Apex Legends developers give an update on “matchmaking tests”

Respawn Entertainment have been working on the Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) system for a while now and have recently turned up with results. The Apex Legends community has been up in arms about the game's matchmaking being atrocious for a while now. A mediocre Season 15 launch saw the Apex Legends community become much more incensed about the game's issues, SBMM included. Thankfully, it looks like Respawn Entertainment have taken notice and have been conducting tests on a new and improved matchmaking system.

The Apex developer put out a tweet that demonstrated the results of these matchmaking tests, which look promising. According to these results, a lot more players on the test server were able to nab a kill in a single BR game than on the regular matchmaking servers. In essence, this means that players on the test server were performing much better than players on usual servers. Currently, the imbalanced SBMM system leads to most casual players getting much fewer kills. Lobbies are dominated and swept up by the higher-skill players who end up getting matched up against lower-skill ones.

The community appears appreciative of Respawn Entertainment's transparency around their matchmaking tests for Apex Legends. Players have been calling on the developers to issue comments and interact with the community about the state of the game for a while now. And with this bit of information on a major issue, Respawn Entertainment have finally delivered. Many pro players, influencers, and streamers responded to the Tweet positively. These include community influencers usually critical of the game like FURIA's HisWattson and TSM's ImperialHal.

A key component of these tests is the fact that they were conducted in real-time on live servers. Many players from the Singapore server reported improvements in SBMM during Respawn's "testing period" which was the holidays. Plenty of Apex Legends Redditors were skeptical of the graph, however, citing that the Y-axis isn't labeled with enough relevant information. However, most players on Twitter seem optimistic. It isn't clear what skill bracket these tests address, or whether they address players in ranked or casual matchmaking.

Regardless, it's promising to see that the developers have indeed taken notice of the matchmaking problem. The issue was last addressed by a developer working on the team in November on Twitter. And Respawn Entertainment followed through by conducting tests on an improved system during the holiday period.

Stay tuned to esports for the latest Apex Legends news and updates.