Apex Legends matchmaking to become fairer for everybody
It’s always the same: You’re on a great win streak in Apex Legends, almost at the point where you can raise your rank, and then you’re matched up with a bunch noobs who don’t even know how to open a door, even less so hit their targets. That’s outrageous. That’s unfair. Or is it?
Matchmaking sounds very easy on paper. A game just needs to find opponents on the same skill level as yourself and put you into a lobby. Practically, of course, this is complicated as hell and there is no perfect solution. Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment has now revealed some interesting details on the battle royale game’s matchmaking system, which might explain why you get the impression that you’re being treated unfairly.
How Apex Legends matchmaking currently works
To simplify it down to a really basic level: Apex Legends currently builds teams based on the strongest player on that team. If that’s you, everybody on your squad will be worse than you automatically, which in turn leads to the impression that you’re only matched with scrubs. If you’re in the lower ranks in a match, you’ll instead think that you’re only matched with aspiring pro gamers who do nothing else with their life than play Apex.
While giving you a fair chance at winning a match you’re put into on paper, this is not the ideal solution. The current system basically punishes low-ranking players if they want to team up with higher-ranking friends by throwing them into a meat grinder.
How Apex Legends matchmaking will work in the future
So Respawn did some work behind the scenes, building a more accurate skill measurement algorithm, and field tested this new matchmaking system over the holidays, which markedly improved the amount of players able to score kills in their games.
This new system will be introduced in phases globally in 2023, making matchmaking fairer by basing teams not around the strongest players, but instead measuring the average skill of all potential members. This even weighs in the higher effectiveness of pre-made squads. Queue times should be unaffected by the change, while improving everybody’s experience in the game and hopefully leading to less frustrating scenarios as described above.
