Re: Genesis Arena Changes
I only just now took a look at the upcoming patch notes and IMO while the vast majority of Arena changes are well thought out there are still two that should not go live.
The Good Changes:
- Arc Stars 100 >>> 125 (Why not thermites as well? Grenade spam can become an issue when there is a coordinated enemy team)
- Gold Backpack 250 >>> 300 (I would have preferred nerfed even further to 350 just to force Lifelines to downgrade weapons if they want to keep mindlessly upgrading this almost every round)
- All Ability price changes and starting ability changes are good
- Scoreboard/Reports/Quality of Life stuff
- Almost every weapon price change
The Bad Changes
- From Round 3 and onward, you’ll now start with a shield battery in addition to 2 syringes and 2 shield cells.
^ This is a really bad change. One of the easiest ways to figure out how smart your Arena team is, is by keeping track of how they manage their economy meta-game. Many Apex players have no experience with economy metagames found in other FPS games like CSGO, and I have seen many of my teammates die, as well as managed to luck out against many enemy teams because they, in their infinite wisdom, spent all their money on fully upgrading their primary virtually every round in addition to buying abilities etc. instead of bothering to purchase any healing, which gives you the additional option of attritioning them to death.
Idiots who do not save money between rounds are currently being ruthlessly punished by Arena, and undoubtedly walk out of Arena games confused as to why buying a purple spitfire every round didn't clutch the win like they thought it would. The only issue that arises from only giving 2 cells and 2 syringes to everyone each round is that Sniper class weapons become insanely powerful and obnoxious (also due to poor map design with the ridiculously open areas with barely any cover that comprise most Arena maps). But since 6x scopes will no longer come default with Sniper weapons this problem is already being reduced with the next patch.
- p2020 price changes
I understand the rationale behind this change; with Mozambiques costing 0 there is virtually no reason to ever pick up a p2020 instead as the Mozambique hits much harder and can guarantee downs and thus round wins in many close range scenarios that the p2020 would just fail at. But that's the wrong way to look at the problem. What this fact really means is that making Mozambiques free was a mistake.
There should not ever be any free secondary weapons. Arena needs to lean more into the economy metagame to create a higher skill ceiling. Both Mozambiques and p2020s should instead function as eco/save round weapons by being less expensive than every other weapon but still costing a bit. Maybe change Mozambique to cost 100 at lvl 0 and p2020 to cost 50 at lvl 0, with the p2020 having a less expensive upgrade path.
