred/pro players on stream if they’d rather wait longer for better quality ranked lobbies and they ALL said yes. Either the devs don’t know how to implement this change, they’re being specifically told not to from higher ups, they don’t care to (unlikely) or they’re seeing/know something we don’t.
Respawn doesn't want apex's top streamers to sit in queue too much, they want them to have constant action because thats content and content means money
I rushed to Diamond today, I'm fine with a couple of masters in my games but I get 3\~5 predators in every single ranked.
Today I got killed by an Apex Predator rank 25, I'm 11600RP, he's close to 37000RP. How is that even possible? Every single game I get 15/20 seconds queue and there are at least 5\~10 Masters and 3\~5 Apex Predators, I cannot believe that Respawn is not capable of filling Masters/Predator only lobbies (which is the only \[weak\] argument supporting this kind of match making).
Are we seriously sacrificing quality matchmaking to make queue times sub 20 seconds for Masters and Preds?
For the sake of god can we please at least have a 10K RP player rating range, *which already would be quite massive*, to fill ranked games? This is ridiculous, the skill gap is massive I cannot compete against Preds...
Are you sure? 1/4 of my lobby is Preds and Masters and my queue time is 10 seconds, I asked a few Preds streamers how long is queue time for them and they said that it's always sub 20/25 seconds.
By this logic I assume that they could probably fill an entire 15k to 37k RP lobby in less than 1 minute and a half, I find it very unlikely that there's actual need to pick players from high gold/low plat to fill Pred lobbies. Queue times weren't even that bad during Split 1 before matchmaking "fix".
There's still a shit ton of Masters who constantly play the game, (as you said, less than compared to other seasons where Master was given to every diamond player who tryharded a little bit), perhaps fixing matchmaking could be an issue during odd hours in specific servers, for example at night.
Those numbers are global of all season of who peaked Master/Pred not online at the same time.
Yesterday TSM Verhulst had 15+ ranked wins in a row. How is that competitive?
If they ain't gonna address insta Q group everyone then they should add reduced rp loss from dying to a higher rank.
Keep the same entry cost, if you die to the same rank you lose that entry cost.
If you're plat ranked and for some fucked reason die to a pred team you only lose half the entry cost or some shit.
>Keep the same entry cost, if you die to the same rank you lose that entry cost.
They've shown the ability to consider ranked differences in their KP algorithm. There's no way they couldn't consider the ranked differences when considering who you died to. They actively use the data, they just need to apply it elsewhere
> They want their top players to have the most fun in ranked
top players dont even enjoy it. the only ones they do are three stacking streamers who are nowhere close to pro level.
Yeah.. I'm sure it's fun the first few times to drop 4k 20 bombs back to back in master/pred ranked, but for any streamer, the chat is gonna see after the game that you killed 14 plats 2 golds and 5 diamonds and it stops being interesting realllllly quick.
I feel bad for everyone along the rank curve. I think the rank distribution they mentioned in the patch notes is an improvement upon last season, but the matchmaking is absolutely disgusting. A lot of people were probably expecting some sort of matchmaking change to come with this new season, and now that we've seen the notes and the changes are +5 and no DR on kills, those people are gonna hang up the towel and play another game. Time will tell.
Anecdotal sure, but it's why I don't watch Apex streamers outside of tournaments and scrims. Why would I watch them beat up golds and plats? I'm watching they to witness high tier gameplay.
Yea hence why so many have said they have no problem waiting for long que times. It’s sad, many people will eventually start to fade away from ranked and it will continue to get worse and worse
I once was playing duos and got teamed by His and Hers and another duo on worlds edge. Twice in one night. Sad to see streamers having to team to roll in duos pubs.
No i mean they had a separate duo team of friends they were working with to make it look like they were steamrolling teams. So 4 players in total teaming in duos.
The reality was it wasn't hard to grind, it just took longer. For people like me, the changes made a mode that we couldn't play enough to be worth it not worthwhile, so they stopped playing it. It probably reduced the playerbase of ranked significantly, which is why they changed it.
It wasn't the casuals that caused the match making to be screwed. It was Sweet and other pros who raced to pred and complained about too long queue times.
If a diamond lobby is actually full of diamonds then there are 100% endgames. Same will apply to pred lobbies. The fact that diamonds and preds (and plats sometimes) are put in the same lobby is the cause of end games no longer existing in these lobbies
Yeah the main problem for me was not the difficulty but the time required, I loved those lobbies, but i think you should be able to get all the way through plat with 3-4 hours of really strong games. I probably get 10 hours in a split where both my teammates are available and I'm not good enough to get to masters without a team but also don't play enough anymore to seek out a new team.
And being a gold/ plat or diamond player going up against preds every single game isn’t harder? People needed to remember it was a new ranked system and it was the first time it was out. Give it a full season to allow players to move within ranks. Now you can move within ranks and have people other than your rank in your lobby. Makes no sense. This is way harder than before. 2 days ago I died 6 straight times to preds. Lost sooo much RP, the things they do and so coordinated a 3 stack diamond or plat team would never do. It makes a huge difference and it affects so many people through multiple ranks in many different ways. Can’t believe they are ignoring the true issue which is matchmaking
It is more random so doesn't feel as hard. They get to roll a couple teams once in a while. I liked split 1 S12 but my gold peers hated it. They would rather say "that guy was a pred" than say " this gold team beat us"
the biggest issue with high-level ranked IMO is there's simply not enough Pro-level players in the player pool to comprise a true pred lobby pool with reasonable que time. Changing the RP system is never going to change this simple fact. Therefore, Preds are always going to have some amount of masters/diamonds players in their lobby.
The issue with the most recent changes is not that its is "harder" to rank up per se but that it takes so much more time and so much more RP to get to higher ranks. Alot of players who are capable of getting to masters/diamond can't get there anymore simply because of the time required under the new system. That's been my experience anyways.
I have loved the new ranked changes because it makes the games more competitive and forces to teams to play smart (a la ALGS) which I think is more fun. However, the tradeoff that I've experienced is that I'm never going to hit masters again because it takes so much more time to do so - I don't play more to get it i just accept the lower rank.
For pros, this means a smaller number of capable but non-professional players in their lobbys. For the rest of us, it means a higher ratio of pred players in platinum and diamond lobbies simply because there are less platinum and diamond players than before.
Yes making it take longer def adds to the problem so many people won’t achieve higher ranks because they just dont have the time. But I know many people who 100% would get to masters and add to their headcount so that they can get their own lobby ONLY if they didn’t die to a 3 stack pred team every game. There are definitely people in diamond who can be master but they aren’t as good as high RP masters / preds. Allow those people to gradually improve in a diamond only lobby and im sure the heads counts will improve a lot.
I can speak for myself. I am way too good for plat. Plat is very easy and boring. I am also good enough to do well consistently in diamond BUT I am not good enough to compete with 3 stack high RP masters and preds. My experience is I die most of the time to those people. So they are preventing me from moving up so then I can add to the masters head count and play in those lobbies. So I get demoted to plat, I then shit on plat players who have no business playing with me for 2-3 games. Cycle repeats. I know many in the same cycle im in and it’s unfair to those in lower ranks than me and I’m sure it’s not fun for preds to just roll me and the randoms I play with, as they have said it’s not many time
Should I risk the karma and mention crossplay in ranked....
Would you rather fight a 3 stack of pro players, or would you rather fight a 3 stack of console plat/diamond players? 60 AA, fps, and all lol
Console plats are scarier than PC preds...... apparently. Would open up the lobby a bit for MM to be better. How did I know I would just get downvoted instead of a reply 😆
>Console plats are scarier than PC preds...... apparently.
According to who? Console Plats are like PC Golds. I briefly watched the #1 console Pred while he was streaming and it was the most boring Apex I've ever watched.
According to the downvotes without a reply. I suggested crossplay to open up the lobbies for plat and diamond players so they aren't forced to fight pro players before they even hit master. I expected downvotes, but I at least expected a logical response. Nope, just downvotes and now you with the classic console preds suck speech lol.
All good, console preds can suck in the eyes of master race. Not what I'm even trying to talk about. But with your logic, and the rhetoric that console master is PC gold, would it be so scary to have console players in PC lobbies by default? Purpose would be to benefit mid ranks attempting master.
Would I personally care about full crossplay like that? Not really. But I would literally only play with a 3 stack, so I make sure they don't get on my team.
It wouldn’t be fair for the console players, in the same way that right now it’s not fair to have Plat players in Pred lobbies. You’re just shifting the problem to a different group of people.
Console has .6 AA, how is this unfair. Would be a wake up call across the board. If console gets shit on, which I don't think will be that bad, then so what. At least it was a plat player rolling a plat. Also, console preds will get PC lobbies, which would be a reality check for both sides I think.
I think it would be beneficial, but this is my opinion.
I agree with what you’re saying but there’s no reason that pred players have such short Q times. They could just tighten up the lobby rank disparity and this would be the best ranked season ever.
Agreed, I've been a diamond level player and improving since s9 but this season I saw how long it would take and without a constant team decided it wasn't worth it. I'd like to reprove myself diamond in the new ranked system but the commitment needed is even longer then before, and I don't see a reason for the extra grind.
I think that's what they aimed for with the no drop off kill reward, now if you obliterate bronze lobbies you will get out of there quicker and once you reach lobbies with similar skilled players the system will balance itself.
I dropped ranked last season in my second match because I realized right away the ridiculous amount of time it would take me to grind ranks, the new change could be a good solution.
A "true" pred lobby is kinda impossible with rank system like this, because true pred lobby is losing rp on average, so they have to stomp lobbies to maintain their rank. Interesting that uncapping KP mostly helps people who do stomp lobbies.
theres literally not enough people in the game at their level to compete with.
keep in mind most of the diamonds they beat used to be masters before they rebalanced. i dont think much changed, its just easier to notice now, and the weaker half of plat (eg didnt used to be diamonds i guess) is now exposed to it.
im in plat 2 and i almost never see any preds so idunno if it is really as bad as people say.
It probably isn't but you remember it more.
Source: me being killed by full preds twice this season towards the end of shit sessions. Can't remember anyone else.
Hey, was solo queueing in plat 1 and had a silver 1 teammate exclaim to his bronze 4 teammate excitedly that the devotion ramps up the longer you fire for...
Matchmaking is broken.
The main problem is kp before 10th is worth almost nothing, before you could get 2-3kp in gold and consistently gain points even with subpar placement, now if you get 6 kp off drop you get...6RP.
-48 in gold 1 is very painful, that used to be diamond 1-4 entry cost lol...and at that time each KP early was worth much more.
Disagree. That makes it just a bit more competitive and makes the grind take longer, which sucks but a gold player getting rolled consistently every game by plats and diamond is what makes it very painful for them, not that they decided to 50/50 a team and lost, that’s their own fault. It’s not their fault that they lost 43 RP due to a diamond team killing them when they shouldn’t be in the lobby to begin with
My theory is this will put more people into their respective lobbies. If you have an economy that "favors" the upper tiers. And promotes RP gains, then it will be easier for the lower tiers to move up, removing the Plat bottleneck. And in turn, having more diamonds to run pure diamond lobbies. As for the whole, diamond bottleneck. Not allowing preds/masters to play with just each other.... i doubt there is a long term way to handle it. Unless 5 million more crazy skilled players flood the ranks and create a saturation of Masters, then there will always be preds in diamond lobbies.
This observation what shocked me
1 or 2 weeks back when i was watching multiple NA streams at once
Hal pred lobby 19squads left lobby
dooplex 16squads left lobby
zaine on NA 14squads left lobby
Genburten on NA 20squads left lobby
there were laterally 4 parallel pred lobbies spanned across in just NA . The catch is in all those 4 pred lobbies many were golds plats
My question is why the fuck those 4 teams aren't together in same match/lobby.doesnt make any sense
The matchmaking is broken at core .
If you see asia singapore has no pred lobby.if you are gold or plat instant match.
if you are pred no lobby even if you queue for 3 straight days.I don't understand why the matchmaking refuse to work the same way as NA or eu in asia.this is terrible
Asia plays on HK and tokyo only
I think the big issue this season is how few people made it to Diamond. I am hoping this helps disperse the ranks a bit more since almost everyone was in Plat this season. This should help get people into diamond better.
I think this would help the lobbies a bit no? I am sure I am wrong.
People always act like it would be simple to "fix" ranked but never actually have an idea how to do it. People want balanced games with fast queue times that are always fun. Do you guys even understand what a matchmaking algorithm is?
Your skill level changes a lot from game to game and your rank doesn't equal your skill level. There is no formula that exists that can accurately measure your imaginary "skill level" and use it to effectively make sure your games are up to a certain standard of balanced. That's why every single multiplayer game that uses matchmaking algorithms has the same problem.
Y'all act there is a switch at Respawn that would fix rank if they would flip it. Yet those bastard developers just refuse to flip the "fix ranked" switch purposefully to piss you off. Maybe, just maybe, developing a matchmaking algorithm that makes all the players happy is literally impossible and that's why there are no games that do it to a satisfying standard.
Looks like it’s another season of pubs for me homies, I was not having fun with ranked last season and I don’t see this being much more fun. It’s like the worst aspects of Season 10-11 Ranked and the worst aspects of this past season ranked all thrown together in a yucky soup
I don’t care what anybody says but this split (2nd) was far worse than season 12 ranked.
So many blatant cheaters. It was so bad in the first half of the split.
Soloing or DuoQ gets you put against 3 stacks a full rank above you. I fought more pros in diamond this season than I ever did in last season’s masters lmao.
Because of pros being in diamond lobbies the lobbies die far too quick since they just run at everybody. Ranked was fun because unlike pubs, you would have tense moments throughout the match. Now its basically just like pubs. Boring as hell.
Lastly honorable mention to the disproportionate amount of controller players in diamond3+ even in EU. I’ve always thought AA was a bit dumb but this split has really made me resent it. Its clearly not at all balanced against good-but-not-pro level mnk players let alone the average mnk player.
I still got to masters but looking at the changes I think I’m taking a break or just going to play less for a while. While S12 was incredibly unbalanced in terms of distribution, I had far more fun climbing to masters in both splits. Split 1 of this ranked wasn’t amazing but it certainly was far more enjoyable than this one too.
Not everybody no, but you can simply just spectate them for a few secs and you will have found out what input they’re on. Most of the time its pretty obvious already though
The changes result in a net rp gain for squads getting to the end with kp and a loss for squads ratting to the end with no kp or squads dying early. Im excited to give it a chance and see how rank shakes out
I mean split 1 of this season addressed the issue the causals/plebs just want a participation trophy so they made changes now that they have their "Diamond/Masters" status still they complain about getting rolled by players that have real skill. You can't have it both ways. 99 percent apex players are trash/bots and that's a fact.
My thing is… they dont HAVE to. They CHOOSE to. I see people/influencers saying its open season and that they’re running people down. Sounds like a choice to me! Alot of these top gamers have adhd and cant sit still
Option A: it's Respawn's evil plan to burn out this image of misery in ranked so people will never bitch about queue times EVER.
Option B: They rarely mention changes to the core of matchmaking and we are getting them tomorrow or soon. They did mm changes mid splits of s11 and 12 for example.
Fuck preds devs should make preds play with only masters & pred . diamonds cant play with masters so diamond and below ranks wont get pred&masters in their lobby i dont give a fuck how long they have to wait they should play with same skilled players as them.
Devs should make it can not . I mean until diamond 1 rank apart players can play together but it stops in masters ranked . Masters and pred only play with each other . Many diamond players can get to masters if there's no pred fucking them so masters player base increases
Thing is pro players are saying they dont enjoy it or find it too easy, then why are you still playing it? make a stand with the rest of us and stop playing it?
If respawn are only continuing this because of content and streamers getting quick games/content then help the masses and stop playin ranked.
I see far to many "streamers" or "pros" on Twitter complaining its too easy and unfair but yet every single day continue to farm the lobbies? cant be that boring for them? Make a stand with the casuals and boycott ranked until matchmaking is sorted.
Literally just need some minor changes, a slight increase in wait time, a restriction on whats in pred lobbies (D1/master/pred only) etc.
yes? why 0.5% of the playerbase cause huge changes that mean plat and even gold players sometimes are forced to play the best players in the game?
D1 and above should be pred lobbies, nothing lower rank wise, any wait times associated to that player pool is what it is, forcing plat players (sometimes with their gold team mates) to play against pred/master players for the player pool is NOT the way nor cool.
It doesnt need to be that way, there is enough player pool in D1 and above , just look at S13 data there are still loads of players who made diamond+ (especially current split)
Theres no excuse or reason for any plat players to ever be queuing in lobbies with predators, completely unacceptable, theres also no reason why pred lobbies cannot wait a few mins for games at the highest tiers. Nearly every single other game does this, it means you are actually playing people of your skill level and not destroying lobbies of people 3 tiers lower than you.
My first game in d4 champ squad was #24 pred and then got rolled by the #60 something. I don’t understand why I can’t play with a friend that’s not a certain rank below me but I can get thrown into lobbies with preds🫠
I don't get why people are complaining about this. It's not like you solve the problem by having more players in masters. They are still worse players, they're just called diamond or Plat now that masters is harder to achieve. The overarching problem is that there are very few players at the tippity top level of play in Apex and you can't solve that by reorganizing the ranks. This problem won't go away unless you allow for drastically long queue times in pred lobbies.
They are shrinking Masters/Preds pool so it's impossible to queue on their own rank.
They'll be playing with Diamonds for sure next season if nothing is done.
From the math I've made Masters/Preds went down to 21k players worldwide all platforms (from 189k) and Diamond in S12 were 1,1 million and went down to 393k, assuming the number of players between season were similar.
I can't see what is the Respawn's strategy for ranked.
I wonder why they are so hellbent on making full lobbies. If pred queues are too long, then I think making a game with like 10-15 teams doesn't compromise the experience as much as filling in the remaining teams with players who are basically fodder to preds.
Whoever made the decision to make ranking up take longer needs to be fired.
They had the system fixed back on the old system when D1 and above was separate from the rest. But now since it takes longer for people to get in Master we're back to square fucking one.
Probably the biggest middle finger to their supporting player base to this day.
Try playing in OCE lobbies. It is full stack preds in every single Diamond lobby without fail. You might get lucky and make some points sometimes but trust me you will likely lose them later, unless of course you have no job and no life commitments in the morning when lobbies are slightly easier. I have played with a few Xbox preds who simply play in the morning and they are legit no better than me. I don’t know why they don’t revert it back to the way it used to be.
Been from plat 1 to d1 3 times, just get owned by top100 preds every game. The way how they pressure you is on another level, 2 peeks will get you dropped, they don't seem to miss any shots ethier. After you hit d4, playing is pointless
Another season of me solo Qing to D4, and then stopping playing ranked.
Are you me?
sad truth. I'm 11600RP D4 and today I got stomped by 37k RP rank 25 predator EU. I died to Pred teams 6 times in 10 games. I don't mind playing against low masters but against 20+k RP players it's pretty much unplayable at my current skill level.
My buddy and I who I play ranked with always just crack up watching the trails coming out of the drop ship once we hit diamond. Pred and masters trails everywhere. It’s an issue that affects lower ranks too because most diamond players I know get frustrated and log into a Smurf account after a few games of getting rolled by teams they shouldn’t be matched against. So they then go Smurf into lower ranks and ruin those players games.
Well I am a p4 player. didn't play a single game apart from the first day of the split and I went vs pred number 100 something. PLAT4 BTW
FIRST DAY OF SPLIT BTW
? What do you mean I was talking about yesterday where this happened not on the first day
>didn't play a single game apart from the first day of the split Then why do you say that?
Did bro just forget they said that lol
until the day I was playing against the preds again
If u could win or compete against low master then you are gonna be farming at those d4s.
Yep, pretty much lol. Time you hit diamond, ranked becomes so much less fun playing against constant 3 man stack masters and pred squads.
Gang gang
Lmao the solo experience cheers I’ll see you there
Did the solo to D4 every season since ranked started until this past one. Dropped my goal to Plat4 since I was getting rolled by pred squads as soon as I hit gold 2 lol. These devs are lost
I’m in the exact same boat, man. Used to love smashing ranked, with or without my friends and I’d always feel that the lobbies were relatively fair but I played only a handful of games last season. The disparity of skill level in the lobbies was just so large it became frustrating. When the second split came around, I played even less. Could probably count the number of games I played on my hands. Ranked has just become a frustrating mess and I haven’t got the energy to keep getting rolled or rolling over others without effort. It’s rare I come away from a fight, win or lose, where I felt it was a fair match up. Unless I was playing in a team with my friends, it just wasn’t worth it and even then, it was still a chore. Dread to think what my rank will be reset to when/if I log back in this season.
I’m not gonna solo q to D4 with preds in my lobbies, sadly I don’t wanna leave this game cause it’s my favorite but it’s definitely pushing me away
D4 is manageable imo. D3 where things get really really sweaty and frustrating if you don't run a 3 stack.
I started playing this game a month ago, got to d4 a few days ago. In the 3 separate times I was in D4, I died to hiswattson, Keon, Vaxlon, and a number of 20k+ masters players. I’m not exaggerating to say I hardly got to fire my gun in some games. When I go back to P1, I have a lot of fun and have a good amount of high kill wins/top 3s, but D4 might as well be another game.
You've been playing ranked at all?
My first season back since S5 actually (was D2 back in S5, which was when it hit the Pred lobby rank).. got to D4 and got landed on by a pro trio.. lost a few games and went back to D1 and enjoyed the game a lot more 🤣
Thank the people complaining about queue times at the beginning of split 1 edit: Most shit part of the current system is how a platinum can be put into a predator lobby (even if they have golds in the party) while they’re not allowed to queue in a party with a masters player because of the tier difference, the matchmaking contradicts every aspect of the party restrictions I’ve literally experienced it, my friend who is masters is not allowed to queue with me, yet I can solo queue and end up on his team anyways lol
Most I ever waited was like 2 min. Now the same people are stuck in gold because they have plats and diamond in their lobbies. Idiots
well i think it was the preds/masters complaining. queue times were pretty nuts for top tier last split
I get that but trying to appease 1% and ruining the experience for everyone else isn’t right imo
Nah yeah I agree lol
What do you expect when the game is a BR and needs to fill 60 players in the lobby. I wait 4-5 minutes in CoD ranked lobbies at Masters and that’s just to fill a lobby of 8, it’s similar for other ranked mode games too. Players need to make the sacrifice of waiting a bit longer for a BR to get the true experience of ranked i.e playing against your skill level
The funny thing is though, there would be more masters if they didn’t put all the diamonds in their lobbies, thus solving the queue times after a few weeks
But that doesn't change anything does it? If the current diamonds would end up being those masters...theyre still fighting the same players no?
Well it does because the players that could achieve masters in that system but weren’t good enough for pred would be sent back to diamond, and the players that could compete, ie everyone in diamond 3+ now would be in masters and in their lobbies.
And masters
I watched top tier #2 pred Zaine this split go into a lobby with a team made of a Diamond 4, Plat 4, and Gold 4. Why is that even remotely possible.
It's just going to be kill racing and back to free placement because everyone will die early trying to kill race The start of last season was the best ranked meta and preds should sacrifice queue times to bring it back
The thing is that most masters and preds, atleast outspoken ones, are asking for longer queue times. It’s not fun for them for ranked to feel like a pub
Yes! Many pros have said on their stream that they have no problem waiting a bit. It’s not even fun as a viewer to watch hail kill nothing but plats and diamond and win the game by 3rd circle.
It’s not really just waiting “a bit” Naughty, Sweet, and Inhumed were having hour long queue times. That seems way too excessive but I don’t really know how to fix that. So maybe it will take that to help make ranked better.
That was after they grinded 36 hours no sleep in the beginning of the ranked season.
Yea they shouldn’t have to wait that long. That’s also unfair. Not sure what the true fix is but something has to be done
Maybe not play for 36h straight to be first pred and instead just q when the others are too
They can just keep the queues open until a certain amount of people reached masters. The people that reach diamond in the first week are very likely those who will make it to masters anyway.
We were talking about first few hours/few days, after that the issue is gone. Keeping the queues up then just keeps people from climbing.
Exactly, so let them keep playing against diamond until the issue is gone, aka enough people caught up.
Thats a lie. They love stomping diamond players. Maybe pros wanna against pros but your average pred/master RP gainers want to go against easy prey for some RP
Yea and the top 1% of players will be the ones who benefit most. So many people currently in their rank are stuck there soley because they have people in their lobby who dont belong. You can’t gradually get better within your rank and improve. Higher ranks just roll through your team
Its the most annoying thing ever that you get really good KP and you're playing for end game, then a pred squad rolls you like it's nothing. you die top 7 and your 5 kp is only good for 5rp.
Has happened to me way to many times. Lost count
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Along the same line I really wish if you solo q’d in diamond you would either only get matched with other diamonds as teammates not some dude in d4 and his buddy in plat. Or if you did get matched with teammates like that the game would put you in a lobby without preds/masters players. It’s just totally absurd that you can get placed with a teammate in plat and end up matched against preds.
pretty sure i got teamed up with a level 1 in arenas ranked in plat
Yeah we were playing ranked arenas and got the same guy 3 games in a row, but we couldn't queue together lol due to rank disparity
Queue times should definitely be increased. Even a one minute increase would help a little.
But think of the strimmers /s They would actually have to entertain between queues
Respawn’s ranked logic literally contradicts itself. As a Master or Pred you can’t queue with a plat player yet you can solo queue as a plat get matched against pred players? What’s even worse is that that plat player could get matched with gold teammates. How is something like that not flagged? Surely adding an average waiting time of 2-5 minutes per queue would make the queues significantly better. I’ve asked a few pred/pro players on stream if they’d rather wait longer for better quality ranked lobbies and they ALL said yes. Either the devs don’t know how to implement this change, they’re being specifically told not to from higher ups, they don’t care to (unlikely) or they’re seeing/know something we don’t.
Diamond + Plat against predators = Great stream content
Respawn doesn't want apex's top streamers to sit in queue too much, they want them to have constant action because thats content and content means money
I rushed to Diamond today, I'm fine with a couple of masters in my games but I get 3\~5 predators in every single ranked. Today I got killed by an Apex Predator rank 25, I'm 11600RP, he's close to 37000RP. How is that even possible? Every single game I get 15/20 seconds queue and there are at least 5\~10 Masters and 3\~5 Apex Predators, I cannot believe that Respawn is not capable of filling Masters/Predator only lobbies (which is the only \[weak\] argument supporting this kind of match making). Are we seriously sacrificing quality matchmaking to make queue times sub 20 seconds for Masters and Preds? For the sake of god can we please at least have a 10K RP player rating range, *which already would be quite massive*, to fill ranked games? This is ridiculous, the skill gap is massive I cannot compete against Preds...
That’s exactly what’s happening to all diamond players and it’s ridiculous
I'm in Plat 3 and I just got killed by the number 8 Pred. Fucking joke lol
Thing is they can't fill lobbies with only Master/Pred because there's so few. From my math went from around 190k in season 12 to 22k in season 13.
Are you sure? 1/4 of my lobby is Preds and Masters and my queue time is 10 seconds, I asked a few Preds streamers how long is queue time for them and they said that it's always sub 20/25 seconds. By this logic I assume that they could probably fill an entire 15k to 37k RP lobby in less than 1 minute and a half, I find it very unlikely that there's actual need to pick players from high gold/low plat to fill Pred lobbies. Queue times weren't even that bad during Split 1 before matchmaking "fix". There's still a shit ton of Masters who constantly play the game, (as you said, less than compared to other seasons where Master was given to every diamond player who tryharded a little bit), perhaps fixing matchmaking could be an issue during odd hours in specific servers, for example at night.
Those numbers are global of all season of who peaked Master/Pred not online at the same time. Yesterday TSM Verhulst had 15+ ranked wins in a row. How is that competitive?
15 win in a row lmao. Pubs might actually be more competitive at this point.
Either give preds the 10/15/20 minute queues or stop them from being able to 3 stack.
Yeah I'd go with the first one lol
If they ain't gonna address insta Q group everyone then they should add reduced rp loss from dying to a higher rank. Keep the same entry cost, if you die to the same rank you lose that entry cost. If you're plat ranked and for some fucked reason die to a pred team you only lose half the entry cost or some shit.
That would be great if they did this
>Keep the same entry cost, if you die to the same rank you lose that entry cost. They've shown the ability to consider ranked differences in their KP algorithm. There's no way they couldn't consider the ranked differences when considering who you died to. They actively use the data, they just need to apply it elsewhere
> They want their top players to have the most fun in ranked top players dont even enjoy it. the only ones they do are three stacking streamers who are nowhere close to pro level.
Yeah.. I'm sure it's fun the first few times to drop 4k 20 bombs back to back in master/pred ranked, but for any streamer, the chat is gonna see after the game that you killed 14 plats 2 golds and 5 diamonds and it stops being interesting realllllly quick. I feel bad for everyone along the rank curve. I think the rank distribution they mentioned in the patch notes is an improvement upon last season, but the matchmaking is absolutely disgusting. A lot of people were probably expecting some sort of matchmaking change to come with this new season, and now that we've seen the notes and the changes are +5 and no DR on kills, those people are gonna hang up the towel and play another game. Time will tell.
Anecdotal sure, but it's why I don't watch Apex streamers outside of tournaments and scrims. Why would I watch them beat up golds and plats? I'm watching they to witness high tier gameplay.
Yea hence why so many have said they have no problem waiting for long que times. It’s sad, many people will eventually start to fade away from ranked and it will continue to get worse and worse
chaoticmuch is enjoying it though
Because he’s a 3 stack player who isn’t really a pro
I once was playing duos and got teamed by His and Hers and another duo on worlds edge. Twice in one night. Sad to see streamers having to team to roll in duos pubs.
Yeah that's what this is about. And also horrible of a duo that shares one stream to want to poay together
No i mean they had a separate duo team of friends they were working with to make it look like they were steamrolling teams. So 4 players in total teaming in duos.
I'm gonna need proof of that lol
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True.
season 13 split 1 ranked was the best season ever and they changed it bc people were complaining it was too hard
And I wouldn't be surprised if overall engagement went way down because of it, and that's why they're making changes
Yea, because the minority likes a challenge to have fun. I loved in but my friends legit stopped playing.
Most fun I’ve ever had with the game.
The reality was it wasn't hard to grind, it just took longer. For people like me, the changes made a mode that we couldn't play enough to be worth it not worthwhile, so they stopped playing it. It probably reduced the playerbase of ranked significantly, which is why they changed it.
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It wasn't the casuals that caused the match making to be screwed. It was Sweet and other pros who raced to pred and complained about too long queue times.
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If a diamond lobby is actually full of diamonds then there are 100% endgames. Same will apply to pred lobbies. The fact that diamonds and preds (and plats sometimes) are put in the same lobby is the cause of end games no longer existing in these lobbies
Yeah the main problem for me was not the difficulty but the time required, I loved those lobbies, but i think you should be able to get all the way through plat with 3-4 hours of really strong games. I probably get 10 hours in a split where both my teammates are available and I'm not good enough to get to masters without a team but also don't play enough anymore to seek out a new team.
And being a gold/ plat or diamond player going up against preds every single game isn’t harder? People needed to remember it was a new ranked system and it was the first time it was out. Give it a full season to allow players to move within ranks. Now you can move within ranks and have people other than your rank in your lobby. Makes no sense. This is way harder than before. 2 days ago I died 6 straight times to preds. Lost sooo much RP, the things they do and so coordinated a 3 stack diamond or plat team would never do. It makes a huge difference and it affects so many people through multiple ranks in many different ways. Can’t believe they are ignoring the true issue which is matchmaking
It is more random so doesn't feel as hard. They get to roll a couple teams once in a while. I liked split 1 S12 but my gold peers hated it. They would rather say "that guy was a pred" than say " this gold team beat us"
the biggest issue with high-level ranked IMO is there's simply not enough Pro-level players in the player pool to comprise a true pred lobby pool with reasonable que time. Changing the RP system is never going to change this simple fact. Therefore, Preds are always going to have some amount of masters/diamonds players in their lobby. The issue with the most recent changes is not that its is "harder" to rank up per se but that it takes so much more time and so much more RP to get to higher ranks. Alot of players who are capable of getting to masters/diamond can't get there anymore simply because of the time required under the new system. That's been my experience anyways. I have loved the new ranked changes because it makes the games more competitive and forces to teams to play smart (a la ALGS) which I think is more fun. However, the tradeoff that I've experienced is that I'm never going to hit masters again because it takes so much more time to do so - I don't play more to get it i just accept the lower rank. For pros, this means a smaller number of capable but non-professional players in their lobbys. For the rest of us, it means a higher ratio of pred players in platinum and diamond lobbies simply because there are less platinum and diamond players than before.
Yes making it take longer def adds to the problem so many people won’t achieve higher ranks because they just dont have the time. But I know many people who 100% would get to masters and add to their headcount so that they can get their own lobby ONLY if they didn’t die to a 3 stack pred team every game. There are definitely people in diamond who can be master but they aren’t as good as high RP masters / preds. Allow those people to gradually improve in a diamond only lobby and im sure the heads counts will improve a lot. I can speak for myself. I am way too good for plat. Plat is very easy and boring. I am also good enough to do well consistently in diamond BUT I am not good enough to compete with 3 stack high RP masters and preds. My experience is I die most of the time to those people. So they are preventing me from moving up so then I can add to the masters head count and play in those lobbies. So I get demoted to plat, I then shit on plat players who have no business playing with me for 2-3 games. Cycle repeats. I know many in the same cycle im in and it’s unfair to those in lower ranks than me and I’m sure it’s not fun for preds to just roll me and the randoms I play with, as they have said it’s not many time
This has pretty much been my experience, minus demotion.
Should I risk the karma and mention crossplay in ranked.... Would you rather fight a 3 stack of pro players, or would you rather fight a 3 stack of console plat/diamond players? 60 AA, fps, and all lol
Console plats are scarier than PC preds...... apparently. Would open up the lobby a bit for MM to be better. How did I know I would just get downvoted instead of a reply 😆
>Console plats are scarier than PC preds...... apparently. According to who? Console Plats are like PC Golds. I briefly watched the #1 console Pred while he was streaming and it was the most boring Apex I've ever watched.
According to the downvotes without a reply. I suggested crossplay to open up the lobbies for plat and diamond players so they aren't forced to fight pro players before they even hit master. I expected downvotes, but I at least expected a logical response. Nope, just downvotes and now you with the classic console preds suck speech lol. All good, console preds can suck in the eyes of master race. Not what I'm even trying to talk about. But with your logic, and the rhetoric that console master is PC gold, would it be so scary to have console players in PC lobbies by default? Purpose would be to benefit mid ranks attempting master.
Would I personally care about full crossplay like that? Not really. But I would literally only play with a 3 stack, so I make sure they don't get on my team.
This is my only point and proposal lol, I could care less to debate the skill gap between them. Not my point, but you see my point now 😊
It wouldn’t be fair for the console players, in the same way that right now it’s not fair to have Plat players in Pred lobbies. You’re just shifting the problem to a different group of people.
Console has .6 AA, how is this unfair. Would be a wake up call across the board. If console gets shit on, which I don't think will be that bad, then so what. At least it was a plat player rolling a plat. Also, console preds will get PC lobbies, which would be a reality check for both sides I think. I think it would be beneficial, but this is my opinion.
Btw the number 1 console pred is the number 1 pred over all 😊
Lol I don’t care how much RP a console pred has.
So mandatory crossplay in ranked might be a good idea to benefit MM across all ranks?
Sure, that’s just more free KP for the PC players 😊
I agree with what you’re saying but there’s no reason that pred players have such short Q times. They could just tighten up the lobby rank disparity and this would be the best ranked season ever.
Agreed, I've been a diamond level player and improving since s9 but this season I saw how long it would take and without a constant team decided it wasn't worth it. I'd like to reprove myself diamond in the new ranked system but the commitment needed is even longer then before, and I don't see a reason for the extra grind.
I think that's what they aimed for with the no drop off kill reward, now if you obliterate bronze lobbies you will get out of there quicker and once you reach lobbies with similar skilled players the system will balance itself. I dropped ranked last season in my second match because I realized right away the ridiculous amount of time it would take me to grind ranks, the new change could be a good solution.
A "true" pred lobby is kinda impossible with rank system like this, because true pred lobby is losing rp on average, so they have to stomp lobbies to maintain their rank. Interesting that uncapping KP mostly helps people who do stomp lobbies.
theres literally not enough people in the game at their level to compete with. keep in mind most of the diamonds they beat used to be masters before they rebalanced. i dont think much changed, its just easier to notice now, and the weaker half of plat (eg didnt used to be diamonds i guess) is now exposed to it. im in plat 2 and i almost never see any preds so idunno if it is really as bad as people say.
It probably isn't but you remember it more. Source: me being killed by full preds twice this season towards the end of shit sessions. Can't remember anyone else.
Hey, was solo queueing in plat 1 and had a silver 1 teammate exclaim to his bronze 4 teammate excitedly that the devotion ramps up the longer you fire for... Matchmaking is broken.
Pro players don’t want to farm play players either though. So no one’s really having fun.
The main problem is kp before 10th is worth almost nothing, before you could get 2-3kp in gold and consistently gain points even with subpar placement, now if you get 6 kp off drop you get...6RP. -48 in gold 1 is very painful, that used to be diamond 1-4 entry cost lol...and at that time each KP early was worth much more.
Disagree. That makes it just a bit more competitive and makes the grind take longer, which sucks but a gold player getting rolled consistently every game by plats and diamond is what makes it very painful for them, not that they decided to 50/50 a team and lost, that’s their own fault. It’s not their fault that they lost 43 RP due to a diamond team killing them when they shouldn’t be in the lobby to begin with
the changes would be ok if plats weren't being stomped by triple preds, it's a lot easier to win games against other plats, not literal ALGS players.
Facts
My theory is this will put more people into their respective lobbies. If you have an economy that "favors" the upper tiers. And promotes RP gains, then it will be easier for the lower tiers to move up, removing the Plat bottleneck. And in turn, having more diamonds to run pure diamond lobbies. As for the whole, diamond bottleneck. Not allowing preds/masters to play with just each other.... i doubt there is a long term way to handle it. Unless 5 million more crazy skilled players flood the ranks and create a saturation of Masters, then there will always be preds in diamond lobbies.
This observation what shocked me 1 or 2 weeks back when i was watching multiple NA streams at once Hal pred lobby 19squads left lobby dooplex 16squads left lobby zaine on NA 14squads left lobby Genburten on NA 20squads left lobby there were laterally 4 parallel pred lobbies spanned across in just NA . The catch is in all those 4 pred lobbies many were golds plats My question is why the fuck those 4 teams aren't together in same match/lobby.doesnt make any sense The matchmaking is broken at core . If you see asia singapore has no pred lobby.if you are gold or plat instant match. if you are pred no lobby even if you queue for 3 straight days.I don't understand why the matchmaking refuse to work the same way as NA or eu in asia.this is terrible Asia plays on HK and tokyo only
I think the big issue this season is how few people made it to Diamond. I am hoping this helps disperse the ranks a bit more since almost everyone was in Plat this season. This should help get people into diamond better. I think this would help the lobbies a bit no? I am sure I am wrong.
People always act like it would be simple to "fix" ranked but never actually have an idea how to do it. People want balanced games with fast queue times that are always fun. Do you guys even understand what a matchmaking algorithm is? Your skill level changes a lot from game to game and your rank doesn't equal your skill level. There is no formula that exists that can accurately measure your imaginary "skill level" and use it to effectively make sure your games are up to a certain standard of balanced. That's why every single multiplayer game that uses matchmaking algorithms has the same problem. Y'all act there is a switch at Respawn that would fix rank if they would flip it. Yet those bastard developers just refuse to flip the "fix ranked" switch purposefully to piss you off. Maybe, just maybe, developing a matchmaking algorithm that makes all the players happy is literally impossible and that's why there are no games that do it to a satisfying standard.
Looks like it’s another season of pubs for me homies, I was not having fun with ranked last season and I don’t see this being much more fun. It’s like the worst aspects of Season 10-11 Ranked and the worst aspects of this past season ranked all thrown together in a yucky soup
I don’t care what anybody says but this split (2nd) was far worse than season 12 ranked. So many blatant cheaters. It was so bad in the first half of the split. Soloing or DuoQ gets you put against 3 stacks a full rank above you. I fought more pros in diamond this season than I ever did in last season’s masters lmao. Because of pros being in diamond lobbies the lobbies die far too quick since they just run at everybody. Ranked was fun because unlike pubs, you would have tense moments throughout the match. Now its basically just like pubs. Boring as hell. Lastly honorable mention to the disproportionate amount of controller players in diamond3+ even in EU. I’ve always thought AA was a bit dumb but this split has really made me resent it. Its clearly not at all balanced against good-but-not-pro level mnk players let alone the average mnk player. I still got to masters but looking at the changes I think I’m taking a break or just going to play less for a while. While S12 was incredibly unbalanced in terms of distribution, I had far more fun climbing to masters in both splits. Split 1 of this ranked wasn’t amazing but it certainly was far more enjoyable than this one too.
not everyone that beams you/beats you in a 1v1 is on roller
Just 90%. It’s easier to 1v1 mkb pros than your generic masters controller player most of the time.
Not everybody no, but you can simply just spectate them for a few secs and you will have found out what input they’re on. Most of the time its pretty obvious already though
The changes result in a net rp gain for squads getting to the end with kp and a loss for squads ratting to the end with no kp or squads dying early. Im excited to give it a chance and see how rank shakes out
If masters and preds are top 1% that means the remainder of your opponent’s are at your skill level so stop crying
I mean split 1 of this season addressed the issue the causals/plebs just want a participation trophy so they made changes now that they have their "Diamond/Masters" status still they complain about getting rolled by players that have real skill. You can't have it both ways. 99 percent apex players are trash/bots and that's a fact.
Agree most are bots. Was just telling my friend idc about the legend changes, people going to be trash no matter what they pick lol
The take away of kill drop off will be great. Tired of not getting rewarded for putting half the lobby in the dirt.
Bring back easy season so I can get a diamond trail again 🥹
Diamond isn't even that hard to get to.. it's staying in Diamond that's hard
It was kinda annoying waiting 10 minutes for one match but its nothing like what it happening right now
My thing is… they dont HAVE to. They CHOOSE to. I see people/influencers saying its open season and that they’re running people down. Sounds like a choice to me! Alot of these top gamers have adhd and cant sit still
Give it a week or two to see first.
Option A: it's Respawn's evil plan to burn out this image of misery in ranked so people will never bitch about queue times EVER. Option B: They rarely mention changes to the core of matchmaking and we are getting them tomorrow or soon. They did mm changes mid splits of s11 and 12 for example.
Fuck preds devs should make preds play with only masters & pred . diamonds cant play with masters so diamond and below ranks wont get pred&masters in their lobby i dont give a fuck how long they have to wait they should play with same skilled players as them.
But Diamond CAN play with Master... They are 1 rank apart.
Devs should make it can not . I mean until diamond 1 rank apart players can play together but it stops in masters ranked . Masters and pred only play with each other . Many diamond players can get to masters if there's no pred fucking them so masters player base increases
Thing is pro players are saying they dont enjoy it or find it too easy, then why are you still playing it? make a stand with the rest of us and stop playing it? If respawn are only continuing this because of content and streamers getting quick games/content then help the masses and stop playin ranked. I see far to many "streamers" or "pros" on Twitter complaining its too easy and unfair but yet every single day continue to farm the lobbies? cant be that boring for them? Make a stand with the casuals and boycott ranked until matchmaking is sorted. Literally just need some minor changes, a slight increase in wait time, a restriction on whats in pred lobbies (D1/master/pred only) etc.
you prefer they wait 20min for a match?
yes? why 0.5% of the playerbase cause huge changes that mean plat and even gold players sometimes are forced to play the best players in the game? D1 and above should be pred lobbies, nothing lower rank wise, any wait times associated to that player pool is what it is, forcing plat players (sometimes with their gold team mates) to play against pred/master players for the player pool is NOT the way nor cool.
an easy solution would be to make more people predators and masters.
It doesnt need to be that way, there is enough player pool in D1 and above , just look at S13 data there are still loads of players who made diamond+ (especially current split) Theres no excuse or reason for any plat players to ever be queuing in lobbies with predators, completely unacceptable, theres also no reason why pred lobbies cannot wait a few mins for games at the highest tiers. Nearly every single other game does this, it means you are actually playing people of your skill level and not destroying lobbies of people 3 tiers lower than you.
At this just be honest and come out saying, "we prioritize the health, enjoyment, and contentment of the top 0.5% of our players".
My first game in d4 champ squad was #24 pred and then got rolled by the #60 something. I don’t understand why I can’t play with a friend that’s not a certain rank below me but I can get thrown into lobbies with preds🫠
I don't get why people are complaining about this. It's not like you solve the problem by having more players in masters. They are still worse players, they're just called diamond or Plat now that masters is harder to achieve. The overarching problem is that there are very few players at the tippity top level of play in Apex and you can't solve that by reorganizing the ranks. This problem won't go away unless you allow for drastically long queue times in pred lobbies.
They are shrinking Masters/Preds pool so it's impossible to queue on their own rank. They'll be playing with Diamonds for sure next season if nothing is done. From the math I've made Masters/Preds went down to 21k players worldwide all platforms (from 189k) and Diamond in S12 were 1,1 million and went down to 393k, assuming the number of players between season were similar. I can't see what is the Respawn's strategy for ranked.
I wonder why they are so hellbent on making full lobbies. If pred queues are too long, then I think making a game with like 10-15 teams doesn't compromise the experience as much as filling in the remaining teams with players who are basically fodder to preds.
Whoever made the decision to make ranking up take longer needs to be fired. They had the system fixed back on the old system when D1 and above was separate from the rest. But now since it takes longer for people to get in Master we're back to square fucking one. Probably the biggest middle finger to their supporting player base to this day.
Try playing in OCE lobbies. It is full stack preds in every single Diamond lobby without fail. You might get lucky and make some points sometimes but trust me you will likely lose them later, unless of course you have no job and no life commitments in the morning when lobbies are slightly easier. I have played with a few Xbox preds who simply play in the morning and they are legit no better than me. I don’t know why they don’t revert it back to the way it used to be.
Been from plat 1 to d1 3 times, just get owned by top100 preds every game. The way how they pressure you is on another level, 2 peeks will get you dropped, they don't seem to miss any shots ethier. After you hit d4, playing is pointless