The past 2 weeks of Apex was the worst experience I had with Apex

[LaughingSharko]

@apostolateofDOOM But isn't that what you're complaining about? Losing often to players who put in the time and are better than you?

As to your other point, I totally agree that low-level players have no business being on the same team as high-level players. No one player should have to carry the other members of their team, especially since groups are allowed to queue against random solo players.

[Axs5626Sxa5001]

@LaughingSharko

He isn’t complaining about playing against top players *sometimes*, he’s complaining about go against top players MOST of the time.

In any multiplayer activity, variance is key. My pubs are consistently comprised of 60-70% Master Preds despite them only making up 3% of the population. As a Masters player myself you would think that’s totally fair, but I am losing FAR more overall than casual players who are average. This ties in Apostle’s point of: “if everyone is going to win at similar rates anyway, why improve?” Equal opportunities is what multiplayer games should offer— not equal outcomes.

Obviously, ranked should ALWAYS try to place people against their doppelgänger— but in pubs? Really? If a below average player really genuinely wants to maximize the likelihood that they are playing against people near their skill, they should exclusively play the mode with the strongest SBMM (ranked).

[apostolateofDOOM]

@LaughingSharko  No, that's not what i'm complaining about.

For example, my brother and his friends are gold/plats and why should they have to play in some of my lobbies that are sometimes 80% master/pred trails just because i'm on their team. The chances of me winning are stacked against me if i'm premade with them or low levels team mates solo que. Not a good experience for everyone involved forcing me to team up with people my rank or skill level turning it into a sweat fest anyway.

I sometimes want to chill in the game too and have the time and effort i put in to improving be reflected in my games performance.

This is my first BR in a long line of FPS games and prior to Apex, we would manually join a server and either be stomped, it be reasonably balanced or do the stomping but whatever happened the server would evolve or we would change servers always having mixed results but better players on average did better across the board.

That doesn't happen here.

Some players who are bronze or silver are getting more wins on average than master/pred players. How's that fair?

[LaughingSharko]

@Axs5626Sxa5001 I think the real driver of most of these threads is that people always prefer the road of least resistance. It's "fun" for many "pros" to massacre players who are far out of their skill levels. Have you noticed that when they smurf, they don't "relax" as they claim to want to do. They use every trick they know to kill the entire lobby as quickly and ruthlessly as possible. So, what they're really saying is they want to be gods among their lobby. All of them, at the same time ... entire lobbies dedicated to their enjoyment ...

Our skill levels are different, but I also have to play against better players every match, along with countless smurfs.

If I want to survive, I have to use every trick I know, and be alert 100%, and sweat constantly, and practice for hours to get better, and still get destroyed most of the anyway.

So, what would variance be in my case or the case of other below average players? Having bots in 50% of my matches?

If your argument is that higher skilled players should win 100% of the time and be able to stomp lower skilled players whenever they feel like it, good luck with that, I guess.

[LaughingSharko]

@apostolateofDOOM Do you have some kind of statistics for that "bronze or silver are getting more wins on average"? Or just an anecdote?

If true, I would

A. highly doubt those players with high win rates are actually bronze level players and suspect they are likely smurfs

B. believe they are probably grouping up and in voice chat

As someone who only plays solo, I can tell you that my win rate is not close to yours. Many of the smurfs in my lobbies have more wins on a single toon than I have total kills on all of my legends combined.

And I often outdamage the other members of my random team. But this isn't a good thing, because they also die within 5 seconds of running into the level 10 "XxNotASmurfxX" and his buddies who need to "relax."

What's your KDR if I can ask? Under 0.4? Even close?

[apostolateofDOOM]

@LaughingSharkoNo but my kdr shouldn't be with 4k hrs put in.

My little brother who's 13 had a similar win rate last season to me and he really struggles in my matches so we don't play Apex together now as it frustrated him.

If you have strict SBMM then people will circumvent and abuse it leading to more smurfs making the problem worse. Just like people knowing they'll struggle getting badges on their main because of SBMM so they try getting them on an alt or keep creating new ones till they do. Keeping them on their main reduces this.

I fully understand where you're coming from and that should be clear from the thread i posted but if you can't see the flip side of genuine issues that in essence are the exact same problems as you that both me and @Axs5626Sxa5001 have expressed then this conversation is pointless.

[Cheese9Man]

 What can Respawn do to lessen the smurfs without putting a paywall to play the game or just leave it as is? Should SBMM be stricter or just have a totally random MM in pubs? 

[apostolateofDOOM]

@Cheese9Man Make 2FA compulsory, pubs should be random as we have ranked OR give us the option to toggle MM on/off with rewards to incentivise those to play with it off with a warning you'll likely face off against better opponents.

[Sand_spitter]

@LaughingSharko Dude you are 100% correct, the 2 issues are perpetuating each other in the end. But I'm not even taking about reaching pred, I'm talking about the average player that will be facing them and won't ever make it to their level. They'll eventually take the smurfing route out of pure frustration to try and find some sort of enjoyment of the game. Most players will never have the time, ability and patience to reach the top, and when they improve won't notice the difference anyway because the game gets progressively harder.

[Sand_spitter]

@LaughingSharkoIt's not about winning all the time, it's about finding a sweet spot that makes the game challenging while still being fun for everyone. My matches used to be like this and at some point it just got crazy hard to the point of getting mentally draining and not fun anymore. I'm getting out classed in lobbies that I clearly shouldn't be in. I'm simply not in a position nor do I care to give up my whole life to play this thing 25/7 like my opponents seemingly are just for the sake of improving to only end up in harder lobbies anyway.