Critique by an Apex Gamer – To the developers

Critique by an Apex Gamer – To the developers

Hi! I go by the nickname of Neverloss. I’ve been gaming since I was 4 years old. I’m 32 now. That gives me 28 years of experience. I have played almost every type of game at the highest level. Being semi-pro in CS in early 2000s, Immortal rank in HoN (after 9 years of play), over 5000 mmr in Dota, Diamond in league, MMORPG veteran as well and 7000 hours + in Apex, master rank with around 25000 kills in total. I want to give you some feedback on your game development.

Where is apex in gaming?
First of all we have to talk some history to be able to put this into the right context. Apex legends is a battle royale game, which is a type of FPS game. Other FPS games you could mention are Half-Life and as a mod to that which was made from a single person came counter strike, that was a great game. Biggest FPS game of all time and second to none in viewership on twitch as the only recognized FPS game next to MOBA and RTS games (like Warcraft and StarCraft) and still being played to this day.

This is a super simplified overview of what gaming is today. Apex legends is an FPS, and mostly a battle royale title. So, what was it that made Apex legends so good compared to CSGO, Fortnite and COD at release? Well first of all Apex is based on Titanfall 2, which is a great game per se, but suffered by some major development issues like bad marketing and of course MECHS. Mechs are lame and everyone knows that, not even people that grew up on transformers thinks mechs are cool, so why even try the game, let alone accept having to play modes with mechs and no aim. But what did Titanfall have that no other game had? Really good gameplay, or gunplay in other words.

The guns:

For the guns it was simple, weapons that require high skill to use were the strongest, notably wingman and r99 which made them very rewarding and fun to use. The guns in apex are similar to the weapons in games like COD and battlefield. With ability to ADS and a lot of weapons to choose from. Accurate single fire and AR weapons like in cs with fast gunplay and fire rate (the wingman, flatline, 301, r99). Shotguns like a close range one shot kills all like in Fortnite (peacekeeper). And accurate ads with varying FOVS like in call of duty that hits where you shoot. The realistic bullet drop and travel time from PUBG. And ofc a twice as long time to kill to make aim duels more about aim and less about who shoots first. All of that coupled with movement in a good engine that feels like CS but in a spacesuit – and you got the perfect recipe for what you would call fun, fast-paced and good gameplay that was actually really fun, to everyone who tried it.

The characters:

Apex did really well on the character development and general polish of the game before release, taking some risks which they have now completely gone away from and replaced with terrible development decisions. Take Wraith, the blue eyed blind ninja that got purple magic and a dagger, runs like Naruto and only wears black. Lifeline the funny very adorable combat medic that carries hella swag both in speech and style. Pathfinder, the friendly robot – monotone voice speaking with the lowest IQ of all time, but still kills entire squads solo. Bloodhound, the noble warrior – righteous and brave, fighting for a cause bigger than himself. Bangalore is good as well, abilities are very fun to use and well put together, with smokes – movement speed and damage. They did a good job of throwing in some “2020 acceptance” into the game, wraith is crazy, lifeline is heavy accent and bloodhound is gender non-specific. W/e. Lets also throw in that Gibby is gay and Caustic is overweight.

Skill based fun:

At release, people did not know what they were doing and did not have proper awareness of who is fighting, how many, where they are etc. and as a result the game was fun. Most aim duels were 1v1 close range and you had plenty of time to kill the enemy character, escape and even heal up before the next engagement depending on how good you are compared to the other player. 1v1 fights in apex are very much decided by skill, and only moderately modified by loot and also if the other player has aim assist that is broken. This I have proved with a lot of 1v1 experience in the firing range. A player with 10 000 kills total will almost always beat a player with 5000 kills total. There is even a noticeable difference between 15 000 and 20 000 kills, and of course the differences are very clear on a level 200 vs a level 500 player. Previous FPS game experience plays a part but the total amount of kills is the absolute best measurement of skill in Apex. Because of this, streamers with very good aim that is also impressive/entertaining to watch were also the best at the game at release, regardless of their teammates. That was of course while everyone was still at bronze to silver in decision making – aka up until about the release of ranked and season 2.

From this point on everything got much worse in Apex, mostly because people started third partying, which is of course unavoidable and not a major problem in any battle royale. But also because people started staying stacked. There is the concept of power in numbers that I believe will be the reason for this game losing all its players along with its lack of choice.  When everyone knows how to aim decently, simple point and click. 3 people will ALWAYS win against 1. Unless a full squad is fighting a full squad, the fight is won, not by skill, but simply by power in numbers. So, the rule is simple, either you stay right next to your teammates and fight team vs team, meaning your teams combined skill vs their teams combined skill or you lose. So this forces every player to stay stacked on their team and only play with people your own skill level.

This is even further reinforced by the introduction of skill-based matchmaking that has to be manipulated and bypassed in some way for solo-queue success. Which places you in the lobby with people of similar aim. The worst thing being, it's only based on the highest player in the team’s rank (in ranked at least) and not a group average. And if you solo queue into it then you get put in the team with the worst players to even it out and put in the same lobby as people 3-queueing. So basically, anyone that is anywhere from 1 to 10 000 hours experience in the game has about the same win rate, kills, damage etc when queueing solo, into the only mode that is available – duos and trios. So, the best players are not the best players, and not respected or appreciated by the community at all – unless you are a pro player that only plays with your team. Skill is not rewarded, aim is not rewarded, practice is not rewarded, only staying stacked as a team, bypassing SBMM and spending money on the game is rewarded. Since a new player will spend about the same, or even more money on the game, right?

Balancing and Gameplay Decisions

Forcing players to play in teams, same mode every time, using weapons they don’t want to use playing characters they don’t want to play.

The really bad - Characters:

Character and weapon balancing has been handled in the worst way I have ever seen in a game. Namely starting with nerfing everyone’s favorite characters and making them unplayable by removing their best traits which was the reason to play them in the first place and trying to force players to pick other characters that they don’t enjoy playing. Pathfinder was hit by major hitbox nerfs and, in the end, just removing his mode of escape and mobility. That change alone made every friend I had in the game that was a Pathfinder main leave the game, never to return. Mostly because failing to provide a better option, or any option for that matter. I don’t know what was the reasoning behind the nerf to the grapple with major cooldown increase, but I have never, even once felt that Pathfinder was too strong. In any situation I died to a pathfinder I was fairly outplayed and I respect the player on the other side for it. Sadly when noobs get owned by a 10k kill predator pathfinder they whine about him being overpowered.

Pathfinder and specifically also Octane, because of their mobility are the only characters that can solo properly in ranked, that is not a problem with their mobility but with ranked being based on placements, which was partly fixed in season 3 with kills being a deciding factor (but still requiring placement). If you can make an algorithm for SBMM to be all about aim, you can make a proper ranked system as well. Just placement is stupid and encourages straight up camping and not fighting, running back and forth peeking angles inside a building just to end it all in a mass suicide at the last circle. Everyone can run and hide – you could be a predator without even shooting a bullet. If you need a good example of a proper and fair ranking system look at CSGO. The game was more fun when ranked/competitive was all about placements and casuals was all about kills, at least then you could choose how to play, fun or grind, and also not have to respect anyone for the predator badge they had, since they only survived right? that can be learned in a few hours, good mechanics take decades to develop.

So, to everyone’s absolute favorite character, and what every hardcore and ambitious player chose; Wraith. I guess the approach to trying to force people away from their favorite character onto a worse option was done more slowly in this case. Small nerfs over long periods, even nerfing her ninja run was just disappointment after disappointment for every Wraith main and just strengthening the wish for a better game, and not a better character to play. The big hit came in season 8, when the hitbox was made huge, making all the hours you put into using her hitbox to your advantage obsolete. Looking at the before and after pictures for Wraiths hitbox is to a Wraith main like looking at crime scene photos. What was done to Wraith was an atrocity, and caused the departure of every highly skilled player we had in the community that is not under contract. Everything cool was removed, making us into the weird losers of the FPS genre.

The really bad – Weapons:

In simple terms, they nerfed difficult-to-use weapons so that even with max skill they are still weak, removing aim mostly from the equation.

This is a weapons tier list – mostly for pubs since in ranked and scrims more long-range weapons are better to use and consequently have a little bit higher tier. Also, I’m not counting any new weapons released to make my point more clear – same concepts also count for all weapons in general. From season 1 (release) on the left, to season 9 (current) on the right.

• This tier list is based from A-E in how strong the weapon is when fully mastered in the game, taking attachments etc. into account as an average.
• The number below each weapon 1-10 is a measurement of how difficult the weapon is to use on first time pickup and how long it takes to fully master.

As you can see at release, the most difficult to use weapons were S tier if fully mastered and played with perfect aim has been nerfed so hard, they can’t really compete with other weapons even if played well. Any weapon that is super easy to use (has little recoil, very fast fire rate high damage) has been moved even further up the list, untouched or even buffed.

So basically, it's part of a general nerfs to all skilled players. Someone that put thousands of hours into wingman practice is easily outplayed by someone that played 10 hours with EVA-8 close range or 10 hours with R-301 in medium to long range. It should also be mentioned that Peacekeeper received buffs between season 1 and now and was S+ tier for an extended period of time, making the close range-meta more noob friendly and ending a player like Aceu or ShivFPS domination in a game in a split second, usually by a level 120 Lifeline with a PK. Disregarding the complaints of the entire community it took developers months to fix it.

The Bad:

Reworking Lifeline was also just straight up dumb. The fast heal made lifeline more combat effective, Lifeline at release was a great character. Very well developed. Removing fast heal and giving her a waay too OP revive just made it even more difficult to kill entire squads. Almost impossible if they had a Lifeline. And 3 bronze players will prevail against 1 predator player, once again. The concept of power in numbers which has become the absolute rule for this game as mentioned before. Skill is not a factor, “teamplay” is.

I could talk for hours about character balance. Notable mentions are Octane (the Mexican drug addict anorectic self injurist) is now much more OP than any other character ever was, a given in every squad above diamond/masters and I myself queued to masters rank with no experience with him whatsoever. Now after the climb through diamond I have around 300 kills on him. On Wraith I have closer to 10 000 and my performance with her is not even close to on Octane, making me not being able to climb on any of my main characters.

The servers:

First of all the servers you think you are playing on, is not really what you are playing on. In the menu you get to choose a server with the best ping – what they fail to tell you is that this server only handles the menu, and has very little influence of what server you will be playing on in the actual game.

It has long been known, since the days we moved from online tournaments to competing on LAN with all equal ping that ping itself is the most deciding factor in FPS games, even more so if the time to kill is short. Looking at the illustration above. Both players are connected to the same server. Player 1 has 50ms ping and player 2 has 15ms ping. So that means it takes 50 milliseconds from when player 1 shoots/moves/jumps for the server to register that happening, while for player 2 it takes only 15 milliseconds. If both players shoot at each other at the same time, player 2 will win every time – even if player 1 shoots 35 milliseconds before. If player 1 has 200 ping he has to shoot 185 milliseconds before, that is more than human reaction time. This is why you often die behind cover, and can see your PK shot go off in his face and not register. Unequal ping makes the game unfair, so there should be a server in every country, and in equal amounts. And there should also be an option to choose what server to connect to.

In order to prove this, all you have to do is download software that will check what country server you are connected to for each game. I did this myself and being connected to only Frankfurt 1; on average out of around 500 games you get:

50-60 % United Kingdom

30% Other countries in EU (Among others; Luxemburg, France, Netherlands, Austria/Switzerland/Belgium, Bahrain)

10% Germany

If you are connected to any EU server, you get put in a random EU server, whichever has the fastest queue time and fits your SBMM. This is the same for any server you connect to. The only thing your selected server affects is if you will be playing on EU, NA, ASIA etc. And this is not to mention this game DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A SERVER NORTH OF HOLLAND. And even if you are connected to Holland, you only play on it 5% of the time. Not to mention Apex servers are pretty bad in general, but there are other games that have done worse on this point. But almost all games now at least have servers in all of Europe, and the option to choose, be it longer queue times if necessary.

The good:

One mention and probably the only good decision that was made was to release Horizon. Finally, a good character, difficult to play but very high skill cap. Good mobility but not too much, a viable escape and a proper ultimate, even quality of life with not having to be stuck in animation after a fall. Made the season fun, gave the game new life, reason to come back and play a little bit ore. But of course, got nerfed pretty fast into not being playable. Wattson is also a good addition to the game and has her niche, difficult not to like. Loba and Crypto are also decent characters. The other ones that have been released are just bad design. Rampart and Fuse are just really bad, so why even release them?

Another thing that has been done right is to not make any skill too disruptive to the actual gameplay. Let's say for example if Gibraltar had a shield he could activate that gave him 500hp, then he could for example single out one player on the other team and keep him/her out of the fight. This is a common problem in MOBA games and also in Overwatch and have a very bad impact on the game. One example of this type of thing in Apex is melee doing 30 damage. If new players see a master or predator trail then they like to land on that person and punch him out together.

Movement speed, mobility, distorting line of sight, silences, reveals and invisibility and damage have all been put into the game seamlessly and are generally very well implemented.

Slows, stuns and displacements have been limited, as they should be in an FPS game as they are detrimental the game experience. Slows namely being Caustic gas (that everyone hates) and displacement (Being punched(battlefield, Titanfall), grenades (call of duty), falling off the map (Overwatch)). Stuns I would consider as walking through a Wattson fence or being stuck by an arc star, not being able to move your crosshair and shoot effectively, I find this to be OK.

What Should be Improved?

• I think I made my opinion clear on the character and weapon balancing. This should be done in a different way moving forward. Guns that are clunky and clearly not designed for their fire rate like the EVA-8 should be fixed (nerfed).
• Enough Octane. Mild nerf to keep him viable for his purpose. Difficult to play characters should have a place in the meta and rank should be able to be achieved in different ways. Skill should be rewarded and not just simply positioning/patience. More fighting, less thirding and ratting.
• Melee should not be doing 30 damage/leave you stuck in an animation when punched. 
• Whoever is in charge of the designs for weapon skins and character skins should have his credentials reconsidered. 
• Servers should be fixed and available in the all of Europe, at least one server in Scandinavia/Northern Europe.
• Game should be increasingly optimized to run at 240 fps stable.
• More modes have to be added to the game, the choice of server, whether to play solo (in queue against only other solo players – premade teams against premade teams - for trios and Arenas 100%). A no down-time deathmatch mode (PLEASE) for variation and practice – this is a better option than putting back hot drops for a while and having to either go back to the lobby or run around for 5 minutes to find the next fight. Let the community decide, not based on statistics but what we actually end up playing by choice over time with more modes available and not having to go to other games to do that.
• SBMM should be based on the average of the group, and not the highest rated player in the group. I preferably want it completely removed from non-ranked modes. Being able to play with who you want in a lobby that is actually winnable, and playing with friends that are new to the game/average not to be destroyed by full pred squad is quality of life.
• The next character to be released should be on par with the highest tier, well designed, nice to look at and fun and fast paced to play. Hitbox or evasion, mode of escape is important. Aiming is a little bit too easy with the weapons in the game and leaves a lot of room for survivability. High skill cap is key.
• Not every character has to carry a heavy accent and fit some immigrant stereotype. I’m all for gender equality, acceptance, anti-racism etc. but too much of a good thing is just too much.
• Shaving people off at the top and feeding people in from the bottom is not constructive for longevity of the game but rather inspiring for making a copy of the gameplay and delivering it in a better package. Changes need to be made. I hope you listen.

Sincerely,

Neverloss