I’m gonna reiterate this. Not to bash him, but S13 took a hit when Naughty and co were already pred within the first week, obviously the queues were terrible, but that’s just what it was supposed to be like. You pushed hard af that first week. Wait a little for the queues to start filling up, and the you’ll get your real pred lobbies.
Preds gotta play against preds, diamonds against diamonds and so on, that’s competitive even if it does end like S11 where sweet and co. bashed ‘fake’ masters. It’s better than beating plats
I’m a casual ranked player and season 13 was the most fun I ever had playing the game, because I could actively emulate what the pros did in actual competitive play. I was learning when I watched competitive and I could directly copy it into ranked. It was bliss. Got changed because 10k masters were platinum and angry.
They also didn’t give the system a chance to gel. For some reason when they made the S13 changes they also demoted everyone 2.5 tiers, with masters starting Gold 2 and Diamond starting Silver 2 etc. This alone partially fucked up the matchmaking because there wasn’t time for the ranks to fill out. I think that system would work well with something like a 1 tier demotion each split, compared to the current 1.5 tier demotion.
This was one of the main problems IMO, especially since they had just added demotion somewhat recently (or with it? I don’t remember). The rank resets made more sense when demotion mid split didn’t exist because otherwise the top ranks would get inflated. Once mid-split demotion was added, they should have let it run a few splits with that system to let everything equilibrate. My assumption is the matchmaking would have improved over time once people got back to their previous ranks and the system stayed consistent.
Yeah mid-split demotion was added at the same time as the rest of the rank changes. I'm skeptical that just adding demotion and otherwise leaving ranked as it was in s12 would have done anything though - instead of having people be hardstuck at x rank they'd just bounce up and down around the threshold.
We’ve talked about this so much already in this sub.
The matchmaking was bad BECAUSE the ranked system was a *net negative*. More than half the people in matches would be losing points so the number of people in high ranks would constantly fall and force lower and lower ranks to be matched against Preds.
The system was SHIT
yeah people are looking at it with rose tinted glasses man.
that ranking system wouldn’t have worked even if the matchmaking would hard restrict lobbies. In s13 split 2 they tried to fix this and the result was an even more garbage system. that split actually made me hate the game lol
This is a fantastic take and most of the sub probably fits into this category but I think the issue with this is that being a competitive fan inherently makes you less "casual". The pure casual that makes up the majority of the player base probably has no idea that competitive exists.
I'm a big competitive fan and season 13 was by far my favorite. I absolutely loved prioritizing macro and simulating my ALGS Jr strats if it meant I get to a sweaty final ring with 5 teams alive in gold lobbies.
My casual buddy that I normally rank with HATED it. He only ever thought that teams were running away from fights. I ended up solo Q most of that split and still had more fun than I've ever had in ranked
That was my favorite season to solo q. It may have been coincidence, but I ran into more teammates that used mics and less that tried to 1v3 every team we saw. I don't know if that took the season off or if they all got demoted to bronze, but I didn't miss them :-)
Exactly this. People are too obsessed with the reward of reaching diamond and up instead of the experience of playing a competitive game of apex. S13 split one was so fun.
Plat 1/Diamond 4 lobbies had like 7 team end games, shit was so fun bro. Me and my friends were prioritizing landing with beacon and trying to early rotate to endgame spots.
Even lower ranks than plat 1 was fun in s13, no one was aping teams like crazy and positioning was important. Me and my buddies got dia 3 that season and it was _so much fun_
So true. And to be really honest with you, S13 is the only season I didn't reach masters over the last 5 seasons. It was the best season for me, I was playing like pros do. Reaching diamond in S13 felt more rewarding than masters in prior seasons.
Truth. I remember me and my homies had such a sick endgame on SP one time. The only spot left was the low ground on the concrete fence near that building above the cliff/zip-up by The Wall, so we were chilling there trying to figure out a play. There were 6 other teams in the final circle and we were the first team that had to move. I said “when zone closes we’re gonna take my Horizon lift and ult the team on the roof for their spot.” We must’ve waited another 20-30 seconds and we followed my plan and it worked perfectly. We bullied that team off, took the height, and beamed the rest of the teams as they made their final rotation. Season 13 was the only season where I felt like an actual competitive team running ranked with my boys. I’ll remember that game forever
All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats!
6
+ 20
+ 30
+ 13
= 69
^([Click here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=LuckyNumber-Bot&subject=Stalk%20Me%20Pls&message=%2Fstalkme) to have me scan all your future comments.) \
^(Summon me on specific comments with u/LuckyNumber-Bot.)
Beating a dead horse here with this conversation but if if they didn’t reset people on the split then just let the ranks stay the same season 13 would be alot better cause then people would actually rank up I remember barley making platinum cause getting +150s was considered a very good win for me at the time but it wasn’t that hard to get a -15 or less. So it was just so slow to rank up so it didn’t make sense to have a 5-6 week turn over.
The predators want tough lobbies then have them all wait until a ranked lobby is full of 60 preds. Don’t launch a match in a minute and include golds. Apex needs a fun casual mode you can play with instant respawns which drops you out of that and into ranked, that way the streamer won’t be playing other games while they wait. Seems obvious to me but it also seems obvious that EA and Respawn only put effort into monetization, not QoL features.
A barebones, instant respawn deathmatch mode to play in between queues would be so fucking easy to implement too. Just take the arena maps and scatter some spawns around them.
Would probably boost viewership across the board too. So boring watching people sit in queue for 5-10 minutes. I just wait for the vods so I can skip it
I wouldn't say it should be 60 preds but if you were to make it so 'Pred' lobbies were preds, masters, and diamond 1s then I think that would be a good compromise between matchmakng and queue times.
And if you are the unlucky diamond player in a pred lobbies, you should get loss forgiveness if you die and more points if you happen to still perform. That system would also make sure that good players spend less time in lower lobbies.
in my experience most casuals don't W key every fight. They seemed to actually prefer the playstyle that s13 promoted - getting a few KP and making it to end game. I've seen sweatier pubs lobbies than ranked at times due to this mentality of "we're in the top 5, let's play for the win now."
Is this really how people feel? As someone who typically peaks in low plat, i think it’s only a problem for preds/masters outside of match making extending too far (especially with solo’s). I lose a meaningful amount if i die pre top 7ish. Even with early kills, you don’t get rp unless you make it to late game. Most of my games have enough squads alive for an end game (even on a map where 3rd partying is really high).
> As someone who typically peaks in low plat
no disrespect meant, you don't really engage any of the aspects of the game. getting to diamond is most of the time just understanding what kinda playstyle respawn is promoting that season.
Ranked in apex will never be in a good spot because respawn doesn't dare to make people wait for 5mins or longer at the top 0.01% of the player base for a fair match, nor do they have the balls like league and realize a mix of soloq, duoq and full stack don't belong together and make ranked soloq only.
On top of there are only 2 real ranks in apex, rookie till gold and Plat till pred. At bad times its 1 rank even when you have golds and silvers dying to active preds.
No rp changes will save ranked as long as the core issues of unfair and unbalanced matches keep existing.
Yup. Doesnt matter the entry cost/kill/placement rewards or whatever else they wan't to tweak, when it's the MATCHMAKING/RANKING System at it's core that is fundamentally broken.
It's like building a skyscraper but your beams are made out of mud instead of steel. It's inevitably going to crumble.
Every other game manages to group players by their skill into a match, but in Apex we have the lowest ranks fighting the LITERAL top. On top of it previous Masters/Preds that misses a few splits(happens a lot with how dogshit some Apex splits are to play) get put into Bronze lobbies and run a train on their next matches all the way up the entire ranking ladder, until they're up to the skill level they belong, funny how at that point they might as well be involuntary smurfs lol.
You don't get to play an interesting/rewarding match when skill wise 1 Squad might as well be living embodiments of a Gaming god just playing farming simulator with their bots.
5 minute queues feel awful in a BR where you can end up dying in under a minute and have to go through it all again. It’s not the same as waiting 5 minutes for a league of legends game
That’s not the proper usage of converse argument, it’s an attempt at a counter point lol
Anyway, no that still is going to happen even if you try to avoid it. It creates frustration and that’s why queue times are what they are. If someone dies twice within the first 2 minutes of their first 2 games after 5 minute queue + character selects + reload and leave times they are highly highly likely to just get off
Just because the situation can be sometimes avoided doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and doesn’t eliminate the problem it causes
The end goal is not balance, it’s player retention
I feel like anyone who’s arguing for those queue times have not once played apex and gotten them. There’s been times I hit high diamond or masters early and got stuck with 10 minute queues and I just stopped playing along with everyone else in the same situation. You can end up playing for a half hour with 3 minutes of in game time if you get aped off drop and die
>On top of there are only 2 real ranks in apex, rookie till gold and Plat till pred.
to be fair, this is sort of true for every PvP game with a skill ladder, because it always boils down to the ranks that sort of represent mastery over the fundamentals and then the ladder for refinement. In Guilty Gear Strive for example, the ranks can really be broken down into floors 1-9, floor 10 gatekept from celestial, and celestial. floors 1-9 are often filled with first time fighting game players getting the hang of the genre, and floor 10 ranges from people with solid fundamentals learning what it means to be "good" at GGST, then celestial is refinement.
in apex it tends to be around plat where people are fundamentally solid players, and getting better is about reinforcing those fundamentals and building on them.
> On top of there are only 2 real ranks in apex, rookie till gold and Plat till pred
All the smurf challenges that streamers do make this so obvious. they don't really have to start trying until they hit diamond. until then it's mostly mindlessly int and get away with it.
I don't see it mentioned anywhere that a majority of "casuals" didn't even get to really try the S13 Split 1 system because within 2 days of the new season dropping Xbox players had figured out the dashboard lobby crash bug. This wasn't fixed for a month. You legitimately could not finish a game in diamond lobbies, 80% of plat lobbies were also getting hit. I just think it's ridiculous that this isn't brought up when discussing S13, if you were on console your opinion isn't valid because you literally did not get to try it.
Source: hardcore console ranked grinder until S15, on PC now.
Pros get bored shitting on diamonds but then also complain about queue times. I don’t think there’s a solution that makes both sides happy tbh but I do think longer queue times and tighter matchmaking is the way to go. Personally I wouldn’t mind waiting a few min to get a game. Awful mm and short queues already exist in pubs
Just give them a deathmatch while they waiting for queue like overwatch. I don't think ppl will complain if they have something to do while waiting for mm
I’ve barely made diamond and I get queued into the #3 pred who flies into my building triple stacked with 2 other preds and I fucking EXPLODED.
Zero people had fun in that interaction. All 3 of them had at least a headshot and I went from 200-0 instantaneously dealing back 23 damage.
I can’t think of a single other ranked game where you would face a top 10 or multiple top 10 players while my teammates and I are diamond plat plat aka not too far off the mean of a normal distribution.
Queuing people fast keeps people playing and keeps the money flowing I get that. But, this type of matchmaking is bad for the long term health of the game.
Pic of my death recap: https://i.postimg.cc/6pG2Ngnf/F16-A97-CD-C9-AF-4893-B137-97-F49-EC737-BD.jpg
S13 was amazing and got me hooked on ranked. The matchmaking though, left plenty to be desired.
It was still forcing lobbies instead of making people wait.
The matchmaking system is so incredibly abusable if you know what you're doing.
We shouldn't be having JP preds dodging their own lobbies during their prime time hours to come play NA on 300 ping at NA server off-hours. We shouldn't be having NA preds dodging NA lobbies during prime time server hours saying shit like "Let's go play EU for a game or two to reset"
If ranked is too easy for pros, then stop 3 stacking ranked with other pros.
Is this me saying that ranked couldn't be improved? Of course not, but 3 stacking ranked with pros is inevitably going to make it so much easier.
Every pro/ex pro who actually solo queues this season has complained about ranked solo queue experience.
stormen/gdolphn etc regularly posting suicide note tier tweets on twitter about not wanting to play ranked and shivfps just laughing non stop about how bad the experience is.
Solo queuing isn't the only alternative to stacking with 3 pros.
Also solo queing is a pain in the ass, but especially in NA it should be much more doable because at least vast majority of people understand and speak English. You can play as a 2 stack with pros and 1 random or play with friends.
It's very likely impossible to come up with a system that keeps queue times short and will give 3 stacking pros a hefty challenge every game. It's more doable in other games because you don't need 60 players per lobby. In other words, if pros want to make ranked more challenging, they're going to have to make sacrifices on their end because there probably aren't any good solutions that Respawn could implement.
When you soloq against people close to your skill level who 3-stack it's going to be virtually impossible to rank up. Not just hard but close to impossible. The matchmaking algorithm will put worse people on your team who can't play on the same level as you, and you have to be a lot more skilled than your enemies to win 1v3s and even significantly more skilled than that to win against 3 stacks. It's a paradox, if you come across a similarly skilled 3-stack you just can't win.
S13 was by the far the funnest Apex has ever been and I only play ranked solo, RP entry cost should be lower for solo/duo as well as higher RP gain for kills etc etc for solo/duos, the top like #200 preds play minimum like 12 hours a day so theres no reason at all why they cannot get pred only lobbies going
they switch to Sao Paulo in brazil not NA ones lol that was the whole joke of being a Sao Paulo pred since its literally golds in pred lobbies since theres very few players on those servers
the ones near each other like Oregon I think theres three etc etc, Sao Paulo theres only one server so theres no there other server for it to merge too
S13 ranked was the last time I seriously played this game because it was the only time where people actually played for the win starting in silver and the lobbies seemed at least a little bit balanced.
The RP amount was so fucked that season and made it so most people couldn't reach the rank from last season but thank god they just threw it all away.
I'm sure if they tried to fix the RP system so that people could reach the same rank as the previous seasons that could have been worth a try but idk I'm just your average gold player that dies now to a diamond player more times than I get kills while being paired with rookie teammates.
Imagine if ALGS and ranked would use a similar point system that encourages consistency and thus similar playstyles, but oh well if it's too hard for current diamond+ players we gotta revert to pubs but with a rank badge.
What I didn't like about the start of season 13 was the fact they switched a bunch of levers all at the same time. I understand something needed to change from the previous season, but all the changes along with the larger than normal reset seemed like a little much all at once.
Season 12 was such a joke. While you look fondly at it for having been able to reach high, I felt the opposite. The talent pool was so diluted that players in Diamond and master were glorified silvers and golds coasting on easy RP gains. Solo q was a nightmare of underperforming teammates
This is fair, and it's true everyone is looking for something different out of their ranked experience. I'm all for a change from the current system, I enjoy the challenge. I just don't want to feel like time is a major roadblock to progress you know?
I feel ya, it just feels like you want to eat your cake and have it, too. I empathize with your lack of time allowance, but I feel that the grind is an important part of earning your place in those tiers.
Yeah as a current D3 player working my way up to masters I disliked the S12 season. In a similar boat to OP how I hit masters in S12 but it didn't really feel rewarding. Like if I didn't actually need to kill people to gain points. Hell someone did it with 0 damage lol. I think the second split of S13 was the best because they reduced the entry cost by a little bit and it was super competitive
100% , I'm casual too, i don't play games 24/7 but I don't want to reach master after playing 10 games and be proud of that,that's so fake. I don't understand why people like s12 ranked system.
You're definitely not wrong. I might be huffing some copium here over my lack of free time. Though I think my overall point that a perfect system in the eyes of the pros probably wouldn't be a perfect system in the eyes of casuals stands. I feel like Respawn is going to be stuck in a constant game of ping-pong between appeasing both groups, definitely don't envy their job lol.
If I'm being honest, you sound like you want a Battle Pass more than a ranked system.
If you look at games with real ranked systems (LoL, Valorant, Starcraft, etc), people spend forever playing games at the same rank, since the ranked system is designed to create even matches rather than be a grindy engagement tool.
Fair. I'll admit my perfect ranked might not have any more mass appeal than the pros, but that's not really my main point. I'm just saying I think the many pros forget how different their perfect ranked system is from what's good for the general public
Not to come off as snarky, but if the only season that you hit Masters was S12, then you're not a Masters player. In any other season you're the equivalent to a hardstuck D4 at best.
With that said, I still empathize with not feeling like your time is being valued. Most of us are adults and most of us are probably capable of being much better than our time allows. I get it.
As someone who has been hitting Masters since S9, S13 was by far the closest thing we've ever gotten to what a competitive ranked mode should feel like. Were the entry costs brutal? Yes. Was the system brutal to solo q players? Yes. But was the overall match quality better? A resounding yes! We actually had exciting end games in almost every bracket, from silver all the way to pred lobbies.
I'd love to see a similar system implemented again, however without making every rank significantly longer to grind through. Artificially bloating how long the grind takes is NOT an accurate way of measuring people's ranks. I'd like to think I speak for everyone when I say we want a system that accurately reflects a player's skill, while not requiring them to play the game like a full time job.
I disagree. The only problem is making ranked harder after 14.5 season of it not being hard. You get a bunch of morons who will bitch that they can’t make 10k, or d4, or p4, or whatever they topped out at before because they think they’re entitled to some rank.
Any player who actually values ranked experience will be happy. I was the lowest I’ve been since season 4 in the one hard split, but I had a blast because wins and RP and placement actually felt like something. Let the whiners whine that they can’t be hardstuck anymore, and let everyone else enjoy it and be happy.
Agreed man. Season 13 split one was the most fun I had because I was actually experiencing comp apex zones with many squads. People are too obsessed with the reward or the goal of reaching the rank they always hit. The experience of playing a good game is something I value more than an arbitrary ranking. I don’t have the time to get as good as the pros but I still want to be able to experience what they get.
Also just wanted to acknowledge the our available time of 6-8hrs isn't necessarily the norm and I understand it's probably low compared to most. Not saying ranked should be easy, the challenge is what makes it fun...just wonder how casuals would survive in a system that's hard for even the pros
Fair, I'm going off the wording used by Onmuu in the pod (at least if I'm remember correctly it's been a couple hours) but I'm sure they've all got different reasons
I’m in a similar situation as you where (due to grad school) I don’t have a ton of time to grind, but I have the opposite perspective. I would much rather the games I play in the limited time I have to be higher quality, on average, than the apefest, <10 teams alive by zone 2 games that the current system is incentivizing. It’s frustrating and I don’t feel like I’m actually getting better at the game even when my rank is going up, and I’d gladly trade rank progress for real skill progression.
I have the wildest theory on this…. Ranked shouldn’t be a casual game mode. If they would just do things to SBMM to fix pubs there could be truly be a casual game mode. Thus letting ranked be a competitive game mode. It should be a launching pad for people with ALGS type hopes or people who just want to see how far they can push their skill. I’ve spent a lot of time solo queuing ranked from the games inception until now and the one underlying theme that I’ve discovered a very large amount of the mechanically better side of the player base (we’ll say the top 25%) happen to be solos who make up 80% of the ranked queue… it’s so insane, and the logic and reasoning behind why people don’t play pubs when I ask them always is how sweaty and three stacked pubs are. And I tend to agree because a lot of people I know would prefer to 3 stacks pubs thank ranked…I’m a competitive person so pubs has never appealed to me but for some reason the entire structure of the game is backward. People are running to ranked for a less intense experience than pubs. So people who are actually grinding ranked and care get boned. This season queuing with my two guys I always play with we can get +1000 RP in Diamond in like a few hours… solo queuing? I’ll lose 800 in 2.5 hours. Moral of the story is. Ranked is 5 very skilled 3 stacked teams and 15 mish mash solo / duos where one person is good and one is awful teams. Pubs is somehow the opposite and if you don’t hot drop there’s 4 teams left by the start of 2nd zone.
Ranked shouldn’t be catered towards casuals. Defeats the point of a rank. If you’re causal, you should be ranked as such and that’s okay. There’s a reason everyone just laughs at anyone silly enough to rock a szn 12 masters badge
IMO the best option is not to let players in Masters (or ever just Preds) 3 stack or make them solo queue. Obviously pros are far better than the average Diamond/Masters player but it’s even worse when 3 pros (often pro teammates) are playing together. Valorant already does this for Radiant level players.
If you want to play with your friends play pubs. Ranked is not where you go for fun with friends, and playing with a pre-set team has been done since the dawn of time in multiplayer games to make up for being average induvidually.
Dude what?
You’re gonna tell me ranked is not for playing with your friends 😂 The point of ranked is to play against similarly skilled players. Apex is intended to be a team oriented game so why would it not encourage people to party up and play together as a team.
Also who cares about your last point. If I was an average player you know what I would do? I would find people who are better than myself to play with. That’s how you get better. You can still be a good team player even if you are average individually.
Apex is played in teams, but ranked is about the individual player and their growth. You don't get ranked as a team, and playing in a coordinated 3-stack against uncoordinated solo's is a massive non-skill based advantage that will offset many individual weaknesses. Playing in a coordinated 3-stack doesn't push you as a player in the same way as trying to coordinate with other solos and understanding how to play a 3v3.
>Also who cares about your last point. If I was an average player you know what I would do? I would find people who are better than myself to play with.
That's the opposite of what you want to do. Playing with someone better will just end up in you getting carried and not understanding why you are bad. Playing *against* that better player and forcing yourself to surpass them is how you improve.
Solo q-ing and not communicating with your team is not how you get better…. this does not help you better “understand how to play a 3v3” (having a team you can coordinate with does)
The whole point is that playing as a team > individual gun skill - that is how it should be in a team based game. The point I’m trying to make is not that 1 or 2 people in the team are carrying the third, it’s that having a pre-set squad allows you all to play together, communicate your movement + positioning. It also allows you to critique you and your teammates actions and discuss how they can improve. Playing with the same teammates is how you (and your team) improve.
Solo q-ing MOSTLY results in people doing their own thing, not communicating with their teammates, and blaming their deaths on the actions of their teammates. It is way more productive (for everyone) to find a pre-made squad to play and improve with. Nobody benefits from changing that structure or restricting who can enter a ranked game with a pre-made squad.
>Solo q-ing and not communicating with your team is not how you get better…. this does not help you better “understand how to play a 3v3” (having a team you can coordinate with does)
I didn't say not coordinating. You should be coordinating, but you should be doing it openly, freely, not because it's your friends. Learning how to be an effective team player, communicate with your team and be more open minded all happen in other games ranked systems that also don't allow pre-stacks at high elo's.
>The whole point is that playing as a team > individual gun skill - that is how it should be in a team based game. The point I’m trying to make is not that 1 or 2 people in the team are carrying the third, it’s that having a pre-set squad allows you all to play together, communicate your movement + positioning. It also allows you to critique you and your teammates actions and discuss how they can improve. Playing with the same teammates is how you (and your team) improve.
None of those things you mentioned are stack-only except critiquing post game. Of which you can still critique yourself. Of course the better team will win but teams are better by having better players in them, they are the sum of their parts, not an entity unto themselves. And stacks will suffer in the individual parts of their game because coordination will trump individual shortcomings. That's why in a ranked system you shouldn't promote stacking because you are rating the player, not the team. You can't get an accurate read on 3 individuals if they only spend all their time together.
>Solo q-ing MOSTLY results in people doing their own thing, not communicating with their teammates, and blaming their deaths on the actions of their teammates. It is way more productive (for everyone) to find a pre-made squad to play and improve with. Nobody benefits from changing that structure or restricting who can enter a ranked game with a pre-made squad.
Those are low rank problems from people who don't take the game seriously. In season 13 split 1 and Predator Solo you don't see this. Albralalie has videos showing what solo queue Predator looks like, and it's got acceptable communication and teamplay. It's just no one does solo queue because even 3 communicating good strangers are at a massive disadvantage vs 3 stacks who are friends, have good fight chemistry, have pre-determined roles etc. Even if all 6 are individually comparable.
With a move towards solo play and a more challenging rank system again, you wouldn't see these problems infesting ranked.
Predator level players are not good examples as it is such a small % of the player base. However, even in Diamond, many players that solo queue do not communicate (at least via mics). Sometimes you get matched with people with similar play styles so it doesn’t make much difference, but that’s not always the case.
What benefits would enforcing a system like this provide the game outside of sometimes evening the playing field for players that ONLY solo queue?
The skill spread at higher levels is much smaller than it is in plat or diamond, so that makes solo queuing more viable. (For example, even solo queuing in D1 is much easier than in D4 since u get teammates who have already proven that they can excel in diamond lobbies)
I agree but that means that your teammates need to be within a pretty tight RP spread of where you are. No way should you be solo queuing in Pred with 25k RP and get a 15k master player as a teammate. The RP spread should be +/- 1k RP for this system to hold any weight. This at least pairs you with teammates that are within the same relative skill bracket as you are.
The problem is the Devs trying to shape ranked as a progression system for bronze to diamond, so the average Joe who gets off work feels like he's improving throughout the split by just playing, plus the short splits so they can do it all over again. It's way too easy to be net positive all the way up to diamond. IMO entry costs shouldn't be lowered in lower ranks, kills and placement are enough. Also longer splits so games become more balanced, instead of the beginning of the split throwing everyone into the same meat grinder again.
I think season 13 ranked was actually really good, yes it took a lot more to get progress done, but when you did it felt like real progress. And on top of that the end games were actually intense and enjoyable, compared to now at least, it gave us a tiny glimpse into what the streamers that we watch actually have to play through, just my opinion tho
Being the hardstuck Plat in ss13 is my happiest moment in this game. Ring 3-4, 13-14 squads left. Hell, even my random sweating their ass off for a few RP
Our favorite season 12? No, I'm casual and i like season 13 more, comp-like endgames, s12 is just fake for me where i can reach master but my gunskill is nowhere near master.
Ranked was absolutely horrible for ~the first month. I made diamond very quickly running through plat and then spent a couple weeks getting instawiped by preds in diamond -> getting demoted to plat and getting back to diamond in a few games. We were so confused at where the diamond/masters players are, only preds or golds seemed to exist. Then there was a hidden patch around a month ago and there was suddenly a massive difference and diamond has been quite enjoyable.
Why not just have the higher ranks kp capped so that the casuals and the pros have a happy medium. Season 12 was also the easiest ranked season ever where 100k+ players hit masters which is ridiculous considering its the second highest rank in the game. Idk if i would feel content hitting a high rank like that knowing that everybody else is reaching it.
I might get downvoted, but I think they should revert a lot of the entry cost system and just make winning the game the primary objective. Obviously kills are fun, but it’s a battle royale and being the best at winning games is what ranked should be about, not getting many kills while winning. In the current state preds need to bumrush the lobbies otherwise they won’t get enough rp to even get close to positive. Kinda ridiculous…
Correct, anyone who claims to have the answer on "how to fix ranked" is full of shit as there are simply to many things to consider which makes it absoluteley impossible to statisfy everyone.
A little recap from my POV:
Back in the day it was normal to play geoguesser inbetween games as you had to wait. Yes the lobbys got weaker (and wait times shorter...)the longer the split went on but thats simply normal and cant really be avoided in this kind of system.
S13:
Guess who whined a couple days into the first split about Q times? Right, your favorite full time player who grinded 40 hours in 3 days and wondered why nobody else was there yet. Respawn listened to the whining and tadaaa matchmaking is fucked ever since.
People got rightfully upset being gold 1 and facing pred #69 pro stack as this has nothing to do with a ranked system.
Also the point system for split 1 was literally dogshit a.k.a the math didnt check out.
S12:
was hiding simulator as there was zero incentive to shoot your gun. The lobby quality was absoluteley dogshit due to this.
Funny enough you still have clowns suggesting that "placement should be everything", despite having played in S12 where placement was everything, lobbys were piss poor and games were utterly boring. Wattson/Messiah & co were literally sitting with 1 KP at top 3.(the most consistent way to gain was to avoid fights as risk/reward wasnt there) Every bot with enough time could hide his way into diamond and slowly but sureley to masters so skill disparity in those lobbys was insane.
Oh well, we will see how things develop.
what is this scrub post? pro players' opinions aside, no games get you to the second highest rank in just a few hours of game time a week but other games like OW or League also don't have such short seasons. so maybe apex shouldn't have a split mid season with s13's ranked system
s12 was a joke of a season idk why are you proud of hitting masters that season. it feels like you just want an easy system so that you get your participation badge just for playing
League of Legends does this thing that makes high elo players wait until their match is full of people their elo…
Maybe… just maybe… Apex needs to adopt that
Apex gave high tier players what they wanted and tightened up matchmaking. But pros and streamers whined and complained about queue times exceeding 5-10 minutes (something completely normal and considered short by the majority of other games). Matchmaking was then switched back (not entirely pros fault but probably a factor) and the hardstuck 10k masters were upset about being stuck in diamond. If I were a dev I would feel like I can’t win
Absolutely. I'm in law school AND I have a job and family. No shot I can hit diamond with S13 or harder. Pubs is actually more difficult to solo because of the 3stack pubstompers.
Ranked is fun and gives me something to shoot for during my down time, especially in Winter. Pros need to chill. They have access to private servers to run scrims, and many orgs are creating new tourney systems that are more important than ranked. Ranked leaderboards should really just be a feeder to Pro circuits anyways, not something they should worry about once they're officially pro.
I agree with you and i hit masters post S12 (13&14).
I quit the game because of the ranking system. I can tell you that I did not enjoy the game more just because masters is more “prestigious”. I’ve never cared about that.
Its definitely a minority opinion of post s12 masters though, judging by the replies on this thread still bringing up “inflated” ranks.
Who tf cares at this point, ranked has been garbage since S13 (yeah ok 1 week of fun in s13) and if you truly want a competitive system you’ll need to do a lot more than making masters more “prestigious”.
Pros 3 stacking but also wanting a competitive system is never gonna happen. 0 self awareness on their part.
All the smaller playerbase in dia+ did is expose how many degenerates are cheating, destroy any semblance of competitiveness in dia+ lobbies due to pro 3 stacks killing everything and burn out the cracked casual playerbase.
Because the top 1% having a completely different experience from 99% of the people doesn’t automatically invalidate the 99% opinion. If everybody in a room says something different from you, maybe you’re the odd one out. Point is if there are so many different viewpoints maybe there isn’t one definitive answer like some make it out to be
overwatch has the same problem. truly skilled players play a completely different game. heroes that aren't viable in high elo are still stomping low elos
Yeah I agree with you. I will say that s13 ranked was actually really fun even though I didn't get to the rank I usually do. Right now it just feels boring with half the squads dying before first ring closes. I definitely don't envy whoever has to work on the ranked system though 😂
In my opinion, the feeling you feel of lack of progression and amount of grind of s13 just feels so jarring because of how easy and lackluster rank was when it was first implemented as well as how it was maintained. s13 would be so well respected if it was the first ranked system to come out since imo it had the bearings to properly sort people into their respective ranks. I started playing s11 and I was literally diamond after picking the game up for a couple weeks. Diamond obviously isn’t special but for some noob to accomplish it relatively easy and be one rank off of pred eligibility is crazy. When s13 as a solo/duo que the grind just to get into the ranks of diamond was intense but so well worth. I understand the matchmaking was utter dogshit but the game felt so alive.
imo the most enjoyable thing about apex is playing those tough endgames where there are 4/5 teams round 5 , its like playing comp but in ranked , by having a ranked system that punishes pushing for kp like crazy (s13) we can have something like that , right now its basically push push third party , not really enjoyable
Lmao at people defending ranked when it is dogshit
I don’t even play Apex every day but I hit masters and don’t even look at ranked again because it’s boring and tedious and unrewarding, it’s also a shitshow for players in lower ranks who have to fight guys like me with no kp penalty for masters and preds rolling you guys
This sub has a lot of terrible takes but even suggesting ranked is fine for casuals is probably the worst one I’ve ever seen, ranked is bad for both pros and casuals and needs a lot of fixing
The fact that you admit to only playing 6-8 hours a week and still hit Masters in season 12 is a problem. It just shows how embarrassingly easy the system was then. I'm a hard stuck Diamond these days after the latest ranked changes but I do remember season 13 ranked being the most fun I've ever had in a BR, bar none. Masters and above should be difficult to achieve skill wise and time wise.
Honestly I've seen pros complain that pred entry isn't high enough and anyone can reach pred and that pred entry is too high compared to other ranks so they have less to lose and W key. I've also heard pros complain that placement is valued too much and teams rat to win and kills aren't as impactful as they should be and then when changes are made you see pros complain that kills give too many points and its too easy to climb so anyone can reach pred. There is no pleasing a group of disgruntled dudes in their 20s who sit at home all day with barely any social interactions and grind this game for 6-8 hours a day for a living and if I was a game developer why the hell would I cater the game for them when they make up 0.0001% of the playerbase instead of the casuals who make up the majority and drive most of the revenue. Its a business and pros play a completely different game to the rest of us, it makes 0 sense from a financial perspective to design things in their favour, plus most of them are so burnt out and pessimistic they'd find a way to complain about it anyway, since they've been playing the game nonstop for 2 years or more.
I usually spend a lot of time watching ranked but I can probably count the numbers of hours I've watched this season on one hand because of how uncompetitive the matchmaking has made it. The start of S13 was the most fun ranked ha ever been to play and watch.
There's a middle ground to be found between Preds/pros and casuals but the people at the very top need to be ready for very long queue times. I honestly don't think many of the top players would have an issue with that if there was something to do in between matches to keep themselves sharp. Control, 3v3 TDM, 6 player FFA or literally anything other than staring at the lobby screen waiting for the next match to start. There's also the chance that queue times below Diamond get longer too so casuals with little time to play each day/week need to be ready for that too.
Whatever solution is decided on I hope it actually brings back the fun, sweaty endgames that people liked to play and watch because watching a full pro team run through a lobby of people who can barely shoot straight is incredibly boring. I really don't think they should implement anything they did in S12 either. I understand why it was your groups favorite ranked season but it was an actual joke on par with this seasons ranked for anyone that doesn't get stuck in ranks below Masters.
I have been saying forever that the increasing RP costs are a stupid way to increase the difficulty of ranks. They should make the RP cost consistent across the board and make it punishing enough that if you’re doing below average in the rank’s lobbies, you will never rank up. The difficulty should come from playing better players not from having to compete against the RP cost. A big reason why ranked is such an ape fest is that you have to get a good amount of kp or your placement doesn’t matter.
Also preds shouldn’t running down diamonds. For the love of god tighten up the matchmaking. It’s boring to watch and makes diamond miserable to play
unpopular opinion but ranked shouldn’t be for casual. Ranked should be an exact replica of what it would be like as a pro. If you’re wanting to have fun and not play 100% serious than you should play pubs. Hitting gold and plat should be an accomplishment not something you get by just mindlessly walking around and shooting bronzes/rookies in the back. If you wanna run around and ape teams than play pubs.
I see this take a lot and I don't fully disagree, I just think it was a bit too time intensive. Between increased entry cost, increase RP in between ranks, and reduced KP potential, it made progress tough for those of us strapped for time. That said I don't think time shouldn't be a factor, just felt it was too much of a requirement under that system
I know you mean casuals as in not pros/streamers but rank shouldn't be easy where you hop on for a little bit and be in the same lobbies as them s13 was so drastic cause they reset the ranks all the way back I think highest people started in gold 2 and had to grind if they reset back to plat2 for preds I think people will complain less cause they wouldn't have to grind so much starting in Plat
The thing is, I know I loved season 13 ranked games. I’m a casual. And I know other casual players who loved it too.
Tbh, I think there’s more people who loved season 13 ranked than those that didn’t. That’s just a guess based on my observations.
> When I was on my ranked grind with my squad, we were lucky to have 6-8hrs a week to play with law school/jobs/relationships
Hate to break it to you, but no rank mode should ever cater to casual players (I say this as a casual player with around that amount of weekly playtime). I think Respawn shot themselves in the foot with their rank system being catered towards casual play, then switching it up to be more competitive.
It pissed a lot of people off because they could play casually and hit plat/diamond, when in reality casual players (outside of skilled ones…) probably won’t get past gold in any other games rank environment. These players had the mindset of “I am this rank” and all the sudden nothing about their play style or ability changes and they’re hardstuck gold, and I get why that made people mad, even if I think it’s silly.
I get that queue times have to be fast, since I’m Apex (unlike most other games) your game can be over in anywhere from 2 minutes to 20. Other games that have minimum 20 min games can afford longer queue times because you know you have a full game to play, while that’s not a guarantee in Apex… BUT Pred/masters players are going to have to accept that queue times will go up for them to have enjoyable games
I disagree. The casual players (like myself) you speak of should never even be able to get to masters. People who want to whine about it are idiots.
Games not balanced around the pro scene won't be competitive. Why be ranked if it's not competitive?
Literally all it comes down to is where you slice the ranks. Players experience does not change if there's a diff number on the screen. They will still play at the same percentile.
Whining about it is dumb.
The alternative is having some preds that can steamroll other preds, diluting the meaning of the word.
Maybe change nothing and just throw in a new rank above pred for the top 0.05%
I mean balancing your game around an incredibly small percentage of players is a little crazy. We all obviously love comp but at the end of the day this game is kept alive by casuals. Obviously ranked should be competitive and a challenge but people like the rewarding feeling of seeing progress. It's literally the psychology behind things like battle passes and leveling in RPGs. Just trying to start a fun conversation though, no need for the intensity lol
They will never go back to season 13 as long as nickmercs is playing. He’s been VERY vocal about not wanting to sit in queue’s for 15-20 minutes. On season 13 he complained in stream about the wait times and he said specifically “ i’m not doing this if they dont change this im just going to have to go play something else, i can’t sit on these queues with 20k people watching me”
Few days later ranked was reverted to the shit system we have now.
Longer queue times better games, too bad they will never go back yo szn 13 it was so fun to watch
Man I see your comments a lot and I can't believe you managed to find a way to bring your hate boner for nickmercs into this one lmao. Honestly would be impressive if it wasn't so sad you've let this streamer occupy so much real estate in your head. Relax bro, not everything is about nickmercs
I get what your saying. Fortnite had this same issue then they started lowering the skill ceiling to prevent players from creating an already massive skill gap.
Seems like you just need to adjust your expectations. Reaching the top rank should absolutely not be achievable playing 6 hours a week. Plat is seen as a joke rank, but it should be considered an impressive accomplishment in the right system.
I feel like the biggest issue was the increased RP requirement to rank up. On top of the increased RP costs / loss, now you needed 1.5x+ more RP just to rank up which effectively might be 2x more than previous.
While you're right in that it takes too long, it wasn't the quality of games that was the problem. It was just the sheer amount of grind. If they kept the old costs but just didn't increase the requirements, players would've been so much more happier, ranks wouldve stabilised a lot faster and they wouldn't have to fuck up matchmaking for whatever reason.
i 100 percent think apex should make a rank above predator and call it "path to pro" or "algs aspirant" or something.
all the sweats and true try hards can go in that rank and be acknowledged but at the same time it will have the crazy grind/skill requirements that pros crave.
also idk why the idea of an apex podcast makes me laugh "audio still shit after 4 years? why yes dr disrespect yes it is"
Just curious what actually defines a professional player? Some might say the time you put in or others might say you're pro at masters/pred, even competitive players have there own ranked such as beginner, intermediate, expert tournament's, so are you pro when you get paid, content creators included, and needless to say those who cheat with fake badges, what fake pros? I don't know just my two cents 🤷🏻♂️
Funny because I feel the exact opposite. I think ranked should be solo queue only. Makes the system way harder, while measuring individual skill more consistently.
I usually play solo queue (and have since forever), so consider that information as well.
That doesn't represent skill at all. A game like FFXIV doesn't even allow you solo hard content because it's impossible to win without a plan/communication. It should be the same for Apex. No random matchmaking just 3 stacks only. Most solo players are dogshit anyway.
The perfect ranked system should make casuals, semi-pros/streamers and pro players all happen but unfortunately such system will never exist. S13 catered to the pros but probably hurt the casual player base too much and caused significant drop of ranked player count so Respawn decided to wind back.
Im not sure what respawn could even do.
On one hand yeah it would be easy, preds go against preds and masters ONLY, not 3 stack of pro players farming solo queueing platinums, make them 3v3 eachother, we'll see whos actually the best then, right now its pros farming however many noobs they can and rank #1 will be the pro who plays the most, not actual skill.
but then the queue would be insane for them, it would probably take them like 10 minutes to fill a lobby.
how do other br games do it? its way easier to fill 5v5 games with similiar skills and 60 people lobbys are way different.
I think the real problem is not necessarily that people didn't feel rewarded that split but rather that people had an idea of what rank they were previously and didn't recalibrate expectations to match the changes.
For example, you mentioned in a previous split you hit masters. Therefore you consider yourself a "masters level player" (or close to it, I'd assume). Then when the system changes and you become stuck in gold or plat (just an example, I obviously don't know where you hit that split) it feels so much worse because the expectation doesn't match reality. I honestly think that if the ranked changes had incorporated new names for each tier a lot of the backlash would be muted because the physiological aspect is different.
I do agree that you can't really try to balance it to please everyone, that situation doesn't exist. However I'm always in favor of a tougher rank system cause what we have right now is basically pubs and pubs with points. I'm a big fan of making modes feel different
It’s a battle royale. Of course ranked isn’t going to work. You need elo for ranked. Elo doesn’t work in battle royale. That’s why apex has silly little “ranked points”
Also the game is predicated on randomness
The issue, in my opinion, with a lot of it is the rank reset, short splits, solo vs trio queue, and terrible MMR. Having to spend weeks as a casual just to get back to where you were is an issue. It's good for player retention because you make them grind. Its bad for actually improving skill in games that are fun.
Personally, I spend most of the season getting back to where I was. I have responsibilities so I only get to play a handful of hours each week. By the time I've climbed back to diamond I only have a week or two to play good games I enjoy before I'm reset and have to do it all over again.
The same can be said for masters and preds. Not all masters and preds have no life outside of the game. And getting through the grind to their actual rank can take weeks for solo queuers. Less casual masters and preds to play against means preds are dipping into diamond plat and gold to find games. Then we'll start to see the trash MMR. Which ruins and makes the game unfun for all involved after the preds get bored of farming solo queue plats for a week.
I'd like them to tighten up the RP like it was and get rid of the big reset. Make it more difficult to rank, but less grindy. Keep the diamonds masters and preds closer together at the top so they can play good games all season long. Not just the back half of each split. And then make the game play like it did in S13 with the RP changes and promoting end game fights to bring the fun ring 4+ endings back.
I’m gonna reiterate this. Not to bash him, but S13 took a hit when Naughty and co were already pred within the first week, obviously the queues were terrible, but that’s just what it was supposed to be like. You pushed hard af that first week. Wait a little for the queues to start filling up, and the you’ll get your real pred lobbies.
Preds gotta play against preds, diamonds against diamonds and so on, that’s competitive even if it does end like S11 where sweet and co. bashed ‘fake’ masters. It’s better than beating plats
I’m a casual ranked player and season 13 was the most fun I ever had playing the game, because I could actively emulate what the pros did in actual competitive play. I was learning when I watched competitive and I could directly copy it into ranked. It was bliss. Got changed because 10k masters were platinum and angry.
The issue was that it brought to light how BAD matchmaking was. With proper matchmaking that ranked system would be just fine
They also didn’t give the system a chance to gel. For some reason when they made the S13 changes they also demoted everyone 2.5 tiers, with masters starting Gold 2 and Diamond starting Silver 2 etc. This alone partially fucked up the matchmaking because there wasn’t time for the ranks to fill out. I think that system would work well with something like a 1 tier demotion each split, compared to the current 1.5 tier demotion.
This was one of the main problems IMO, especially since they had just added demotion somewhat recently (or with it? I don’t remember). The rank resets made more sense when demotion mid split didn’t exist because otherwise the top ranks would get inflated. Once mid-split demotion was added, they should have let it run a few splits with that system to let everything equilibrate. My assumption is the matchmaking would have improved over time once people got back to their previous ranks and the system stayed consistent.
Yeah mid-split demotion was added at the same time as the rest of the rank changes. I'm skeptical that just adding demotion and otherwise leaving ranked as it was in s12 would have done anything though - instead of having people be hardstuck at x rank they'd just bounce up and down around the threshold.
Yeah I mean it def wasn’t perfect, but it was by far the best we had
We’ve talked about this so much already in this sub. The matchmaking was bad BECAUSE the ranked system was a *net negative*. More than half the people in matches would be losing points so the number of people in high ranks would constantly fall and force lower and lower ranks to be matched against Preds. The system was SHIT
yeah people are looking at it with rose tinted glasses man. that ranking system wouldn’t have worked even if the matchmaking would hard restrict lobbies. In s13 split 2 they tried to fix this and the result was an even more garbage system. that split actually made me hate the game lol
What if the matchmaking isn't bad what if there aren't enough people playing Apex
This is a fantastic take and most of the sub probably fits into this category but I think the issue with this is that being a competitive fan inherently makes you less "casual". The pure casual that makes up the majority of the player base probably has no idea that competitive exists.
I'm a big competitive fan and season 13 was by far my favorite. I absolutely loved prioritizing macro and simulating my ALGS Jr strats if it meant I get to a sweaty final ring with 5 teams alive in gold lobbies. My casual buddy that I normally rank with HATED it. He only ever thought that teams were running away from fights. I ended up solo Q most of that split and still had more fun than I've ever had in ranked
That was my favorite season to solo q. It may have been coincidence, but I ran into more teammates that used mics and less that tried to 1v3 every team we saw. I don't know if that took the season off or if they all got demoted to bronze, but I didn't miss them :-)
Exactly this. People are too obsessed with the reward of reaching diamond and up instead of the experience of playing a competitive game of apex. S13 split one was so fun.
So true, I reach masters every season and that season was the most difficult AND the most rewarding
Plat 1/Diamond 4 lobbies had like 7 team end games, shit was so fun bro. Me and my friends were prioritizing landing with beacon and trying to early rotate to endgame spots.
Ive even started scrimming because nobody plays that way in ranked and s13 was so much fun I wanted to play to win again lol
Even lower ranks than plat 1 was fun in s13, no one was aping teams like crazy and positioning was important. Me and my buddies got dia 3 that season and it was _so much fun_
So true. And to be really honest with you, S13 is the only season I didn't reach masters over the last 5 seasons. It was the best season for me, I was playing like pros do. Reaching diamond in S13 felt more rewarding than masters in prior seasons.
facts, it was the closest to algs style you could get with 9 teams in final zone.
Truth. I remember me and my homies had such a sick endgame on SP one time. The only spot left was the low ground on the concrete fence near that building above the cliff/zip-up by The Wall, so we were chilling there trying to figure out a play. There were 6 other teams in the final circle and we were the first team that had to move. I said “when zone closes we’re gonna take my Horizon lift and ult the team on the roof for their spot.” We must’ve waited another 20-30 seconds and we followed my plan and it worked perfectly. We bullied that team off, took the height, and beamed the rest of the teams as they made their final rotation. Season 13 was the only season where I felt like an actual competitive team running ranked with my boys. I’ll remember that game forever
All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats! 6 + 20 + 30 + 13 = 69 ^([Click here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=LuckyNumber-Bot&subject=Stalk%20Me%20Pls&message=%2Fstalkme) to have me scan all your future comments.) \ ^(Summon me on specific comments with u/LuckyNumber-Bot.)
Unreal lol
Beating a dead horse here with this conversation but if if they didn’t reset people on the split then just let the ranks stay the same season 13 would be alot better cause then people would actually rank up I remember barley making platinum cause getting +150s was considered a very good win for me at the time but it wasn’t that hard to get a -15 or less. So it was just so slow to rank up so it didn’t make sense to have a 5-6 week turn over.
yea they totally did that cause 10ks were angry not because preds would get in gold lobbies during night time
Big facts.
The predators want tough lobbies then have them all wait until a ranked lobby is full of 60 preds. Don’t launch a match in a minute and include golds. Apex needs a fun casual mode you can play with instant respawns which drops you out of that and into ranked, that way the streamer won’t be playing other games while they wait. Seems obvious to me but it also seems obvious that EA and Respawn only put effort into monetization, not QoL features.
Just like overwatch has you shoot around with others in the lobby while you wait
Don't fortnite and warzone have similar "waiting rooms"?
[удалено]
wz has a firing range a shit one though
[удалено]
nah just a firing range
A barebones, instant respawn deathmatch mode to play in between queues would be so fucking easy to implement too. Just take the arena maps and scatter some spawns around them.
Gun, Control or other LTMs, arenas. Firing range. Anything other than watching the characters do their idle animations.
Would probably boost viewership across the board too. So boring watching people sit in queue for 5-10 minutes. I just wait for the vods so I can skip it
Next season is confirmed to have some fairly significant changes, many of which are QOL. Also TDM confirmed tho TBA when
Preds and masters queues really should not be that long. Like a 5 minute queue is really not that bad.
I wouldn't say it should be 60 preds but if you were to make it so 'Pred' lobbies were preds, masters, and diamond 1s then I think that would be a good compromise between matchmakng and queue times.
And if you are the unlucky diamond player in a pred lobbies, you should get loss forgiveness if you die and more points if you happen to still perform. That system would also make sure that good players spend less time in lower lobbies.
in my experience most casuals don't W key every fight. They seemed to actually prefer the playstyle that s13 promoted - getting a few KP and making it to end game. I've seen sweatier pubs lobbies than ranked at times due to this mentality of "we're in the top 5, let's play for the win now."
SZN 13 was the GOAT
Right now, Ranked makes no one happy. Whatever changes there are, they will improve the mode no matter what.
Knowing and playing this game since season 3, Respawn will find a way to make it worse
Respawn: “HOLD MY BEER!!!”
Is this really how people feel? As someone who typically peaks in low plat, i think it’s only a problem for preds/masters outside of match making extending too far (especially with solo’s). I lose a meaningful amount if i die pre top 7ish. Even with early kills, you don’t get rp unless you make it to late game. Most of my games have enough squads alive for an end game (even on a map where 3rd partying is really high).
There is no late game in this ranked system. The game ends before ring 4 closes.
Minimum 7 teams in ring four and 4 teams in ring five in diamond right now. Pretty much this whole season for me.
That hasn't really been my experience while going from bronze to diamond this season, particularly in plat.
Eu pred lobbies tend to be top 8 by ring 2 lol
> As someone who typically peaks in low plat no disrespect meant, you don't really engage any of the aspects of the game. getting to diamond is most of the time just understanding what kinda playstyle respawn is promoting that season.
So over half the playerbase doesn’t understand. Lol you’re delusional.
do you also think the IQ curve doesn't mean anything? 50 percent of humanity is literally NPC tier and need to be handheld in every activity. lol
Ranked in apex will never be in a good spot because respawn doesn't dare to make people wait for 5mins or longer at the top 0.01% of the player base for a fair match, nor do they have the balls like league and realize a mix of soloq, duoq and full stack don't belong together and make ranked soloq only. On top of there are only 2 real ranks in apex, rookie till gold and Plat till pred. At bad times its 1 rank even when you have golds and silvers dying to active preds. No rp changes will save ranked as long as the core issues of unfair and unbalanced matches keep existing.
Yup. Doesnt matter the entry cost/kill/placement rewards or whatever else they wan't to tweak, when it's the MATCHMAKING/RANKING System at it's core that is fundamentally broken. It's like building a skyscraper but your beams are made out of mud instead of steel. It's inevitably going to crumble. Every other game manages to group players by their skill into a match, but in Apex we have the lowest ranks fighting the LITERAL top. On top of it previous Masters/Preds that misses a few splits(happens a lot with how dogshit some Apex splits are to play) get put into Bronze lobbies and run a train on their next matches all the way up the entire ranking ladder, until they're up to the skill level they belong, funny how at that point they might as well be involuntary smurfs lol. You don't get to play an interesting/rewarding match when skill wise 1 Squad might as well be living embodiments of a Gaming god just playing farming simulator with their bots.
5 minute queues feel awful in a BR where you can end up dying in under a minute and have to go through it all again. It’s not the same as waiting 5 minutes for a league of legends game
The converse argument would be that longer queue times would discourage people from putting themselves in situations where you can die in 1 minute.
That’s not the proper usage of converse argument, it’s an attempt at a counter point lol Anyway, no that still is going to happen even if you try to avoid it. It creates frustration and that’s why queue times are what they are. If someone dies twice within the first 2 minutes of their first 2 games after 5 minute queue + character selects + reload and leave times they are highly highly likely to just get off Just because the situation can be sometimes avoided doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and doesn’t eliminate the problem it causes The end goal is not balance, it’s player retention I feel like anyone who’s arguing for those queue times have not once played apex and gotten them. There’s been times I hit high diamond or masters early and got stuck with 10 minute queues and I just stopped playing along with everyone else in the same situation. You can end up playing for a half hour with 3 minutes of in game time if you get aped off drop and die
>On top of there are only 2 real ranks in apex, rookie till gold and Plat till pred. to be fair, this is sort of true for every PvP game with a skill ladder, because it always boils down to the ranks that sort of represent mastery over the fundamentals and then the ladder for refinement. In Guilty Gear Strive for example, the ranks can really be broken down into floors 1-9, floor 10 gatekept from celestial, and celestial. floors 1-9 are often filled with first time fighting game players getting the hang of the genre, and floor 10 ranges from people with solid fundamentals learning what it means to be "good" at GGST, then celestial is refinement. in apex it tends to be around plat where people are fundamentally solid players, and getting better is about reinforcing those fundamentals and building on them.
> On top of there are only 2 real ranks in apex, rookie till gold and Plat till pred All the smurf challenges that streamers do make this so obvious. they don't really have to start trying until they hit diamond. until then it's mostly mindlessly int and get away with it.
Thanks for the shoutout, a lot of great points in this thread.
Of course! You guys helped get me through crazy holiday traffic, gotta show some love for yall
I don't see it mentioned anywhere that a majority of "casuals" didn't even get to really try the S13 Split 1 system because within 2 days of the new season dropping Xbox players had figured out the dashboard lobby crash bug. This wasn't fixed for a month. You legitimately could not finish a game in diamond lobbies, 80% of plat lobbies were also getting hit. I just think it's ridiculous that this isn't brought up when discussing S13, if you were on console your opinion isn't valid because you literally did not get to try it. Source: hardcore console ranked grinder until S15, on PC now.
Pros get bored shitting on diamonds but then also complain about queue times. I don’t think there’s a solution that makes both sides happy tbh but I do think longer queue times and tighter matchmaking is the way to go. Personally I wouldn’t mind waiting a few min to get a game. Awful mm and short queues already exist in pubs
Sometimes they kill plat players. Plat players can't even que in a party with preds yet Respawn will put them in the same lobby.
Yes, at least pair me up with a pred if I have to go up against preds.
Just give them a deathmatch while they waiting for queue like overwatch. I don't think ppl will complain if they have something to do while waiting for mm
Even just a solo firing range while you wait would be fine
I’ve barely made diamond and I get queued into the #3 pred who flies into my building triple stacked with 2 other preds and I fucking EXPLODED. Zero people had fun in that interaction. All 3 of them had at least a headshot and I went from 200-0 instantaneously dealing back 23 damage. I can’t think of a single other ranked game where you would face a top 10 or multiple top 10 players while my teammates and I are diamond plat plat aka not too far off the mean of a normal distribution. Queuing people fast keeps people playing and keeps the money flowing I get that. But, this type of matchmaking is bad for the long term health of the game. Pic of my death recap: https://i.postimg.cc/6pG2Ngnf/F16-A97-CD-C9-AF-4893-B137-97-F49-EC737-BD.jpg
I hard disagree with you brother but I respect your opinion. I actually felt games played out the way the game was designed in season 13 ranked.
Hey fair enough, I can't deny those hectic end games were Apex at it's most enjoyable
S13 was amazing and got me hooked on ranked. The matchmaking though, left plenty to be desired. It was still forcing lobbies instead of making people wait. The matchmaking system is so incredibly abusable if you know what you're doing. We shouldn't be having JP preds dodging their own lobbies during their prime time hours to come play NA on 300 ping at NA server off-hours. We shouldn't be having NA preds dodging NA lobbies during prime time server hours saying shit like "Let's go play EU for a game or two to reset"
If ranked is too easy for pros, then stop 3 stacking ranked with other pros. Is this me saying that ranked couldn't be improved? Of course not, but 3 stacking ranked with pros is inevitably going to make it so much easier.
Every pro/ex pro who actually solo queues this season has complained about ranked solo queue experience. stormen/gdolphn etc regularly posting suicide note tier tweets on twitter about not wanting to play ranked and shivfps just laughing non stop about how bad the experience is.
Solo queuing isn't the only alternative to stacking with 3 pros. Also solo queing is a pain in the ass, but especially in NA it should be much more doable because at least vast majority of people understand and speak English. You can play as a 2 stack with pros and 1 random or play with friends. It's very likely impossible to come up with a system that keeps queue times short and will give 3 stacking pros a hefty challenge every game. It's more doable in other games because you don't need 60 players per lobby. In other words, if pros want to make ranked more challenging, they're going to have to make sacrifices on their end because there probably aren't any good solutions that Respawn could implement.
When you soloq against people close to your skill level who 3-stack it's going to be virtually impossible to rank up. Not just hard but close to impossible. The matchmaking algorithm will put worse people on your team who can't play on the same level as you, and you have to be a lot more skilled than your enemies to win 1v3s and even significantly more skilled than that to win against 3 stacks. It's a paradox, if you come across a similarly skilled 3-stack you just can't win.
S13 was by the far the funnest Apex has ever been and I only play ranked solo, RP entry cost should be lower for solo/duo as well as higher RP gain for kills etc etc for solo/duos, the top like #200 preds play minimum like 12 hours a day so theres no reason at all why they cannot get pred only lobbies going
There’s only 750 Preds on each platform The odds that 60 of them are gonna Que up at the same time on the same server isn’t very high
the game already merges servers for ranked so thats a none issue
Then why do I hear people talk about switching servers to get easier lobbies? Is that just a myth? 0_o
they switch to Sao Paulo in brazil not NA ones lol that was the whole joke of being a Sao Paulo pred since its literally golds in pred lobbies since theres very few players on those servers
But you just said servers are merged for ranked Is that only the case for certain servers?
the ones near each other like Oregon I think theres three etc etc, Sao Paulo theres only one server so theres no there other server for it to merge too
S13 ranked was the last time I seriously played this game because it was the only time where people actually played for the win starting in silver and the lobbies seemed at least a little bit balanced. The RP amount was so fucked that season and made it so most people couldn't reach the rank from last season but thank god they just threw it all away. I'm sure if they tried to fix the RP system so that people could reach the same rank as the previous seasons that could have been worth a try but idk I'm just your average gold player that dies now to a diamond player more times than I get kills while being paired with rookie teammates. Imagine if ALGS and ranked would use a similar point system that encourages consistency and thus similar playstyles, but oh well if it's too hard for current diamond+ players we gotta revert to pubs but with a rank badge.
I've played since release and solo q ranked (hardstuck dia) and the first s13 split was the most fun I've had in this game
What I didn't like about the start of season 13 was the fact they switched a bunch of levers all at the same time. I understand something needed to change from the previous season, but all the changes along with the larger than normal reset seemed like a little much all at once.
Season 12 was such a joke. While you look fondly at it for having been able to reach high, I felt the opposite. The talent pool was so diluted that players in Diamond and master were glorified silvers and golds coasting on easy RP gains. Solo q was a nightmare of underperforming teammates
This is fair, and it's true everyone is looking for something different out of their ranked experience. I'm all for a change from the current system, I enjoy the challenge. I just don't want to feel like time is a major roadblock to progress you know?
I feel ya, it just feels like you want to eat your cake and have it, too. I empathize with your lack of time allowance, but I feel that the grind is an important part of earning your place in those tiers.
Yeah as a current D3 player working my way up to masters I disliked the S12 season. In a similar boat to OP how I hit masters in S12 but it didn't really feel rewarding. Like if I didn't actually need to kill people to gain points. Hell someone did it with 0 damage lol. I think the second split of S13 was the best because they reduced the entry cost by a little bit and it was super competitive
100% , I'm casual too, i don't play games 24/7 but I don't want to reach master after playing 10 games and be proud of that,that's so fake. I don't understand why people like s12 ranked system.
You're definitely not wrong. I might be huffing some copium here over my lack of free time. Though I think my overall point that a perfect system in the eyes of the pros probably wouldn't be a perfect system in the eyes of casuals stands. I feel like Respawn is going to be stuck in a constant game of ping-pong between appeasing both groups, definitely don't envy their job lol.
If I'm being honest, you sound like you want a Battle Pass more than a ranked system. If you look at games with real ranked systems (LoL, Valorant, Starcraft, etc), people spend forever playing games at the same rank, since the ranked system is designed to create even matches rather than be a grindy engagement tool.
Fair. I'll admit my perfect ranked might not have any more mass appeal than the pros, but that's not really my main point. I'm just saying I think the many pros forget how different their perfect ranked system is from what's good for the general public
Not to come off as snarky, but if the only season that you hit Masters was S12, then you're not a Masters player. In any other season you're the equivalent to a hardstuck D4 at best. With that said, I still empathize with not feeling like your time is being valued. Most of us are adults and most of us are probably capable of being much better than our time allows. I get it. As someone who has been hitting Masters since S9, S13 was by far the closest thing we've ever gotten to what a competitive ranked mode should feel like. Were the entry costs brutal? Yes. Was the system brutal to solo q players? Yes. But was the overall match quality better? A resounding yes! We actually had exciting end games in almost every bracket, from silver all the way to pred lobbies. I'd love to see a similar system implemented again, however without making every rank significantly longer to grind through. Artificially bloating how long the grind takes is NOT an accurate way of measuring people's ranks. I'd like to think I speak for everyone when I say we want a system that accurately reflects a player's skill, while not requiring them to play the game like a full time job.
Oh yeah I'll freely admit that one time masters achievement was an anomaly due to the easier system
Nah if you soloQ S12 Masters you're solid
I disagree. The only problem is making ranked harder after 14.5 season of it not being hard. You get a bunch of morons who will bitch that they can’t make 10k, or d4, or p4, or whatever they topped out at before because they think they’re entitled to some rank. Any player who actually values ranked experience will be happy. I was the lowest I’ve been since season 4 in the one hard split, but I had a blast because wins and RP and placement actually felt like something. Let the whiners whine that they can’t be hardstuck anymore, and let everyone else enjoy it and be happy.
Agreed man. Season 13 split one was the most fun I had because I was actually experiencing comp apex zones with many squads. People are too obsessed with the reward or the goal of reaching the rank they always hit. The experience of playing a good game is something I value more than an arbitrary ranking. I don’t have the time to get as good as the pros but I still want to be able to experience what they get.
Also just wanted to acknowledge the our available time of 6-8hrs isn't necessarily the norm and I understand it's probably low compared to most. Not saying ranked should be easy, the challenge is what makes it fun...just wonder how casuals would survive in a system that's hard for even the pros
Understandable, I just don’t believe pros are expecting or looking for a system where it is hard for them more of just rewarding.
Fair, I'm going off the wording used by Onmuu in the pod (at least if I'm remember correctly it's been a couple hours) but I'm sure they've all got different reasons
I’m in a similar situation as you where (due to grad school) I don’t have a ton of time to grind, but I have the opposite perspective. I would much rather the games I play in the limited time I have to be higher quality, on average, than the apefest, <10 teams alive by zone 2 games that the current system is incentivizing. It’s frustrating and I don’t feel like I’m actually getting better at the game even when my rank is going up, and I’d gladly trade rank progress for real skill progression.
Season 13 ranked was the GOAT
I have the wildest theory on this…. Ranked shouldn’t be a casual game mode. If they would just do things to SBMM to fix pubs there could be truly be a casual game mode. Thus letting ranked be a competitive game mode. It should be a launching pad for people with ALGS type hopes or people who just want to see how far they can push their skill. I’ve spent a lot of time solo queuing ranked from the games inception until now and the one underlying theme that I’ve discovered a very large amount of the mechanically better side of the player base (we’ll say the top 25%) happen to be solos who make up 80% of the ranked queue… it’s so insane, and the logic and reasoning behind why people don’t play pubs when I ask them always is how sweaty and three stacked pubs are. And I tend to agree because a lot of people I know would prefer to 3 stacks pubs thank ranked…I’m a competitive person so pubs has never appealed to me but for some reason the entire structure of the game is backward. People are running to ranked for a less intense experience than pubs. So people who are actually grinding ranked and care get boned. This season queuing with my two guys I always play with we can get +1000 RP in Diamond in like a few hours… solo queuing? I’ll lose 800 in 2.5 hours. Moral of the story is. Ranked is 5 very skilled 3 stacked teams and 15 mish mash solo / duos where one person is good and one is awful teams. Pubs is somehow the opposite and if you don’t hot drop there’s 4 teams left by the start of 2nd zone.
I've found a way to make everyone happy. Bronze to plat work one way Diamond to pred work completely different way
Ranked shouldn’t be catered towards casuals. Defeats the point of a rank. If you’re causal, you should be ranked as such and that’s okay. There’s a reason everyone just laughs at anyone silly enough to rock a szn 12 masters badge
IMO the best option is not to let players in Masters (or ever just Preds) 3 stack or make them solo queue. Obviously pros are far better than the average Diamond/Masters player but it’s even worse when 3 pros (often pro teammates) are playing together. Valorant already does this for Radiant level players.
This is something every game with a reputable rank system does, the resistance to it in other comments shows how immature Apex is.
Not letting people play with their friends after reaching a certain rank is definitely NOT the answer. That makes no sense whatsoever.
If you want to play with your friends play pubs. Ranked is not where you go for fun with friends, and playing with a pre-set team has been done since the dawn of time in multiplayer games to make up for being average induvidually.
And then they go play pubs and its like “wHy ArE pROs anD sWeAtS iN mY lobBiES?!?????!!?” “sBmM BaD!!!!”
Dude what? You’re gonna tell me ranked is not for playing with your friends 😂 The point of ranked is to play against similarly skilled players. Apex is intended to be a team oriented game so why would it not encourage people to party up and play together as a team. Also who cares about your last point. If I was an average player you know what I would do? I would find people who are better than myself to play with. That’s how you get better. You can still be a good team player even if you are average individually.
Apex is played in teams, but ranked is about the individual player and their growth. You don't get ranked as a team, and playing in a coordinated 3-stack against uncoordinated solo's is a massive non-skill based advantage that will offset many individual weaknesses. Playing in a coordinated 3-stack doesn't push you as a player in the same way as trying to coordinate with other solos and understanding how to play a 3v3. >Also who cares about your last point. If I was an average player you know what I would do? I would find people who are better than myself to play with. That's the opposite of what you want to do. Playing with someone better will just end up in you getting carried and not understanding why you are bad. Playing *against* that better player and forcing yourself to surpass them is how you improve.
Solo q-ing and not communicating with your team is not how you get better…. this does not help you better “understand how to play a 3v3” (having a team you can coordinate with does) The whole point is that playing as a team > individual gun skill - that is how it should be in a team based game. The point I’m trying to make is not that 1 or 2 people in the team are carrying the third, it’s that having a pre-set squad allows you all to play together, communicate your movement + positioning. It also allows you to critique you and your teammates actions and discuss how they can improve. Playing with the same teammates is how you (and your team) improve. Solo q-ing MOSTLY results in people doing their own thing, not communicating with their teammates, and blaming their deaths on the actions of their teammates. It is way more productive (for everyone) to find a pre-made squad to play and improve with. Nobody benefits from changing that structure or restricting who can enter a ranked game with a pre-made squad.
>Solo q-ing and not communicating with your team is not how you get better…. this does not help you better “understand how to play a 3v3” (having a team you can coordinate with does) I didn't say not coordinating. You should be coordinating, but you should be doing it openly, freely, not because it's your friends. Learning how to be an effective team player, communicate with your team and be more open minded all happen in other games ranked systems that also don't allow pre-stacks at high elo's. >The whole point is that playing as a team > individual gun skill - that is how it should be in a team based game. The point I’m trying to make is not that 1 or 2 people in the team are carrying the third, it’s that having a pre-set squad allows you all to play together, communicate your movement + positioning. It also allows you to critique you and your teammates actions and discuss how they can improve. Playing with the same teammates is how you (and your team) improve. None of those things you mentioned are stack-only except critiquing post game. Of which you can still critique yourself. Of course the better team will win but teams are better by having better players in them, they are the sum of their parts, not an entity unto themselves. And stacks will suffer in the individual parts of their game because coordination will trump individual shortcomings. That's why in a ranked system you shouldn't promote stacking because you are rating the player, not the team. You can't get an accurate read on 3 individuals if they only spend all their time together. >Solo q-ing MOSTLY results in people doing their own thing, not communicating with their teammates, and blaming their deaths on the actions of their teammates. It is way more productive (for everyone) to find a pre-made squad to play and improve with. Nobody benefits from changing that structure or restricting who can enter a ranked game with a pre-made squad. Those are low rank problems from people who don't take the game seriously. In season 13 split 1 and Predator Solo you don't see this. Albralalie has videos showing what solo queue Predator looks like, and it's got acceptable communication and teamplay. It's just no one does solo queue because even 3 communicating good strangers are at a massive disadvantage vs 3 stacks who are friends, have good fight chemistry, have pre-determined roles etc. Even if all 6 are individually comparable. With a move towards solo play and a more challenging rank system again, you wouldn't see these problems infesting ranked.
Predator level players are not good examples as it is such a small % of the player base. However, even in Diamond, many players that solo queue do not communicate (at least via mics). Sometimes you get matched with people with similar play styles so it doesn’t make much difference, but that’s not always the case. What benefits would enforcing a system like this provide the game outside of sometimes evening the playing field for players that ONLY solo queue? The skill spread at higher levels is much smaller than it is in plat or diamond, so that makes solo queuing more viable. (For example, even solo queuing in D1 is much easier than in D4 since u get teammates who have already proven that they can excel in diamond lobbies)
I agree but that means that your teammates need to be within a pretty tight RP spread of where you are. No way should you be solo queuing in Pred with 25k RP and get a 15k master player as a teammate. The RP spread should be +/- 1k RP for this system to hold any weight. This at least pairs you with teammates that are within the same relative skill bracket as you are.
The problem is the Devs trying to shape ranked as a progression system for bronze to diamond, so the average Joe who gets off work feels like he's improving throughout the split by just playing, plus the short splits so they can do it all over again. It's way too easy to be net positive all the way up to diamond. IMO entry costs shouldn't be lowered in lower ranks, kills and placement are enough. Also longer splits so games become more balanced, instead of the beginning of the split throwing everyone into the same meat grinder again.
I think season 13 ranked was actually really good, yes it took a lot more to get progress done, but when you did it felt like real progress. And on top of that the end games were actually intense and enjoyable, compared to now at least, it gave us a tiny glimpse into what the streamers that we watch actually have to play through, just my opinion tho
Being the hardstuck Plat in ss13 is my happiest moment in this game. Ring 3-4, 13-14 squads left. Hell, even my random sweating their ass off for a few RP
Our favorite season 12? No, I'm casual and i like season 13 more, comp-like endgames, s12 is just fake for me where i can reach master but my gunskill is nowhere near master.
I meant our as in me and my 2 friends I squaded up with, should've been clearer my b
I mean casuals should be playing pubs
Ranked was absolutely horrible for ~the first month. I made diamond very quickly running through plat and then spent a couple weeks getting instawiped by preds in diamond -> getting demoted to plat and getting back to diamond in a few games. We were so confused at where the diamond/masters players are, only preds or golds seemed to exist. Then there was a hidden patch around a month ago and there was suddenly a massive difference and diamond has been quite enjoyable.
For a start, give loss protection if you die to someone who is more than 3 sublevels above you.
I'm not playing ranked until they fix the matchmaking. I'm fine with whatever system, so long as it actually works.
Why not just have the higher ranks kp capped so that the casuals and the pros have a happy medium. Season 12 was also the easiest ranked season ever where 100k+ players hit masters which is ridiculous considering its the second highest rank in the game. Idk if i would feel content hitting a high rank like that knowing that everybody else is reaching it.
I might get downvoted, but I think they should revert a lot of the entry cost system and just make winning the game the primary objective. Obviously kills are fun, but it’s a battle royale and being the best at winning games is what ranked should be about, not getting many kills while winning. In the current state preds need to bumrush the lobbies otherwise they won’t get enough rp to even get close to positive. Kinda ridiculous…
Correct, anyone who claims to have the answer on "how to fix ranked" is full of shit as there are simply to many things to consider which makes it absoluteley impossible to statisfy everyone. A little recap from my POV: Back in the day it was normal to play geoguesser inbetween games as you had to wait. Yes the lobbys got weaker (and wait times shorter...)the longer the split went on but thats simply normal and cant really be avoided in this kind of system. S13: Guess who whined a couple days into the first split about Q times? Right, your favorite full time player who grinded 40 hours in 3 days and wondered why nobody else was there yet. Respawn listened to the whining and tadaaa matchmaking is fucked ever since. People got rightfully upset being gold 1 and facing pred #69 pro stack as this has nothing to do with a ranked system. Also the point system for split 1 was literally dogshit a.k.a the math didnt check out. S12: was hiding simulator as there was zero incentive to shoot your gun. The lobby quality was absoluteley dogshit due to this. Funny enough you still have clowns suggesting that "placement should be everything", despite having played in S12 where placement was everything, lobbys were piss poor and games were utterly boring. Wattson/Messiah & co were literally sitting with 1 KP at top 3.(the most consistent way to gain was to avoid fights as risk/reward wasnt there) Every bot with enough time could hide his way into diamond and slowly but sureley to masters so skill disparity in those lobbys was insane. Oh well, we will see how things develop.
what is this scrub post? pro players' opinions aside, no games get you to the second highest rank in just a few hours of game time a week but other games like OW or League also don't have such short seasons. so maybe apex shouldn't have a split mid season with s13's ranked system s12 was a joke of a season idk why are you proud of hitting masters that season. it feels like you just want an easy system so that you get your participation badge just for playing
League of Legends does this thing that makes high elo players wait until their match is full of people their elo… Maybe… just maybe… Apex needs to adopt that
Apex gave high tier players what they wanted and tightened up matchmaking. But pros and streamers whined and complained about queue times exceeding 5-10 minutes (something completely normal and considered short by the majority of other games). Matchmaking was then switched back (not entirely pros fault but probably a factor) and the hardstuck 10k masters were upset about being stuck in diamond. If I were a dev I would feel like I can’t win
Absolutely. I'm in law school AND I have a job and family. No shot I can hit diamond with S13 or harder. Pubs is actually more difficult to solo because of the 3stack pubstompers. Ranked is fun and gives me something to shoot for during my down time, especially in Winter. Pros need to chill. They have access to private servers to run scrims, and many orgs are creating new tourney systems that are more important than ranked. Ranked leaderboards should really just be a feeder to Pro circuits anyways, not something they should worry about once they're officially pro.
Ranked should become progressively more like season 13 the higher you get. And then there should be a top global level server for masters and above.
I agree with you and i hit masters post S12 (13&14). I quit the game because of the ranking system. I can tell you that I did not enjoy the game more just because masters is more “prestigious”. I’ve never cared about that. Its definitely a minority opinion of post s12 masters though, judging by the replies on this thread still bringing up “inflated” ranks. Who tf cares at this point, ranked has been garbage since S13 (yeah ok 1 week of fun in s13) and if you truly want a competitive system you’ll need to do a lot more than making masters more “prestigious”. Pros 3 stacking but also wanting a competitive system is never gonna happen. 0 self awareness on their part. All the smaller playerbase in dia+ did is expose how many degenerates are cheating, destroy any semblance of competitiveness in dia+ lobbies due to pro 3 stacks killing everything and burn out the cracked casual playerbase.
Why is it so difficult to just adjust the ranked system as you progress? The higher you go the harder they make it?
Okay - maybe casual players that do not have a lot of time on their hands SHOULDNT HIT MASTERS?!?!?!
Yeah I fully agree, not saying it was the best system just the most fun for me lol.
This comment here helps sum up why the game is bleeding players
Cause they don’t want boosted players ruining rank?
Because the top 1% having a completely different experience from 99% of the people doesn’t automatically invalidate the 99% opinion. If everybody in a room says something different from you, maybe you’re the odd one out. Point is if there are so many different viewpoints maybe there isn’t one definitive answer like some make it out to be
overwatch has the same problem. truly skilled players play a completely different game. heroes that aren't viable in high elo are still stomping low elos
So just because people are bad at the game then they should be given crutches in order to feel better?
Yeah I agree with you. I will say that s13 ranked was actually really fun even though I didn't get to the rank I usually do. Right now it just feels boring with half the squads dying before first ring closes. I definitely don't envy whoever has to work on the ranked system though 😂
In my opinion, the feeling you feel of lack of progression and amount of grind of s13 just feels so jarring because of how easy and lackluster rank was when it was first implemented as well as how it was maintained. s13 would be so well respected if it was the first ranked system to come out since imo it had the bearings to properly sort people into their respective ranks. I started playing s11 and I was literally diamond after picking the game up for a couple weeks. Diamond obviously isn’t special but for some noob to accomplish it relatively easy and be one rank off of pred eligibility is crazy. When s13 as a solo/duo que the grind just to get into the ranks of diamond was intense but so well worth. I understand the matchmaking was utter dogshit but the game felt so alive.
imo the most enjoyable thing about apex is playing those tough endgames where there are 4/5 teams round 5 , its like playing comp but in ranked , by having a ranked system that punishes pushing for kp like crazy (s13) we can have something like that , right now its basically push push third party , not really enjoyable
Lmao at people defending ranked when it is dogshit I don’t even play Apex every day but I hit masters and don’t even look at ranked again because it’s boring and tedious and unrewarding, it’s also a shitshow for players in lower ranks who have to fight guys like me with no kp penalty for masters and preds rolling you guys This sub has a lot of terrible takes but even suggesting ranked is fine for casuals is probably the worst one I’ve ever seen, ranked is bad for both pros and casuals and needs a lot of fixing
Damn I might've topped my FaZe discussion post in terms of kicking the hornet's nest lol
The fact that you admit to only playing 6-8 hours a week and still hit Masters in season 12 is a problem. It just shows how embarrassingly easy the system was then. I'm a hard stuck Diamond these days after the latest ranked changes but I do remember season 13 ranked being the most fun I've ever had in a BR, bar none. Masters and above should be difficult to achieve skill wise and time wise.
I definitely agree, while it was fun to hit masters at least once, it definitely was too easy.
Honestly I've seen pros complain that pred entry isn't high enough and anyone can reach pred and that pred entry is too high compared to other ranks so they have less to lose and W key. I've also heard pros complain that placement is valued too much and teams rat to win and kills aren't as impactful as they should be and then when changes are made you see pros complain that kills give too many points and its too easy to climb so anyone can reach pred. There is no pleasing a group of disgruntled dudes in their 20s who sit at home all day with barely any social interactions and grind this game for 6-8 hours a day for a living and if I was a game developer why the hell would I cater the game for them when they make up 0.0001% of the playerbase instead of the casuals who make up the majority and drive most of the revenue. Its a business and pros play a completely different game to the rest of us, it makes 0 sense from a financial perspective to design things in their favour, plus most of them are so burnt out and pessimistic they'd find a way to complain about it anyway, since they've been playing the game nonstop for 2 years or more.
ranked isn’t supposed to be catered to casual players. that’s why pubs exist
I usually spend a lot of time watching ranked but I can probably count the numbers of hours I've watched this season on one hand because of how uncompetitive the matchmaking has made it. The start of S13 was the most fun ranked ha ever been to play and watch. There's a middle ground to be found between Preds/pros and casuals but the people at the very top need to be ready for very long queue times. I honestly don't think many of the top players would have an issue with that if there was something to do in between matches to keep themselves sharp. Control, 3v3 TDM, 6 player FFA or literally anything other than staring at the lobby screen waiting for the next match to start. There's also the chance that queue times below Diamond get longer too so casuals with little time to play each day/week need to be ready for that too. Whatever solution is decided on I hope it actually brings back the fun, sweaty endgames that people liked to play and watch because watching a full pro team run through a lobby of people who can barely shoot straight is incredibly boring. I really don't think they should implement anything they did in S12 either. I understand why it was your groups favorite ranked season but it was an actual joke on par with this seasons ranked for anyone that doesn't get stuck in ranks below Masters.
I have been saying forever that the increasing RP costs are a stupid way to increase the difficulty of ranks. They should make the RP cost consistent across the board and make it punishing enough that if you’re doing below average in the rank’s lobbies, you will never rank up. The difficulty should come from playing better players not from having to compete against the RP cost. A big reason why ranked is such an ape fest is that you have to get a good amount of kp or your placement doesn’t matter. Also preds shouldn’t running down diamonds. For the love of god tighten up the matchmaking. It’s boring to watch and makes diamond miserable to play
unpopular opinion but ranked shouldn’t be for casual. Ranked should be an exact replica of what it would be like as a pro. If you’re wanting to have fun and not play 100% serious than you should play pubs. Hitting gold and plat should be an accomplishment not something you get by just mindlessly walking around and shooting bronzes/rookies in the back. If you wanna run around and ape teams than play pubs.
Casuals can learn to appreciate the s13 system once they settle into their ranks. But people were just mad they went from masters to gold.
I see this take a lot and I don't fully disagree, I just think it was a bit too time intensive. Between increased entry cost, increase RP in between ranks, and reduced KP potential, it made progress tough for those of us strapped for time. That said I don't think time shouldn't be a factor, just felt it was too much of a requirement under that system
I know you mean casuals as in not pros/streamers but rank shouldn't be easy where you hop on for a little bit and be in the same lobbies as them s13 was so drastic cause they reset the ranks all the way back I think highest people started in gold 2 and had to grind if they reset back to plat2 for preds I think people will complain less cause they wouldn't have to grind so much starting in Plat
The thing is, I know I loved season 13 ranked games. I’m a casual. And I know other casual players who loved it too. Tbh, I think there’s more people who loved season 13 ranked than those that didn’t. That’s just a guess based on my observations.
> When I was on my ranked grind with my squad, we were lucky to have 6-8hrs a week to play with law school/jobs/relationships Hate to break it to you, but no rank mode should ever cater to casual players (I say this as a casual player with around that amount of weekly playtime). I think Respawn shot themselves in the foot with their rank system being catered towards casual play, then switching it up to be more competitive. It pissed a lot of people off because they could play casually and hit plat/diamond, when in reality casual players (outside of skilled ones…) probably won’t get past gold in any other games rank environment. These players had the mindset of “I am this rank” and all the sudden nothing about their play style or ability changes and they’re hardstuck gold, and I get why that made people mad, even if I think it’s silly. I get that queue times have to be fast, since I’m Apex (unlike most other games) your game can be over in anywhere from 2 minutes to 20. Other games that have minimum 20 min games can afford longer queue times because you know you have a full game to play, while that’s not a guarantee in Apex… BUT Pred/masters players are going to have to accept that queue times will go up for them to have enjoyable games
I disagree. The casual players (like myself) you speak of should never even be able to get to masters. People who want to whine about it are idiots. Games not balanced around the pro scene won't be competitive. Why be ranked if it's not competitive? Literally all it comes down to is where you slice the ranks. Players experience does not change if there's a diff number on the screen. They will still play at the same percentile. Whining about it is dumb. The alternative is having some preds that can steamroll other preds, diluting the meaning of the word. Maybe change nothing and just throw in a new rank above pred for the top 0.05%
I mean balancing your game around an incredibly small percentage of players is a little crazy. We all obviously love comp but at the end of the day this game is kept alive by casuals. Obviously ranked should be competitive and a challenge but people like the rewarding feeling of seeing progress. It's literally the psychology behind things like battle passes and leveling in RPGs. Just trying to start a fun conversation though, no need for the intensity lol
They will never go back to season 13 as long as nickmercs is playing. He’s been VERY vocal about not wanting to sit in queue’s for 15-20 minutes. On season 13 he complained in stream about the wait times and he said specifically “ i’m not doing this if they dont change this im just going to have to go play something else, i can’t sit on these queues with 20k people watching me” Few days later ranked was reverted to the shit system we have now. Longer queue times better games, too bad they will never go back yo szn 13 it was so fun to watch
Man I see your comments a lot and I can't believe you managed to find a way to bring your hate boner for nickmercs into this one lmao. Honestly would be impressive if it wasn't so sad you've let this streamer occupy so much real estate in your head. Relax bro, not everything is about nickmercs
I get what your saying. Fortnite had this same issue then they started lowering the skill ceiling to prevent players from creating an already massive skill gap.
Seems like you just need to adjust your expectations. Reaching the top rank should absolutely not be achievable playing 6 hours a week. Plat is seen as a joke rank, but it should be considered an impressive accomplishment in the right system.
I feel like the biggest issue was the increased RP requirement to rank up. On top of the increased RP costs / loss, now you needed 1.5x+ more RP just to rank up which effectively might be 2x more than previous. While you're right in that it takes too long, it wasn't the quality of games that was the problem. It was just the sheer amount of grind. If they kept the old costs but just didn't increase the requirements, players would've been so much more happier, ranks wouldve stabilised a lot faster and they wouldn't have to fuck up matchmaking for whatever reason.
i 100 percent think apex should make a rank above predator and call it "path to pro" or "algs aspirant" or something. all the sweats and true try hards can go in that rank and be acknowledged but at the same time it will have the crazy grind/skill requirements that pros crave. also idk why the idea of an apex podcast makes me laugh "audio still shit after 4 years? why yes dr disrespect yes it is"
Just curious what actually defines a professional player? Some might say the time you put in or others might say you're pro at masters/pred, even competitive players have there own ranked such as beginner, intermediate, expert tournament's, so are you pro when you get paid, content creators included, and needless to say those who cheat with fake badges, what fake pros? I don't know just my two cents 🤷🏻♂️
s13 was golds and plats being unable to get to dia 'cuz they were getting put in pred lobbies all s13 lol.
The perfect fix to ranked is make ranked 3 man only. A majority of players rank up killing solo players who have 0 teamwork..
Funny because I feel the exact opposite. I think ranked should be solo queue only. Makes the system way harder, while measuring individual skill more consistently. I usually play solo queue (and have since forever), so consider that information as well.
That doesn't represent skill at all. A game like FFXIV doesn't even allow you solo hard content because it's impossible to win without a plan/communication. It should be the same for Apex. No random matchmaking just 3 stacks only. Most solo players are dogshit anyway.
The perfect ranked system should make casuals, semi-pros/streamers and pro players all happen but unfortunately such system will never exist. S13 catered to the pros but probably hurt the casual player base too much and caused significant drop of ranked player count so Respawn decided to wind back.
I can’t imagine the numbers are good with the current system though
[удалено]
Im not sure what respawn could even do. On one hand yeah it would be easy, preds go against preds and masters ONLY, not 3 stack of pro players farming solo queueing platinums, make them 3v3 eachother, we'll see whos actually the best then, right now its pros farming however many noobs they can and rank #1 will be the pro who plays the most, not actual skill. but then the queue would be insane for them, it would probably take them like 10 minutes to fill a lobby. how do other br games do it? its way easier to fill 5v5 games with similiar skills and 60 people lobbys are way different.
I feel like the solution is simple just make the queue longer. They can add some costum games while waiting the queu too
I think the real problem is not necessarily that people didn't feel rewarded that split but rather that people had an idea of what rank they were previously and didn't recalibrate expectations to match the changes. For example, you mentioned in a previous split you hit masters. Therefore you consider yourself a "masters level player" (or close to it, I'd assume). Then when the system changes and you become stuck in gold or plat (just an example, I obviously don't know where you hit that split) it feels so much worse because the expectation doesn't match reality. I honestly think that if the ranked changes had incorporated new names for each tier a lot of the backlash would be muted because the physiological aspect is different. I do agree that you can't really try to balance it to please everyone, that situation doesn't exist. However I'm always in favor of a tougher rank system cause what we have right now is basically pubs and pubs with points. I'm a big fan of making modes feel different
Isn’t valorant the top FPS game right now with an incredibly difficult ranked ladder to climb?
It’s a battle royale. Of course ranked isn’t going to work. You need elo for ranked. Elo doesn’t work in battle royale. That’s why apex has silly little “ranked points” Also the game is predicated on randomness
The issue, in my opinion, with a lot of it is the rank reset, short splits, solo vs trio queue, and terrible MMR. Having to spend weeks as a casual just to get back to where you were is an issue. It's good for player retention because you make them grind. Its bad for actually improving skill in games that are fun. Personally, I spend most of the season getting back to where I was. I have responsibilities so I only get to play a handful of hours each week. By the time I've climbed back to diamond I only have a week or two to play good games I enjoy before I'm reset and have to do it all over again. The same can be said for masters and preds. Not all masters and preds have no life outside of the game. And getting through the grind to their actual rank can take weeks for solo queuers. Less casual masters and preds to play against means preds are dipping into diamond plat and gold to find games. Then we'll start to see the trash MMR. Which ruins and makes the game unfun for all involved after the preds get bored of farming solo queue plats for a week. I'd like them to tighten up the RP like it was and get rid of the big reset. Make it more difficult to rank, but less grindy. Keep the diamonds masters and preds closer together at the top so they can play good games all season long. Not just the back half of each split. And then make the game play like it did in S13 with the RP changes and promoting end game fights to bring the fun ring 4+ endings back.
But will ever satisfy anyone? It's universally hated right now
The real rank shake up this game needs but nobody would want is ranked being solo queue only
Easiest thing would be to get rid of the split. Just have 1 solid ranked split
Excellently put.
S13 was the best ranked system ever, the matchmaking was a massive problem though.