Apex Legends will lock everyone Diamond and above into solo queue for two weeks is a battle royale admitting teamwork breaks matchmaking apparently. From June 9 to June 23 during Season 29, anyone in Diamond, Master, or Apex Predator loses the ability to queue as a premade, full stop. Respawn frames it delicately saying the goal is to "create more evenly matched high-skill lobbies, reduce hard-carries into Diamond, Master and Predator and build trust in the overall fairness of these matches." This is another way of saying we cannot make a better matchmaking system. The game is built upon teamwork and this is a try to break that.
Solo queue fairness has been one of the loudest, longest-running complaints in the Apex community for years, the recurring issue that a solo gets fed to premade squads who communicate, coordinate, and carry each other up the ladder. Respawn acknowledged the demand directly, noting that "while this is a commonly requested feature by portions of our community, we will be closely monitoring community sentiment and match data."
The Diamond Line Is Where the Pros Think It Breaks
The pro consensus runs roughly that the idea is sound but Diamond shouldn't be in it. John "Hakis" Håkansson called solo queue "100% needed" to fix the power imbalance at the top, then argued it should be Master and Predator only, because forcing Diamond into the same pool risks dumping those players into lobbies against Predators with a skill gap wide enough to feel pointless. Jack "NiceWigg" Martin put the business risk plainly during ALGS scrims: "I think the majority of Diamond players that queue with their friends are just gonna quit, and I don't think that's a good look for Apex." Even the supportive takes carried the same asterisk, with retired pro Otto "ottr" Boström tweeting "based as hell" before adding "should've left it Master+ tbh."
Why It's a Two-Week Test and Not a Switch
Another issue is there just aren't enough players up there in the rankings. Respawn has openly noted that when top-rank populations are small, restricting matchmaking to only those tiers produces long queue times, which is why high ranks normally get mixed with lower tiers to fill lobbies at all. Solo queue only makes that thin pool thinner, since every premade that used to fill one lobby as a group now needs its own separate slots. Two weeks is just enough live data to see whether the fairness gain is worth the queue-time cost, or whether Diamond players hit the rank and stop logging in.
The matchmaking in general continues to suffer at the expense of players, and companies are trying to create solutions, the reality is gaming population is fractionalized. The skill gap between top and the bottom percentile is insane and it creates a genuine issue for majority of players. CoD was another game where everyone complained about matchmaking for a very long time. Whether this will solve the situation time will tell, but for now as we have highlighted, the change is temporary.
More:Ubisoft's AI Spend Lands in Its Worst-Ever Loss Report
Read
Source Editing
Visual Editing
Related news
