The Leading Battle Royale Today: A Critique Paper on Apex Legends

With an emphasis on smooth movement in-game, gunplay that offers a variety of fighting styles,

and tactical teamwork through diverse characters, Apex Legends is a free-to-play shooter Battle Royale (BR)

developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by EA, initially released on February 4, 2019, and

remains as one of the most popular games today with an estimated playerbase of more than a million

players going online daily.

Technical Issues

Apex Legends being an online multiplayer game, makes use of servers and networks to connect a

worldwide playerbase to separate matches. A common function that games make use of is the ability to

change server regions which allows the use of VPNs while playing and to allow the player to make decisions

on their own to minimize lag and lower their ping. However, one of the main set of problems faced today by

the player base are the constant issues with the networking and server connectivity, with evidence coming

from personal experience and a multitude of complaints arriving from players of all skill levels and

veterancy, it is a common issue no matter the internet provider, server region, or the specs of the device

being used to play. With Apex Legends becoming one of the giants in the FPS BR genre, the player base has

swelled from its popularity, allowing a constant stream of revenue and content but also putting a strain on

the servers, limiting the retainability and overall enjoyment of players.

 The network issues are a combination of crashes, disconnections, lag, and freezes, with not one

specific type being more common than the rest, with multiple cases happening with different players with no

correlating characteristic, it can be proven that it is an issue with the game, may it be the server or coding,

and not a problem with the players. With the rising player base, more capable IT technicians and personnel

are needed to ensure that the game runs smoothly and to maintain a positive community, to check reports

of hacking, exploiting, and toxicity, as well as to work on the game’s bugs and glitches. Another feasible

method would be to try new data centers to be able to find better alternatives to the current ones in use

since the current ones seem to be subpar at most considering the fact that they are unable to handle the

game whenever it updates, which is a regular occurence.

Balancing

Being a game with a diverse set of characters, weaponry, and a regular update of new features in-

game such as maps, vehicles, and other special utilities, Apex Legends has to keep balance in mind.

Balance in a game is the equality of all players when choosing different things, although there will be

exceptions similar to how a pistol would never be as effective as a sniper at far ranges or how some

legends are geared towards different playstyles, to ensure fair gameplay, they must keep each other in

check or to have abilities that specialize or excel in an area but not overpower others. A recent example of a

balancing issue would be “Seer”, one of the latest additions into the roster, the legend was overpowered due

to his overwhelming abilities, ranging from a heartbeat sensor, to a movement tracker that spans a large

radius. However, in response to the complaints of the player base and the undeniable evidence of Seer

dominating matches, Respawn quickly released a nerfed version, "nerfed" being used to describe something

that has been weakened, reduced, or generally made less effective. Despite having his abilities being
weaker and taking longer to use, Seer still remains a viable and an enjoyable legend to play as. Although

being overpowered, the game had experienced another flash of popularity and something fresh into the

game, injecting new blood and replayability for older players as well as creating a hot topic that the player

base could interact over. In spite of the imbalance and slight anger caused by new changes, I personally

welcome them as new content, especially considering that they release regularly every season to ensure

that the game is still considered fun and so that the player base has something new to play with.

Matchmaking and Ranked Systems

With a competitive nature in it’s gameplay, it would be natural for differing skill levels to exist, from

the lowest bronze to the highest predator ranking. Skill based matchmaking attempts to ensure fairness and

equality within the game by pitting a player against others who, if not the same, are similar to their skill

level, however, what skill based matchmaking does, is due to a player improving and due to other variables,

is place you in higher or lower skill levels, and considering it’s a game, most would wish to win, which

continues to raise the skill floor of the encountered opponents. Although good for competitive players or for

those who enjoy a challenge, it becomes tiring for casual players. Most casual players find that skill based

matchmaking would be fine for competitive games or for ranked ones, however with it being applied to

casual or PUBs (public games), it forces a player to constantly be better and to take the game seriously

rather than enjoy it casually which opposed to a proposed random matchmaking wherein it would take a

wide range of players from all skill levels which would both increase the casualness of the mode and the

fairness, since it is dependent on luck rather than variables that could be manipulated. It has become a

common occurrence in the world of games for people of high skill levels to make new accounts which are

called “smurfs” in order to play against lower ELOs, which for everyone else who are playing normally,
abuses the newer and lower skilled players, reducing the enjoyment and faith in the game and it’s

developers. Due to the skill levels of the smurf, the rising ELO matches multiple casual players, which due to

the SBMM, matches the regular players constantly with these smurfs, rather than constantly pairing with

rising smurfs as well.

For the ranked system of Apex Legends, instead of encouraging a team-point based system, it

rewards kill steals and individual gain, despite the need for cooperation to win and achieve higher

placements, it still creates the culture of stealing kills from teammates and to third-party, which I will admit,

is more of a problem with the player base rather than the game, however the ranked point system (RP)

encourages this culture. Similar with the aforementioned matchmaking system, it’s variables too can be

skewed and allows boosters and smurfs to abuse it’s system while hindering regular players. A suggestion

that I would like to give would be to add more variables into the game’s point system, similar to League of

Legends wherein multiple aspects come in to judge your scoring. Correct usage of abilities,

communications, positioning, and a whole list of other aspects which could help in deciding a person’s ELO

other than the kill-death-assist ratio (KDA).

Overall, Apex Legends is a good game with developers that listens to its player base and is still

improving and tweaking itself, as such, other than the aforementioned issues, there isn’t much to have issue

with, however, to further improve itself and earn us a wage, we must strive to improve it to it’s best state

and continue to strengthen its positives while changing its negatives.