And can't be helping in terms of killing the game. Like c'mon bro. I haven't played in a year but I personally don't like that he did that, ive been wanting to get back to apex. This all just sucks 😞
For me a major turning point was when Apex Legends stopped dropping lore trailers and adding tidbits in the game around lore. It was exciting to figure out what Bangelores story was, why the syndicate was after Crypto, etc. Combine that with these videos dropping hints about new characters, their abilities, etc. resulted in a lot of talk online about what was coming, which build up hype, which resulted in people flocking to a new season to see how these things they had been speculating about for weeks, turned out. And then the lore continued in game... Now all the lore is found on twitter, which a lot of the player base doesn't follow. Also as you say... they're trying to create excitement for new skins? That might appeal to a tiny fraction of the player base. Why would someone who plays the game for the fun of the game, be interested in what skins they want. Sure its not unimportant, it's the lifeblood that keeps the game free to play (many people seem to forget that tidbit when they complain about skins), but it's not what brings players to your game. No-one plays apex because OF the skins, the skins are just really cool to a segment of the player base that has fallen in love with the game. Though there is a counter argument, because even before they moved away from costly production of lore videos and lore content, the game was already getting more sweaty and it was already harder and harder to retain the less skilled player base. At that point SBMM is the only tool they have to retain casual players, which is a system universally hated by the top players. So I can kinda understand they're focus shifted to the existing player base that is sticking around, and then their current marketing strategy does make more sense.
Yeah, it's funny when I end up playing randomly with a pro/sweat and they always say that their games are always the same for them and always just as difficult, no difference between a 3KD and a 6KD lobby. So I'm wondering, let's say there were 2 million Apex players, and 100,000 of them are able to get 4k 20 badges and have over 4KD. And maybe 200,000 have 1.5-3KD, another 200,000 have less than 0.6KD, the other 1.5 million players all averaged 0.7-1.5. Since the 4+KD guys are always just going against other 4+KD all the time, why can't they just play together? why does my 0.7KD self always have to be in these guy's lobby. I feel like EBMM could work, if it followed certain parameters like keeping players that have no business playing against pro/sweats, out of pro/sweat lobbies. These example numbers are what I feel the game was a couple years ago. I think it's now more like 50,000 pro/sweats with over 3KD and a few hundred 0.7-1.5KD like myself and I don't know if the super casual
I couldn't agree more. When I started playing back in Season 7 and crossing over to Season 8 when Fuse debuted - I was so pumped up for the destruction his arrival caused. Every time they released a new legend, weapon, or map update, we'd get another thread to pull at, more of the story to explore and widen the lore. Skins that came out made sense for what happened in the story. Voicelines didn't feel like quips because they just happened to know each other, but they were furthering the storyline even more. I remember when they were doing Rev Reborn, and they released little mini-sodes every few day, I was super hyped. It was the lore returning to form! The story was interesting, the animations were awesome - and they released a game mode that was a bit half-baked but super goofy and fun and just something DIFFERENT! The thing was, the story lead up to Rev getting his head and "being his own controller", so now he's Red-eye Rev and... that's it. They didn't follow up further. Loba and Rev continue to snipe at each other and hate each other. But nothing ever really came of Duardo's death, or Rev getting his head. It just was like "story complete"... I think one of the driving factors that made the lore great was that it was interesting to see what was happening "behind the scenes", so to speak - where Caustic was trying to find a cure for his cancer or the love stories of Loba, Bangalore, and Valk. To see what the legends were doing when they weren't competing in the games. We wanted to see how they grew as people - that despite the fact that they're legends, they do have interests outside of competition and the occasional spat. Instead, many seasons later, Mirage is still hinting that Newcastle is actually Jackson but trying to poorly keep his secret... when I'm pretty sure everyone and their mother knows who he really is by now.
it’s GENUINELY depressing how a game this good ended up so poorly because of uper management like I HATE battle royals whit a capital H yet this is different this is flat out fantastic to play and feels great for a couple of games every now and again but god so many dumb decisions and horrible practices has led this game here
Honestly.. i mean, at the peak of it’s popularity it could have been a far better game than COD.. 1: come up with a free to play, revolutionary, inclusive co-op game mode, then off the back of BR/co-op success, release a full on triple A game on shop shelves with an amazing campaign (like titanfall 2 but better with all the lore and story to take advantage of), multiplayer modes, BR and co-op… bang, COD is dead.. but no, the EA suits just wanted to milk the popularity rather than build on it
No, that's not true. A game focused on casuals will likely die quicker unless it's huge like FN. The reason is that casuals move quickly to whatever is hyped. A game focused on pros has longevity if it has a strong competitive community. Think of CS or Dota 2. A game that flip flops between both is jack of all trades, master of none. Apex is exactly this. Respawn loves to cater to both at different times, and that just doesn't work. The game needs to be strongly balanced towards competitive play because it's already sweaty. Now embrace your pro players, bring orgs back and invest heavily in the competitive scene.
@@swiftrealm Dead by Daylight, DBX, Warframe, DC Universe, and Warhammer are games that are casual yet performed just as well or even better than Apex did in its prime. I do agree that most casual games tend to die off, but the same argument can be made for competitive games. What keeps a game alive is the "fun factor." Whether a game is competitive or casual, if you're logging in and feeling miserable, you're going to move on to something else. Why would anyone keep spending money on something that isn’t fun? Fun is subjective, but I think we can all agree that over time, Apex became less enjoyable for both casual players and competitive ones. Instead of trying to revive the game's appeal, the developers focused on monetization-especially with the gambling-like mechanics. Sometimes, you might have to spend $200 just to get what you want. Yes, it’s a free-to-play game, so they can monetize it however they want, but if players are already frustrated with the game, this kind of monetization can be the final nail in the coffin. It doesn’t matter whether a game is casual or competitive-what truly matters is if it’s enjoyable and respects your time.
Only people who can’t afford to spend $40 at a time have this take.. people cried about about content and all this stuff for the game to upgrade to, but people cry the moment a FREE game needs $20 for a battle pass..
@@zRepLaY it’s not about the price. It’s about the embracing of predatory practices. To me it just showed the priority of respawn had shifted from the game itself and to extracting as much money as possible from its base.
@@zRepLaY this may be one of the worst takes I see about monitization. Yes they can charge whatever they want for their product and yes it's free, but $20-$40 is the price of whole games. What actual value are we getting? Recolored skins? The return of older game modes? They took away arenas for some reason. I would actually support them with my money if they were transparent and gave a crap about real content. The community can only ever react to balance changes and skin events.
@@TheZerothousand I get it, I’m jus saying do we not feel like they would give us more if we actually supplied the game with money, like Fortnite and epic was
This. Doesn't really matter how or why it feels that way but the end result is it feels like a constant grind. Maybe it just needs to not be a BR anymore but fundamentally it needs to make it so casuals can feel like they have a chance/fun. It flat out doesn't matter what the pros think or if it's dumbing down.
This is one of the main reasons IMO. New players just cannot learn the game when you have what the game thinks are low levels being ultra confident blind pushing you hitting every bullet. Or PC cheaters boosting their low level friends.
I returned to play apex after a year of not playing. One thing I noticed is the queue time is a lot longer than before. The game also feel super sweaty, even after I took a break for a year
same here, I wasn't able to play with my friend for 9-ish months and just last Thursday we came back, and duos is 100% unplayable, it takes, at the very least, 30 minutes to get a match and in trios, they are extremely sweaty
@@apollyon4578 I play in Singapore server, duos is totally dead. I have to move server if I wanna play duos. Even trios, it took time to just play one match
I tried playing today after a week and couldn't get into a single game, not even TDM or Control. The freedom the game offers is something that's killing the game, a lot of sweaty Octane and Horizon players ruining every lobby is just unfair.
you’ve spent so much time on apex and look at it now you deserve respect along with other RUclipsrs who played it taking their time away to play it I wish things to change for the better
They could have solved the oversaturation of the loot pool the same way PUBG did, specific weapons only spawn on specific maps and this rotates every season. This also makes the game a little more interesting as playing a new map has that bit of extra variety to it. But EA is incompetent.
Literally been saying this for years at this point. Specific pools or some kind of lotto at the beginning that could choose variants of weapons would make things feel so much fresher
@@3ericwthis is a great idea and there are 100s more layups and interesting experiments that they are just too slow, greedy and lazy to execute properly, or even try in the first place. They don’t listen to their players
It all started with heirloom recolors. Seriously, there were so many heirlooms at 1 point, players who hit level 500 deserved a guaranteed pack. Unfortunately EA only cares about money and not Apex.
Nailed it. I left overwatch 2wks after Apex launch and played Apex every single week roughly 20hr per week until September 2023 when I quit. I have not played one minute since then. Why? I loved ranked but after they made it so difficult for a solo player to climb, it ruined it for me. Then they took away Chem trails for diamond players. They were intentionally making the game less fun and less rewarding psychologically.
Exactly and that’s also when the introduced the stupid Akimbo guns and Changed pubs to the Relic boxes for 80 days maybe a week or two not the hole time I want to play regular Apex not relic Apex
Over the years I gave apex a lot of chances but man what killed this game for me is the matchmaking , getting matched with level 500s and a lot of them just being complete trash somehow, goodbye apex
playing for a long time (level 500) doesnt necessarily make them good tho, take league of legends for example theres are casuals stuck in silver/gold for a literal decade
Personally for my friend group, apex died around season16(dont know when was that) the game felt repetative , cheaters/smurfs are rampant , sbmm was very hard when we played together, us 3 can barely get to gold and were somehow VS 3 stack preds tap-strafing in our face+ as a PC player getting shti-on by controller player doing move-techs with steam macros or whatever they call it soured the game for us so much that us casuals who could only play 1-2hrs every night after work started to play less apex till we completely stopped when that cursed battle-pass changes was announced. Its a shame that apex is a online only game and will die frfr once EA decides to shut it down, atleast we will remember this game till we die probably. Hope the devs finds a way to make apex great again.
No, the actual downfall was the release of season 10. The focus became on balancing at that point. The release of Seer and the beginning of devs listening more to pro players rather than their core audience
I think you’re spot on! My friends and I used to get so excited for new trailers, new content. There’s nothing new. They make changes slowly and add nothing new because, like you said, they’re so worried about balancing everything.
For me, Apex' downfall began the moment a second collection event came out. "People bought into the shitshow that was the Iron Crown Collection event? The community is actually cool with this new one? Ah, so we're taking *THAT* route... Great."
Every failed game, every cynical choice by gaming companies, is one more example of why crony capitalism is leading us down a path no one is going to like.
Absolutely spot on points Merchant. I really think if they did their old routine of high quality lore videos and good trailers actually hyping the player base up that alone would go towards helping somewhat.
Its like they are stuck in a cage with multiple buttons with one being able to open it. And we r yelling at them the correct button but they still cant open it.
i stopped playing in summer 2022 when it felt like i couldn't play casually and still win or do well. i'd have to wait in queue for at least 2-3 minutes, get through all the pre-game screens, land, and immediately die because i'd get a crate with a level 1 evo and a level 1 shotgun bolt and the dude next to me would get a gun with high burst damage. when i realized i was spending more time in the menu waiting to play than actually playing, that's when i noticed the game wasn't fun anymore
The true death of apex is the matchmaker. Picture this: As an casual player - that plays for *fun(!)* - you go into a round of mixtape. You have fun. You run towards the enemy spawn. Now you get insta beamed for 200 damage from an enemy you don't even see. This happens 20 times in a row. Then you finally get a beam of ~140 on someone, they survive with ~1hp and now you get aped by 2-5 of his teammates, that come out of nowhere and beam you from all directions. No audio. Not visible clue they where there. What do your teammates do? One is afk. One runs around and does not do any damage. Someone disconnects. Two teammates already leave the round. The rest of them go solo getting beamed and killed instantly. Round lost 20/40. - at max(!) or even lower counts. This happens 3 times in a row ---> *I quit the game.* Same thing in BR. But instead of getting quick rounds, we run around for 15 minutes, not finding anyone and the first enemy we see beams us like they use some kind of aimbots. No Audio. No Visual indicator they were there. Sometimes they even beam us through walls, the floor or even closed doors.
I like how you highlighted that the game truly has had an unbelievable amount of content in the last year or so, and the issue is not the lack of content or over monetization. But in fact the communication and transparency of that with the player base. We got a final fantasy event that everyone loved with the sword and materias and everything, and now we got that event back which is really cool but the issue is they just come across as advertising skins rather than gameplay and I don't understand how they don't understand that that is not the way to go 😂
i felt that something was wrong, but never could pinpoint what exactly it was, until they released the season 1 event. playing that was so much fun. i wish things went back the way they were
Although s16 didn't bring a new character, it brought many quality changes and i remember playing it really felt refreshing for one season to finally adress those issuses. So i'm gonna say it was the general neglect of the game and the majority of the player base's requests. Eg. Tick rate, audio issues, cheaters, 3 issues that were a issue from the first day
The ironic part is, that the audio was better during pre-season or season 1. The audio got worse due to an update, and the reason why it got worse was because of xbox one and ps4 was lagging with that audio, so they kinda buffed the audio in order to prevent lag on ps4. Problem was, this also affected pc players with good hardware and had nothing to do with console players (and honestly, just because it was "better", it was never good to begin with). Audio issues is something i genuenly believe that they will never fix, i stopped hoping for it atleast since season 7. Because you have to remember that this is source engine, and audio for the most part works great on source engine when it gets applied to smaller maps (like counter-strike maps), but when a map get scaled incredibly big as in Apex, an out-dated engine will struggle to balance its audio and where to prioritize what sound to play in the middle of a chaos. I feel bad for the audio designer at respawn, because at this point, the know that the audio in this game is bad due to all the criticism. And even after all that, it's kind of a clear indication now that it's something that they cannot just "fix", because if they could, they would. So these employees sits there with a big burden on their shoulders, not being able to do anything to fix the issues, but just accepting what it is and how it is. Must be a horrible experinece to be an employer and not being able to utilize your full potentional due to an engine being the "bottlenecker". So as someone who quit apex now in december/january, it feels so refreshing to play The Finals. The engine itself feels so modern with a battlefield kind of atmosphere, the audio isn't perfect in my honest opinion (imaging specifically, soundstage is on point), but compared to Apex? Whole other universe. And as a free to play, it doesnt feel like the game tries to force you to spend money on the game, you can literally buy a sick skin once and apply it to all of your classes. You want new sights and new abilities? You have to grind for it, you cant spend IRL money on it. And when i jump back from The Finals to Apex, the game feels like it got released in 2012. The only reason why Apex felt refreshing in 2019, was because it was kind of a middle-ground between PUBG and Fortnite. It was faster paced than pubg and felt more arcade than pubg, but it also looked and felt more mature than Fortnite (less kids and more grown-ups playing it).
You're not wrong. I quit for like two full years and when I came back I felt like so little had changed. The problem with balancing is that you become closer and closer to "solving" the game. You can have the same plan every game, know exactly which guns you're looking for, know what to expect from other teams, and so basically you know how each game will go, beginning to end. Imagine an Apex where there are 10 more weapons and 10 more legends. People would stop running the same kits every game because they would be harder to find, and fights would have more variety because you'd less expect what you're going to be fighting, assuming it remains relatively balanced. But I don't think proper balance is the issue. I do think they prioritize balance, but I don't think they do it well. Instead of a shifting meta of 4-6 legends and 2-4 guns, why not make everything viable? They lack creativity and innovative ambitions. It's just anything to keep the wheels turning. People think the game is dead because Respawn acts like the game is dead. It's not. It's dying slowly and has been for a while. They could flip the script any season, even now, still. $o why wouldn't they
Facts! Fixing the game the way the pros an content creators want the game to be. They don't think about the casual players who play the game for fun an not money.
Not sure what season it was, but Apex lost my group when they made the changes to the shield. We felt it made the sweats even sweatier and took out the randomness of each match.
Not enough people realise this. They think lower RNG and higher TTK is better (largely cause vocal sweats/streamers want to be able to hot drop and stomp without a care in the world). But the whole point of a BR is to balance looting and surviving with the other aspects of the game.
@@edwardchester1 Yeah, I always felt it was stupid to make the shields different. Instead of buffing the loot pool of armour on the map they took the lazy way out by letting players start with tier 1 armour. At Battle Royale feels nice when you have to find loot to survive, not already start with it.
The removal of ARENAS basically made every deticated arenas players to just leave the game entirely, I know ppl that played apex specifically fpr arenas, they killed the whole arenas community for no reason...
I don't know why this isn't more people's take, the game literally peaked right before they removed arenas and started sliding downhill immediately afterward.
Personally it was Season 7 for me that started the decline. Very subtle but that was the starting point, and the OG Respawn team members starting to leave.
I used to be hype for the character trailers knowing that the creators from love death robots made them. It just showed how much passion they had back then
The game right now is actually fun, other than even public lobbies being sweaty, the relics (like the throwing knife in trios and duos) the new perks and e district, it feels really fun to play again. But I get bored a lot quicker than before
People stop playing because everyone plays these games now like there's £1m on the line. Tried playing with a friend who is new to the game and he just cannot figure it out, keeps getting pushed non stop by level 5s hitting every shot.
a weapon and character would never bring me back only a very different way to play apex would a completely new experience based on the gun and core gameplay anything else is just chasing what will never return (the excitement we had yrs ago)
I think it started when it became clear they were never gonna fix the games issues and things like cross progression were gonna take so long the point of having it was gone. When these things were not addressed by season 6 (which I think was rampart) that was when my thinking shifted from this is fun, to this is hopeless and a skin farm
i played apex for the first time in a year just an hour or so ago after being a die hard apex fan. its genuinely indescribable how much i loved the game, and yea you’re completely right. i kinda had fun but idk, it all seems like a cash grab rn. especially with them releasing the wattson nessie-onesie skin (that people have been making concept art of for literal years) only now and as a level 40 battle pass skin so they know people will first pay, then play enough to get it.
Imagine they made a series on the outlands and lore, that could boost players and maybe help with adding legends too and potentially getting creators involved too somehow
The irony is they would’ve made sooooooo much more money if they actually listened to their playerbase and made coherent decisions that would retain and attract new players in producing a quality game.
You just know there's one person in the back of the office meeting just eating an apple all smug like saying "yall should have listened when i said we need more fun content" lol
myself and the guy I duo with just don't play pubs, it's just so, so bad in terms of matachmaking that we usually play a few mixtape games, then go straight into ranked
in simple terms, we went from entertainment to product. NGL, i'd kinda argue that the downfall started with the Iron Crown event. That was the start of the end, where it was clear they cared more about the $ than anything else.
So much this. As the first sign of killing the fun, this was it. And people forget just how long this was before they finally "balanced" Wraith, the most boring character ever in the game.
The numbers are really bad right now because they did too little for TOO long. They acted like doing the minimum wouldn’t permanently bleed players. So you know what, they dug their own grave.
I played with a group of 9 boys. Everyone doesn’t want to come back bc of the hacking situation. There’s definitely a bit of group-think between everyone, but I think it deserves a shout
The game got frustrating for me because I couldn't play as often as sweat players, meaning my skill level didn't keep up, and the game I loved just became harder because the players still playing got too good for me to continue. When the casuals leave, the game dies, since we're the majority of the player base.
The downfall of apex will always be not having the nuts to make BIG and drastic changes just like Fortnite does. They’re not afraid to completely change major aspects of the game and that’s what keeps it fresh and keeps people coming back. That will forever be apex’s downfall
The moment it started was when they showed how little they actually cared about the lore and made the comics without any character voiceover instead of fun side quests and amazing cut scenes that gave you immersion into that universe. It didn't start "dying" at that point but that was the turning point where the company decided that they didn't have to make a good game they just had to sell it, because they already had a good game. From there the foundations on which Respawn built Apex Legends on were undermined by EA and their greed, without the stability of that "make games for gamers" mentality we were thrust into a repeating cycle of bad corporate decisions and new skins pushed down our throats, everything goes tumbling down a mountainside from there.
This is the same route Ubisoft took with Rainbow Six Siege where instead of giving us a new map and 2 characters with unique weapons every season, we are getting just one character with a recycled gun and that's not even every season because we would have seasons with character reworks insteads, that with the massive cheating issues on both console and PC have made Siege a dying game for the past 3 years...
Funnily enough, I actually quit Apex for good about a month after Feb 14th 2023. Although, my reason for leaving was less content drought (but that was defs a factor) but because the game was literally taking a toll on my mental and physical health. Being constantly stressed out and raging and sweats or teammates was not good for me at all, and I wasn't having any fun either. Nearly 2 years on since quitting, I haven't looked back on this dying game.
I've been playing CS for almost 10 years... and when I say CS I mean de_dust... ok, later on de_dust2... since CS has these shiny new skins and weapons and maps I quit... I love apex for being constant
It all circles back to not enough additional content. Apex kind of dug itself into a hole by prioritizing competitive integrity as that caps what kind of content you can add over the long-term.
3:47 it's almost like the pro scene created by tryhards in a fun game ruin the whole thing huh? a lot of games could learn from this mistake and avoid it entirely.
It seemed like most people were relatively happy until they started tampering with the ranked system. I'd say that's what really started the downward spiral. They changed(ruined) the ranked system like 6 seasons in a row. I say that as someone who hardly ever touched ranked, too.
I think apex died when the game shifted from lore-based content to just about any random-theme based content in their eagerness to sell more skins. Remember when everyone wanted the Voidwalker skin or Mirage's heirloom? Because they looked cool, no doubt, but also because they had us invested in those characters. The Wraith STFO was so damn good, it got our emotions worked up. It's the same with Loba, or some of the later legends, until it just became secondary to tell a good story and maintain the constant development of the lore through those videos or even those amazing in-game events or easter eggs. They hardly even care about telling a story now, and when they do come out they seem pretty uninspired.
Been playing since Season 0... almost 6 years of non-stop gaming. My best friend and I have watched every LAN, pushed for high ranks and kills every season, and watched streamers play non-stop. The game now feels like a money grab and unenjoyable. I get on about every other day to get the badges from "new" events, but other than that the game feels extremely dead. I tried to queue up for a pub last week and it took me 12 minutes. Heartbreaking as an OG fan.
Apex started dying when they made those silent SBMM changes a week or two before one of the season changes... like Q2 or Q3 2023? Anyway, for me and a LOT of other casual gamers I know that play maybe 4-10 hours a week went from maybe win 2-3 rounds per night to getting put in with sweat stain lobbies every single round. I think they completely betrayed the mid range players like me and all my friends. And all they have left now is the odd newbie that still hasn't tried to game that will most likely not play it in the long run and the people that have invested so much in the game only for Respawn to ruin everything for them. 1200+ hours since launch to when we all stopped playing it.
They lost me when they ruined the face of the game. Wraith. How I miss her... but I will never play this game ever again. Shoutout to Aceu as well, man made me feel emotions like no one when he would play Apex.
When anything new is released, I am the one who goes through the patch notes immediately and relays all the important information to my friends. Without gameplay trailers and lore updates, they really don't look up anything else and I don't blame them. Hype is really important for game updates right now. Most other popular games have better marketing that increases interest, not just informing people of new things to buy.
Still love the game, but can't play it for the long periods that I used to because it's just exhausting how sweaty lobbies are. Marvel Rivals has been scratching the itch for me of a casual experience where you genuinely decide how sweaty and serious the game is for you.
Leaving Apex was like kicking a bad addiction. Yeah, the ride is fun while you're on it, but when you get off, you realize how bad the drug really was. It made gaming miserable. Ever since I've stopped playing, I've had more fun gaming again.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
damn using marvel clips for an apex video is nasty work. 🤣
lol I barely remember him taking about apex
And can't be helping in terms of killing the game. Like c'mon bro. I haven't played in a year but I personally don't like that he did that, ive been wanting to get back to apex. This all just sucks 😞
That'd y it's dead
Apex sucks
😂😂 da funny part is the hype around Marvel Rivals wont last 5 years
For me a major turning point was when Apex Legends stopped dropping lore trailers and adding tidbits in the game around lore. It was exciting to figure out what Bangelores story was, why the syndicate was after Crypto, etc. Combine that with these videos dropping hints about new characters, their abilities, etc. resulted in a lot of talk online about what was coming, which build up hype, which resulted in people flocking to a new season to see how these things they had been speculating about for weeks, turned out. And then the lore continued in game... Now all the lore is found on twitter, which a lot of the player base doesn't follow.
Also as you say... they're trying to create excitement for new skins? That might appeal to a tiny fraction of the player base. Why would someone who plays the game for the fun of the game, be interested in what skins they want. Sure its not unimportant, it's the lifeblood that keeps the game free to play (many people seem to forget that tidbit when they complain about skins), but it's not what brings players to your game. No-one plays apex because OF the skins, the skins are just really cool to a segment of the player base that has fallen in love with the game.
Though there is a counter argument, because even before they moved away from costly production of lore videos and lore content, the game was already getting more sweaty and it was already harder and harder to retain the less skilled player base. At that point SBMM is the only tool they have to retain casual players, which is a system universally hated by the top players. So I can kinda understand they're focus shifted to the existing player base that is sticking around, and then their current marketing strategy does make more sense.
Yeah, it's funny when I end up playing randomly with a pro/sweat and they always say that their games are always the same for them and always just as difficult, no difference between a 3KD and a 6KD lobby. So I'm wondering, let's say there were 2 million Apex players, and 100,000 of them are able to get 4k 20 badges and have over 4KD. And maybe 200,000 have 1.5-3KD, another 200,000 have less than 0.6KD, the other 1.5 million players all averaged 0.7-1.5. Since the 4+KD guys are always just going against other 4+KD all the time, why can't they just play together? why does my 0.7KD self always have to be in these guy's lobby. I feel like EBMM could work, if it followed certain parameters like keeping players that have no business playing against pro/sweats, out of pro/sweat lobbies. These example numbers are what I feel the game was a couple years ago. I think it's now more like 50,000 pro/sweats with over 3KD and a few hundred 0.7-1.5KD like myself and I don't know if the super casual
I couldn't agree more. When I started playing back in Season 7 and crossing over to Season 8 when Fuse debuted - I was so pumped up for the destruction his arrival caused. Every time they released a new legend, weapon, or map update, we'd get another thread to pull at, more of the story to explore and widen the lore. Skins that came out made sense for what happened in the story. Voicelines didn't feel like quips because they just happened to know each other, but they were furthering the storyline even more.
I remember when they were doing Rev Reborn, and they released little mini-sodes every few day, I was super hyped. It was the lore returning to form! The story was interesting, the animations were awesome - and they released a game mode that was a bit half-baked but super goofy and fun and just something DIFFERENT! The thing was, the story lead up to Rev getting his head and "being his own controller", so now he's Red-eye Rev and... that's it. They didn't follow up further. Loba and Rev continue to snipe at each other and hate each other. But nothing ever really came of Duardo's death, or Rev getting his head. It just was like "story complete"...
I think one of the driving factors that made the lore great was that it was interesting to see what was happening "behind the scenes", so to speak - where Caustic was trying to find a cure for his cancer or the love stories of Loba, Bangalore, and Valk. To see what the legends were doing when they weren't competing in the games. We wanted to see how they grew as people - that despite the fact that they're legends, they do have interests outside of competition and the occasional spat.
Instead, many seasons later, Mirage is still hinting that Newcastle is actually Jackson but trying to poorly keep his secret... when I'm pretty sure everyone and their mother knows who he really is by now.
I think management thinks having a lore/cinematics department is a waste of money. Blizzard removed theirs in Overwatch, so EA/Respawn followed suit
it’s GENUINELY depressing how a game this good ended up so poorly because of uper management
like I HATE battle royals whit a capital H yet this is different
this is flat out fantastic to play and feels great for a couple of games every now and again
but god so many dumb decisions
and horrible practices has led this game here
Honestly.. i mean, at the peak of it’s popularity it could have been a far better game than COD.. 1: come up with a free to play, revolutionary, inclusive co-op game mode, then off the back of BR/co-op success, release a full on triple A game on shop shelves with an amazing campaign (like titanfall 2 but better with all the lore and story to take advantage of), multiplayer modes, BR and co-op… bang, COD is dead.. but no, the EA suits just wanted to milk the popularity rather than build on it
The moment developers focus on catering to pro players and not the fan base is when a game begins to go downhill
No, that's not true.
A game focused on casuals will likely die quicker unless it's huge like FN. The reason is that casuals move quickly to whatever is hyped.
A game focused on pros has longevity if it has a strong competitive community. Think of CS or Dota 2.
A game that flip flops between both is jack of all trades, master of none. Apex is exactly this. Respawn loves to cater to both at different times, and that just doesn't work. The game needs to be strongly balanced towards competitive play because it's already sweaty. Now embrace your pro players, bring orgs back and invest heavily in the competitive scene.
@@swiftrealm
Dead by Daylight, DBX, Warframe, DC Universe, and Warhammer are games that are casual yet performed just as well or even better than Apex did in its prime. I do agree that most casual games tend to die off, but the same argument can be made for competitive games. What keeps a game alive is the "fun factor."
Whether a game is competitive or casual, if you're logging in and feeling miserable, you're going to move on to something else. Why would anyone keep spending money on something that isn’t fun? Fun is subjective, but I think we can all agree that over time, Apex became less enjoyable for both casual players and competitive ones. Instead of trying to revive the game's appeal, the developers focused on monetization-especially with the gambling-like mechanics. Sometimes, you might have to spend $200 just to get what you want.
Yes, it’s a free-to-play game, so they can monetize it however they want, but if players are already frustrated with the game, this kind of monetization can be the final nail in the coffin. It doesn’t matter whether a game is casual or competitive-what truly matters is if it’s enjoyable and respects your time.
based
@@swiftrealm shut up tsm fanboy
@@swiftrealm spoken like a true bronze player
Apex legends officially died when the first milestone event released
Only people who can’t afford to spend $40 at a time have this take.. people cried about about content and all this stuff for the game to upgrade to, but people cry the moment a FREE game needs $20 for a battle pass..
@@zRepLaY it’s not about the price. It’s about the embracing of predatory practices. To me it just showed the priority of respawn had shifted from the game itself and to extracting as much money as possible from its base.
@@zRepLaY this may be one of the worst takes I see about monitization. Yes they can charge whatever they want for their product and yes it's free, but $20-$40 is the price of whole games. What actual value are we getting? Recolored skins? The return of older game modes? They took away arenas for some reason. I would actually support them with my money if they were transparent and gave a crap about real content. The community can only ever react to balance changes and skin events.
@@TheZerothousand I get it, I’m jus saying do we not feel like they would give us more if we actually supplied the game with money, like Fortnite and epic was
Post malone event
The amount of sweats in that game ruined it for me. I have plenty of wins but damn every single fight is a tournament
This. Doesn't really matter how or why it feels that way but the end result is it feels like a constant grind. Maybe it just needs to not be a BR anymore but fundamentally it needs to make it so casuals can feel like they have a chance/fun. It flat out doesn't matter what the pros think or if it's dumbing down.
That's what makes the game fun, I don't want to play against players who can barely shoot back. Cheaters roaming free for months didn't help Apex.
This is one of the main reasons IMO. New players just cannot learn the game when you have what the game thinks are low levels being ultra confident blind pushing you hitting every bullet. Or PC cheaters boosting their low level friends.
It started at the PK recolor
Honestly it was the Bloodhound skin. THAT was the downfall.
Which skin@@The_Wither_Skull
@@joelongreen1313 Heirloom tier skin. People thought it was gonna be like 40-60$ at max.
@@joelongreen1313 the gladiator one
That """heirloom""" legit made me stop giving respawn money altogether. Maybe it was for the better...@@The_Wither_Skull
I returned to play apex after a year of not playing. One thing I noticed is the queue time is a lot longer than before. The game also feel super sweaty, even after I took a break for a year
same here, I wasn't able to play with my friend for 9-ish months and just last Thursday we came back, and duos is 100% unplayable, it takes, at the very least, 30 minutes to get a match and in trios, they are extremely sweaty
Honestly the queue time and the amount of tryhards and cheaters ruined going back after a year or so without playing.
@@apollyon4578 I play in Singapore server, duos is totally dead. I have to move server if I wanna play duos.
Even trios, it took time to just play one match
I tried playing today after a week and couldn't get into a single game, not even TDM or Control.
The freedom the game offers is something that's killing the game, a lot of sweaty Octane and Horizon players ruining every lobby is just unfair.
@@shinyyordle9233no way... I havent played in a year and Ive been wanting to hop back on. This makes me sad
you’ve spent so much time on apex and look at it now you deserve respect along with other RUclipsrs who played it taking their time away to play it I wish things to change for the better
They could have solved the oversaturation of the loot pool the same way PUBG did, specific weapons only spawn on specific maps and this rotates every season. This also makes the game a little more interesting as playing a new map has that bit of extra variety to it. But EA is incompetent.
Literally been saying this for years at this point. Specific pools or some kind of lotto at the beginning that could choose variants of weapons would make things feel so much fresher
They aren’t incompetent.. they’re just greedy and lack any creativity
@@3ericwthis is a great idea and there are 100s more layups and interesting experiments that they are just too slow, greedy and lazy to execute properly, or even try in the first place. They don’t listen to their players
It all started with heirloom recolors. Seriously, there were so many heirlooms at 1 point, players who hit level 500 deserved a guaranteed pack. Unfortunately EA only cares about money and not Apex.
Nailed it. I left overwatch 2wks after Apex launch and played Apex every single week roughly 20hr per week until September 2023 when I quit. I have not played one minute since then. Why? I loved ranked but after they made it so difficult for a solo player to climb, it ruined it for me. Then they took away Chem trails for diamond players. They were intentionally making the game less fun and less rewarding psychologically.
But why play a team game solo? I’ve nearly solo queued to master this season. I’m D1. But it is tough and you do get some useless teammates
@@phantasticmrphasma9874 cause people can choose to play team game solo,and there is nothing wrong about it
I’m shocked you didn’t mention the splitting of the battle pass into 2, that’s the day I finally logged off and haven’t been back since
Same, I can relate
That was when the casual community spoke out. The day 1 apex players have been dealing with this for a long time.
Exactly and that’s also when the introduced the stupid Akimbo guns and Changed pubs to the Relic boxes for 80 days maybe a week or two not the hole time I want to play regular Apex not relic Apex
cant agree more
Same. This is when I logged off and haven't been back
Over the years I gave apex a lot of chances but man what killed this game for me is the matchmaking , getting matched with level 500s and a lot of them just being complete trash somehow, goodbye apex
playing for a long time (level 500) doesnt necessarily make them good tho, take league of legends for example theres are casuals stuck in silver/gold for a literal decade
I mean that’s a poor description of why their matchmaking is terrible, but your point stands.
I just realized how long I’ve been out of the game when you said Lona and mirage feel overpowered.
Same I had to google what they did with my girl loba
@@isaacdempster1315she is the number one wanted legend now
Personally for my friend group, apex died around season16(dont know when was that) the game felt repetative , cheaters/smurfs are rampant , sbmm was very hard when we played together, us 3 can barely get to gold and were somehow VS 3 stack preds tap-strafing in our face+ as a PC player getting shti-on by controller player doing move-techs with steam macros or whatever they call it soured the game for us so much that us casuals who could only play 1-2hrs every night after work started to play less apex till we completely stopped when that cursed battle-pass changes was announced.
Its a shame that apex is a online only game and will die frfr once EA decides to shut it down, atleast we will remember this game till we die probably. Hope the devs finds a way to make apex great again.
I’ve spent some great years on apex fr
No, the actual downfall was the release of season 10. The focus became on balancing at that point. The release of Seer and the beginning of devs listening more to pro players rather than their core audience
The moment they recycled winter express for the third damn year in a row was the year I deleted the game and never looked back
I think you’re spot on! My friends and I used to get so excited for new trailers, new content. There’s nothing new. They make changes slowly and add nothing new because, like you said, they’re so worried about balancing everything.
They aren’t worried about that, that’s just their excuse.. they’re understaffed and underfunded now.. EA have sucked the lifeblood from respawn
For me, Apex' downfall began the moment a second collection event came out.
"People bought into the shitshow that was the Iron Crown Collection event? The community is actually cool with this new one? Ah, so we're taking *THAT* route... Great."
Solos was more important.
EA does not care.
Every failed game, every cynical choice by gaming companies, is one more example of why crony capitalism is leading us down a path no one is going to like.
"your boos mean nothing - ive seen what makes you cheer."
Wubba lubba dub dub
Absolutely spot on points Merchant. I really think if they did their old routine of high quality lore videos and good trailers actually hyping the player base up that alone would go towards helping somewhat.
I stopped playing Apex when that final fantasy 7 crossover happened, it was easy to tell that once they released universal heirlooms that was it.
Its like they are stuck in a cage with multiple buttons with one being able to open it. And we r yelling at them the correct button but they still cant open it.
i stopped playing in summer 2022 when it felt like i couldn't play casually and still win or do well. i'd have to wait in queue for at least 2-3 minutes, get through all the pre-game screens, land, and immediately die because i'd get a crate with a level 1 evo and a level 1 shotgun bolt and the dude next to me would get a gun with high burst damage. when i realized i was spending more time in the menu waiting to play than actually playing, that's when i noticed the game wasn't fun anymore
I should have quit fully then cause that was indeed the vibe even back then. It kinda stopped being actually fun within a year or two of its release.
The true death of apex is the matchmaker.
Picture this:
As an casual player - that plays for *fun(!)* - you go into a round of mixtape. You have fun. You run towards the enemy spawn. Now you get insta beamed for 200 damage from an enemy you don't even see. This happens 20 times in a row. Then you finally get a beam of ~140 on someone, they survive with ~1hp and now you get aped by 2-5 of his teammates, that come out of nowhere and beam you from all directions.
No audio. Not visible clue they where there.
What do your teammates do?
One is afk. One runs around and does not do any damage. Someone disconnects. Two teammates already leave the round. The rest of them go solo getting beamed and killed instantly. Round lost 20/40. - at max(!) or even lower counts.
This happens 3 times in a row ---> *I quit the game.*
Same thing in BR. But instead of getting quick rounds, we run around for 15 minutes, not finding anyone and the first enemy we see beams us like they use some kind of aimbots. No Audio. No Visual indicator they were there.
Sometimes they even beam us through walls, the floor or even closed doors.
I loved playing this game and I haven't touched it in years. Like you said a distant memory. Send this video to a friend in denial fr LOL
When the OG devs left
I like how you highlighted that the game truly has had an unbelievable amount of content in the last year or so, and the issue is not the lack of content or over monetization. But in fact the communication and transparency of that with the player base. We got a final fantasy event that everyone loved with the sword and materias and everything, and now we got that event back which is really cool but the issue is they just come across as advertising skins rather than gameplay and I don't understand how they don't understand that that is not the way to go 😂
Ngl marvels looks so boring to watch in comparison to Apex. Say what u want about Apex but still the best game mechanics I've ever seen in fps.
The true downfall was the release of the Final fantasy 7 event
If it wasnt dying before, that was the nose dive point
and the funny thing is they're bringing it back - with nothing changed - for the next event. it's almost insulting
Your commentary is always so thoughtful and well produced. I completely agree. Good work.
i felt that something was wrong, but never could pinpoint what exactly it was, until they released the season 1 event. playing that was so much fun. i wish things went back the way they were
Although s16 didn't bring a new character, it brought many quality changes and i remember playing it really felt refreshing for one season to finally adress those issuses. So i'm gonna say it was the general neglect of the game and the majority of the player base's requests. Eg. Tick rate, audio issues, cheaters, 3 issues that were a issue from the first day
X2
The ironic part is, that the audio was better during pre-season or season 1. The audio got worse due to an update, and the reason why it got worse was because of xbox one and ps4 was lagging with that audio, so they kinda buffed the audio in order to prevent lag on ps4. Problem was, this also affected pc players with good hardware and had nothing to do with console players (and honestly, just because it was "better", it was never good to begin with).
Audio issues is something i genuenly believe that they will never fix, i stopped hoping for it atleast since season 7. Because you have to remember that this is source engine, and audio for the most part works great on source engine when it gets applied to smaller maps (like counter-strike maps), but when a map get scaled incredibly big as in Apex, an out-dated engine will struggle to balance its audio and where to prioritize what sound to play in the middle of a chaos.
I feel bad for the audio designer at respawn, because at this point, the know that the audio in this game is bad due to all the criticism. And even after all that, it's kind of a clear indication now that it's something that they cannot just "fix", because if they could, they would.
So these employees sits there with a big burden on their shoulders, not being able to do anything to fix the issues, but just accepting what it is and how it is. Must be a horrible experinece to be an employer and not being able to utilize your full potentional due to an engine being the "bottlenecker".
So as someone who quit apex now in december/january, it feels so refreshing to play The Finals. The engine itself feels so modern with a battlefield kind of atmosphere, the audio isn't perfect in my honest opinion (imaging specifically, soundstage is on point), but compared to Apex? Whole other universe. And as a free to play, it doesnt feel like the game tries to force you to spend money on the game, you can literally buy a sick skin once and apply it to all of your classes. You want new sights and new abilities? You have to grind for it, you cant spend IRL money on it. And when i jump back from The Finals to Apex, the game feels like it got released in 2012. The only reason why Apex felt refreshing in 2019, was because it was kind of a middle-ground between PUBG and Fortnite. It was faster paced than pubg and felt more arcade than pubg, but it also looked and felt more mature than Fortnite (less kids and more grown-ups playing it).
You're not wrong. I quit for like two full years and when I came back I felt like so little had changed. The problem with balancing is that you become closer and closer to "solving" the game. You can have the same plan every game, know exactly which guns you're looking for, know what to expect from other teams, and so basically you know how each game will go, beginning to end.
Imagine an Apex where there are 10 more weapons and 10 more legends. People would stop running the same kits every game because they would be harder to find, and fights would have more variety because you'd less expect what you're going to be fighting, assuming it remains relatively balanced.
But I don't think proper balance is the issue. I do think they prioritize balance, but I don't think they do it well. Instead of a shifting meta of 4-6 legends and 2-4 guns, why not make everything viable?
They lack creativity and innovative ambitions. It's just anything to keep the wheels turning. People think the game is dead because Respawn acts like the game is dead. It's not. It's dying slowly and has been for a while. They could flip the script any season, even now, still. $o why wouldn't they
i think the downfall of apex was when they started competing professionally and a lot of them complained and apex made changes for the pro players …
Facts! Fixing the game the way the pros an content creators want the game to be. They don't think about the casual players who play the game for fun an not money.
Like when they changed the golden shield so that you can’t revive yourself 😢
Not sure what season it was, but Apex lost my group when they made the changes to the shield. We felt it made the sweats even sweatier and took out the randomness of each match.
Not enough people realise this. They think lower RNG and higher TTK is better (largely cause vocal sweats/streamers want to be able to hot drop and stomp without a care in the world). But the whole point of a BR is to balance looting and surviving with the other aspects of the game.
@@edwardchester1 Yeah, I always felt it was stupid to make the shields different. Instead of buffing the loot pool of armour on the map they took the lazy way out by letting players start with tier 1 armour. At Battle Royale feels nice when you have to find loot to survive, not already start with it.
Nailed it. I left around that time due to terrible servers and matchmaking
The removal of ARENAS basically made every deticated arenas players to just leave the game entirely, I know ppl that played apex specifically fpr arenas, they killed the whole arenas community for no reason...
Half of that community were just bots and cheaters
Arenas just wasn't popular enough, they never did anything with that mode.
I don't know why this isn't more people's take, the game literally peaked right before they removed arenas and started sliding downhill immediately afterward.
Personally it was Season 7 for me that started the decline. Very subtle but that was the starting point, and the OG Respawn team members starting to leave.
I feel like ever since Jason McCord left the game went down hill
Imho the downfall began when the 99 went in the package
I used to be hype for the character trailers knowing that the creators from love death robots made them. It just showed how much passion they had back then
The game right now is actually fun, other than even public lobbies being sweaty, the relics (like the throwing knife in trios and duos) the new perks and e district, it feels really fun to play again. But I get bored a lot quicker than before
It started when they changed the animation for the trailers I fear 😔😔
People stop playing because everyone plays these games now like there's £1m on the line. Tried playing with a friend who is new to the game and he just cannot figure it out, keeps getting pushed non stop by level 5s hitting every shot.
If they had an option for pc mnk only comp ladder id come back in a heartbeat.
yeah JMeyels has been talking about in game tournaments and so on; that would be awesome
a weapon and character would never bring me back
only a very different way to play apex would
a completely new experience based on the gun and core gameplay
anything else is just chasing what will never return (the excitement we had yrs ago)
In the right hands Apex could easily return to peak levels; its such a good game at its base. The opportunity is in there hands, I believe.
Now they've got an ingame post asking for feedback on what they can do to improve lol
The Titanfall franchise can just never catch a break.
It's not less characters and weapoms. It's 100% EOMM and allowing cheaters to run rampant. That's it. The only two things they needed to fix
Funny thing is I'm enjoying apex alot more lately. Now when I solo que I actually get atleast one good teammate.
The amount of lore that Apex legends built up is crazy...
Only for them to not expand upon it... insane work from respawn.
I think it started when it became clear they were never gonna fix the games issues and things like cross progression were gonna take so long the point of having it was gone. When these things were not addressed by season 6 (which I think was rampart) that was when my thinking shifted from this is fun, to this is hopeless and a skin farm
i played apex for the first time in a year just an hour or so ago after being a die hard apex fan. its genuinely indescribable how much i loved the game, and yea you’re completely right. i kinda had fun but idk, it all seems like a cash grab rn. especially with them releasing the wattson nessie-onesie skin (that people have been making concept art of for literal years) only now and as a level 40 battle pass skin so they know people will first pay, then play enough to get it.
Imagine they made a series on the outlands and lore, that could boost players and maybe help with adding legends too and potentially getting creators involved too somehow
Here is how it happened, here is how the batman died.
The irony is they would’ve made sooooooo much more money if they actually listened to their playerbase and made coherent decisions that would retain and attract new players in producing a quality game.
No town takeovers, no new legends, but lots of gambling events...
You just know there's one person in the back of the office meeting just eating an apple all smug like saying "yall should have listened when i said we need more fun content" lol
myself and the guy I duo with just don't play pubs, it's just so, so bad in terms of matachmaking that we usually play a few mixtape games, then go straight into ranked
“Biggest decline in battle royale history”, bro never heard of H1Z1
😂😭😭 sad but true
H1z1 sucked, the only battle Royale more unique than apex was the culling which TRULY had a worse downfall then both H1Z1 and Apex.
@@cairnethunderhoof6225 nah but the culling was super unique an lit when it came out can't lie loved the hunger games feel
It was never popular enough to have a big decline.
in simple terms, we went from entertainment to product.
NGL, i'd kinda argue that the downfall started with the Iron Crown event. That was the start of the end, where it was clear they cared more about the $ than anything else.
The decline happened when they messed with pathfinder’s grapple
So much this. As the first sign of killing the fun, this was it. And people forget just how long this was before they finally "balanced" Wraith, the most boring character ever in the game.
The new characters carried most of the hype when it comes to new seasons for me
The numbers are really bad right now because they did too little for TOO long.
They acted like doing the minimum wouldn’t permanently bleed players. So you know what, they dug their own grave.
The shields and abilities thing ruined it for me. Should’ve kept it simple man
Apex has rotted like a corpse in the sun, and EA is just sniffing it up.
I played with a group of 9 boys. Everyone doesn’t want to come back bc of the hacking situation. There’s definitely a bit of group-think between everyone, but I think it deserves a shout
You really pinpointed it well.
I used to play apex a lot but got bored of it because there was no new content to make the game fun 😔
The game got frustrating for me because I couldn't play as often as sweat players, meaning my skill level didn't keep up, and the game I loved just became harder because the players still playing got too good for me to continue. When the casuals leave, the game dies, since we're the majority of the player base.
The downfall of apex will always be not having the nuts to make BIG and drastic changes just like Fortnite does. They’re not afraid to completely change major aspects of the game and that’s what keeps it fresh and keeps people coming back. That will forever be apex’s downfall
Biggest Decline in BR History? Let me introduce you to my old friend Warzone. 😂😂
For me it was the removal of the self revive from the gold knock down shield and matchmaking. The game went from being fun to sweaty.
people underestimate the power of marketing. Great video!
The moment it started was when they showed how little they actually cared about the lore and made the comics without any character voiceover instead of fun side quests and amazing cut scenes that gave you immersion into that universe. It didn't start "dying" at that point but that was the turning point where the company decided that they didn't have to make a good game they just had to sell it, because they already had a good game. From there the foundations on which Respawn built Apex Legends on were undermined by EA and their greed, without the stability of that "make games for gamers" mentality we were thrust into a repeating cycle of bad corporate decisions and new skins pushed down our throats, everything goes tumbling down a mountainside from there.
This is the same route Ubisoft took with Rainbow Six Siege where instead of giving us a new map and 2 characters with unique weapons every season, we are getting just one character with a recycled gun and that's not even every season because we would have seasons with character reworks insteads, that with the massive cheating issues on both console and PC have made Siege a dying game for the past 3 years...
Funnily enough, I actually quit Apex for good about a month after Feb 14th 2023. Although, my reason for leaving was less content drought (but that was defs a factor) but because the game was literally taking a toll on my mental and physical health. Being constantly stressed out and raging and sweats or teammates was not good for me at all, and I wasn't having any fun either. Nearly 2 years on since quitting, I haven't looked back on this dying game.
For me, it was when they removed arenas. I loved that mode so much and came back only for it but once they removed it I was gone.
I've been playing CS for almost 10 years... and when I say CS I mean de_dust... ok, later on de_dust2... since CS has these shiny new skins and weapons and maps I quit... I love apex for being constant
CS has been around for over 25 years in various forms. Dust and dust2 are two different maps. Stopping making out like you're the OG.
Honestly 5v5 arenas set in the apex world would be so much fun it has all the necessities to be huge
It all circles back to not enough additional content. Apex kind of dug itself into a hole by prioritizing competitive integrity as that caps what kind of content you can add over the long-term.
3:47 it's almost like the pro scene created by tryhards in a fun game ruin the whole thing huh? a lot of games could learn from this mistake and avoid it entirely.
The decline started in season 8 with the issue of servers and how your ping would tank
It seemed like most people were relatively happy until they started tampering with the ranked system. I'd say that's what really started the downward spiral. They changed(ruined) the ranked system like 6 seasons in a row. I say that as someone who hardly ever touched ranked, too.
Meaningful balance changes are necessary, but they have to come alongside fun new additions.
I think apex died when the game shifted from lore-based content to just about any random-theme based content in their eagerness to sell more skins. Remember when everyone wanted the Voidwalker skin or Mirage's heirloom? Because they looked cool, no doubt, but also because they had us invested in those characters. The Wraith STFO was so damn good, it got our emotions worked up. It's the same with Loba, or some of the later legends, until it just became secondary to tell a good story and maintain the constant development of the lore through those videos or even those amazing in-game events or easter eggs. They hardly even care about telling a story now, and when they do come out they seem pretty uninspired.
it started for me when they removed arenas
Been playing since Season 0... almost 6 years of non-stop gaming. My best friend and I have watched every LAN, pushed for high ranks and kills every season, and watched streamers play non-stop. The game now feels like a money grab and unenjoyable. I get on about every other day to get the badges from "new" events, but other than that the game feels extremely dead. I tried to queue up for a pub last week and it took me 12 minutes. Heartbreaking as an OG fan.
Apex started dying when they made those silent SBMM changes a week or two before one of the season changes... like Q2 or Q3 2023?
Anyway, for me and a LOT of other casual gamers I know that play maybe 4-10 hours a week went from maybe win 2-3 rounds per night to getting put in with sweat stain lobbies every single round. I think they completely betrayed the mid range players like me and all my friends. And all they have left now is the odd newbie that still hasn't tried to game that will most likely not play it in the long run and the people that have invested so much in the game only for Respawn to ruin everything for them.
1200+ hours since launch to when we all stopped playing it.
When they nerfed the r99 into the ground.
Talking about Apex with Marvel in the background , 😂. 😂
I think akimbo Mozam and p2020 kinda counted as a new weapons with the hop ups and everything
What started this whole thing was when they brought catalyst into the game and alot of players left because of him and broken moon
They lost me when they ruined the face of the game. Wraith. How I miss her... but I will never play this game ever again. Shoutout to Aceu as well, man made me feel emotions like no one when he would play Apex.
When anything new is released, I am the one who goes through the patch notes immediately and relays all the important information to my friends. Without gameplay trailers and lore updates, they really don't look up anything else and I don't blame them. Hype is really important for game updates right now. Most other popular games have better marketing that increases interest, not just informing people of new things to buy.
Still love the game, but can't play it for the long periods that I used to because it's just exhausting how sweaty lobbies are. Marvel Rivals has been scratching the itch for me of a casual experience where you genuinely decide how sweaty and serious the game is for you.
Leaving Apex was like kicking a bad addiction. Yeah, the ride is fun while you're on it, but when you get off, you realize how bad the drug really was.
It made gaming miserable. Ever since I've stopped playing, I've had more fun gaming again.
every time I died in an instant, it was always some kid on roller with a strike pack... I mean I just got tired of it and left the game for marvel
The removal of Arenas move was it for me. After that it was sweat or die