Apex Sucks! But Why?
In a writing mood today, so let’s talk about something that’s been on my mind a lot (Other than “my job sucks”.) - Why does Apex Legends suck so much? Despite what Reddit might tell you, the answer is actually a lot deeper than it seems. This isn’t just the ramblings of a MnK player who has lost his mind, my job causes far more spiritual damage compared to dying to controllers that don’t deserve to kill me.
And what better topic to start off on! Aim assist, it’s OP, you know it, I very much know it, and I can tell you the devs also know it. The game is basically rigged against you if you are on MnK - the very nature of a battle royale with the ring continuously shrinking as the game goes on, combined with a Down-but-Not-Out system and Apex’s uniquely long Time-to-Kill, ensures that most fights in the game will happen close range, where controllers have both the accuracy and consistency advantage, with even mechanically B-tier controller players having aim that the best MnK players can only dream of.
Of course, that does not mean that MnK is completely unable to compete, MnK players can simply become infinitely better at positioning, IGLing, strafing, controlling recoil and put in 10x times the effort and lead the lobby like zer0. Outliers like him does not mean aim assist is balanced, despite what braindead controllers and delusional, mediocre MnK “grinders” might tell you. Even someone like zer0 who puts in ALL of the work possible shoots around 32% on r5, with the average controller pro shooting well into the 40s. MnK also does have its own advantages, namely recoil control and movement options that open up the game SOMETIMES à la YukaF, but overall, controllers have the advantage, with shitters being gifted opportunities all over tier 2.
However, notice how this is an issue that only MnK players face, if the game was good otherwise, controller players would be having the time of their lives! This is clearly not the case, so let’s keep digging.
Apex Legends, outside of competitive, is a game that completely disregards individual skill. In every POSSIBLE gamemode that you can play, the SBMM has been cranked so high since season 17 that you are guaranteed to sweat your BALLS off in public matches. The skill distribution of the playerbase, much like most things in life, can be modeled with a bell curve. In pubs, mixtape, or whatever mediocre gamemode that respawn cooks up in the future, that curve remains the same. For above average or even far above average players, every pub match feels like a ranked diamond game, the days of streamers going into a trios match solo and dropping 25 kills is gone - Now getting a game with 15 kills and barely edging past 3000 damage is a herculean task, and let’s not even go into how you will fight 3 stacks even if you are solo queuing.
A rarely discussed problem is the effects SBMM has on the average player - they don’t get to have fun too. In their lobbies where most players should be around the same skill level, players who improve would most likely win, and good for them! Now they are placed in higher tier lobbies, where they will immediately get put down by 3 stacking controllers. Surprisingly, this is actually not fun, as their legitimate improvement has given them maybe 2 rightfully won matches. SBMM ensures that the skill gap is kept at a minimum, no matter how much time you spend improving. From the shareholder’s perspective, this is good because it means everyone gets a similar experience playing the game, no matter their skill level, but the fact is a lot of people, even casuals, don’t play games passively, because getting GOOD is desirable, and everyone wants to improve in some way. SBMM takes away the feeling of success from improving by actively punishing people for doing so. The current matchmaking really only benefits the absolute worst players in the game - gamer dads who sit on their couch with drool all over their controllers.
Here’s an anecdote: I have a friend who’s a real gold MnK player, and we simply cannot enjoy pubs together because if I play on my main account for a supposedly casual gamemode, I will have to consistently 1v3 masters players and she gets instakilled every single fight - the only way for us to play together and have some resemblance of fun is if I smurf in ranked on my alternate account, which is not actually a good thing.
Well, pubs suck ass, guess I’ll go play ranked. Not so fast! It’s even worse.
Respawn has simply fucked up the ranking system for 21 seasons straight, 21 (with half a split done correctly in S13) seasons back to back is incompetence so impressive that you might have to respect it, try fucking up ANYTHING in 21 different ways yourself! Ranked is a completely different experience compared to competitive, which only harms the competitive scene since the act of thinking about rotations does not exist even in Pred. How can a gold player understand what the pros are doing without relearning the entire game?
What’s worse is: Players now EXPECT ranked to be a certain way - basically pubs with entry costs, existing diamond players would expect to be diamond every season, platinum players would expect to be platinum, and so on. It’s easy to blame them for being “bad and not knowing it”, as some have said when people complained about season 13 for “rewarding ratting”. But can you really blame them? Ranked has been like that the entire time they have played the game. The very basis of ranked itself is terrible, with rank now a function of time - just look at the ranking distributions, every other competitive game regardless of genre gets it right, with even overwatch having figured out full stacking in high elo isn’t good, and have solo/duo queues.
Alright, I’ll go get 2 other dudes to 3 stack ranked together… anddd we just got rolled by cheaters. There’s really not much to say about the cheating situation in Apex - The security team is most likely overworked but that does not change the result: they have failed. The simplest change - blocking the chaining of .cfg files somehow took a dozen seasons to do, with the same change done on r5 first, a game maintained by around 5 people. Efforts in banning cheaters are also very much biased towards NA, if you play in Asia or Europe, good fucking luck.
Alright, guess we’d go to NA, play on 250 ping on our smurfs to avoid the cheaters in dia… the meta is fucking garbage. This is the least of the complaints, since this is just topical and will change in the future, but as of right now, this is the worst meta the game has ever been in. As I’ve said, the devs are aware that aim assist is OP, but they don’t have the balls to nerf it (JayBiebs tried really hard to gaslight us otherwise, but alas nothing has happened), so they nerf tracking weapons that are “good on roller”, gutting the R9 and the CAR, buff burst guns and clicking weapons, introducing a good amount of powercreep in the process - simply imagine disruptors on a PK 10 seasons ago, everyone regardless of input would scream about how doing 130 damage in 1 shot is terrible.
The legend meta is equally terrible, Respawn has said many times that they use data to balance the characters, which is a terrible way of balancing things, and is a confession of a lack of vision for the overall game. A game designer with any sort of competency and vision would realize a character with 2 movement abilities, and 75 extra health on tap, knocks and even ASSISTS would be staggeringly unfair, yet we have revenant. Previous metas have also shown the same lack of vision - Gibby was meta for far too long, with no serious attempts in nerfing him, cat/seer combo being allowed to even exist at all, and the dominance of Bangalore in competitive has also very much overstayed its welcome.
What makes all of this so frustrating is that the core game of Apex Legends is incredible, we’ve seen how good it can be with old pubs, season 13 ranked, and the thrill of a good competitive match, but that potential is endlessly squandered. Even Respawn occasionally shows sparks of brilliance - laser sights, EVO changes, perks, all incredible changes that proves at least ONE dev knows what they are doing, yet the end result continuously gets worse. This isn’t some flavor of the month FPS that will die soon from bad fundamentals, this is no Finals or XDefiant, this is the opposite, a game lovingly crafted with strong fundamentals bogged down by one bad decision after the other.
Notice how I didn’t mention the monetization changes?
Written 18.07.2024