4Game

Edit: I concede that SBMM sucks for high tier players, and that it need improvements. I remain convinced that SBMM overall is beneficial for the player base. Thanks for the discussion on a slow day at work!

I see complaints about SBMM daily on this sub. And I think I could summarize them all pretty generally. “I used to be able to win most of my games, and now I can’t. And the game isn’t fun for me as a result. Please let me win all the time again.”

Most of the posts are from high performing players. KDA over 2 (most over 5 from my browsing). Level 100 or above. Many many hours invested.

Reality check-

There are thousands of players that are not good at this game. I am one of them. For every game with 7 or 8 kills, I’d have dozens where I would die with no kills. To other players riding the level 100 cap before it was extended. I don’t think I’ve hit level 40 yet.

Now that the 1% are playing together more, the remaining 99% has less of a skill gap to clear to have a chance to win.

Honestly, I bet the majority of Apex revenue comes from battlepasses and unlocks. I would imagine Apex cares much more about maintaining the thousands of players near or below a KDA of 1 to maintain the BP revenue than losing a few hundred maybe but not likely whales that spend hundreds of hours playing and might spend $250 getting boxing gloves for pathfinder.

To the loud minority complaining about SBMM: Are you really good at this game? What’s your KDA? If you are upset at getting destroyed by better players, why should the majority of Apex newbies be exposed to lose to you? How does that help the ecosystem?