In a new deep dive post, technical director Samy Duc has explained Apex Legends‘ new matchmaking system as the traditional Skill-Based Matchmaking System is gradually retired. The new matchmaking system distributes players in a greater number of skill buckets than before, assigns premade groups higher skill ratings to compensate for their advantage, and implements a uniform matchmaking system across all gamemodes.

Apex Legends Old Skill-Based Matchmaking System:

Previously, Apex Legends’ SBMM grouped players into four skill rating buckets, and used this rating in different ways across gamemodes:

• In Pubs (regular Battle Royale matches), the matchmaking system grouped players into parties of roughly equivalent total average skill.
• In Ranked, the matchmaking system grouped players with other equally-skilled players to mitigate carry burden.

The system accounted for premade groups’ advantage by using the skill rating of the group’s most skilled player as a representative of the group’s skill. However, this resulted in great difficulty for newer Apex players: these new players were put against squads of much greater skill, and created significant carry burden for their more experienced teammates. Due to a limited similarly-skilled player pool during matchmaking, the system inevitably paired uneven premade group sizes together to the frustration of the Apex Legends community.

Apex Legends New Matchmaking System:

Now, the new matchmaking system distributes players into numerous smaller skill rating buckets to ensure fairer squad groupings. Instead of rating a premade duo or trio by the skill rating of its strongest player, it accounts for premade advantage by increasing the group’s skill rating by a small amount during the matchmaking and skill measurement processes. All gamemodes will use the new matchmaking system for a consistent gameplay experience throughout.

According to the developers, the new matchmaking system takes care to ensure optimal queue times using a new player-search algorithm:

With the new skill measurement, we need to make the tightest possible matches in a reasonable time frame. Our new matchmaker strives to achieve this by flipping the typical search around. Rather than placing players into static buckets and creating a match as soon as that bucket reaches 60 players, it will predict the distribution of incoming players and dynamically chooses the optimal tradeoff between skill differences and wait time.

Apex Legends is currently in its 15th gameplay season “Eclipse,” and is available on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.

Source: Apex Legends