How do you think Apex should be played?

@BigMacAttack8u the more aggressive you play, the more chances you take, and not just from the parties that you fight directly, but also from third parties. Playing passive could give you a higher avg. placement, but you won't be as ready or kitted as other teams that are participating in more fights. Ultimately, people need to have good gun skills, movement, map knowledge, rotational skills, and good decision-making skills in order to be good at the game and win more.

From what I see, the monetization part comes from people wanting to look and feel good in front of others.

@BigMacAttack8u

Interesting theory. I like it. It explains why I haven't felt any need whatsoever to buy anything in this game. That's also explained by me being a cheap *. But I like your theory better. 😉

@reconzero Umm, I don't think we are really at odds here. It seems like you think what I mean by aggressive is to just run up to everything and start shooting? That's not what I mean at all. You can still be smart at what fights you take and how you fight, like using cover for instance. And there are times when engagement is not the best play, like when you have bad positioning.

I've had teammates who want to hide on top of some roof somewhere instead of participating. Half the match is basically just sitting there and then when the fights come our way they pretty much die instantly. I believe that is because they avoid fights instead of talking them thereby never actually getting better at the game. I would rather have 5 kills and die than wait 15 min, kill nothing or maybe 1-2 players and win, it just does not feel satisfying.

Anyhow,

"Unless their less aggressive buddies have higher win rates."

Well, like I said to someone else earlier, passive play can and will only get you so far. Maybe someone can have a decent win rate, for now, but eventually they will be surpassed by people who has more experience in fights. Every player in comp knows this. Even hot drops aren't a bad thing if your goal is to get better at fighting.

"Sell to your audience (see "young and dumb" above)."

Sell what exactly? It's just a showcase of what's possible. Some things literally exist to compliment fighting. Again, we would not have these awesome movement speeds and abilities if the intended way to play was to go camping. 🙂

Just to sum up - aggressive does not have to mean dumb or reckless. But in order to progress a person HAS to start taking more fights eventually.

@Unitee01

"...aggressive does not have to mean dumb or reckless."

Yup, we're very close to being on the same page.

You're right that aggressive play doesn't always mean reckless... but in my lobbies it usually does. And it's largely the kids you're describing. They're not trying to be dumb, they're just trying to get some experience. They're throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. And I can appreciate that, but this is a "not on my time" situation.

"But in order to progress a person HAS to start taking more fights eventually."

Right again, but it is a question of easing into fights at one's own pace, not at the pace of the diamond-level double stack I just got paired with for no good reason. Not that this bothers me now, but it sure did back in season five. And this IS the way this game so often works.

"Maybe someone can have a decent win rate, for now, but eventually they will be surpassed by people who has more experience in fights."

Here I have to say again, this is rank-think. This is only true IF you play ranked and IF you genuinely believe that anyone can make it to predator if they just want it bad enough or work hard enough or buy the right strike pack or whichever. I can't. I won't. And I'm not interested in trying. I'll take my sbmm matches and play it cool and win way more than my gun skills should allow, because this game has sbmm. Whatever others may claim to the contrary.

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The problem with the idea of constant improvement, as I see it, is twofold. First: there is a performance ceiling for each and every one of us. Do I really want to bleed out my eyeballs to get to my true potential just to discover that it's low platinum? And Second: Wherever that ceiling may turn out to be, once you get there sbmm is designed to make sure that you don't have even one minute to feel satisfied or proud. It will, with great haste and assuredness, find many many players who can wipe the floor with you no matter how good you get. So where is the incentive to grind ever upward knowing that you'll never reach the top, and that the higher you go the harder you'll have work for every single inch of ground and every single bullet you fire? My daddy always said, "Work harder, not smarter." No! Wait! He never once said that in his life and neither has any smart person I know!

@reconzero So you're basically saying you are worried that if you play differently or improve the mm will ruin the game for you because you'll get harder lobbies? Theoretically that should already be the case if you've been playing this long. Either way, both scenarios sound kinda equally bad for me tbh :/ What's the point of playing if you're only interested in getting easy wins the easy way in the easy lobbies? The pride or enjoyment you speak of is gained by beating the odds which aren't in your favor, that's the point, at least for me anyway. I played very passively back in season 3 but it eventually just made the game feel dead to me and it always bothered me to know I couldn't really take fights head on. And if you think about it all the game really is is a series of 1v1's, in a way. But hey, I'm not here to judge you or tell you what to do or how to play, it's not really the point of the discussion. It's just my perspective. You do you 🙂

@Unitee01

There's nothing here that I can disagree with... even if I wouldn't necessarily characterize my decisions in exactly those words. But yes, I'm not interested in striving to achieve mediocrity. I'd rather relax and let the chips fall where they may. A good part of that is just my personality, but I think the lion's share has to do with being a solo player in a team game. So much of what qualifies as "good" in this game is based in team work, and that is, I think, one aspect of the game that the solo player just plain has to discount to almost nothing. Not because I won't sometimes get good teammates, but because you never know from one match to the next, and because by the time you find out what you have for teammates, it's often too late.

But in the end, no, I don't want harder lobbies. I won't complain about them if they come, but I won't actively seek them out. I'll let the game decide what it thinks I can handle and once in a while it will expose me to something that I can't, and that's okay as long as it doesn't become 70% of my matches. But I don't need this game to be a job. I already have one of those.

@reconzero Amen.

@Unitee01

I agree with you 100% that statistics and badges and trackers, taken out of context, have virtually no meaning or value whatsoever.

"If someone is exclusively playing bronze lobbies 70% of the time naturally they will have a higher win rate."

This is not true at all. If a player is playing in bronze lobbies 70% of the time then they are not a very good player and will win, even against other bronze players, at a rate reflective of their skill. If they start to win more over time then they probably won't remain in bronze for very long. This is just the nature of mmr and sbmm, even in this game where they seem to be lax and elastic.

"To me, a win rate of 3% in masters lobbies means 100x more than getting 15% in bronze level lobbies as those wins carry a lot more weight."

This is problematic for me, especially as we've already said that these statistics, taken out of context, have no real meaning. But beyond that I feel as if the implication here is that shooting and aiming are the real skills in this game, and people who are best at those skills, even if they don't win the most, are still the best players. If that isn't what you're implying then I'm just reading too much into what you've said, but if it is what you're implying then we'll just have to agree to disagree. Winning matters, and it matters at every skill level. If the game is designed in such a way that a player can play in the highest ranks of the game, and not have a respectable win rate to show for it, then the mmr alogrithm is flawed. But I'm sure we already knew that it was flawed in a huge number of ways....