The new Arenas mode in Apex Legends is a 3v3 heads-up match more akin to shooters like Valorant or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Since its inception, it's been popular among Apex Legends players, but not without its flaws. Among the most common complaints is that the skill-based matchmaking within Arenas is ineffective, in response, Respawn has admitted it's looking into the issue.
As Arenas is a direct head-to-head fight with far fewer players than usual, any disparity in skill is relatively easy to notice. If players' reports are accurate, then the current system appears to match based on a player's level—an indicator of time put in more than skill—with higher-level players being consistently teamed with low-level players, possibly trying to achieve a certain combined level as an aggregate of all three players. As a result, the Arenas mode saw frustrated gamers increasingly abandon matches, a problem that was addressed in a recent Apex Legends update that introduced leaver penalties.
Now, Redditor JimeeB's post about these matchmaking imbalances garnered a reply from Respawn's Lead Software Engineer, Samy Duc. As an answer to JimeeB's observations, Duc responded by saying "the fairness of a game is pretty even but we understand it is a bit tiring when level disparity is high in your team composition. It will improve." Still, many remain skeptical of the metrics being used to inform the underlying matchmaking algorithm, with players complaining that skill-based matchmaking system is broken in Apex Legends because they are constantly ending up in lobbies that are too difficult even in the battle royale mode.
Though not official, this response seems to suggest that matchmaking does factor in experience level too heavily while searching for teams in Arenas. While experience can be a measurement of skill, it's not always the case. This is likely attributing to the inconsistent experience that many are seeing through the current matchmaking. In order to address this problem, the matchmaking system should weigh statistics like K/D ratios, average survival time, accuracy, and the like, though a recent glitch in the Firing Range made even these metrics exploitable.
Between an imbalance of Apex Legends' character's passive abilities and an ineffective matchmaking system, competitive playlists have a serious problem. A player trying to reach the upper echelon of the ranking system should at least be assured of teammates within a reasonable skill bracket. If not addressed, the problem will continue to compound on itself, with would-be high-ranked players falling into a lower bracket solely because of poor matchmaking, which only further perpetuates the issue.
Apex Legends is available on, PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, and Xbox One.
