Respawn painted themselves into a corner with Axle

Axle is one of those legends that, upon entering the game, feels like it was never tested before being introduced.

How could the developers introduce such a strong legend that kills the usefulness of at least half of the legends in the game?

Well, I guess we're playtesters for their game. They're also testing people's patience, but then again, they've been doing that for a very long time.

I'd love to see Axle's winrate on Respawn's chart. I have a feeling Axle has already surpassed the unrivaled Horizon in this statistic.

It's not just Axle. They keep changing things because they feel a need to justify a paycheck. They washed out E Dist with sunlight. They added two new characters that violate given game mechanics (sheer speed and travel through map geometry). It's the Halo effect. Change for change sake, not for better play.

they should just nerf the speed increase.

I'm not gonna disagree with you. She's a problem. But having dealt with her now for several days I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I would rather deal with Axle than with Alter or Ash, even in their current states. Axle may move way too fast, and carry her squad with her, but at least you can see her coming. Ash and Alter appear out of thin air, one clip you, and then disappear again just as quickly as they came. Well, maybe those are extreme scenarios, but you know what I mean.

Let's just say there are certain abilities which should not exist in the game, even if short-lived with long cooldowns. Teleportation (at least without visual or audio cues) is one of them. So is invisibility. And so is extreme speed. How much speed is too much speed? That's for other people to decide. But I'd say Axle is, if not there already, perilously close.

So by that logic I've just asked Respawn to remove from the game: Axle, Octane, Mirage, Ash, Alter, Loba, and maybe even Wraith. Now you can see why I'm not in charge of anything.

I'm gonna stick by what I said a few days ago. The thing about Axle (for me) isn't her speed. It's that she can lay down three gates at once, anyone and everyone can use them, they only have an eighteen second cool down, and, at least for now, every squad in the game has an Axle. Sure, the next-season nerf will address some of this, and sure, her pick rate will go down so you no longer find four Axles under every rock. But she is still an agent of chaos and I prefer a less chaotic game. And if it was just her then that would be one thing. But it isn't just her. She's just another step - a huge step - on the path toward a game built around battlefield illegibility. Respawn's phrase, not mine. If you hate the current dumpster fire that is Wildcard then don't think you can go back to trios and everything will be fine. It won't. And it's only going to get worse.

The devs don't care 

It's been a week and a half, and they haven't done anything yet.

There's even a post on Reddit that's been liked over 600 times (that's a lot).

Respawn, EA, wake up, remove this legend until you fix and balance her. Axle is the cancer of this game.

People are starting to rebel. Maybe this is finally a good sign?

https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1te065g/too_much_movement/

https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1td7col/vault_axle/

I was just reading one of those reddit threads. WTF? Lower TTK? If I wanted to play CoD, I wouldn't have installed Apex. What gripped me with Apex when I stumbled upon it WAS the shielding to make the firefights last longer.

It seems no one on this development team is thinking rationally anymore.

The game has been very fast for a year and a half, and then they gave us Sparrow (who, by the way, also contributed to making the game even faster), and now they've given us another Skirmisher, who has probably irreversibly broken the game as we know it. This mechanic (Axle) is simply ruining the game.

Since they see that the games are very fast, instead of making them slower, they speed them up significantly.

They removed Alter so that Axle could replace her. What a great change...

Some developer reportedly said that Axle was designed to reduce Valk's pick rate in the ALGS.

They're focusing everything on the ALGS, which is played by 0.01% of the entire community. They don't understand that they've killed their game from the inside. If they want to change something in the ALGS, they should do it there. I don't understand. No game mode looks like ALGS, so why should these changes affect all modes?

Apologies if this comes off as a personal attack vVv_Bjoergen_vVv​, it's meant more as some perspective from someone who works in tech. 

I'd be careful vilifying the developers. I highly doubt they are the only ones making major decisions about the direction of the game, and are more likely just working on the projects based on the directives they are given. Personal attacks against the devs aren't going to get changes we as players want to see, it's just going to create animosity between Respawn/EA and players. Let's keep it to what we don't like about the game play and characters, and make that voice the loudest.

Completely agree with the point that far too much weight is placed on the opinions and game play of pros, ALGS formats, and content creators who have made playing video games their vocation as versus a fun hobby. Most of us don't play 8 hours of video games a day and simply like to get on and play something that we enjoy after a long day of work. 

I've been drawn to Apex due to its high skill ceiling and skill expression. For me, Axle greatly detracts from both of those attributes and has fundamentally changed Apex for the worse. 

I also scratch my head at the decision to add in a character that can move their team around the map and third party everything with such rapid ability, when the reason the tridents were removed from the game was because they were being used by superior players to run down lobbies. The addition of a character that does the exact same thing doesn't reconcile.

Again, apologies if that's taken personally, I just want to keep this on point about Axle's abilities and how the character affects the game.