Knockout Feedback

Its an interesting mode and it just feels like Battle Royal with objectives.

Overview:

1) The zones are very hard to identify on the map and in general.

2) The zones appear too early, which causes players to hotdrop at the same zone. Nothing wrong with competition, but the problem is there's like 9 or so zones and only a few gets players dropping at them due to being closer to the drop ships, (which there are two dropships, this of itself is alright.)

3) There's no easy indication that you're going up or down in the scoreboard other than a sound effect, (which is often hard to hear), and looking at the top right of the screen, (which isn't ideal most of the time). Yes, it does show a "your team is above/below the knockout threshold", but for the most part, you're not going to really notice this, and it only appears in the last minute or so of a round.

4) The general flow of the game feels overwhelming and its easy to lose track of what you're suppose to do. It also doesn't help that the point system is a bit confusing and hard to understand what exactly is going on.

5) One of the biggest issues by far, cheaters. There's a TON of players going into this mode with aimbot, wall hacks, and anti-recoil. Most of these players are also playing on low level accounts. Some of the players are also bots.

6) Whenever you die, (even if your teammates are still alive), you seem to spectate the enemy team that had killed you almost every single time. You can see where the enemy team all are, what their EVO level is at, (even the points required to level up), their pings, everything, until you respawn.

7) The death recap tab doesn't even show anything most of the time, (it would be "loading", and then it will act like nothing is there to be reviewed), and when it does work, its difficult to report any player for any reason, (such as cheating), as it either doesn't let you report, switches tabs on you, or disables your ability to interact with the menu altogether.

8) When getting knocked out, the animation effect is blinding. I don't have any health issues, (such as epilepsy), but this effect hurts to watch and it doesn't feel like it should be something in our faces when we get knocked out.

I've played 4 matches before writing this, and this is how those matches played out:

Match 1) Everyone croweded the points near the dropships, where most of the players were either acting like a bot, (standing still, punching the air, walking into walls), or they were cheating. My team was one of the first ones to get knocked out.

Match 2) Same thing as match 1.

Match 3) Roughly the same as match 1 and 2, but I manage to get a few kills with my team, (who were randoms), and kept us alive for another round, in which we then got knocked out.

Match 4) Made it to the sudden death round, and placed 6th. 4 of the teams were decent and legit players, while the last of the teams was just aimbotting everyone, (and they weren't even hiding it).

9) The pacing of the mode feels too fast in general, while capturing the zones feels like it takes forever.

Overall, if I have to rate the mode, it would be a 3/10.

gameplay discussion

16 Replies

reconzero
Seasoned Ace
10 months ago
@Midnight9746

Here's my Knockout feedback:

Respawn, please stop making new game types that are built to encourage, or even force, early-game engagement. Do the children who play this game really need to be rewarded for doing the impetuous and ill-considered things that lead to ultimate failure - things they were already going to do no matter what? Revival, Straight Shot, Three Strikes, all built to remove any penalty associated with a lack of patience, all built to reward the short-of-attention-span. Every single one is like an admission that there is some fundamental flaw with the basic Battle Royale format. And there is. IF you prefer Call of Duty team deathmatch. And if people DO prefer CoD TDM then let them go PLAY Cod TDM. And then you can start using your creativity to come up with game variants that will help your players learn and get better at BR instead of indulging their worst instincts. Rant over.
whatsthefakk
New Traveler
10 months ago
Knock off "Knock out" it´s the usual fail ! Any better ideas ? Comon !!
ComicBookGuy2727
Seasoned Ace
10 months ago
Apex is supposed to be a BATTLE ROYAL - stop trying to destroy everything that a BR brings to the table. There is a reason I want to play a BR over say COD, TDM, et cetera. Because I want something different than that. I want the BR experience. You guys keep feeding the new generations short attention span. What about us that didn't grow up with our faces glued to a cell phone swiping every 3 seconds?
I say ask this every time... do you guys even play your own game?
spiderjock64
Rising Novice
10 months ago
Eventually they will realise that Revival is what kept this game alive because it's fun and not * poorly managed like every other game mode, trios is fun but most of the time you'll get teammates that just want to loot or game then die to the first team
Toeteefishing
10 months ago
@whatsthefakk 👍🏾
Midnight9746
Hero+
10 months ago
@whatsthefakk The mode would of been better with a smaller ring, (like bot royal), and if it was 15 VS 15 players, (maybe more).

After a round, it would knock out the bottom few from both teams, making it a 12 VS 12, (or something like that). Then when its a 3v3, both teams get spawned apart, (like how it was in Arenas), for sudden death.

The mode wouldn't be a Battle Royal, but rather a version of Arenas. That also would of been a way to revive arenas where they could then bring back the original version of arenas for those who actually enjoyed it.
Also, instead of it simply being a Team Rumble, (like Fortnite), the capture points could spawn around the map and the overall goal wouldn't be to reach a kill goal, but rather to avoid being knocked out. There also could of been twists on the rounds where you could only punch other players, use one gun, etc. and the idea would be to outplay other players to stay in the game.

When they announced Knockout, I thought it was going to be Lockout on a larger map with more teams, not a Battle Royal with objectives. In the end, at least we got something for a mode. I wonder if they would ever have a return of other modes, like Dummie's Big Day, Armed and Dangerous, (with Mozams nerfed), etc.
reconzero
Seasoned Ace
10 months ago
@Midnight9746

"I wonder if they would ever have a return of other modes, like Dummie's Big Day, Armed and Dangerous...."

You know, I really want to get behind this idea because I believe that in a perfect world there should be no reason not to give the people what they want. I never like these LTMs but I appreciate that other people do and that makes me want to want them.

But I don't want them because the already bad matchmaking in main line modes becomes even worse than normal when these LTMs syphon off players. I've had people claim that doesn't really happen, but it does. Matchmaking has always struggled in this game. Then over the last few seasons (cheaters and smurfs aside) we've had one LTM after another, some running concurrently. Revival, Solos, Quads, and I can't even remember what all else. And matchmaking has never been worse than in these last two seasons. It's not a coincidence.
Midnight9746
Hero+
10 months ago
@reconzero Something else I wonder is would the game be better if the bots from Bot Royal were better, smarter, and were used in every mode.

The bots would be able to:

- Cut down on que times
- Give casual and new players a chance to enjoy the game
- Can fill ranked matches, (to some degree)

Then again actual bots might not be ideal. In games like Fortnite the bots aren't all that smart and the bosses are either too weak or annoying to fight.
ComicBookGuy2727
Seasoned Ace
10 months ago
All these modes are pointless to bring back if the MM isn't going to be addressed. Hard to enjoy all the cool LTM's when you're getting destroyed match after match by pros and streamers and players miles above your pay grade without the MM adjusting to your 20th straight insta boxed matches.
reconzero
Seasoned Ace
10 months ago
@Midnight9746

I've been saying for a long time now that developers need to stop pouring resources into ray tracing and insane graphics and all the other holy grails they keep chasing. When it's painfully obvious to me that the real video game arms race should be to develop bots that are virtually indistinguishable from real players. 343 came closer than anyone with Infinite, but there's still a long way to go. And Respawn would have an even harder time given the complex behaviors of dozens of different legends with different abilities.

But even if they figured it all out tomorrow, I'm pretty sure you'd still have a huge number of players, probably a healthy majority, who would hate or refuse to play against anything other than real people. As in, what's the point of getting a kill if you're not actually ruining some real kid's day?