For those few who take the time to read this, let me state two things before going into this I-hope-it-will-not-be-too-long essay.
First off, I want to make clear that this is my opinion. If you happen to disagree with me, I would love to hear about it. Second; I'm not advocating that the game has been the best since launch in terms of balance, servers, perfomance, or gameplay. I do believe that balancing in season 2 has had a much improved fine-tune with the introduction of smaller hop-ups, making formerly trash weapons in some cases less trash (mozambique and p2020 for example) and together with some nerfs, the gap between the OP and trash has been shrunk down a bit. It is, however, sad to see that the servers have made such a major downturn in season 2.
On to the main topic, player base. The quality of a game is not solely dependent on gameplay or balance, but also on who plays it. The people you play with have influence on how fun the game is. However, to understand fully what I'm thinking about, lets look at the state of the BR genre and the other BR games being played the most these days.
After some time of one BR overtaking the other, and many smaller BR's dying as fast as they became popular, the BR scene has stabilized in terms of popularity so far. At this point, I consider 3 BR games to be those that are still played with a larger stable playerbase; FortNite, Apex, and PUBG. I will also include Blackout, but more on that later on. Let's look at these games more closely to understand the place Apex is in.
First off, we have FortNite. FortNite is, unarguably, the most popular BR to date, and has been for most of the time since its release, in terms of Twitch views, playerbase, and revenue. However, it could also be said that the game is still suffering from that same popularity. Popularity allows developers to create, under the right circumstances, a competative scene for the game. Popularity and competition draws those players to the game that some (and I dare to say many of us) do not wish to play with all the time; kids, toxic tryhards, and toxic tryhard kids. This paragraph is spoken out of pure personal experience as a former LoL player with several permabanned accounts.
Next we have PUBG. PUBG was really the first BR that took off in terms of popularity. While PUBG did stay very popular for quite some time, it could not keep up with the insane hit the BR genre was going to become before other BR's took the scene. Because of, but not limited to, its many bugs and wonky gameplay, it really pushed casual players towards other games once other alternatives came up. Once the casuals left, only those devoted to the game remained, which, in PUBG's case, meant a lot of toxic people. I came back to it a while ago, it sure is toxic compared to Apex.
Then we have Blackout. Blackout never really had the popularity necessary to attract players outside of its usual player base. Not to mention CoD has been doing very poorly the last couple years, with BO4 being a big improvement compared to the garbage of the years before. So, those who still play Blackout are just those who play CoD to being with, and I say we should keep it that way.
Now, we just have Apex left. It is not too popular, not too old, has a solid playerbase and aside from the underperformance of servers in season 2, its a fun game. FortNite's popularity draws the kids and competative away, PUBG keeps its cult, and Blackout the CoD players, so who are we left with?
The casual players.
Rarely do I encounter a screeching kid or a raging asshole. Most of the time its just people who want to have fun. I do think we have more hackers on average than other BR's, but I haven't really been that bothered by them as there sure have been a lot less of them than there used to be (except China servers, RIP). Now not to say we don't have the aforementioned players, but we sure do have a lot less of them than the other BR's. Therefore, by my reasoning, Apex is the best BR, in terms of playerbase.
