Apex Legends is shelving its solo-queue experiment because it made high-tier lobbies feel worse

Respawn has published what it learned from two temporary Ranked matchmaking tests in Apex Legends, and the answer to both is no. Neither the tier restriction nor the solo-queue lock is becoming permanent, and the studio says the second one actively made things worse for the players it was meant to help.

The problem they went after

Both tests targeted premade squads. Respawn says its data shows a squad with a premade duo plus a solo fill wins 19 percent more often than three solo players thrown together, and a full premade trio wins 17 percent more often. At the top of the ladder that behaviour is close to universal: 85 percent of Masters squads are premade three-stacks.

Test one: narrower squads

The first test let you queue only with players within one rank tier of you instead of two. The effect was small and narrow. Diamond players saw roughly 8 percent fewer Diamond opponents and about 8 percent more Platinum ones, Platinum players ran into more Diamonds, and outside those two tiers nothing moved. Respawn decided that was not worth restricting everyone else's friend lists.

Test two: solo queue only

The second test locked Diamond, Master and Predator players to solo queue. It worked mechanically, in that the three-stacks disappeared, but the win-rate gap between the top and bottom teams in a Masters lobby stayed at 9 percent. As Respawn puts it, the best squad in the lobby still wins whether or not it queued together.

The unexpected part was exposure. Apex builds a match by pulling 60 similarly ranked players, sorting them by RP and splitting the list into thirds, then giving each squad one player from each third. Take away stacking and the Masters and Predator players do not leave the lobby, they get spread one per squad instead of clustering into two or three. For a Diamond player, that reads as running into top-tier opponents more often, not less. Respawn also concedes its pre-match skill display makes this look worse than it is, because a squad with one Masters player and a squad with three Predators currently show up identically.

The deciding number was participation. Return rates fell hardest among Diamond and above players who normally queue in duos and trios, which Respawn calls a bad trade: thinning out Ranked makes matchmaking worse for everyone in it.

What happens next

Respawn says solo-queue experiments are not dead, just that this version was too broad, and that it still wants to cut how often you meet a fully coordinated top-tier squad without breaking up friend groups. The changes that came out of these tests are landing in Ranked across Seasons 31 and 32, with details promised in October.