Respawn reveal why Apex Legends Rank gap in matchmaking is “fully intended”

A Respawn Entertainment dev explained why Apex Legends players are finding a disparity in their Ranked games as people report more matchmaking issues with noticeable gaps in ELO.

The Apex Legends community have long contended with finding a Bronze player in Platinum lobbies or similar cases that can mar competitive gameplay for teams. This has been even in past seasons, baffling players throughout the years.

Though it leaves the door open for a low ELO player to file in where it’d be inconvenient for a squad, there’s a reason as to why that’s the case.

Respawn have long been adamant that these cases are rare and are crucial for keeping Apex’s queue times low to get every lobby of 60 players filled.

Apex Legends players want the Rank matchmaking to find players closer in rank to each other.

Even in Season 13, Diamond-ranked people will claim to find Bronze players in their games while low ELO lobbies will find Platinum+ absolutely level the field.

Although not ideal, Live Technical Designer Aaron ‘Exgeniar’ L. can see why people might still cross someone who has no business being in that Ranked lobby, on both ends of the spectrum.

“Bronze player could get matched with a platinum player in some intended edge cases,” he said. “However, Bronze player should never be matched with a Diamond+ player… In all the cases we checked, it is a Gold Player in a premade with a Bronze player that gets placed into a Gold + Plat lobby.

“Sometimes when queue time is sufficiently high, lobbies start merging to kick off games. This is a compromise in the design because we don’t want these players to wait forever. So sometimes during off-peak hours, this starts happening. This is fully intended.”

Apex Legends can have a Rank disparity sometimes, but it’s be design — sometimes.

The dev was clearing up a statement from an EA Help rep who said Bronze players should never be matched with a Platinum. But this can happen and does, though Exgeniar calls them “edge cases.”

Even in application, the Respawn dev admitted it can feel like a “bug” at times and they could look at home to ease these fringe instances from occurring in the future.