Apex Legends dev responds to bizarre matchmaking inconsistency

A strange matchmaking occurrence in Apex Legends allowed a team of random players to drop into a game together, but stopped them from queuing up for another match – and Respawn have given explanation as to why.

People dropping into Apex’s Ranked playlist have been matched with other players of wildly different skill levels in the past. The ranked system has been called “flawed” by some players in the past because of these mismatched teams, among other issues.

But the system worked against a team of three randoms in an unexpected way after they wanted to run it back together, but were barred from doing so because of their ranks.

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“Hey Respawn, if I’m playing Ranked with randoms and we team up after our game, this is not OK,” user ‘JohnJimMilton’ said, perplexed after not being able to queue up with the players they had just come out of a game with.

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Milton explained that after their game, the three players found they couldn’t get in another match since one person was only a Silver while another was in Platinum.

On paper, the situation looked like some sort of glitch that must have occurred in the lobby that paired them in the first place or with the game’s online service not letting them queue.

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Yet, the reason for that was much clearer, and possibly had to do something with the way Ranked matches up people for a game.

Giving more insight into the issue, Senior Designer at Respawn Entertainment Chin ‘tangentiallogic’ Xiang Chong offered an explanation of how the system could have formed Milton’s team.

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Tangentiallogic explained: “I’m not saying this is what happened, but here is a legitimate case of why this could be happening: Players A and B are gold and silver respectively, they are friends and party up into Ranked. They get matchmade as gold. Player C matchmakes into their party, and is Plat. Plat players can and do play with Golds. After the match if Player C tries to join a party with Players A and B, we do not allow that because Plat can only play with 1 Tier difference away.”

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The dev went on to say that the one-tier difference max policy is implemented in an attempt to stop people from boosting lower ranked players.

That could explain why the team was formed in the first place, though it didn’t offer much consolation for the group of Apex Legends players who wanted to queue up again.