Team-oriented vs. solo behavior

I see this as the crux of the fixed drops vs. jump master debate. And as the developer has built Apex from day one as a team-based game, there's every reason why we should be debating this. What makes a good teammate? Blind obedience? Good judgment? A willingness to risk their own life over and over again to constantly res downed teammates? The list goes on, but that's for another place. What I want to talk about here is the gradual transition of bot royale from a fundamentally solo experience to the team-based experience that it is now.

I've always viewed the mode as the one place in the game where I can escape the ludicrous expectations of live teammates, the unrealistic assessment of their own abilities, their general willingness to die as long as I'm at their side and willing to make the same mistake with them. I haven't used the word "toxic" to describe these players for a couple of reasons. First, the word is over-used. Second, these players represent the vast majority of the player base, pubs or ranked, so I have to at least give them that they have numbers on their side. But they feel pretty corrosive if you take the game seriously.

So here we are this season with full matches in bot royale. A huge step forward and something a few of us have been wanting for quite a while. Historically we've had bot squadmates as well. They certainly had their drawbacks, and were eerily like real scrub players in their inability to exercise judgment. But they had the advantage that you could ignore them if you so chose. And ignoring them had no material effect on the outcome of the match.

Now your teammates are live and they fall into two distinct categories: scrubs who die frequently and either quit instantly or are verbally demanding instantaneous aid - without the ability to read a mini map to tell them that aid is an impossibility and only a respawn can happen. You can spam ping the replicator all you want - to no avail. They're angry. Sometimes angry enough to quit, sometimes only angry enough to tell you that you suck. Category number two is the hot dropping terminator who will wipe the entire lobby single-handedly. (Side note: I'm noticing a lot lately that they often have level 4 accounts with a gamertag like "Wraith####," I assume to fool live enemies into thinking there are no other live enemy squads. Maybe I'm reading too much into that, but I know that I look at the kill feed all the time to check for tags that don't conform to the Apex bot standard format. More on that in a moment.)

So there I am in this mode either playing nanny to the helpless and feeling guilty if I don't because they're real people. Hell, I even had a hard time abandoning bots for a while. I know. It's a mental defect. Or I'm looting trying to get good kit and position (hard to get good kit these days as the loot pool seems to have been discounted in the last week or so - or maybe it discounts automatically as you climb the mmr ladder - does this mode even have its own mmr?) and as we approach the close of the first circle I look up to see that there are nine enemy squads left. And that number usually dwindles rapidly from there. I'm now in a race against my teammates if I want even one single engagement. And I don't like to race. And I'm not incentivized to do it because the outcome of the match is a guaranteed win no matter what I do. So I've started quitting these kinds of matches when it becomes obvious that that's what they are. Strike one, Respawn.

Then we have the can of worms that is live enemy squads. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: If I wanted to square off against live players then I would have queued into pubs or ranked. And have done so. But that isn't why I go into bots. I doubt it's why anyone goes into bots. EXCEPT the aforementioned level 4 Wraith#### who seems to be under the delusion that a 4k/20 in bots is somehow just as cool as it is in pubs. It's a little too early to say for sure, but these appear to be the people who are taking over the mode. I'm not saying they're using it in a way it was never intended to be used. I'm saying that if I have to start quitting every match because of them then the entire point of the mode is defeated. And that's a sadness. And, as a side note, if their secondary (which should not even be allowed) is letting them get around an mmr matchmaking algorithm, then more shame on you, Respawn.

I assume that the entire point of up to five live squads in a match is to ease the load on servers, but if that's what you have to do to make the mode viable from a resource standpoint, then, at least for me, you may as well shut it down right now.

The other frustration is that the average player won't know they're facing off against a live Smurf squad until it's too late. And then they'll probably just re-queue. So there's no built-in way for you to get any data on whether this hurts or helps the mode. If I had to guess, I'd say that the mode had a population spike at the start of the season, and is trending a little lower now, though probably not much. What I want to know is where it will be at the end of the season. Active or unused. And if the population declines then how will you attribute that drop off? If you do an in-game survey then the results you get will be very dependent on how you phrase the questions - or, obviously, if you even ask the right ones to begin with. And if it's just the standard "Did you enjoy your last match?" then the you're begging the answer you want because the frustrated self-select out of the match by quitting long before they can get the survey.

I know this is the kind of situation where you can't please everyone. I just hope that you went into these changes with an openness to change if some of them prove to be problematic beyond the experience of just one single, vocal player.

Best of luck. To all of us.