@Emery_XP wrote:
@PeterN_UKThe main problem I have with Destiny is that it's simply not getting the attention it deserves in this respect.
True. The seasonal model has gotten a bit stale.
Beyond Light came out during the pandemic, so since I had a lot of extra home time, I got the deluxe pack that had the expansion and all 4 seasons in between it and the next one (Witch Queen).
While it was nice to get all the extra materials and skins, as the pandemic started to turn to endemic and we could get out more, I was now upset that the season pass tracks now felt like work that took time I didn't want to spend for the minimal story beats that come out in the seasons. But I had paid for them so it felt wrong to not finish them. When Witch Queen came out, I did not get the deluxe version with all the seasons, and it was nice to be able to avoid the seasonal treadmill and just focus on completing Witch Queen's content. I never fully finished Forsaken before they started locking half of it away behind the 'content vault' that was as poorly thought out as gear sunsetting.
They need to take a hint from Guild Wars 2 and have the seasons be something included with the Expansions anyway as long as you are an active player at that time. That encourages regular log in, regular engagement with the game (cause as long as you logged in to unlock story or check in, might as well finish a Daily, right?) and good will with their player base that does in fact spend regularly in the Gem Store (cash shop).
But, on to board topic, Apex Legends, if you have not bought the battle pass and feel obliged to finish it and justify spending the money, really has nothing to compel casual players to stay in the game. If you are a casual player, the EOMM ensures that you will be food for streamers, teamed with people with the tactical awareness of a kitten high on PCP, and your tops 5s, much less wins, will be few and far between.
Now, BR type games can be engaging for casuals that are not twitch-reflex gods of the FPS genre, but the game would need vast changes to help balance the playing field.
- Ammo and Health/Shield supplies - part of why the top killers can be the top killers is the abundance of ammo and the ability to run and reset after a bad engagement, even without confirming kills to resupply from. The amount of ammo, medical, and shield supplies on the map need to be drastically reduced. As long as players have the supplies to treat it like Deathmatch, they will.
- You should have nothing on drop. No armor, no helmet, no meds or cells. Part of a BR template is that scramble to find weapons and supplies to survive. The more they go away from that survive and scrouge concept, the more people treat it as a Deathmatch.
- Melee Damage needs to be reduced. Not only is it unrealistic that a punch does more damage than 9mm or .45 pistol ammo, it encourages hot dropping. Because you are very likely to, if you know what you are doing, get kills easier with punches because the newbie players dragged into these hotdrops by other wanna be streamers don't realize that the P2020 they found or the Sentinel without any attachments has less DPS in close range than the guy punching you. Melee should be 10 damage base, and then be 20 with a weapon (and the animations changed to being pistol whips and rifle butt strikes). Current melee damage encourages treating the game like a Deathmatch on early drop.
- Ring Damage needs to be almost immediately fatal. When they increased the ring damage, it was hilarious to me how much easier it was to end in top 5 just because players don't read patch notes. All I had to do was rotate properly and early. The ring would get the kills for me, and it actually for a little while forced people to play it like a BR again (and most importantly, loot fast and MOVE). Then they made the first ring easier again because people cried (instead of reading patch notes, and adjusting tactics properly). The ring being survivable, with gear to make it easier, combined with the amount of gear from point 1, is another combination that makes players try and play the game like a deathmatch.
- EOMM matchmaking needs to die and be replaced with real SBMM. They can lie to us all we want, but you don't file a patent on a matchmaking type and then not use it, so we know they are using it. And the SBMM also needs to include a player selected playstyle, to match people with likeminded players. I might still be playing if the game had at least regularly put me on teams with people like @reconzero who wanted to be slow and careful, instead of constantly being paired with Hot Drop Harrys. As long as the matchmaking makes wholly unbalanced teams and matches, the game will be played like a Deathmatch.
Anyway, to sum up, as long as the amount of gear you can find in the game allows the better players to treat it like a Deathmatch game and the rest of the casuals are paired up with people with no interest in playing as intended, people will play the game like a 1-life Deathmatch, ruining the casual experience. And as I have noted before, any online only multiplayer game that does not have a mode for and consider the casual base will eventually start bleeding money.
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