Hear me out here. Not trying to brag but I am an above average player. I have 700 hours in the game since release, and several thousand lifetime kills, and when I first started playing Apex the game felt like it really rewarded me for my time. It was the first FPS I’d played on PC in 5 years and I was dog shit looking back on my old footage. My aim was garbage, positioning was terrible and my movement looked like a dog was operating my mouse more-so than a human. But the more I invested in the game in regards to movement, aim, positioning etc, the better I felt I became. Most really good competitive games behave this way. More time invested = better results. This doesn’t stop in video games though, it applies to IRL things as well. I would not expect to beat Lionel Messi, or LeBron James In their respective sports because I have not invested the kind of time they have. Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a game of basketball with my friends though. This is how most competitive games work.
Apex, however, seems to be moving farther and farther away from respecting the time I put into it. They remove bhopping so all the time I spent learning to bhop is negated. Not a big deal I guess, I wish it was still in the game but I understand it wasn’t an intentional system. Then we get season 2 and the oppressive longbow meta. Now we feel like anyone can pick up a gun, and with almost zero time invested can “outplay” someone who has really dedicated lots of time to getting good at the game. Muzzle flash is another example of this. I’ve Spent so much time working on my aim, working on my tracking and flicks, and then the game seems to spit in my face because all that effort I invested doesn’t mean anything since I happen to be in a dark environment.
From there things seem to keep getting worse. I invest time in playing a certain character and they nerf them. They create hitscan snipers that any moron can pick up and beam someone with across the map. no matter how much time you have in the game, sometimes there’s no counter play to that. Then they make the PK easy to use, and I see low level players that have little time invested into the game are able to “outplay” even super high level players (literally watch any of Aceu’s vods while the PK buff was active) just because they get lucky dropping on one gun.
I realize this community can be super harsh to the devs, especially the competitive community, but it’s because we love this game, and I personally sometimes feel like Respawn doesn’t really care that I put hundreds of hours of my life into this game, I can’t even imagine how the players that have put thousands of hours of their lives just to feel like they can get beaten by anyone who gets lucky enough to find a certain gun. I think what I’m trying to say is that I understand why the casual community wants the game to be a level playing field, but I think for the game to have a healthy lifespan Respawn really needs to make sure they reward time invested into the game. They need to make the people who are going to be putting huge chunks of their life into this game don’t feel abandoned or ignored, especially now that they’ve announced their competitive series. We love your game, and we love what your game has the potential to be, but right now the game has a lot of growing to do.
*Edit for structure. Also, you are entitled to your opinion, if you like the state of apex then all power to you. I am just voicing my personal opinion and the opinion of some of my friends.
