Apex Legends players have taken issue with the battle royale’s matchmaking system, questioning if it does enough to sort out certain skill levels. This question has long gone unanswered by its developer, with many casual players growing tired of being put into matches against veterans. Well, this may no longer be the case soon, as the current system is reportedly being “retired” in favor of more “meaningful” matchmaking.
In a new blog post on the Apex Legends webpage, developer Respawn Entertainment has gone into great detail explaining both the old and new matchmaking systems for the game. It clarified that its current structure for both its Public and Ranked modes is centered around the highest-ranked player in a squad and places their team into one of four defining “buckets” based on this player’s skill. As the developer has found these skill-based buckets to be too few to separate those with different experience, the new system is said to be “more granular and has many more buckets.”
However, the incoming implementation will even factor in wait times to ensure Legends are not stuck in queues until a balanced match is made. The post points out that the new skill measurement is capable of predicting the number of active players and “dynamically chooses the optimal tradeoff between skill differences and wait time.” So far, the experiment appears to be a success in its tested regions, with various graphs showcasing tighter matches that have resulted in higher elimination counts for lower-level players, as first revealed by Respawn’s Twitter earlier in the month.
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Shortly after this announcement, fans were ultimately mixed on how the game would be going about connecting players of certain talents. Reddit user Natdapat expressed that while the new system seems fair, they would not “mind waiting a little longer for a better quality game.” Meanwhile, others voiced their gratitude for the impending change. Redditor StinkusFeather exclaims that with more balanced matches, the future update is “definitely a beacon of hope for this game.”
Albeit, not all fans will see the changes right away. While the new matchmaking system is being tested on some servers, the developer has stated it plans on phasing out the current formula region by region, though no specific dates have been given. Aside from matchmaking, the free-to-play title may be in for some other nice surprises. Dataminers have recently pointed to it earning a Lunar New Year event in late January, while other leaks have suggested an incoming shake-up to its character classes in the near future.
