Not sure how experienced in Apex are you d34dwu7f but I have played since season 7 and here are my thought / review of what I have seen:
- when I came in guns had crazy recoil. Even when practicing and doing my best I could hardly land 100 with R-99 (topped out with attachments), Devotion and Havoc was basically uncontrollable, especially when turbochaged etc.
Gun meta at the time was Wingman + shotgun and wingman was absurdly accurate for controller players while on MNK you really had to master it. Basically I got 3 tap knocked most of the time.
Only gun for "newbs" was 301 which had close 0 to but still some recoil. - then first "easy mode" came around season 9/10 when Spitfire in combination with super steady Horizon gravity lift became a combo. Spitfire had 0 recoil, you could slap 3x 2-4x on it, create a lift and just perfectly hit people form "height" with it. It was nerfed after a 1 split if not mistaken.
- since then "easy mode" and "no recoil bs like jitter aiming" took flight and there ALWAYS has been some OP gun:
Lstar, Rampage, Havoc, Devotion, Spitfire, Hemlock, Nemesis, G7 with double tap, 30-30 with skull piercer etc.
People just do not like here hard mode, they want to spray like pros (who in many cases hack, use no recoil and softbot) -> so EA gives them that opportunity. And yes you are kinda forced into meta guns more than meta legends imo unless you are some sort of freak who can control some other gun so much better where using it vs meta guns still gives you advantage.
Also as known for a fact most players in the game are on controller = they need guns that require linear input to control recoil vs MNK where you can be more reactive. So guns, game mechanic is tuned towards controller players. Including the worst thing EA has done imo = making hipfire of so many guns so accurate that even I on MNK 50% of a time hipfire every gun these days.
In comparison back in season 7 and even as early as like season 12/13 you could not hit even 100 damage while hipfiring guns like spitfire, rampage not to mention G7 and snipers. But then came "era" of Hiswattson no-scope Kraber shots and basically since then all long range gun hipfire became pretty much automatic - 3030, G7, Sentinel, Kraber you name it. That's why you see so many players running those guns without scopes that makes no sense if you use them at their "intended" range = you can't see s#$@ in Apex 60m+ with above mentioned on iron sight. Again all tailored towards controller + Aim assist players where this combo actually works even on hipfire.
As for meta legends = I bet if you would record your games playing not meta legends and losing games I would be able to point out at least 5 major mistakes per situation you made which is not related to meta legends.
You can easily counter meta legends even up to 16k current Master level as people still make very bad decisions up to that point in ranks.
