S21 - The State of The Game

Question

Honestly, it's barely playable. I'm not one to call a game dead, even if the game happens to have no players, however Apex is on a fast track to being a "dead game", more so than many players already feel like it is.

First off, the cheating situation. There's so many cheaters that it's out of control.

There was a recent ban wave that banned around 30% of players who reached masters and pred. With that ban wave it was also noticeable that the average account level was 550. This meant that a lot of these players have been cheating for years, or at least for a few weeks and haven't been banned yet.

Another problem with the cheating situation, is that in a recent tournament, a team won in the ALGs, in which the players watching the stream started calling the winning team out for cheating.

From what I've heard and understood, the Twitch PlayApex team seemed to realize the team was cheating and had commented on how the team was in zone 6's ring way before ring 1 was even formed. (There's a cheat that tells cheaters where the next ring is). None of the players on the team had a legend that could use ring consoles either, so the cheat was even more obvious.

When the viewers started calling the team out for cheating, the chat became an emoji only chat. Which makes the Twitch PlayApex team seem like they're hiding something. They could have turned off the chat or maybe slowed it down and communicated to the viewers that things would get looked into, but from what I've heard, they didn't. They just kept things moving along. I’m not sure if that was the right call to make. I’ve also heard the team is going on to the next part of the tournament, which isn’t right.

Every single match I play, no matter what data center I connect to, what time I get on to play, what modes I play, I'm always in a match with multiple cheaters. It's usually one team with full wall hacks / aimbot, one of them cheating while boosting the other two, or multiple teams using cheats. If its a mixtape mode, usually 1-2 players on each team using wall hacks and some form of aimbot.

I thought maybe that I'm just trying to justify a lack of skill, but then I saw posts and videos talking about how even the pro players are complaining about cheaters.

We still haven't even gotten any actual word from EA or Respawn about the ALGs hack or were told if the game was even safe to play. Its been apparently said by the hacker who hacked Hal and Gen during the ALGs that the "exploit he used was patched out", but who knows if that's true or not.

If it is true, shouldn't there be something from EA/Respawn about it? I haven't seen or heard anything about it.

Another part of the issue is that hackers who spend money in the game seem to be getting unbanned just because they might spend more money later. This shouldn't be allowed to happen if this is the case. Breaking the rules warrants punishments, not a slap on the wrist.

EA/Respawn should honestly region lock servers, tighten security more, and use other methods for detecting cheaters. The current "anti-cheat" seems unable to tell when someone's cheating because its not "detecting" cheats on the person's system. What if EA/Respawn use AI? They could train an AI to learn how legit players and cheaters play, in which it then sends clips to Hideouts and their team. This would be similar to the kill cams but be from multiple perspectives and include things like ping. Some cheats apparently are already using AI, so why not fight back with an anti-cheat AI?

Another thing EA/Respawn, (more so EA) should do is they should sue the cheat makers and take after Bungie. Bungie recently won cases against two different third-party cheat sellers, and honestly every gaming company such as Epic Games, Blizzard, etc. should take this kind of action as well. It's beyond time to take action against cheaters.

Another issue besides the cheating problem is the smurfing and bot issue.

Bots are more so a problem on certain servers and I don't want to say which servers to avoid people running to grind these bots, (which you shouldn't as they apparently will report you for "cheating"). Despite being a small problem unless you're on those servers, they still exist. If the game has a total of 500 players, it could be assumed that 30-80 of them are bots. The game should have security measures in place to detect and ban these bots, especially if they're playing 24/7 while doing the same action each match.

As for smurfs, (which a lot of them are just cheaters on new accounts), the system should be better equipped to detect these players, or at the very least flag them for review.

Secondly, the matchmaking, (and also teaming). The matchmaking claims to be "SBMM", but this doesn't seem like the case. Its acting more like an engagement optimized matchmaking system, (or EOMM), more than SBMM. A better system for skill balancing would be great to see.

As for the teaming, I've mentioned possible solutions before. One solution is to detect players who are fighting near other players, (in which neither side is actually trying to kill the other), and after some time, if the two, (or more) teams haven't killed the other, it should force the teams involved to fight each other, otherwise the game will eliminate the teams it deemed to be teaming. It could also highlight the players who are teaming.

Now, what about the players who aren't teaming, but their team is? As long as these players are trying to knock and kill other players, including the ones their team is trying to team with, they should be fine. The game should also allow players to just run off as a solo with no issues in these cases as it would be an indicator that the player isn't wishing to team.

This then leads us to ranked. Rank needs a lot of things, but it mostly needs a higher level requirement in order to enter rank. Level 20 is far too low, 50 was a bit better, but it be nice to see level 100 at the very least. Besides some balancing to the matchmaking, the system should be better at judging everyone's skills in which it moves them up or down the ranks accordingly.

Currently you could do really well in a match and maybe go up a tier, but that's it. Even if you somehow win with 5-10 kills, you barely seem to go up in the ranks. This was apparent when we had placement matches. Some players were getting top 5's or winning their matches with a decent amount of kills, and the highest they were placed was in gold, while those, (such as myself), didn't have much luck and we were placed into silver, sometimes into bronze. If these players were so much better than others, why were they put into gold? Why not plat or diamond?

Another thing is that players who had reached diamond, masters, and pred, (maybe even plat), shouldn't be allowed to demote down into rookie-gold ranks unless the system decided that's where their skills actually are at, (because let's be honest, some players get boosted). I'm seeing a lot of masters and preds in silver right now boosting other players. While today, I saw a pred top 300 badge on a plat player, who was the champion, and their teammates were both silvers, while I was gold with two silver teammates.

For players who boost, and get boosted, I'm not really sure how that can get resolved other than detecting the booster if they're cheating, and banning the others if they've been partied up with the cheating booster.

Then there's issues with the in-game store. It's too pricey, has a lot of recolors, and the focus is more on getting players to spend money during events. It would be nice to see a change for the better and to not see events where we have to gamble for the items that we want.

Lastly, let's talk about the servers, the audio, bugs and glitches, and the aim assist.

Starting with the servers... we honestly need better servers with higher tick rates as well as have a system that handles players with different pings better. Many players, (including myself) believe the game has lag compensation. As in, if you have a high ping, other players can barely hit you, while you'll be able to hit them after they went around corners on their end. I've noticed players with a higher ping often teleport around and shots just no reg on them. I’ve also noticed that when I'm connected to data centers further away from where I live, my shots don't register on players right away, but then I would get hit markers.

One example I have is that I was shooting at someone while my ping was over 200. (I was connected to the Tokyo data center at the time), I thought I had missed every single shot and went to reload. While I was reloading my gun, I saw the player I was shooting at run into a building and close the door behind them. Moments before the reload animation was completed, I heard a knock down sound, and saw the player in the window of the building fall down to the ground.

My shots not only had apparently hit the player, but also had knocked them behind cover. This shouldn't have happened. The server shouldn't have counted my shots on a player who had gotten behind cover, especially when they were behind cover on my side when they had gotten knocked down. I thought that maybe it was a bug, but it happened more than once, and even a few times on data centers closer to where I live. The players were also only shot at. I didn’t throw any grenades at them or use any abilities.

Now onto the audio, (or the lack thereof). Honestly, it needs to be ported over to a new sound engine as most of the time, players aren't hearing things they should. I myself barely hear footsteps and legend abilities, and I've noticed that if a cheater is nearby, the audio is even more silent. An Octane could stim sprint right up from behind, and neither me or my teammates would hear them, and in some cases, we won't even hear the gunfire, only the sound of the bullets hitting us.

As for the bugs and glitches, there's many still in the game, and new ones that keep on showing up with each patch. Hopefully one day all the bugs and glitches would get fixed and very few new ones would get introduced, however for now, there's a few that are game breaking and honestly ruins the fun. One lets players become invincible while doing the glitch and they're also able to shoot at enemy players. Issues like that is why the game needs play testers.

Now onto controllers. The aim assist needs some balancing, sure, however its not overpowered in my opinion. The issue comes from the use of strikepacks, xim, chronus zen, etc. All these 3rd party hardware needs to be bannable.

Strikepacks and the Chronus Zen provide unfair advantages, such as macros and scripts, while xim tricks a console into thinking a mouse and keyboard is a controller, giving the player the perk of being on a mouse and keyboard while also having aim assist. This is a major problem for the game. I’m seeing a lot of cheaters on PC and most of the time, they're with 1-2 console players using things like strikepacks. I've even seen a few console players loot deathboxes like a PC player, which meant they were using xim.

Overall, these issues need to be addressed if the game is going to last for the long term. I understand its not easy to just do, but hopefully in due time things improve and get better. I’d hate to see this game truly die, but right now, that is the direction the game is heading in.

llanxiety2kll · Answer

In a respectful manner I got nothing positive or good to say about this season. Everything is just bad if not worst. From bad audio and visual effects to the worst rank experiences.The audio and visual for the game can be fix, but I never experience how bad the audio and visual effects for this season. It's frustrating because I rely on my sense of hearing and seeing just other gamers that plays this game because it provides information on where the enemies are at, where they're coming from and where they are shooting at us from. This needs to be fix.Now as for Rank in my opinion I only have one and that is shut it down. Because it's a complete mess. The rank experience I went through from every server I can play has been the worst. Skill Base Matchmaking and MMR doesn't exist it's a joke. Playing on a Brazilian server multiple of my games was high rank players of diamond, masters, pred lobbies I didn't get not one lobby for my current which is gold right now. Playing on the European servers a little bit of ups and downs but the cheaters man why how do you cheat in an average low rank games bro. Playing on NA servers it's the same thing but worst I'm running into cheaters after cheaters after cheaters like bro at this&nbsp;point this could be my last season of Playing Apex. I can't deal with it.&nbsp;And what's worst didn't Apex had a tournament where a team didn't even hide the fact they where cheating. And Apex had to switch their chat to emotes only heard about that. If you want your to be over ran with cheaters and hackers just say and the entire community will let it happen because how will the devs and EA make money if the hackers are unlocking everything for free.&nbsp;

6572e6696bdb1dc · Answer

Save for the dark ages of S17~19, the game is about as playable as it ever has been for me. For what it's worth: I started playing in S7 and basically always hit Diamond in ranked without a huge sweat.

That said, the past 3~4 weeks have been particularly bad in my experience. I only ever play ranked on the London servers and I've noticed a pretty sharp uptick in cheaters and overall server issues -- infinite loading circles, games starting with as few as 30 players spread over 15 squads, and general ping/latency fun with bullets rounding corners. I'd say around 25~30% of games start without giving me a full squad to play with which (in ranked) isn't that fun. I don't need or want a crapshoot to decide if the game will even start, then another dice roll to find out if a match will be properly populated before a final coin toss as to whether or not I'll run into a hacker that's using a CAR like a sniper rifle.

It's also disheartening that the whatever-matchmaking system seems to prefer big swings in progress as opposed to smaller incremental gains. Once you're into Plat you basically have to go ham and score a bunch of kills to creep over the high entry cost but, in doing so, you risk being wiped yourself and taking a big loss. Sometimes it seems like the best way to climb is to throw a few games to start and wait for the system to take pity on me with some decent teammates and I can get a big win to recoup. But the opposite is just as true -- I'll usually end my session after a win because I can be kinda certain my next match I'll be put with some window lickers that will take a quick notch out of my newly gained RP.

And the total radio silence that the devs give us between seasons is tragic. I can appreciate they want to let the pot settle before giving it another stir, but there's months and months of certain legend/weapons being utterly dominant before the tiniest tweak and it happens all over again. When you look at the data collected by third parties (which probably pales in comparison to that which the devs harvest) from the pro scene it's blatant how oppressive certain elements of this game are. Do more little tweaks through a season to stop such concrete metas forming and players getting complacent and/or at least tell us that you know what the issues are and where you're looking.

In conclusion, you know we're in a bad spot when King's Canyon is the least worst map in rotation.

midnight9746 · Answer

@llAnxiety2Kll&nbsp;Yeah, there was an tournament where players had called out a team for cheating, and the PlayApex Twitch mods turned the chat to emotes only. What's worse, is if you hear how the commentators&nbsp;responded, (the ones giving the play by play), they sounded like they knew the team was cheating, which is shameful that they had counted the game as being legit.Over the years a lot of players have been saying that EA/Respawn allows cheaters, that they're the ones mainly "selling cheats", etc.Well, I still don't know about the selling of cheats part, but they sure seem to allow cheating since instead of the commentators&nbsp;saying something like, "Well folks, something doesn't seem quite right on our screens, we'll post the results later", they just congratulated&nbsp;the team on their win and silenced the chat.Other players have also said that if a cheater had spent any money on the game, they don't get banned, and if they do, they're more likely to get unbanned due to the idea that they "might spend more money".Honestly, every gaming company should prioritize&nbsp;fairness over profits. If your game suffers from cheaters, put more effort into the anti-cheat. If your game has a lot of bugs, glitches, crashes, etc. put together a more dedicated team on it.I get everything cost money and takes time, however what sounds better?- Getting problems resolved and reducing the amount of cheating, thus having legit players wanting to put money into the gameOR- Letting problems get worse and worse, losing every single legit player until it becomes a "dead game" that no one really plays, thus players stop putting money into the gameThey're giving Apex the Titanfall treatment.Titanfall&nbsp; got infested with cheaters and DDOSers where every legit player stopped playing it and there was only ever 7-13 players online. I downloaded the game back in 2020 or so when I had EA Play, and everyone who was "online", were cheaters. So, it was 6-12 cheaters out of the 7-13 "online" players when looking at the counter.There's a reason why a group hacked Apex and put up the "Save Titanfall" thing, locking every gamemode at the time. Players really enjoyed Titanfall, and instead of getting support, they got ignored as more effort was put into Apex. Now from the sound of things, Apex is being treated the same as a new game is being developed.I'm sure I've said it before, however if EA/Respawn actually take the time to give the game the attention it needs and improve/fix the issues, get a better handle on the cheating, etc. players would most likely come back and play. EA/Respawn would also need to not make every event a cash grab and make store prices more reasonable.Compared to Fortnite, you get a skin for $20 in Apex, while in Fortnite gives a skin, backpack, glider, etc. Fortnite's bundles also make more sense, gifting isn't broken, content creators are better rewarded, and not to mention that at least through Epic Games on PC, (I don't know about consoles), you get points when you buy things, leading to being able to get a dollar or more off on your next purchase.So, not only does Fortnite makes things feel worth it, they pretty much reward you for it. The only thing I don't like about Fortnite's marketing is that its quick to shove it in your face, where it reminds you to buy the battle pass, crew pass, etc. however if you don't buy Apex's battle pass, it does the same thing.

alteschepperhan · Answer

There is also this cheat around which skips the killcam in BR. You are still able to report whoever dmg / killed you but with some people i don´t get into their killcams besides they are still alive have killed me and there is no 3rd party ongoing. This happened often enough and i guess it is a way to prevent having footage of them doing shady things somehow. In the previous seasons 19 and 20 i didn´t noticed that whatever it is at all but in this season!

Also, i got the feeling with the eac eos the cheater / aimassist / cronus / xim / bla bla etc. situation got even worse than before the update. I really don´t know how that could even be possible. Makes me really infuriating they have absolutely zero control over this and just go the ignoring route. I still remember these sad speedhackers from pre season 1 and even there was the cheat problem not containable. Haven´t changed much all seasons along how it seems.

It really makes wanna go full boycott all ea products no matter what!

midnight9746 · Answer

@reconzero I understand what you're saying, but this isn't a "diamond and higher only" problem, its affecting the whole playerbase.

If you were to create a brand new account, you'll most likely get the exact same players in your matches right after the orientation matches.

Smurfs, cheaters, bots, they affect all modes at any "skill level", and a lot of them keep their rank around bronze to be in the lower lobbies, which then affects players lower than diamond.

@WTF_Huitzo There's a ton of cheaters from other regions, not just China.