Forum Discussion

Re: rankeds or we should say campers?

@d3adc3II wrote:
@Anlbrd wrote:
The idea that aggressive = not smart play is hilarious.
My opposition to what I call camping and others think is tactical is that without aggressive play the game boils down to people literally immobile on the edge of the ring until they need to move for the next one, as was evident in the so called elite queue.
All the guys who postulate that camping is the smart mans play seem to not realise that without people moving and engaging in fights youre left with maybe a fight at the start, then a 15 minute wait for a clusterf in a circle the size of a beer matt, again - as was seen in the elite lobbies half the time.
Its not about epeen for high number stats next to your name, its about engaging gameplay rather than endless waiting to be moved along by the ring.
The thing apex does better than the other BRs is its fast paced gunfights. Cater to the crowd who dont want to fight for the first 12 minutes of the match at your peril. If you removed all the self-professed smart players who hide on the edge of the ring, no one would notice. If you take out the guys willing to get into fights anywhere on the map - youve lost what apex is to everyone I play with, without exception.
I think no one ever said agressive = not smart play
No one ever said camping = camp at 1 place the entire time, and move to next good spot and camp the entire time.
I've never seen anyone do that in this game because it's not possible. By design, this game make it impossible to just defend in 1 place the entire game.
The concept of camping? It's part of the whole gameplay.
- You play aggressive when you need to.
- You move to the better spot and use it to your advantage to win the fights.
- Sometimes, you stop and "camp" in that better spot for like 10-20 seconds, if you predict the other squad will come. ( Don't tell me you stay on the open area the whole time or jump into the middle of the combat when you know other squad are behind you)
- You pick the more defensive playstyle since your lineup supports that ( for example: Caustic, Lifeline, Watson)
I really want to laugh when someone said camping means i have to stay at the edge, sit there for more than 5 minutes. It's way so wrong.

^^^ This, and especially the bit in bold.

@Anlbrd You cannot know if somebody camps the entire game. You don't know how the entire server play. I notice you now have said "where you play" instead of the general sweeping statement made earlier.

Respawn have also said, playing to win is priority. The kill cap is great in terms of stopping people farming easy early game kills for RP. If you hit 5 kills, it doesn't mean stop. There is the win to go for and your team mates to help out.

7 Replies

Anlbrd
6 years ago
@Silz616 I would have thought it fairly obvious that all ANY of us can do is speak from personal experience and what we see in streams/vids.

Before the elite queue dropped and people were concerned with the number on the streak badge, I maybe found 1 person hiding, ratting around behind relay on the ledge, or behind repulsor in no mans land, or under the buildings in cascades. After the elite queue dropped : it was every game there'd be an entire team cuddled holding hands under or behind something.

Some of the best players I know who rank globally on xbox decided that they were going to get a big streak and their method was to land somewhere obscure, loot meds and hide until last 5, then quit and do it all again. They had a laugh doing it and got their massive streak badge but it hardly produced any fun games for anyone else. You could argue their responsibility is only to their own enjoyment, and fair enough - but if we all thought like that : virtually all online games would be garbage to play.

My point is that when incentivised to play like cockroaches, scurrying around in abandoned, dark corners - even some of the best players will. The net result is a slowing down of the pace of the mid-game especially and a feeling that the game is having a lot of the fun bleached out of it.

Some of you may enjoy 10 minutes of barely anything - what attracted me to apex originally was that it WASN'T like that. I'm not alone : as the complaints about the reward system encouraging camping from all corners of the globe in this and other threads have shown.
Silz616
6 years ago
@Anlbrd Well I think some players are in for a rude awakening as to what they think their "skill" is.
In ranked, running over your opponents will cease to exist, nd maybe even the best players will realise that running around in the wide open chasing gunfire is not the way to play all the time.
It seems to me, that there are to many who want to run around picking gunfights at will. How do you think these players will fair when they come up against players who are as good or better? They will die early game, which is not the best way to play BR. It may work against average joe (me) but not against your peers.
These matches will cost RP, and as such will make players not just hotdrop for 6-10 quick kills then quit, rinse repeat. You play the game and stay till the end. If you don't wat to die, don't make idiotic decisions because of "kills and damage rules OK"
Nobody else is complaining apart from the "my kills" brigade. This is not team death match. If you read some posts, they even say, "after 5 kills I'll stop, whats the point". The point is is not all about "you/them". It's a team game.
After watching the early dev streams introducing the characters, they even say that the design philosophy of a team of 3 was to make teams lose x1 aspect of the squad (Attack/Defense/Support/Healer) and require team work to make up that shortfall. In all those discussions, winning and team work were the driving force and their gameplay vision. NOT one super hero stacking kills but hardly ever winning and not giving a toss about their team mates.
The community needs to wake up imo. This is not Cod/BF/Quake/Doom.
Anlbrd
6 years ago
@Silz616 And yet - it plays like an old school twitchy shooter, and everyone I know loves it precisely because of that. Whatever the devs intention (and it is their game to do with as they wish) there's a huge current of players who love the action packed nature of how Apex's culture has coalesced. I would question why they'd move away from players they know they're pleasing to potentially satisfy people who want a slower paced game. It's taking such a forceful effort to try and instill a slower game when people are still thumping. All anyone I've spoken to about Wattson have said is that they can't wait to try to use her to ram into big fights and bully their way through crowds, in some glorious attempt to pervert her clearly intended 'static' style.

In Australia there's a crew who set up sweaty lobbies as best they can by stacking premades, getting into comms and all queuing at the same time. It's been a bit of a DIY scrimm system. I've played in a handful. The gameplay was just as fast and furious, but the difference being the squads all played a lot tighter and called targets more rigorously etc as they knew who they were up against and that they'd have to wait for everyone to finish the game before getting into the next one. Ranked mode before ranked mode.

They still pushed fights hard, some still got very high kills but they had to work like slaves for it. The first scrim I played our team was assaulted almost immediately in Wetlands of all places by another squad leaping onto us like starving cannibals - two of them didn't have weapons and one was relatively stacked for an immediate fight off the drop with blue armor and a spitfire. They were hard to kill even though all three of us had grey shields and 2 of us had (admittedly crappy) weapons.

They didn't do that because they thought "easy kills, lets get a 20 bomb". They knew it was the fight we didn't want to have yet and we were caught flat footed. Two people who can aim getting the drop on you with melee is a concern, you're dead in seconds if you don't react in exactly the right way. That's smart play, whether you want to attribute intelligence to it or not 🙂

These are the same players who will be in the Apex Predator category in OCE, as most of them place globally for their class. They're good shots. They move well. Their game sense is very well developed. It's not stroking my ego to say this : most of them are strangers to me other than me recognising them from champ squads. I'm not lauding my friends.

I cannot understand why the top tiers aren't being tailored to the people who will actually be in them. I can't think of a single player I'd consider a safe-bet for Apex Predator who is rubbing their hands together looking forward to all the times they'll be able to just wait around for other squads to finish each other and clear the path for them to get a win with 5 kills each.

I can only speak for where I'm from, and obviously not for everyone - but for the good players that I've interacted with whether friends, relative strangers or people who have animosity towards me : this scoring system is, at best, only semi-relevant to how they play. It is a missed opportunity at best to make the top tier hyper competitive.
Anlbrd
6 years ago
Am I mischaracterising your view when I see it as : "Players who push fights and enjoy the game as it has naturally developed are knuckledragging FPS hounds without a micron of strategic capability?" because that's how it reads. You keep suggesting that people will have to re-evaluate their skill etc as though people capable of high kill games are somehow only getting it because everyone else is crap?
This just isn't the truth :S
Silz616
6 years ago
@Anlbrd Sorry. I have been discussing with you, but actually using other peoples complaints for the discussion. I think we are on a similar view but from slightly different sides.
I have, and do play with some amazing players who are super aggressive. This works well in "pubs" and they certainly know how to play. Timing a push is crucial imo. Approach from a good position and time when to hit your opponent. I agree you cannot just sit back, but knowing how and when to engage is key imo, especially playing other good players. This is the style everybody wants to emulate, but their skillset lets them down.
Then there are super aggressive players who "think" they are good but blame campers/game mechanics for their downfall. These are the rush but no thinking type of players. These are the players I have an issue with. It come from many years playing FPS and playing with "forum greats" who turn out to be rage quitting stat padders, so I'm a BIG cynic when it comes to people claiming their "skill" on an internet forum.
None of my remarks have been directed at you personally, but at the players who think this ranked structure will hurt their kills and how they may not get as high in rankings because of the game, and not because they are not as good as they think they are.
I'm hoping this system does put greats up against greats, and I will play players closer to my skill level and I think it will, but all I seem to be reading from some people is "KILLS, DAMAGE = SKILL ARRGH".
I want every player to be able to play however they want, and I think they will. The higher ranks should be a more balanced experience, but I can't help but feel some people are going to not like playing players who are as good as them, or playing against players who play in a less face tanking manner, which then leads to come here to say "campers ruin it" which they have zero evidence of.
Sorry if my previous came over as directed at you. I don't envy Respawn trying to balance this. Just look at all the differing views on here, but I do feel they will adjust it correctly and over time this will be truly great.
P.S I have witnessed many high kill players who just don't care for the win. If they kill 3 or 4 people early game in 2 minutes they are happy to die and find a new game. That is not skill. That is padding stats to "look" like you are good. This is why stats in the pre game lobby mean nothing to me. It is zero sign of how well you play.
I hope I made my point without to much of a ramble, and didn't go round in circles. Some of my problem is I am cynical lol. I also respect Respawns designs decisions. It's them that have brought the game to us in the first place and I hope they stay true to their vision.
Anlbrd
6 years ago
@Silz616 100% get it mate and you're right on the money about a certain kind of player who isn't going to enjoy it. I understand what you're talking about now. I haven't taken anything you've said as a personal attack, I thought we were just talking past each other a little bit - hence the need to clarify.

From one cynic/pessimist to another - I'm still bloody hyped for tomorrow. If nothing else the game is going to be rammed full of everyone trying to make sense of a new map, new legend(s?) and a new mode. It's set to be a good day.
Silz616
6 years ago
@Anlbrd wrote:
@Silz616100% get it mate and you're right on the money about a certain kind of player who isn't going to enjoy it. I understand what you're talking about now. I haven't taken anything you've said as a personal attack, I thought we were just talking past each other a little bit - hence the need to clarify.

From one cynic/pessimist to another - I'm still bloody hyped for tomorrow. If nothing else the game is going to be rammed full of everyone trying to make sense of a new map, new legend(s?) and a new mode. It's set to be a good day.
Cool 🙂 Glad you understood, as I can ramble for Britain and sometimes go over old ground to many times lol.
I'm hyped to. I love this game and have had a few years out of FPS as nothing really grabbed my attention (same old same old kinda thing). Apex is great as every game throws up something new.
Happy hunting fellow cynic 🙂