I will play devil's advocate this time and write following:
- free to play games = someone has to pay for hundreds of thousands to play for free. So focus is on monetization, tailoring to people who value heirlooms and skins more than competitive achievement, getting good.
- AAA games mean player base in many cases in millions -> given number or people there will be a lot of bad actors especially like in Apex where you can make 5 figures a month while hacking, motivation to achieve the same vs working 9 to 5 is huge -> you can't manually ban so many people especially if you don't ban IP (only possible thing that can't be changed that easily as HWID or account creation).
Just do the math, say 2000 people constantly hack (all preds in all platforms 500x3 + 500 odd other players) -> to review one game you would need like at least 5-10 min = 2000x5 min = 10000 min = 170h. And even if you do that people can be banned and jump right in. Pointless process in case of manual work. Needs to be automated - Can banning be automated - clearly yes, but clearly not real-time / up to date cheating software.
Imagine if people are paying 100$ for skins, will they be hindered to pay 50$ for "lifetime" hack subscription... sure no. So you get this pay to win community that is paying not only for the game (which is good) but also for hacks (which is not good). - Engine game is built on - everyone knows it was kinda outdated at the start of the game (shortly after) and for sure it is far from the best now. We need to accept limitations of it be it sound or mechanics or whatever. Thus the talks about Apex 2 that will probably run Unreal engine and its benefits. Now we just need to survive until it is done -> copy best from Apex 1 to Apex 2.
- People might be inclined to pay for the game as in old days when you had to buy CD / serial number BUT probably most will not pay in case of Apex because of hackers and major bugs. So again mission impossible = can't produce bug free game / iteration process, can't deal with hackers so have to generate income from skins where all time goes in from dev team who in turn can't be working on other issues.
Also stakes are much higher - these days AAA title development is like 8 figure deal if not more, back in the days I assume it was at best 5 figures and also CD cost like 10$ which in case of a bad game you just discarded and was upset for like 5 min. These days to pay 100$ for a skin just to see you being destroyed by hackers in game...would probably leave sour taste in your mouth for longer + you will tell everyone not to pay for the game (which was harder back in the days before internet / at its early stages).
So yeah... I would say community has to change and stop:
- hacking
- buying boosts
- willing to all be Preds with no effort, some always will be last in sports / games, accept it, deal with it if that is you, find motivation to improve
- tolerating hackers on their team because free RP e.g. When I see hacker on my team I instantly drop off map, report and leave the game ASAP
- get educated to see who is / is not hacking or listen to people who know vs trashtalking about them crying about it / not being good enough
This is not easy change but totally possible and requires 0$.