I've been playing other games lately, so I haven't had as much time to play Apex, but when I do it's almost always with a buddy who is around my general skill level, just a bit lower. Apex is in a weird spot between the sbmm in the normal queue, and the ranked league. We can't play the ranked mode because i hit diamond while he's still plat. I have no intention of hitting Apex Predator tier, but I can't even try to help my buddy hit diamond tie because if we play together then we just go up against diamond players and apex predators. Diamond matches just aren't fun. There's no action for minutes at a time, and then someone sees you. If the highly coordinated, and skilled, squad doesn't wipe you in a second, then you get into a protracted battle. Any battle that lasts more than a second basically invites the rest of the lobby to pounce, and you die to a fifth-partying. It sucks to see my buddy lose all his points without even getting a slight boost for trying to survive in these anti-fun lobbies.
...and then you get the normal queue with its sbmm. We just end up going against plat/diamond/apex predator players anyway, and while it is a bit easier, we always get stuck with some random that is nowhere near our level. So it boils down to my buddy and I taking on squads that are balanced out skill-wise, and then, inevitably, taking on all the other balanced squads that swoop in for the third party finish. There just isn't a consistently fun way to play this game right now, so I'm not surprised to see it's been slipping a bit on the xbox charts.
The duo queue was a good medium between the playlists, and was probably the best way to play the game in terms of getting loot, dealing with the third parties, etc. I miss the mode. I also miss being in plat. Idk it just sucks that there's no way for my buddy and i to play this game that we both like