Respawn Entertainment MUST consider non-BR fans.
I keep hearing awesome things about Apex Legends, but I can never get into this game because it is centered purely on the battle royale (BR) experience. Arenas is widely hated by even myself (I would prefer to play Valorant or CS:GO instead of Arenas because the inter-round flow is terrible). I am not a fan of the battle royale experience, because I do not like to feel defeated most of the time, when I already feel pretty bad about myself overall.
The reason I do not like battle royales, especially in a first person shooter (FPS) that does not aim towards realism, are as follows: in single player games, if you die, you try the level again, you try and try again until you succeed - it feels like a puzzle that rightly rewards players' tenacity. BRs break that whole flow - you do the same thing, but as if the previous match never happened but which still counts against your lifetime combat record.
Considering too that the only way to do well in a BR is to win, a feat that's largely unachievable owing to both the large number of players at any one match, and how there are likely a large number of extremely competent players, this whole game feels almost like an unnecessarily exploitative scheme to one's self-worth if it offers no decent and permanent non-BR experience. With more realism focused games I can tolerate that because you would not be able to relive the same experience after dying from it. In a run and gun shooter like Apex where realism isn't a goal, I find it unnecessarily punishing as someone who already feels worthless.
Respawn's direct competition with first person shooter games are by comparison less appealing, especially considering the major flaws of the companies who have been responsible for the respective games:
- Fortnite is associated with Epic Games, who have had to refund $500m to consumers over a case that Fortnite was "too addictive" or broke privacy laws for children.
- Call of Duty and Overwatch are associated with Activision Blizzard, who have had the reputation of harboring sexual harassment that caused the suicide of an employee there. Additionally, the sole non-BR experience is worth a price that few are willing to pay, 70 USD. Although Apex Legends has offered non-BR and non-Arenas game modes for a limited time, they were at least offered for free.
- Rainbow Six Siege is associated with Ubisoft, who have had similar issues to Activision Blizzard.
- Valorant is associated with Riot Games, a company that has been infamous for toxicity, and while I am not yet aware of any cases that are as severe as that of Activision Blizzard taking place within that company, I do not think it is impossible given the corporate culture and the infamously toxic communities harbored in their games. I have also found articles about Riot staff making racist comments too.
- Counter Strike: Global Offensive, a title created by Valve Inc., has had controversies surrounding especially the company regarding how they do nothing about cheaters because they are more interested in the money they're making from the trading of potentially extortionate skins in that game.
By contrast, people's only issue with Respawn are almost always towards Apex Legends or EA. I have not heard so many bad things about Respawn Entertainment, and I hear they are one of the few or only AAA companies that seldom implement crunch (sadly a standard practice across the games industry). In light of this I believe Respawn has a duty to take players away from those experiences and offer them what they want in their own title.
Some of EA's and Respawn's own FPS titles also do not seem to be doing so well as Apex Legends - Apex always has above 50k players according to Steamcharts.com and regularly touches 100k players, while Titanfall 2 struggles to break even 10k players as of July 2021, a project that Respawn Entertainment is increasingly caring less about - no new content will ever arrive to keep that game fresh. The only time Batltefield 2042 has ever touched or exceeded 10k players has been during December 2021 and December 2022.
I'm also starting to find Apex's BR-only success a bit offensive at this point - why can't a non-shooter with even more diversity than Apex like Sims 4 do better than Apex, when not everyone wants to risk feeling terrible about themselves just to be the last player/squad standing, and there are people who aren't really into shooter games? The Sims 4's potentially infinite diversity (save for it still being rather ableist sadly) could help teach Netflix a lesson for constantly canceling shows with gay women as leads because of lack of viewers. There's entire communities on Twitter who are into Apex who are not playing the game, because they're far more interested in the diversity than the high stakes and overall punishing nature of battle royale.
I have been interested in hosting a custom game to help Apex Legends grow, but unless Control, Team Deathmatch and/or Free For All are available permanently, I do not want to have anything to do with this game.
EA and Respawn, PLEASE do something about this. I DO NOT want the only FPS experience that has little controversy surrounding it and that regularly has new players and content to just be a battle royale, and I do not want players to be forced to get into intellectual property that does not play into their interests (either because of strict focus of BR or canceling anything with diversity as with Netflix content), or was made with the cost of the LIFE of abused developers and other staff. May Season 16 permanently have Control in place of Arenas.
