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Anlbrd's avatar
Anlbrd
7 years ago

Respawn's mixed signals on camping

The thing I love(d) about Apex is the pace of the game.  It didn't play like the other BR [Edit - Admin.] we've had to endure because people would thump through the games seeking out enemies and fighting, not hiding in bushes or under buildings.  It had all the furious pace that makes a good FPS without the over-the-top elements of Titanfall2, wallrunning etc.  The Season1 trailer emphasises and re-emphasises the idea of constant movement, pace and aggression.

We've just had a patch upping the zone damage to stop 'camping in the zone' and before that the patch introducing the elite lobby.

I don't know about other platforms and regions but the games on Xbox OCE have slowed to an absolute crawl, with what feels like a majority of players trying their absolute best to not get involved in the game until the last 5 squads as they don't want to compromise their streak in the elite queue.  This isn't limited to 50kill, plays 2 hours a week accounts.  Plenty of the guys in the top 50 of their main have started acting like this as well.

Respawn are fixing issues that are barely a problem (Lifeline's hiding in the zone) citing 'camping' as the issue whilst simultaneously encouraging camping as the best foolproof way to get the high numbers on the streak badge introduced in the last content patch.  They double down on this when they talk about Watson offering an alternative to the current 'aggressive meta'.  In plain language - Watson is a camper's character, through and through.  Lastly, kills get barely any xp, where-as "time survived" gets the bulk of all xp gains.

What is wrong with an aggressive style of game in an FPS?  It's called BATTLE royale, not hiding royale.  The manipulation of the masses to move things away from the former aggressive/quick style of gameplay hasn't done anything good for the game where I play.  You've got more people multi-squadding and hiding on the edge of the map than ever before.  More teams that don't commit to any kind of fight other than third partying teams who were unlucky enough to start a fight next to one or two squads sat silently in the buildings next to them.

So my feedback is - there's nothing wrong with the game involving fights and movement.  There is EVERYTHING wrong with encouraging people to set up camps on the edge of a ring which burns you to death instantly then move closer and closer in an 11/12 minute snooze-athon until you have 8 teams left in a circle the size of a beer mat.

The elite lobby has been a massive mistake for anyone who wants to play instead of wait for 10 minutes to be able to play.  It feels like rushed content to pad out season 1 so people aren't left with the cavernous echoing of disappointment from the first pass as a bad taste in their mouths before being asked or more money.

Change the method of access to the elite lobby to a points system taking into account kills and placement, weighted in that order.  Please have a serious rethink on SOME of Watson's abilities before you drop a character that turns the game you slowed down deliberately into the game you stopped by accident.

gameplay discussion

4 Replies

  • TheJumpingJawa's avatar
    TheJumpingJawa
    Seasoned Ace
    7 years ago

    I've been wondering if damage done would be a suitably simple, yet accurate metric to represent contribution to a match.

    You can't do damage without being involved in combat, and dealing damage necessitates making noise, thus opens you up to the dangers of 3rd parties.

    What I'm not sure is whether it should be a flat threshold, say 1000+ damage, or if it should be the top X damage dealers.

    It also has the problem of encouraging snipers, as poking at max range allows more time for healing, leading to much higher overall damage numbers.

    Ultimately I think the elite queue is too simple of a structure to properly grade players; we'd need a far taller ladder-like structure with a complex grading metric.

  • Anlbrd's avatar
    Anlbrd
    7 years ago

    I suppose at least with 'damage done' : interaction with other players is obligatory.  If someone is good enough to poke and reset forever the situation is already 100000 times better than the current one, as it takes absolutely no skill to find a dark corner and then abandon your controller for most of the game.

    Even if the elite queue was for the top 20% of current online players by kill-count alone on their bannered legend it would result in better games than this.  It would clear out the default queue of a lot of players who wipe the floor with a lot of less skilled players giving the remaining 80% more of a chance for varied games where they might not feel the need to camp as much.

    You could throw a stick in almost any direction and hit a result leaving us better off than encouraging slow, constipated gameplay :S

  • Vhalei's avatar
    Vhalei
    7 years ago
    easy fix: min 300 damage, 1 kill stats. You HAVE to engage in order to achieve this, but its also very easy to achieve even with two allies outshining you. Also, the whole point of the increase to the damage is to stop people camping in places where they shouldn't have access to, as the zone is supposed to restrict those areas from play. Noone is going to run into Relay through the zone to try and catch the campers sitting there, but people will go exploring all the areas INSIDE the circle. Cowards camp, predators hunt them down and pick them off.
  • Anlbrd's avatar
    Anlbrd
    7 years ago

    I don't think that would work because you'd get the team who land, get into 1 fight and then go to their same hidey holes.  The idea for the elite lobby should be that you compete to get into it.  Qualification shouldn't come from the absence of competing under any circumstances otherwise you end up with the same result : people hiding in the field behind repulsor or under the houses near southern watchtower, or in any of the other 50 places that I've seen them in which I didn't even know existed before this patch drove the rats back into holes.

    I'm thinking PURELY in terms of the effect this system has on the wider culture of how people are choosing to play the game and anything that encourages them to rat around under things and actively avoid players for 10 minutes of the game is just bad.

    The quickest fix would be to remove the badge displaying your 'elite' streak, there'd be no record of anyone's lameness then and the smoldering dungheap players wouldn't have a reward for crawling around the edge of the map and the competitive personalities wouldn't adapt their playing to hang out and shy away from the game to keep a streak which shouldn't matter.

    Ranked mode can't come fast enough tbh because at least in the higher tiered games there'll be shame attached to playing like a scumbag (He said, optimistically).

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