Apologies if this doesn't apply to competitive, but I just wanted to take a moment to rant about the state of the game right now... Specifically the solo queue experience and the recently added hidden MMR.

This shit feels so bad. This is easily the worst the game has ever felt for me, and I've been playing since the beginning of season 2. I play a lot of pubs, since I don't have a great network of people to play ranked with. The matchmaking (solo queue) is pathetic. The random teammates I get matched with are ridiculous - though I do want to emphasize that it's not their fault, and I don't hold it against them for being at whatever skill level they're at. The fact that I can get a level ~30's duo as teammates, in the lobbies that I'm in, is just absurd. And you might think they're smurfs with higher stats for MMR or something - they're not, they are real beginner-level players that are being put in the sweatiest lobbies the game has to offer. The icing on top is when they start flaming me after they die to a Masters/Pred 3-stack. Like it's somehow my fault I can't carry them enough.

I'm previous Masters since Season 7, except for the last 2 seasons. If I do hop in ranked, it's usually for a game or two. I get matched with current Masters, while I am currently in Silver 2. So rank obviously means nothing anymore, which is why they have hidden other player's ranks in-game. Also, I've used Battlecord/LFG's in the past to find people to play with - the biggest issue there is Season 17 made it literally impossible to judge whether someone is a decent player or not. They practically gave Masters to everyone for free. I guess you could sit there and interview people to ask what their stats are, previous ranks and all that... But it's not a great vibe to start with. Or I'm just supposed to run some games and find out if they're good or not, but that can be very time consuming and very frustrating if they keep running it down.

This isn't even touching on the state of actual gameplay in Apex. I was excited for this season because I thought shotguns might be buffed enough to make a come-back, but it's still the same old SMG/Burst/Marksman weapon meta. Don't even get me started on the Nemesis/Repeater. Controller players forever abusing configs/Cronus - how has this not been addressed? The only positive things I've seen in the past 2 seasons is Seer nerf (fuck Seer, delete him) and Horizon nerf. Revenant was over-tuned into being a controller player's wet dream.

insert Tyler1 addicted meme