And again, not trying to crap on something that other people seem to love, but this guy said it well:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/apex-legends-latest-go-at-a-compressed-battle-royale-forgets-the-journeying-spirit-at-the-genres-heart
Here's the meat of it if you don't want to read the whole thing:
"...something about Wildcard underwhelms. It’s not the shooting, which is as crisp and dynamic as in any other Respawn FPS. And it’s not the simplified gear gobbling, which is fine for a supplementary mode. It’s that at the end of a Wildcard round, even the ones I’ve won, I’ve never felt that I’ve really gone anywhere or done anything except aim down my sights and left-click. In chasing nonstop drama it denies you something that good battle royales, and their progenitors, can so effectively deliver: a journey."
It's another way of saying what I've been saying all along. In this world there are battle royales and there are team slayers (or team deathmatches for you CoD people) and the more a dev tries to mash up the two of them then the more you end up with just plain old slayer. And if that's all anybody has the attention span for anymore then that's okay. But for the love of Mike what are you doing in a battle royale game in the first place when you could be in a REAL ARENA SHOOTER instead???
I read some of that article too. I disagreed with it and stop reading.
Wildcard is a super casual game mode. That's it. The core game mode is still in the game "unranked matches". IMO, Apex is getting better, not worse, when it comes to variety. Although, more work needs to be done as with anything.
"IMO, Apex is getting better, not worse, when it comes to variety."
I hear you. And I want to agree with you. But then there's this:
Three Strikes. Revival. Straight Shot. Knockout. And now Wildcard.
I don't call that variety at all. That's an on-going fine-tuning of all the mechanics in this game that make it faster and more forgiving for thoughtless players. That's not variety. Mixtape is variety. (Although, again, I can get better versions of any of those modes in other games). Bot Royale is variety. Sort of. An extraction mode would be variety. Sort of. Single player campaign? Maybe, though again, others have already done it well enough that I'm not sure what Respawn could bring to the table that would make it worth the trouble - of developing or playing.
To me it breaks down like this: At launch Apex was a combination of shooting, movement, and strategy. The above list of newer game types is testament to the fact that the people who play this game don't have any interest in strategy. Some are young enough that they just don't have the attention span. Some are so committed to their aimbots and wall hacks that they don't want any aspects of gameplay that can't be cheated. I know how cynical that sounds, and I know very well that the core battle royale modes are still there. But even ranked is being dumbed down in some pretty shocking ways. Though who cares when silver lobbies are filled with diamond-calibre players? What honestly is the point of it all?
