*Another pre-season 1 thought piece that I have finally found the time to get done. Like the last article, I believe a lot of these things have not been changed yet and is still relevant to the game today. I will start to release more timely posts now that I have freed up some time.
Apex Legends is such a fun game to play, but the emphasis on team gameplay harkens me back to my days playing competitive Overwatch…in the worst possible way. The refusal for people to want to play as a team and make such boneheaded decisions makes me wonder: what makes most of these players suck? I think I have identified at least 4 reasons as to why:
1. Playing Fortnite and Apex is hard.
I've been saying this since day 1: Fortnite players can't really play other games. The mechanics around building and shooting are so unique to Fortnite that it simply cannot translate into skill in other games. A Fortnite player's first reaction when getting shot or shot at is to build their own cover. In Apex, the slide mechanics are largely unfamiliar concepts especially if they never played Titanfall or any of the parkour based Call of Duty games. So most people will hesitate. This gets a lot of players killed. Another thing I've noticed is that people do not understand the power that doors have in this game when fighting in close quarters. Most people I play with just found out you can kick down and open and close doors while down! Apex is chess played blindly: when running into every fight, you have to approach every situation differently based on factors such as your team composition, whether or not you know who's on the enemy squad, whether that team used their ultimate's, things of that nature. This requires strategizing on a level that is beyond building, and I see a lot of my Fortnite friends struggle with this and generally react slowly.
2. People don’t (or care to) understand the mechanics of Apex.
Apex is so damn polished (besides the crippling lag) that there's a lot of nuanced things in the game that to this day I'm still learning about. Most people don’t really care to understand how the Legends work and how they can be used to provide a lot of value to a squad. three examples I can think of is Wraiths passive, Pathfinders survey beacon and Caustics traps. People just completely forget that pathfinder can locate the next circle before anyone else, which can be an incredible asset in later rounds as the circle gets smaller and less predictable. Wraiths passive essentially makes her the defacto lookout, but most people keep the voices in her head to themselves. Caustics traps are hilarious to me because, like Mirages clones, they are something that is so avoidable but lands them frags because it's hard to keep track of them in the heat of battle. Being aware of these things would fundamentally change how people team fight today.
3. Most people stick to one player (I’m guilty of this)
I think people find their favorite legend too quick in this game and just play them into oblivion. This is a fatal mistake as you only learn how to play the game through the lens of one person. By playing everyone, you learn how to play against them when the time comes. League of Legends had a similar problem upon release with its champions, but now that there are literally hundreds of champions available to choose from, its easier to switch your preferences on the situation. This mindset would improve the skill of the normal player a lot.
4. We live vicariously through our favorite pros and streamers
This actually applies to every godamn Battle Royale game and it drives me insane. I get it, Shroud is incredibly good and we would all love to have the aim and mechanics that he possesses. But were not Shroud; we shouldn’t aim to be a copy of them. We get so obsessed with emulating tactics that we become Great Value versions of our favorite player. What makes these players great isn't just their mechanics, but also their decision making and the tendency to make the right decision instead of the fatal one. Though streamers regularly let people peek inside their mind to analyze their play-style, it’s the people that find another way to be great that get to their level.
A combination of these four things usually what leads to a lot of quick deaths in this game. Though the game is paced fast like call of duty it requires a level of finesse that doesn’t go well with a tunnel vision mindset. I do believe that players can and will get better, but only through the emphasis of team gameplay and some critical thinking when things go left.