Player count dropped hard?!

We can see that the start of the season had a lot of player activity, slowly trickling down with a few spikes down the road.

Now it's pretty much back to the same numbers before the start of the season (roughly), so it has only dropped by 100k players.

I personally don't think it's that abnormal since stuff has been pretty stale, though this doesn't mean it's so unhealthy for the game so to speak.

@XHelperZI feel like new features and twists would be nice for the game.

Like, we could have a mode with a survival tool that can get timed out banners or one that slows/pauses the timer on boxes to give us a bit more time to grab our teammate's banner. I mainly say this because enemy players would just camp deathboxes, which having boxes guarded in this manner is no fun, at least not for me.

We could have the map break apart and fall as the ring closes, much like when Mad Maggie was messing with the ring and creating those heat circles, except this is only on the outer part of the ring, and it forces players to move faster into the ring or fall off the side. The breaking of the map starts off as a slow decay, and gets faster as the ring progresses into round 6. The "final ring" before it closes completely just disables guns and abilities and forces players to punch any other survivors off the side of the platform.

There's also the need for more game modes, better clubs, and an actual matchmaking system that works.

I feel like with the new season it might pick back up for a bit, but until apex makes the necessary changes to its ranked system and gets a better Mm it's just going to drop back down again.

New things are nice and do help the game keep going, but that's only going to last so long. We don't really need new things as much as we need bug fixes and better MM. 

told ya storm is coming weeks ago, signs where written all over the wall, the canary already being unconscious while the coalminers still being at work.
smb should have pulled the plug on the MM changes instead of finetunig a dead horse.
the felt uptick in cheating is more or less an effect to cope with the MM situation.
if the games generally get too hard or seem to be unfair, ppl likely quit or look for a way to compensate (like Pros goin Controller in troves [and some people still believe ist not an advantage ...], others by using the unsanctioned methods), this just puts on more pressure for the remaining honest gamers especially in the midsection of the spectrum.
If respawn really wants to force ppl to play on a controller ... fine ... they might win a console player but will loose seasoned 2 MnK in the process.
i dont know many players that switch inputdevices bcs a game prefers one over the other , they instead  switch the game  ...

I am wondering if the launch of OW2 might have had a bit of an effect as well? 

@NickBeam27could have been any other title, we also saw some people doing valorant for a brief moment and coming back to apex.
the fact of them leaving is not OW2 being more fun, but Apex being less fun as it was for various reasons (MM one of the most prominent ones).
Even the "hardest" tryhard has a point where he doesnt like to carry anymore. 
I said it once and i say it again, those intentions might have been good, but they didnt thrive well with the players perception.
Let the noobs get their wins, but if you deal them easy wins, dont let them rank up in the same fashion as one that had to actually work for the win in a sweaty match.
Thats what i hate the most about apex ranks ... lesser skilled people getting to ranks they should not be in in the 1st place. im fine with plat but if i get a diamond or even some masters as a random mate, i expect them to be way better at the game than me, but i get disappointed quite often.