Apex is aiming + movement and nothing more

For me, Respawn killed this game in season 24 by introducing Rework Ash. Now they're "finishing off the corpse" by introducing another character with a sick movement like Sparrow.

Dashes and double jumps killed the whole point of the game for the other legends.

This game will never be the same again.

Dashes and double jumps give a huge advantage over other legends. If they don't remove this - in time it will be the end of this game.

Since I've been playing Apex Legends (and I've been playing for a long time) I've never seen a worse mistake Respawn made than the Ash rework. It's the worst mistake in 25 seasons of the game. 

Tactical gameplay has ceased to exist since the Ash/Ballistic/Alter meta appeared. The only tactic is push and kill and go back (alter portal). No season except s24 and s25 was this damaging if you played any other character off meta (maybe s23 too, because the support meta was also unbearable).

Either way, we've had 3 seasons in a row of disastrous seasons and a huge lack of knowledge about the game from the current developers. Each season ruins another part of this great game.

In addition, the EU server is full of cheaters in terms of recoil/wh (mnk), and the NA server, where there are more controllers, is full of cronus/xim. The only thing left to play is probably in Africa, unless they find out there that cheats exist (joke). For me this is the end of FPS games, and definitely Apex.

And in every game you die against Ash + Ballistic. Haha, this game is really dead now. There is no counter to this duo of characters.

Game uninstalled again. Wasted time and money. Bye.

Best regards.

First all - yes. Dashes and Double jumps break the game, when only some people have them. 

PvP in Titanfall 2 worked because EVERYONE had the same basic movement options. ALL pilots know how to use their mobility pack. 

Selective knowledge of how to use that for more than just stopping you from SPLAT after jumping out of the dropship is a broken balance option in this game. 

2nd of all, Recon my friend... 

The guns in this game (at least the ones based on real firearm bases, not talking weird stuff like the triple take and L-Star) do kinda work like real ones. I have a lot of experience with many real world guns, and own "the spread of the bases" of my own, from pistol plinker for target shooting up to big bore hunting needs. 

They get the way guns cycle right. How a semi-auto shotgun will lock the bolt open to chamber direct if you fire last round, but you can just top off if you don't run it dry. The difficulty with re-acquiring target after a heavy load large caliber bolt action rifle fires (though you can train to hold that in tight and cycle it with the firing hand while not losing target picture - if I can do that why can't these professional legends?), the way bullets drop over time. 

But then, the things they DON'T get right. You can't just swap scopes and not have to re-zero the weapon. After swapping a scope you should have to waste 2-5 bullets just getting it back on target at 25 yards. Auto-fire is so SLOW compared to real life, which is the only reason people can try and spray around the target so easy (with the cyclic rate of the average modern M-4, a 30 round mag on full auto is gone before your brain processed the word gone back there). 

But, what's really bonkers, his 'hip fire' accuracy, and being able to hit anything while moving. Hitting ANOTHER moving target while you yourself is moving is usually a one in 10,000, or even 100,000 or more, odds shot. There is a reason even trained military infantry stops moving (ideally with cover) to shoot back. 

If you are moving while shooting that is suppressing fire to cover your movement. Which works IRL because even good body armor is often totally defeated by modern rifle rounds. So people are logically resistant to coming out of cover when being shot at, even if the odds are low. 

It doesn't work in video games because you have impossible body armor that can take a body shot from a near anit-material rifle and you still be up and moving (IRL, even if somehow that plate saves you, you are on your butt gasping for breath and likely with multiple cracked ribs). It doesn't work because until that last HP is gone, you function at 100%. It doesn't work becuse there is no fear of getting shot. 

Which is why most squad based "military combat" games don't work long term as team tactical games. Without the real world impacts, it's just a really flashy game of pong. 

Kyldenar​ regarding your meta comment - I think you were not here when Octane was fine-tuned and everyone basically pushed other squads through jump pad and even more so Octane + Rev Ult combo with more advanced people combining it with Ash Ult.

Apex clearly has gone from focus on stationary fights and end zones - Wattson meta, Gibi + Valk + Caustic meta, Catalyst wall fights etc. - to more dynamic run and gun. Why? Because it requires less IQ and is more favorable to casual gamers who just want to get damage and kill and basically do not care about rank / competitive / ALGS (as they call it) play style. Your typical land into 1+ teams, get a few kills, die, congrats you get 19th place with 3 kp and minus gazillion RP in ranked just to brag about how much damage you did vs your teammates or win the first fight just to be surrounded by multiple teams and die shortly after.

Imo there are two main issues with Apex and above mentioned:

1. movement is not clearly defined or is FPS related, which in Apex = very unoptimized game, laggy servers, fells just totally off unless you script / lower your FPS below optimal / have latest hardware and just overcome some of the lags via brute hardware force.
   1.1. movement techniques are not clearly explained by Apex / Respawn -> instead people have to rely on the info from "movement streamers" who as we know are breeding as cockroaches and are as useful and trustworthy.
   
   2. as you mentioned hipfire setting in game is just absurd yet again it is tailored towards lazy casual games and especially with controllers...because they have to generate income and based on rumors there are more console players than PC players, add to that PC players who switched to controller because game kinda forced you to -> if you see pure (no hacks etc.) controller player with even above average skill set you see how bad they are in dynamic fights = hipfire + AA is the only thing saving them from being rolled over.
   But if Apex changes that -> it basically will become CS/Valorant like = where you can hit hipfire shots like 1 bullet per mag, which in CS and Valorant is enough if headshotted, but in Apex that would mean major change in game dynamics and basically 50% death of Controller players / AA advantage. I would be up for it :D but I am sure EA / Respawn money wise will never do that. As we know hardcore gamers do not spend money on skins and heirlooms and without lazy casual gamers who came to flex their badge or skin game would not be free to play :)

Personally I am not against latest changes per se, being on MNK I have no big issues tracking moving targets, bigger problem is server / exploit fact = those moving targets generate a lot of no-regs. Also now there is another legends than can easily cover up wallhacks which is sad. Still Ash rework, Ballistic and Alter buff, Sparrow intro is nowhere near as broken as support meta and other previous instances like Seer intro to the game and probably a few more that I already forgot about.

This graph makes it easy to see where Respawn messed up the game.

Over the last 4 years, the balance of this game has never been more messed up than it is now. The dominance of one character (and in the meta three that we know well) is crushing.

Until Ash gets a major nerf to his dash (I still think this rework is the biggest mistake they've made and the previous form of this character, which was already very good, should be brought back) this problem will NEVER go away.

Ash/Ballistic/Alter combined together (especially Ash+Ballistic) gives such firepower and a huge advantage over other teams that it looks a bit like you're playing against cheaters (if you're playing a legend outside the meta). Is the game really supposed to make you have a new main every 3 months? There's been NO counter to these three legends for 3-4 months, and now Sparrow has joined, who is a wallhacker and has a powerful ult.

The most healthy balance of this game was 2023 and partly 2022/2024. I would just like to remind you that back then we had a much larger player base before the growing problem with cheaters (since Destroyer2009 took over ALGS). Since then, despite propaganda information from Respawn, it's only gotten worse. A wallhack forced into the game is not a solution for many legends. It's clear that they themselves don't know how to counteract it, not to mention devices that reduce weapon recoil on controllers and various types of cfg files for MnK players.

Not to mention how broken crossplay is and console players entering PC lobbies while maintaining AA. With all that, this is the least of my problems. I share the opinion of many people that "You don't have skill, you just have aim assist".

I don't mind adding something fresh to the game, but maintaining the overall balance.

Here the developers either don't care or don't know what they're doing, because they've been destroying the game for over a year.

Why can't we fix/enhance what's bad/too weak to improve the overall balance? Why did Respawn choose to make 5-10% powerful legends, 20% good/just playable and 70% useless? What the hell is that supposed to be?

I wonder what Respawn will give us in the second split of this season. If the balance problem is not solved - it will be "interesting". There have been a lot of great people who have left this game and there will be more to come. I am very sad about the direction Respawn has taken with this game. The game is great but the management team is terrible.

I would agree to the part about most legends becoming redundant with those few exceptions of people playing their mains / aiming to have top1 stats per certain legend in the world.
But I do understand that this is caused because majority asks for "more content" and eventually you just can't balance 27 different type of legends in one game. I guess they are planning to go "superhero" mode eventually on all of them - probably in Apex 2 - which might actually work.
Also don't forget that people are lazy, they actually might want to grind same legend over and over again vs learning 27 different ones WHILE others would not do the same - but with meta they actually do which creates this issue of kinda meta change = more content -> things going stale because everyone does the same.

For me only really broken meta was support 3 stack - you were just unable to do enough damage most of the time as not-3stack vs such teams.
Also Seer was just impossible to counter in its first release version where you screen just light up, shook like crazy and there were so many animations that fps dropped and you could not see where enemies are.

Rest is actually doable. E.g. now I don't have issues countering current meta, yes it is annoying when people whom you knock take Alter portal and reset or when someone just bluntly runs into your face with devotion or G7 and hipefire you to death. But as said above I would say that is more of AA / hipfire being too accurate issue + people unable to coordinate well.

Otherwise I can easily counter those pushes most of the time. Biggest issue is coordination and damage output when I soloq. What I mean:
- it is much easier for enemy team to coordinate a push e.g. Ballistic ULT, everyone is empowered to "w" into enemies, Ash player automatically uses dash(es) = automatically team is better coordinated, works toward the same goal
- more often than not team that is "defending" is out of position (that motivates Ballistic to ult and push), not coordinated, panics, creates 2v3 or worse 1v2/3 situations where it goes down hill fast
- most people don't get it / can't pull off "focusing" one of the enemies during the game that would lead to insta-knocking the person on the enemy team which in turn 99% of a time introduces doubt factor for enemy team and in many cases stops their push
- you can easily "avoid" fights e.g. you see Ballistic ult -> take your alter portal to safety or use any other form of retreat to limit time you fight vs Ballistic ult. But most do not do that, they want "fame" and try to fight vs enemies in their strongest position (under ult / better positioning / better coordinated)

And the list goes on.

Plus people are quite dumb in this game (sorry but I really mean that):
1. they think that playing meta gives them superpower just by picking legends while ignoring aspect of "can you actually play meta well"
2. they will pick based on "what works best for me" vs "what is more beneficial for the team". Typical example of latter is that most in soloq pick movement legends as they know that fights sooner or later will go bad fast and you will have to run away from the enemy chasing you

I e.g. always pay attention to:
- what players have picked or about to pick (icons around legends with player numbers highlighted during pick phase)
- I try to pick legends that create synergy e.g. at least one support per team, one movement legends, one scanner etc.
- play accordingly in the game - if I see that my teammates are just super aggressive, I just play on defensive / support side knowing that they will get most KP / damage and brag about but I still take it and overall better result vs just dying together pushing everything

But I can do above said because I have IQ over average in Apex for sure + I have played all legends for significant amount of time to be able to know how to use them all to at least average degree.

To sum up: meta = easiest way to win IF you know the basics / execute them well.
For the rest "meta" is just a buzz word same as "toxic, cringe, lol etc." = words that has no place or meaning or clear definition in this game but people keep using just to "look cool".
Most players in soloq / ranked are just bad and them not picking meta / playing vs meta just makes them worse, make better coordinated enemy teams with meta legends, weapons to win games more easily.

But as I said before - if current D4 players would just use comms and switch to "team first" mentality, most would easily reach D2/Masters just because of that not because of meta. Meta is like using doping in elite level where you battle for top 1% not like in Apex where D4+ take now like top 10% of the pool :) you don't need doping for top 10% :)

In short I'll just say this - the support meta was awful, but the Ash meta killed this game. There is no counter to this character.

Best regards.