Critique by an Apex Gamer – To the developers

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@lowpush3v1roller wrote:

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.

CS is a tactical round-based FPS. Apex is an ability based battle royale FPS. TTK (time to kill) on both is completely different and the gameplay too.

Engine is highly modified Source 1 - same as CS with the same problems. Personal opinion - I think the TTK of Apex should be significantly lowered.

The characters:

Apex did really well on the character development...

Agree. Character lore is awesome. Art, cinematics, storytelling - all is very good.

Skill based fun:

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.

Disagree. Third-partying is a huge problem. Played some CoD Warzone these days - in squads it is the same madness as here. As I said few times before this tactic can destroy the whole genre.

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?

Agree completely as it is 100% correct. I think Apex needs ELO system, based on personal performance and matching with similar people.

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.

100% agree again. Players (in any game) should be encouraged to try different tactics and different play-styles. For casual players based on their own preference (to play the game as they want) and for pros based on experimenting on tactics for surprise and uniqueness. Here we have forced meta which is horrible.

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.

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.

Yes, it is stupid and needs to be reworked. Not to mention that at the moment it is an absolute grind. If I wanted to grind I would play WoW instead.

Everyone can run and hide – you could be a predator without even shooting a bullet.

The so called RP Farming.

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.

This is correct. And now they are nerfing Octane, because of the Battle Royale and Lifeline because of the Arenas. Also to back-off from such cool thing which was the Wraith's Naruto run, only because some stupid non-stop macro-using "pro" children had cried their lungs out how it had been unfair. Oh, the irony. It would hurt me if I was the developer whose cool idea was removed, because of such outrageous parody.

The really bad – Weapons:

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.

Absolutely true and also many weapons at the moment are completely useless. Only few are viable and "meta" for an efficient gameplay. No diversity whatsoever - same as with the characters/legends.

The servers:

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.

Do not agree here. Played CS and other shooters for many years - sometimes even 200 ping wasn't problem at all. What is a real issue though is the server tick rate. This means how often the server refreshes. Apex servers are 20Hz (or 20-tick) which even for 2019 was bad... like really bad. For example normal CS servers are 64 and the competitive ones are 128.

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?

Horizon and Wattson were usable for a single season only and then went into the forgotten characters corner. Nowadays static defense characters like Wattson are completely obsolete due to the nature of the gameplay at the moment.

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).

All or almost all weapons or characters should be made equally usable.

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.

+1

Skill should be rewarded and not just simply positioning/patience. More fighting, less thirding and ratting.

+1

Melee should not be doing 30 damage/leave you stuck in an animation when punched. 

+1

Servers should be fixed and available in the all of Europe, at least one server in Scandinavia/Northern Europe.

This would require a lot of money, but they should be if it is not too late already.

Game should be increasingly optimized to run at 240 fps stable.

Oh... on RTX 3090 it runs on 190 FPS on low settings. Can you imagine that? Sorry Respawn, but it is a bit laughable.

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.

Solo/Ranked Solo should be in the game as a must.

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