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signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,170
Not saying this is the case with Apex but I wonder how influenced people get by Twitch numbers lowering. "Apex isn't in first place anymore after only 3 days? Dead game smfh I'm going to stop playing this too"
 

Z Y

Member
Oct 27, 2017
905
I checked out after purchasing the battlepass and realizing I can't devote 20+ hours a week to grind out shitty cosmetics. I wouldn't be able to do that even if the rewards were good.

I'm cool with GaaS but once it feels like a job, I'm out. Too many great games to play. Too little time.
 

IDontBeatGames

ThreadMarksman
Member
Oct 29, 2017
16,473
New York
  • Battle Pass was wack
  • They take too long to update the game
  • Why is there still no Duo queues? (As far as I know, unless it's there now lol)
  • Fortnite makes a lot more changes at a faster pace + they make a lot more changes to the map etc which entices people to keep playing.
  • Fortnite also happens to hype up updates more than they do when you think about it, every season there's been something "major" to hype up from Thanos, Marshmellow Concert, Avengers team up supposed happening soon and others
  • They didn't capitalize on their hype train they had when it first came out, instead they let everyone be super excited and enthusiastic about the game without making changes and hearing feedback. If they engaged with the fans, streamer personalities and all of that to help make changes or rapid updates or at least create a list of changes the community wanted to then communicate to them what they're changing, it would have kept people going etc.
  • There's also a good number of great games that have come out since the beginning of the year (RE2,KH3, The Division 2, DMC5) etc that people would rather devote their time towards
  • Fortnite has been here a lot longer so it's also kind of an "ol'reliable type thing"
  • Plus signal brings a good point, people probably do follow the whole "Apex isn't in first place anymore after only 3 days? Dead game smfh I'm going to stop playing this too" culture.
 

CobaltBlu

Member
Nov 29, 2017
812
This article reads more like investors overvalued EA/Apex because they don't fully understand the data they are using as a metric for valuation.
 

Deleted member 16025

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,506
Battle Pass was so weak that it killed a lot of my interest. The core game is great, but there needs to be more to look forward to in terms of unlocks and whatnot. The skins are also seriously disappointing for both characters and weapons.
 

Zoidn

Member
Dec 23, 2018
1,710
I still play it cause it's the only Battle Royale game that seems worthwile to me, but I don't think it is a good game. A decline in popularity makes sense since it seems to be stagnating already.
 

Hazzaku

Member
Oct 25, 2017
310
There's little incentive for me to play it unless a friend wants me to hop on.

Battlepass in comparison to Fortnite or even the BO4 ones feels slow to progress through.
Unlocks in general are wack.
3 person squads only (sometime's I'll have no one to play with cause squads are full on my friends list lol)

Apart from that though everything on paper is pretty much what I wanted from a BR, especially after Blackout's horrendeous looting controls on console at launch. But I somehow found myself with more playtime and memorable moments in Blackout which I only played for around 70 hours.
 

PanzerKraken

Member
Nov 1, 2017
14,968
I checked out after purchasing the battlepass and realizing I can't devote 20+ hours a week to grind out shitty cosmetics. I wouldn't be able to do that even if the rewards were good.

I'm cool with GaaS but once it feels like a job, I'm out. Too many great games to play. Too little time.

You had the choice of not buying the pass and just playing the game when you wanted. You won't play the game because you bought the battle pass?

I don't understand gamers now
 

Weebos

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,060
I was interested, but as far as I know there is still no solo mode so I haven't touched it.
 
Oct 27, 2017
12,238
I like the game a lot but I pretty much played it non stop for a month and I'm burned out now, maybe in a couple months I'll return to it. Hopefully with a better Battle Pass.
 

f0rk

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,692
I understand some writers need to make a living, but this is the 3rd thread (at least) about different articles describing the "downfall" of Apex based purely on Twitch metrics. Do we really need a new thread for every article? This one in particular I don't really understand the source, is this some sort of hobbyist stock analyst?

I fail to see how the game is a disappointment for Respawn or EA at this point, they seem to be going at their own pace. A lot of people seem to think a game has to be constantly chasing the biggest new entertainment property of the last couple of years to be successful.
 

Gifted

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
1,359
To me it's pretty simple, they came out with probably the most polished BR experience to date with some excellent features and dropped the ball shortly afterwards. The main problems to me are:
  • Loot boxes become slow and then non existent
  • Updates aren't nearly frequent enough
  • The season pass is disappointing not only in content, but the speed of levels
  • The new character was pretty underwhelming
So in general there's not any real meaningful progression. I have all the trophies and no real reason to play.
 

Einbroch

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,961
Nothing hurts an online game more than negative press saying the game is "dead". Low playerbase games can turn it around (not saying Apex has a "low" playerbase) but once word of mouth is "this game is dead", no matter how true it is, that's REALLY hard to turn around.
 

Ciao

Member
Jun 14, 2018
4,829
Still playing it, 1h each coupe of days, having fun. I don't care if it's a roaring succes or a bit more nuanced, I don't need more content. It's pretty good as it is. I remembered recently how I could have fun for many month with a single game in the 8/16/32/128 bit eras. We've become so entitled for new content every week, new patches, weapon, etc. these days.
 

Z Y

Member
Oct 27, 2017
905
You had the choice of not buying the pass and just playing the game when you wanted. You won't play the game because you bought the battle pass?

I don't understand gamers now

I bought the pass. I played the first week and a half for a couple hours a night to try keep pace to get to level 100. Realized I couldn't keep that pace. It started feeling a chore. Burnt myself out. Now I don't really feel like going back. That help?
 

Danzflor

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,710
Seems like the honeymoon period is over, which is fairly understandable, the lackluster Battle Pass turned a lot of people off (considering you have to spend quite the ammount of time to get everything and the rewards are not that great) and the fact that people were complaining about not getting loot boxes after hitting a certain cap level hasn't helped either.

Still, the game is fantastic and is still the best and only good Battle Royale out there (got myself a couple matches last night, still tight), so I'll keep playing it, maybe just paying up to unlock the characters (gotta admit the process to do it for free is also really long).
 

Demacabre

Member
Nov 20, 2017
2,058
An EA microtransaction lootbox filled flavor of the month genre with a stealth release to avoid public scrunity then propped up by 'sponsoring' 'influencers' is failing?

This is my sad face.
 

Nome

Designer / Self-requested ban
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,312
NYC
Gonna quote myself from February --
I don't think it'll hit remotely close to Fortnite's numbers in the long term--I'm trying to be very unbiased here because I really dislike Fortnite and I love all of Respawn's games, lol. Biggest factors here being (1) not being on mobile, (2) having a higher gameplay skill floor, (3) having a less universal art style, and (4) being an EA product, as EA has not yet shown they're capable of scaling a product to superstar status outside of FIFA, whereas Epic is continuing to push the medium on a daily basis and is now a live ops leader in the industry.

Monetization-wise, hard to tell until Respawn unveils all of its monetization features, and generally more hardcore games have higher LTVs (average expected lifetime revenue per player), but I'd probably give the edge to Fortnite here too on the basis that they're a bit more shameless with what they're selling and how they're doing it.
All these things are still applicable today. Epic has repeatedly demonstrated themselves leaders in live ops in the traditional space, even going so far as to influence mobile trends (when it's historically been the other way around). On the other hand, Respawn has a history of poor progression design and bad retention metrics.

Something to also keep in mind is that aside from the incredible organic growth that Fortnite has seen, they also continually pump money into user acquisition as is the norm for most successful F2P titles intent on growth--while on the other hand, Apex Legends kind of made a big deal out of only spending to incentivize organic installs at launch. This is not a sustainable business model for growth, and something people working in the traditional gaming industry don't seem to understand is that growth is a continuable, scalable ratio of dollars out to dollars in.

I don't know right now if EA is shitting their pants over Apex's performance but I certainly would be. It comes down to what their expectations were, and how they defined success. If they're OK with it making the amount of money it's made (which, to be fair, is an assload of money), but don't care to make even more, then I suppose they might be happy. This entire scenario reminds me of how Niantic completely blew it (from a business perspective) with the Pokemon GO launch by creating a genuine cultural phenomenon and then failing to take advantage of it.
 

SecondNature

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,147
They need to roll out the following:

-The New Legend that is meant for this season
-Solo Mode and Duos

Solo mode should get significant tuning to feel different from the rest of the game. I think Solos should disable Legends and make it a separate lore-based mode based on Pilots.

Pilots are generic male/female soldiers that you can customize. They can sell headgear, outfits, etc. in place of skins for Legends. Solos should make a bunch of Legend abilities pick up items to loot, allowing you to have more creative fun in utilizing a bunch of different abilities in a single playthrough. Solos inherently also lets

-Solo mode that removes the focus on abilities also allows more items to be added bi-weekly, like launch pads, new items, etc

-They should be working on more varied maps like PUBG
 

Kinthey

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
22,250
Compared to Call of Duty and fortnite it's just missing a consistent enough stream of updates. Of course the more money you put in it the worse it is if it ends up failing anyway...
 

Stat

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,150
Love Apex but they need to have more events and content. Even something simple like a Double XP Weekend would be nice
 

Qudi

Member
Jul 26, 2018
5,313
The half assed battle pass is the deal-breaker for many. It shows how a good and rewarding progression system is important now days.
 

Mr_Blue_Sky

Member
Oct 25, 2017
826
The game seemed to be rushed to launch beside Anthem before it was content rich/feature complete, probably at the behest of EA higher ups in the hopes that at least one of the two would be a massive hit. Amazingly and no doubt due to Respawn's pedigree as devs, Apex is great, but within no time at all Fortnite had copied its two most lauded features (Respawning and the ping system) and with a disappointing battle pass and glacially slow game updates, there's just not much to keep you excited about continuing to play the game.

Really makes you wonder if this game could have become the new BR king if it had been given just a few more months of dev time to be in a more solid starting position, but even with that said, I really hope Apex can turn it around because the game is so fun and deserves the success.
 

Shinku_King

Member
Nov 11, 2017
532
I think the worst part about apex is they don't update fast enough, like if they even added slight changes to the map for a short period, or even add a duo mode. I think this is the best BR game period but lack of updates hurts this game imo
 

blizzardjesus

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
417
Getting a 180 hrs out of a free game is pretty good. Got my last achievement last night, But i've been wanting to get back to the games ive been neglecting.
 

Pankratous

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,231
So much doom and gloom commentary around this game and here I am loving every fucking moment.

I do wish it updated faster but I don't think the game is dying for me.
 

ShinUltramanJ

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,949
I was bored within a couple days. Never even bothered to check out BFV's BR mode.

I think I'm just bored of it all.
 

Nama

A Big Deal
Member
Nov 2, 2017
1,319
Still play Apex everyday but all my friends bounced out hard. They all had the same complaint that the battle pass sucks, too slow and no interesting rewards.
 

Ryo

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,523
Maybe it's dead in BR terms but the subreddit still has 10,000 people online.
 

Nephtes

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,545
Once I hit 1000/1000 achievement points, I was pretty much done with Apex.

The game was much more enjoyable at launch when it was still new (and relativity more easy to get victories and kills).

But, yeah, it just isn't a varied enough experience to keep me coming back day after day. Unlike Overwatch, the skins don't really do it for me as an incentive to pull me back to earn more...

I enjoyed it for what it was and I happily gave them $10 for the enjoyment they afforded me.
 

tanky

Banned
Apr 2, 2019
351
I hit rank 100 and haven't touched the game in roughly a month. My buddies have moved on from it, too. The lack of content and updates hurt the overall experience like not offering leaderboards, stats pages and QoL features only recently added from what I've heard.

Much of the loot was low effort and not cool or exciting like banners or tacky skins. Awarding less loot boxes as you progressed in rank was stingy as well. Some of the balancing the devs have done like nerfing the wingman and buffing the DMR shows such a disconnect with those weapons and play styles.

It should be said that the map got boring very quickly. Respawn needed to add or alter some locations and eventually release a new locale entirely. The real nail in the coffin, though, was that terrible season pass. I have no interest in going back to this game regardless of any changes at this point.
 

CobaltBlu

Member
Nov 29, 2017
812
I think one thing that is obvious is that Respawn doesn't have a development pipeline in place that lets them output a lot of content that people were expecting. The growth of Fortnite happened in a completely different way from how Apex popped onto the scene. It has to be seen if they can ramp up production and recapture lapsed players with new content or if they even want to do that.
 

kraftdinner

Alt account
Banned
Mar 8, 2019
254
The unlocks are dull as shit. A lot of them are like voice lines or stat trackers you see in loading menus. The cosmetics that are included are rather boring looking to mostly everyone. The top reward is a unique looking skin for a gun hardly anyone uses. On top of that the XP needed for each level is quite a lot, and unless you're particularly really good at the game, it's a really slow grind, of which isn't helped by buying the premium battlepass, which in other games like Rocket League gives you a healthy XP multiplier, Apex does not.


Thank you for the explanation. Really puts things into perspective.
 

JigglesBunny

Prophet of Truth
Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
31,042
Chicago
I burnt out in a week and they aren't on top of delivering new content. The Battle Pass being terrible doesn't help things.
 

SlickShoes

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,769
I like the game but get tired of squads pretty quickly after either a few good games or a few bad ones, I'd prefer a solo mode at the least so I can just play it by myself and not worry about other people all the time. The map is quite small and there's nothing remotely exciting about it.

Battle pass and cosmetics are dire.

I still play one or two games a few days a week but I'll probably never spend money on it at this rate
 
Oct 27, 2017
6,141
Their treating Apex like a Faberge egg rather than a fun experiment to throw wrenches into. It got dull. There's so much they could be doing to twist things up that don't require art assets or large amounts of resources.
 

Sheepinator

Member
Jul 25, 2018
27,915
The article claims,

"With Apex making up a substantial portion of EA's valuation, EA's stock faces substantial declines."

EA is at the exact same price it was at before Apex Legends was suddenly announced and launched.
 

Sha_96

Member
Jan 22, 2019
666
This new generation is too fucking needy, if you don't release an update each week then they consider your game dead ugh
The game is still too fun and it scratches an itch that no other game really does, and it has very good gunplay, pacing, etc....
The battlepass is a bit disappointing but that's not really a killing point at all
 

cakely

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,149
Chicago
I think the state of actual gameplay in Apex Legends is in a pretty great state. I play daily, and thanks to balance patches, the new character and the new weapon, I actually enjoy it more than when I started.

The season pass was terrible. Very low-effort on Respawns's part: it's just very long survival time grind with poor rewards.

The general stinginess of the loot crate system is terrible. The loot itself is also pretty bad.
 

Koukalaka

Member
Oct 28, 2017
9,279
Scotland
I get the sense EA and Respawn weren't expecting it to be such a success and they've been struggling to catch up and meet expectations.

I still maintain it's the best "Day 1" BR experience I've played, and the core gameplay mechanics are unrivalled in the genre.

People have insane expectations around daily/weekly/monthly content, which doesn't help when fundamentally these games are about playing the same map/mode with minor variations.
 

Chorazin

Member
Nov 13, 2017
1,239
Lancaster County, PA, USA
Fortnite has ruined people's expectations of games as service, especially in the BR field. When you're getting new things to do weekly in the most popular game in the world, and Apex comes out strong but then fails to make any real changes and shits out a half assed Battle Pass....yeah, things aren't gonna go well.

I still really enjoy the game but with nothing really new to do I play a lot less.
 
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