Apex Legends Players complain about “Sweaty” matchmaking in Season 18

The launch of Apex Legends Season 18 has brought along a few matchmaking problems. The issues appear to be quite prevalent with several players complaining on online forums. If you hopped into the game excited to try Revenant, only to keep getting owned by preds in your lobby, don't worry. You aren't the only one thinking there's something off about the matchmaking.

The Apex Legends community is up in arms about the issue all across social media. However, different levels of players seem to be facing different issues. In fact, some players have noticed matchmaking issues since August 1. Season 18 went live on August 8, 2023.

Among the primary issues are the long matchmaking queues. Since Season 18 dropped, many players are reporting unusually long matchmaking queues. This is applicable across the board for all game modes, including unranked. Solo queuing players appear to be facing similar queues to 3-stacks. While most players report they've been nearly instant for unranked in past seasons, players are reporting anywhere between 20 s to 2-minute matchmaking queues. On some servers, these appear to be even longer.

Many players are frustrated with the long queues, in addition to other issues with the matchmaking in Apex Legends Season 18.

There are also complaints about how every game feels like a 'sweatfest' with the recent matchmaking struggles. It appears they're facing lobbies that turn into warzones even in casual game modes like unranked and mixtape. There are a few members of the community that suspect this is because the matchmaker appears to be trying to pair equally skilled players in the same lobby. However, there are also several comments from casual players that appear to claim the opposite.

The picture on Reddit seems to describe a completely different issue. It appears regular casual players with lower skill ceilings have been facing top-level players even in pubs. A lot of Apex Legends Redditors are calling on the developers to address the issue or at least provide some comments on what has changed. Many users are speculating that the problems with the matchmaking began as early as August 1. Describing every lobby they're matched into as "completely filled with sweats and unfun", Reddit Users believe the matchmaking is the main problem in Apex Legends Season 18.

Popular Apex Legends content creator and competitive player, ottr, compiled a thread of undocumented changes to the game in Apex Legends Season 18.

As a part of this thread, he describes "an adjustment" to the matchmaking that has been noticed "a week or so prior to the patch, but definitely after the patch". According to him, this adjustment has led to high-skill bucket players facing very high-skill opponents with 20-bombs and 4k damage badges and players ranked at Predator.

Early in the year in January, the developers posted a devblog talking about how they're conducting "matchmaking tests" on the server. It appears this could be an instance of the same. However, it's unclear how long the current matchmaking system will prevail and what exactly is the situation until the developers comment on it. With all the noise on social media, it won't be long before Respawn Entertainment addresses the issues.

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