I know everyone hates SBMM right now but I think it's good to reflect back on some of the quality of life improvements we've had since launch to appreciate things. I know some of these took a long time to implement but they still listened to community feedback and implemented a lot of things within the first year of launch.
- All the new charms, emotes, dive trails, etc are actually really cool. Plus they added the community suggestion of reskinning guns
- More configuration options (Controller sensitivity in boxes, auto run, getting kicked out of death boxes, individual ADS sens)
- Reworking fast heal to make gold armor viable and adding gold backpack which adds some strategy to rezzing. Plus finishers are actually useful now too!
- Buffs to bloodhound, caustic, gibby, and mirage. Even though none of them are OP it at least brought their power levels up slightly. Plus the fortified bonuses on our thic bois
- Hitbox adjustments, remember how bad OP pathfinder was? So happy to be gone from the swiss cheese days
- More apex packs with the new level 500 system which added a ton of free unlocks
- Inviting teammates from last match, remember how after a match was done you couldn't try to group up?
- New guns, havoc, charge rifle, and lstar. Although launched with mixed issues (lstar being trash and charge rifle being too OP) it's still new guns added to the game. Plus new hop ups as well adding to some different dynamics.
- Way less cheaters, they do seem to come and go in waves but its been a while since I've gotten destroyed in b2b2b games by cheaters. Remember how terrible it was at lunch? As much as we complain about SBMM, I'd much rather go up against a 3 stacked streamer team than the mess of cheaters at launch
- Map changes, although good and bad we've had a lot of tweaks so far. With bridges / cascades rework, wraith labs, octanes playground, now the new map and mirages voyage. Some were good and some less good but it's still been changes over time and respawn is growing so hopefully it'll happen more frequently moving forward
- Disconnects at the start of the game. Remember how if your game didn't load fast enough you just got dropped? Sure there's still code nets (especially this week) but its still way better than it was at launch.
- New game modes, ranked has been a lot of fun, singles/duos were a blast, and the train mode is pretty fun. Hopefully respawn will adjust their plans to have more parallel game modes/maps but at least it shows they're willing to try out new modes. I have faith we'll get singles and duos back in the future with some rework (remember as great as singles was, landing was kind of a cluster fuck with so many individual people)
- The cinematic videos, the lore, the trailers, it's all been incredible. Seriously, hats off to the marketing/story/graphic teams for making it so much fun seeing each trailer and teaser roll out.
I know i know, SBMM ruined the game, the game is dying, blah blah blah. It's easy to hate and spread negativity but at the end of the day this is a free game and a lot has been changed since launch. There will always be good and bad when changes come around but I'm pretty pumped to see what happens for 2020.
Side note: Respawn said it takes 1-2 years to create a new map and that worlds edge was started back in '18 before launch so low key I really hope that means the kings canyon team would've started map #3 as soon as the game launched so maybe mid 2020 we get another new map more akin to kings canyon again =D Probably too much hope but hey! tis' the year to be positive!