Change my mind. Being able to go 100mph 200meters crouched so you have almost no audio AND being able to boost your whole fucking team is crazy. There's 0 reason to ever play octane. Broken ult and broken Q. Unreal this legend even exists. Not a single downside

Hey everyone, I'd like some suggestions for stretched resolution in Apex. I tried 1440x1080, but it looks very blurry. I'd like better visibility. Could you help me?Hey everyone, I'd like some suggestions for stretched resolution in Apex. I tried 1440x1080, but it looks very blurry. I'd like better visibility. Could you help me?

TLDR: The Solo Queue test has not yielded significant results (improvements) in the matchmaking and has made us go back to our original problem and at times a worse experience. I'm optimistic that improvements can happen but we'll have to wait and see

BACKGROUND

Hey Yall!

As many of you know earlier this week, Respawn started the solo queue test for Ranked for players Diamond and above for the next 2 weeks or until their data collection is done. The main problem that they try to nail are pre-made teams more specifically 3-stacked preds that roll through the lobby. In theory the test seems too good to fail, you level out the playing field by making it so that everyone has to play with people they don't know, communication can be hit or miss, and the skill levels are balanced in a way where every team has some bad players and good players in them. This has however resulted...somewhat true

I was able to progress from Plat 1 to Diamond 2 on my own as of the making of this post just for reference. I was able to solo queue to Diamond 1 last split but 3 stacked to finally reach Masters.

THE TEAMS/EXPERIENCE

In the games I've played since the test I was able to queue with people of my own rank, good we are off to a great start. There were extremely rare cases where I was able to get a pred or a masters player on my team, also not strange as this has happened in the past. I've also occasionally got plats on my team which was common and I didn't think was out of place from my experience. In the beginning hours and day of the test the lobbies there were significantly more plat teams in the matches. Its normal that a plat gets into a diamond lobby but not this many, at times being 8+ plat teams and more than likely the diamond teams coming out on top. Towards up until today and more recently however, there have been cases of now 9 pred teams with even extreme cases of 2 plat teams being in the same match. This is what caught me off guard and made me question why is Respawn putting a plat into a pred lobby, this has never occurred in my experience prior to the test. So 9 pred teams, seemed extremely high and I thought oh maybe its just a pred and 2 diamonds/masters that's why there's so many. To my shocking surprise after I was third partied by one of them I spectate and find out that I was killed by a 3 pred stack. Maybe this was an outlier, maybe they got lucky to end up all in pred? Nope, unfortunately its common for preds to queue together which is actually been part of the same rank queue. If you're diamond you get diamonds, if you're masters you get masters, if you're pred you get preds. With now this in mind I asked myself, "Aren't we just playing the same game but now I have 2 people I have no idea how they play and don't talk until they get mad when we die?" Short answer: yes yes you are.

However I would also be lying if I didn't say I had matches where I had 2 players on my team that I played well with and at times won games with 300+ RP. There were even extreme cases where I matched with the same people I had gained with and I would go on a winning or top 5 streak. I also noted a significantly faster progression in ranked in this split than I had last split. Within those games I would say those random players were better than players I would find on LFGs or mutuals.

WHAT IS THE UNDERLYING ISSUE?

There are two I can clearly point out.

One, the team composition didn't change or balance out. Like we discussed, the test ultimately did not change the team compositions that you would see prior to the test. You would still get games with a stacked pred team or games with diamonds where the skill range is vast. In extreme cases, players in significantly lower ranks were being matched with high ranked teams which was not personally seen prior to the test.

Two, is that getting to diamond is just too easy. This is not a result related to the test but is something I've noticed more greatly with this test. This was an issue I saw early on upon my return to the game last season ago and why many people complain about "bad teammates" in their diamond games. The RP fee increase from Plat to Diamond is significantly higher compared to that of the jump from gold to plat making the climb not so difficult. Its not until you reach Diamond 4 that players start to realize that they now have to more greatly prioritize placement, communication, and legend composition in order to not go negative 65. It does not help that the fee doesn't change for every tier you gain within that rank division. Turns out we did have this system in the past but was changed to this current system of the same fee throughout the same division which I was surprised since this was my return since season 14 which did have this changing fee system.

ANY SOLUTIONS?

1. Pred Limit

A solution would be limit the amount of preds in 1 team to only 1. This could potentially be done for pre-stacks but would more than likely yield better results while in a solo queue environment as it would disperse out the amount of preds in the game and would spread them out across multiple teams allowing for playing field to be a bit more balanced in terms of the skill composition. Possibly creating multiple cases of teams having 2 above average diamonds/masters with a pred and having a better fighting chance with a better player on everyone's team

2. Increase Difficulty in Diamond progression

I'm not entirely sure how I would adjust the rank as -65 is already a good spot. Reverting to the old system wouldn't entirely make sense, it was changed for a reason. Possibly scaling the RP cost in the previous ranks would be a good place to start just to allow up and coming players understand those important fundamentals early on so that once they reach diamond they are not taken by surprise as to why the game is difficult. I've heard of people saying introducing another rank above diamond which would have a higher cost like -80 would be a good place to start but then again we'd just making the grind already too long and that's considering we got the rookie ranked a while ago which didn't really need to exist to begin with.

Bonus: KP and Placement

I've also never understood why kills/assists are scaled by placement rather than scaling them when the KP occurred. Why is a KP earned in the beginning of the match valued as much as a KP in the endgame. Wouldn't it make more sense to the game that I was able to not only place smart and get good placement but to also get a kill or assist late into the game where those points and gunfights matter even more rather than just getting a wipe at the very beginning and play passive/rat my way to the endgame to still be scaled the same amount of points?

FINAL REMARKS

We still got a few days of this solo queue and see how it will finally end. Who knows if Respawn will actually do something with this data and if further tests will occur. I will continue to play during the test and see if I can make my way to masters again and even with luck to pred for the first time! I've always enjoyed apex, I always felt like the competitive scene and ranked feelings is the best out of all the ranked BRs I've played and I would like it to improve for the whole player base. Apex is an amazing game and I want more people to comeback to it with an amazing experience. This was in no way me being completely negative or saying the test was flawless, its simply observations and personal takes based on those experiences. I would love to hear your voice on this and see what you think. Having a discussion is always the greatest way for things to change for the better!

Thank you for your time, legend!

Seeing preds still being able to queue with other preds. How do the devs fail this bad?

everyone has been in the situation where you & your opponent are on a headglitch or at a piece of cover, you peek & hit 2-3 shots on them (low damage)... Problem I have is I think low damage is worthless & will overpeek because of that (whatever the correct term for that) to try get more damage & I end up taking the same amount of damage I did or get hit for more. I have won so many fights I never thought I would've when I was hitting low damage but keeping health up by not overpeeking but still find myself seeing low damage as a waste

The only* time you should be looting ground/bins is for a short (and I mean SHORT) while in your first POI to get good guns and a couple of extra heals - that is all you need for a first fight. And this should be done by landing in a spot so that you loot in the direction of the nearest POI of enemies. That is it. Any more time than that spent looting bins/ground at any part of the game is a complete waste of time and just an incorrect way of playing. The quicker you get into a first fight the better.

Why?

• You gain evo quicker because you're shooting enemies.

• You get better loot and you get it quicker because those you kill have looted stuff for you and collected it in one place.

• This game inherently values momentum. More kills - more evo - more loot - easier to kill the next team.

These are only some of the in game benefits for doing this. But think about it from a developmental perspective: How much do you improve looting bins? Zero. Zero improvement whatsoever. It is a COLLOSSAL waste of time both from a per-game perspective and just your development in general. A net-negative activity. When you take the game to others, you learn how to fight. You learn how to push a team. You learn how to third party. You learn how to deal with being third-partied. Every aspect of the game that matters, you improve on. Most importantly: you are playing correctly. I could go on.

To summarize: Stop looting ground/bins. If you have enough for a fight dont even open any more. There is no point whatsoever. Be on the move, look for engagements. When you find engagements, close the distance and loot who you kill instead (quickly).

I was solo alive in a ranked Apex match after both of my teammates died. There was only one replicator available that I could get to without getting caught.
The problem was that the replicator was surrounded by what looked like 4 different squads fighting/rotating around it. I decided to wait because I figured crafting the banners there would just get me killed.
I ended up dying before I found a safe opportunity to craft but I was hiding for a decent amount of time. This was at landslide. After I died, one teammate got mad and asked why I was waiting, saying I should’ve just used the replicator. Specifically, “why the fuck were you fucking waiting there for so long, you know there was a replicator right behind you, right? You legit gave me cancer” with the other guy laughing. From my perspective, there wasn’t another replicator and this one wasn’t safe to use.
Was waiting the better play, or should I have tried to craft immediately even with multiple squads nearby?
I’m genuinely looking for strategy advice here, not validation. If you think I misplayed it, what would you have done differently?
Also, I just have a really hard time dealing with toxic stuff like this. I might have some OCD. So forgive me if I sound crazy for even asking.

Hey all,

I really hope not to get hate posts here.

I am hardstuck d4. I put in the work, do firing range drills every day, play R5 and try to work on fundamentals aim and positioning. I try to learn from my deaths.

Precisely because I put in the work I really want to see marginal incremental improvements, but I don't.

I get to d4, I would have a win that would boost me some 200-300 points and proceed to lose it all in the next games. I mainly fail in the early game where it's third party after third party and seem to do well when it's an isolated fight in the beginning.

The early games seem so random as to how many teams will come and it's really exacerbated with random teammates.

I am really frustrated as I don't see any improvements at all...

I rage at the matchmaking system as it groups people together by rank and it would put me with d4 teammates vs d2 or d1 groups but not in-between.

I don't know what to do, I feel helpess at this point.

What makes it more frustrating is watching people like mgclutch saying diamond lobbies are easy as he proceeds to melt everything. I don't want to be as good as him or anything but it feels really bad when you put in the work but get no results.

Is there anything not so mainstream that I could be missing and you guys can suggest? Anything I haven't thought of before?

Thanks a lot! 🙏🏻

So is this somehow not commonly known?!?

I don’t mean the ones with EVO orbs in them, I mean every bin opened is 50 EVO and thus time off teammate respawn timer.

It kills me to watch a solo teammate running away from an outmatched fight passing closed bin after bin after bin in their mad dash retreat.

You don’t have to stop and loot, just tap E as you run past the bins. Ple-e-e-e-ase! 🙏

I've started playing in s4, got ~800 hours in the game and then took a 4 years break.

Started playing again a couple of months ago and the experience is miserable.
For some reason I'm getting put on the very right end of skill curve in unranked after not touching the game for years. Getting overrun by some guy with big scary numbers on his trackers every time. Generally feels bad to be a third wheel every match.

Tried ranked and it was fun until I reached platinum, where I don't belong. I feel like a bot in wildcard and in mixtape, same issue with opponents jumping my face and just oneclipping me.

It seems that I can't play against opponents of my skill (which is kinda low). Except for ranked, until I get out of gold, which seems easy to do just by getting carried.

So my main question is, is it that bad for every returning player? The matchmaking seems off, maybe it's confused by my playtime.
I guess the main advice could be to "git gud", but the process of improving isn't really fun if every opponent is leagues ahead of you skillwise.

Should I maybe make a new fresh account and see how it goes?

Is there any way for me to remove turning extra yaw and pitch whislt staying on linear?

I know some of my problems are literal skill issues, but I was watching Aceu's latest YouTube video, and seeing even Ace missing shots was such a relief. Ace plays on MnK and legit has good aim, but he's not one-clipping people with a Hemlok or Havoc at range. I swear to God, in high elo it feels like 80-90% of people are using XIM, Titan, or jitter scripts, and it's really sad it wasn't like that before. If you ever played Warzone, you remember the Grau meta; that AR literally beamed with no recoil. It just feels like everyone has a Grau against me. In Diamond3+, I can't even contest ARs with snipers or marksman rifles, it's insane. I just swapped to a shotgun + wingman combo and I'm getting more reliable results. What do you guys think, am I just delusional and trash at the game, or are there a lot more cheaters than we thought?