Apex Legendsseem to be getting ready for an interesting update as the company shares details on its matchmaking system. The battle royale’s Skill Based Matchmaking (SBMM) mechanism has long been debated, with many gamers urging for changes. Now it looks likeApex Legendsfans may be finally getting their wish granted.
Apex Legendshas come a long way since its release in 2019 and has grown to be one of the top battle royale titles in gaming today. Throughout its 15 seasons, the game has undergone many changes with new characters, maps, weapons, and interesting cosmetics being added regularly while building on itsTitanfall-based lore. Although, these changes don’t always work in the game’s favor. For example, the developers had to recently roll back an update thataccidentally nerfed Horizon’s Gravity lift tactical ability. But beyond these typical character changes and bug fixes, Respawn could be prepping up for a massive overhaul of its matchmaking mechanics, a core part of howApex Legendsfunctions as a battle royale.
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In a developer blog post, the company shared a detailed view of howApex Legends' current matchmaking processworks within the game and what players could expect to happen in the near future. Accordingly,Apex Legendswill be retiring the SBMM system and will be replacing it with a new version. Here, the system will look to measure skills and create matches based on two goals. The first is to gauge a meaningful measurement of the player’s skill where it “must be predictive of their performance.” The second goal is “to make the tightest possible matches in a reasonable time frame,” according to the company. This means that as opposed to placing players into static buckets and creating a match after it fills 60 players, the game would predict the distribution of incoming players and “dynamically chooses the optimal tradeoff between skill differences and wait time.”
The developers have also shared that these systems have already gone live in certain regions and modes for testing purposes following the launch of Season 15, Eclipse.Apex Legendsfurther states that it hopes to phase out the old matchmaking system region by region and that the company will explore possible additional corrections to player skill ratings afterward. News of an update to SBMM has been rumored for a while and oneRespawn developer even confirmed matchmaking changeswere on the way. In any case, only time will tell how these changes will pan out for millions of players.
Apart from the upcoming matchmaking changes, the company is rumored to be updating another key aspect of the battle royale, its spawning mechanism.Respawn is reportedly looking to make big changes to how players will spawnin the game with the launch ofApex LegendsSeason 16. Of course, Respawn itself is yet to confirm any such change is in the works. Either way, it’s unlikely fans will hear anything official untilApex Legendsshare details on its next season which will kick off after Eclipse comes to an end on 21 June 2025.
Apex Legendsis available for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
