(Repost) Why do most Apex players suck?

*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.

(Repost) About those apex packs, part 1

*I wrote this post about a month into my time with Apex, and is still relevant, with the exception that Respawn/EA did decide to release lower-priced skins. Sort of. I look forward to them fixing this in season 2 and I will evaluate at the end of the season* 

Apex packs are interesting to me because they are what I consider a value microtransaction. At the same time, they are pretty terrible and promotes massive grinding if you decide to not spend money. Let's explore both sides of the coin.  

A value micro-transaction is an item that when purchased, gives you a reason to spend money in a way that is natural. League of legends pioneered this with their skins, which not only were cosmetic but granted different effects and also different animations to go with it. Arcade Riven is a good example of this. Apex packs are a value microtransaction because they give you reasons to buy. Apex packs have guaranteed loot rarity depending on certain factors. For example, every 30 packs (though it has been debated if there is a chance that one can even not get this) guarantees a legendary item. Also, each tier has a specific percent chance of obtaining as well and you can never get a duplicate item. Combining these three things mean that more often than not, you can get some dope stuff. What's more is that by simply opening more apex packs, you are lowering the amount of common and rare items to be obtained, which means that you will start to get what you want as you spend. Of course, every legend, gun, and loading screen item has about 10-25 different variants, so it would still take quite a bit of money to get everything. As if to throw salt in the wound, they will feature legendary skins in the item shop that you can purchase for the low price of…1800 Apex Coins, which translates into 20 dollars since you cannot purchase specifically 18 dollars worth of coin (100 Coins = 1 Dollar) 

Don’t get me wrong, I love apex a lot. I love how polished the game is and how focused the developers are towards fixing the few balancing problems the game has. But I think in order for items to be a fun grind to obtain and for EA to extract maximum profit from their microtransactions, there needs to be a reimagining on how you get in-game items.  I have what I think would be an optimal solution to the issue and it's pretty simple: Higher base crafting material, lowering of prices, and an expansion on the usage of legend tokens. Currently, crafting material is used solely to be able to buy skins (fact check) as well as purchase banners, quips, poses, phrases, and stat trackers. Legend tokens are used only to buy Legendary variants in the store (which is ingenious!) and legends. Higher crafting material means that it would be more rewarding to buy apex packs s which would spur sales. Expanding the use of legend tokens for the other legend cosmetics would give people something to buy. It is pretty easy to stockpile legend tokens since it only costs about 36000 Legend tokens to purchase all of the currently locked legends. Legendary variants don’t come often for most people since you need the legendary skin first in order to purchase the variant with legend tokens. By expanding the number of things to buy, people will have fewer legend tokens, which mean they will be incentivized to get apex coins! Lastly, lowering the price of legendary items to 800 coins instead of 1800 would spur A LOT of purchasing. In order to make up for this, you can offer a higher tier legendary skin which has cooler visual effects ie: league of legends skins. I think these changes will make apex irresistible for its core fanbase, which is how Fortnite became the money-making behemoth it is today.  

(Repost) Early Access promotes greed from developers (sometimes)

Let's take a trip back to 2008. The first real beta I played was Call of Duty: World At War. It was a fun experience playing a game that I was looking forward to. Since I was 13, I didn’t really understand the concept of a beta and why it existed; I just wanted to play the game. Betas for games were mostly feedback tools that were used to find out the problems with a game, as most people left feedback and the developers solicited the feedback from the players (especially in closed betas). That, combined with constant patching and balancing, leading to a game experience that was always top notch. Games such as League of legends which instituted patches every 2 weeks also brought a level of stability due to the fact that the community was invited to test future updates early and give their feedback. Even though I didn’t always agree with some of the changes, I knew that they came from a place of player input and feedback.

Betas have since transformed from being a way to test out a game before release and give feedback to now being an opportunity to play an anticipated game before release. Some devs will even give access to betas only if you pre-order the game, which turns the whole process into a money grab. While this is annoying, this can be mitigated by simply just waiting until the full release of the game and buying it then. 

Now, let's fast forward to 2018. Betas have since remained unchanged, but there seems to be more of an emphasis on the closed beta, which allows for more genuine feedback. Public betas remain as a way to access a game early, but the popularity of the Steam Store on PC has spawned a new genre of testing and exposing games to the public prior to release: Early access. Early Access is a hybrid of both testing a game by having gamers play it constantly to provide feedback, as well as give people that believe in the game an opportunity to play the game before its final release. This is great for developers since you avoid a lot of QA by having people test for free and provide (or complain about the game) free feedback. This model worked flawlessly until a game called H1Z1 was released. H1Z1 is a zombie survival game (as if there isn’t enough of those) which also had a Battle Royale component called King of the Kill (or KotK for short). The game had extensive use of cosmetic items that can be bought and traded for steam store credit, and the popularity of KotK lead to many people, including myself, buying into this early access. It was a win-win for everyone…until you ran into the bugs.

Boy did this game have a lot of fucking bugs. But its early access right? This would be an acceptable excuse if the developers actually paid attention and fixed the bugs when they were reported. But they didn’t. For years. Which leads to the second fundamental flaw of early access: since devs already took peoples money, they have little to no incentive to fix their games flaws since they made money so quickly and profited even more off of the cosmetic microtransactions. Combined with the fact that the game stayed in early access for years, it leads to an aggravating experience and one that soured the taste of many gamers. But many just accepted this since it was early access. But after what amount of time does a game become less early access and more paid beta experience ala Star Citizen? Well, apparently the answer is it is in Early access indefinitely because since the battle royale (KotK) and survival modes (Just survive) have been split off into separate games and put into early access until further notice. This has opened up the entire battle royale genre open to being taken over by games such as PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BattleGrounds (PUBG), which has essentially cannibalized at least half of former H1Z1 players. Last year, Epic Games (of Gears of War and Unreal Engine fame), decided to throw their hat into the genre by releasing Fortnite, which, like H1Z1, has two components: a survival game mode which has a price, but also a free to play battle royale game mode. Also like KotK, it is in early access and in many ways surpasses the H1Z1 in terms of the quality of the product. Let's break it down:

Fortnite Battle Royale automatically misses a lot of criticism that might be aimed in its direction because of the fact that it was free to play. However, it makes up for this due to the fact that its survival mode does cost money (though itself is also in early access) and because of the skins. And boy, do they have skins. What's more is that there are a lot of aspects that give the impression that the game is actually complete. This includes:

1. A tiered system for getting a handful skins and emotes, with the option to buy a "battle pass", which introduces a separate paid tiered system which unlocks exponentially more skins and emotes not available normally
2. A season structure that gives you a set time to unlock all rewards mentioned above (and more microtransactions to help gain the aforementioned paid tiers quicker)
3. Seasonal items which match holidays
4. Special game modes
5. Heavy game advertising
6. A heavy focus on getting streamers to play 

But yet, it is still hidden behind this screen:

Sounds familiar to kotk right? Cause it is. And just like daybreak (h1z1 developers), Epic games is milking the money train for all it is worth. Getting feedback on the game is such a low priority, that the button to leave feedback is so incredibly easy to miss.

And just like kotk, there are bugs on top of bugs in the game. The most egregious of which being double-pump shotgun bug. This bug allows you to switch to another gun and fire immediately, making pump shotguns into very effective killing machines. Combined with the fact that pump shotguns do incredible amounts of damage at mid-life range, means that this bug essentially turns fights within 30 meters of enemies into a flurry of jumping and spamming weapon switches.

I call it a bug because you should not be able to shoot a gun immediately after taking it out. Even call of duty recognizes this. This can be simply fixed if you simply introduce a second of delay when switching weapons to fire. But epic won't do this. Why? Because streamers love it. Because it has become part of the game. It reminds me a lot of another gameplay changing mechanic from, ironically, another Epic Games game: Gears of War. 

Gears of War had the wall bounce, which took advantage of the cover mechanics and quick reflexes in order to traverse a map really quickly. The side effect of wall bouncing is that it made the Lancer an n00b weapon and made the shotgun the default gun to use in the game due to the fact that you can use wall bouncing combined with the cover mechanics to close the distance between you and an assault rifle user very quickly. Back then, Epic balanced this out by having power weapons on the map as well as the sawed-off shotgun in gears of war 3, which completely countered wall bouncing by making it near impossible to kill up close without being instakilled by the gun (fuck that gun). In fortnite, there are no such counters. One may argue that you can simply use an assault rifle, but the counter to that is to simply rush an enemy by building in front of yourself to absorb bullets. This combined with the double pump also turns the game into a shotgun fest. 

These are all issues that can be fixed but won’t. The priority for Epic is to keep making as much money as possible since people are buying skins at insane rates. And why should they care if people are still buying into the game? I mentioned this in my video rant on the same topic, but there are two ways that this game can avoid the same fate that H1 suffered from. The first is to STOP BUYING SKINS. When you keep buying 20 dollar skins and paying more than that for V Bucks, you create an incentive for the devs to….make more skins. And not fix bugs. It’s called voting with your wallet. The second thing you can do is to provide feedback on the game. The game is early access, so treat it as such. Use the feedback button. Report bugs that you find so they can fix them to make the game we want to see.

**UPDATE**

When I originally wrote this post, everything j said was true. However, by the time I published the post, Epic games has changed the game in a lot of ways, including bringing up the game's performance on the console to match that of pc, as well as increase the delay between switching weapons to being able to shoot, which has eliminated the double pump exploit. This has made the game a much more enjoyable experience and I'll give Epic their props for making changes. However, this does not invalidate my thesis on early access games or how it can be a money grab. Especially with all the new 20$ skins being released. But hey, progress is progress. I still hate shotgun damage though (not the use of them, but how inconsistent the damage is).

(Repost) Season 2: An obituary

Lets see if I can get all my old posts out the way in a timely fashion*

Just a couple thoughts about the last season: 

1. Solo mode. I have a separate post about the nuances of the solo mode trial, but ill just say here that I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Maybe this could be a solo game after all. 

2. The map changes made Kings Canyon more fun. A lot of the places of interest in Kings Canyon were badly designed and were either destroyed or altered drastically in season 2. These changes kept the game fresh and gave people some new options on where to land. I’m curious to see if they alter the new map the same way seeing that its a drastically bigger map. 

Not very compelling. Those crafting metals tho!

3. I don’t really care about the battle pass. Mostly because the skins offered are TRASH. Y’all gotta try harder to make me open my wallet. I still haven’t bought the season 3 pass cause there isn’t that one item that I want to grind for. In fortnite, when they started to add music packs and dances that I wanted, it gave me a reason to do challenges and play every day. I love apex, but I don’t love it THAT much

Proof that a wall doesn’t solve every problem.

4. Watson is beyond useless. Caustic and Gibby are cumbersome, but they have utility and can move around in a fight a lot while using their abilities to maximize their utility to the team. Watson...just builds walls and ults. That’s it. Even Lifeline has more utility due to her tiny hitbox which allows her to engage an enemy very aggressively while also having proper time to heal up if it gets rough. I cannot make a case for playing Watson when her usefulness is limited to such niche situations in a firefight. I actually have a lot more to say about Wattson, but ill leave that for another post.