I wish I could compare this to Warzone, but the damn thing won't even let me log in on PC. Seems like a driver issue. Re-downloaded the game and it didn't work. Now I'm installing it on PS4. Joke.
I just played my first few matches of Plunder....You're correct. It's a shit load of fun.
Still love my Apex but this is a nice break for now.
I wish I could compare this to Warzone, but the damn thing won't even let me log in on PC. Seems like a driver issue. Re-downloaded the game and it didn't work. Now I'm installing it on PS4. Joke.
Lul believe me, if I had a data cap I'd be playing Apex right now.
That's cause a lot of the riff-raff are playing Warzone instead.
Sounds like a good idea. Evo shields aren't very appealing after the first 5 minutes. Perhaps dropping with one (plus a pistol) would incentivise their use.One thing that I would like Apex to copy from Warzone is spawning in with a pistol. It would even things out a bit more if you land and happen upon bad RNG.
Maybe you could spawn in with an evo shield, too? But I'm less sure about that.
What's everyone's preferred endgame weapon load out (excluding care package weapons) this season? I've tried a bunch of different combinations but still haven't found anything that really clicked.
I'm curious how Respawn and Epic intend to respond to CoD: Warzone, given it was known to exist for months now, but only just came out.
One of my biggest issues with this game is that the feedback on hits doesn't feel all that great, and up close it can be difficult to tell where your shots are going. I don't hate it, but it can be irritating. Moreover, the movement can often get really "sticky", and when I try to do things like sprint and slide, I'll often just go from a sprint to crouching in place. Warzone doesn't have those problems. It has its own issues, of course, but when it comes to movement and gunplay, I never feel like I'm cheated by packet loss or tickrate, and the feedback from shooting a gun and moving around the map is great (as expected of Call of Duty).
Moreover, in spite of being leagues beyond Apex in terms of visuals, Warzone still runs better. At a full 1440p with high settings on my 1080 Ti, I can easily hit 120FPS (with some drops when in seriously packed areas). In Apex, meanwhile, I had to go into the config files to increase the dynamic resolution's bounds so it can target 165FPS. One would expect that, given the game doesn't look particularly amazing, it'd be able to run smooth like butter on a 1080 Ti, but that's simply not the case. Very commonly, even in areas that aren't particularly "busy" visually, the resolution can dip so low, it feels like my screen is coated in vaseline.
I don't expect Respawn to reinvent the wheel to keep up, but with this season being pretty underwhelming insofar (and yet another cash grab "collection event"), I'm not all that interested to continue playing when Call of Duty is offering a more refined, more compelling, more exciting Battle Royale.
Pathfinder's hitbox is so fucking bad and his abilities are annoying. Wish he would get nerfed.
The more I play Warzone the more obvious it is how miles ahead Apex is.
What I like about it is the 1vs1 chance of getting back in the match, the fact that you're not letting everyone on the map know when you're parachuting back in (respawning), that you have a pistol on drop so you kinda have a shot if the RNG screws you over.
But the movement, FOV on console, waiting time until you get into a match, shots and explosions everywhere yet you can't see anyone unless you look at the minimap (?), pinging which is not easily accessible since it's up on the d-pad, gameplay that promotes camping and waiting with little action...
Pathfinder is tall and has one of the worst hitboxes in the game, movement is all he's got. The most annoying abilities goes to Caustic easily, best hitboxes to Wraith, Lifeline, Wattson.
I don't remember that underground bunker with the warp gate. Is that new to King's Canyon in this mode or was that how the map was before they changed over to World's Edge? I didn't play Apex much during the time when there was a wraith-focused event, so that might be why I don't recognize it.
It has been added to Kings Canyon for the Voidwalker event at the beginning of September, and stayed there until S3 started with the new map.
Any recommendations for drops in kc? Maybe for purple armor, r99, prowler with select fire etc? Best drops so far?
There's this little town in between Bunker and Air Base that has a purple armor at the bottom portion, and then head up top for a Prowler with select fire and a Peacekeeper with choke. In the little shed area under the hill in the town there's a level 2 extended heavy mag too.Any recommendations for drops in kc? Maybe for purple armor, r99, prowler with select fire etc? Best drops so far?
I like all these ideas, but how about I take it a step further:They could start by dropping you with level 1 armor and a P2020 instead of the ridiculous mad dash to finding a gun and armor which due to their RNG might net you none of those things on drop. The looting in Warzone is cooler than Apex since you just run over an item like ammo or shields and it automatically just picks it up. There's no digging through death crates. The ping system in Warzone isn't as good as Apex but it's certainly good enough to get the job done if you're with teammates with no mics.
All of your suggestions in your post sound totally unappealing to me personally.I like all these ideas, but how about I take it a step further:
- Players no longer need to find shields, period. Every player drops with three bars (four bars?) and two pre-filled. Using cells and batteries recharge you up to max shields. Health regen is passive outside of combat, so medkits and syringes would remain useful in the midst of a fight (and be used a bit quicker).
- Weapons drop in tiers. No more opening a supply bin to find no gun (or worse, a Mozambique). Furthermore, most attachments would no longer be necessary, as weapons of higher tiers (Fortnite/Warzone style) would have more attachements, greater magazine capacity, etc. The only attachments that would need to stick around would be optics, as nobody would like a high-capacity flatline with a 3x optic.
- No more death boxes. Players drop all their gear at their feet when they die, and their banner is given a distinct glow for their teammates to pick up quickly and easily (with the same pickup animation, so as to prevent folks from aggressively putting down fire while grabbing a banner).
Agreed on all fronts.All of your suggestions in your post sound totally unappealing to me personally.
- Armor/Health: A fun part of the game is the excitement of finding better tier armor. The sensation of seeing a purple armor (or gold, even better!) laying there is great and this would totally remove that. Not to mention the awesome feeling of winning gunfights when you are in an armor mismatch disadvantage (white/blue vs purple), and how this compounds to incentivize moving in to kill opposition then acquire their gear or fleeing from fights where you are at too much of an armor disadvantage.
Passive health regeneration would make Lifeline's utility to a team essentially useless, and take away one of Octane's unique traits too. Not to mention it would hurt the resource management of balancing ammo versus healing items as players would just hoard much more ammunition/grenades instead of keeping a balanced inventory. And making health regen passive, I feel, would just encourage teams to disengage from fights more rather than committing as they would know they could just recover health if they break away rather than having to make a fight or flight decision mid combat.
- Guns as tiers rather than attachments as tiers: This would just collapse the loot pool even further and even further place weapon success more in the hands of RNG rather than individual skill. Yes there's RNG in finding attachments to improve the weapons a player holds, but done via attachments rather than built into the guns themselves encourages the players to continue to move around the map/get into fights and try to improve their gear. It's a feedback loop that incentivizes moving and fighting both. Pre-built guns would de-emphasize this gameplay loop I feel. Once you found a good gun, you'd be set, especially if it was joined to your first point about everyone having decent armor from the word go.
- Death Boxes: The idea that all of the loot should just spill onto the map is terrible IMHO. It would make the maps more cluttered, and players would spend more time looking at the ground rather than scanning the horizon/surroundings. Whereas the death boxes are not only elegant in loot management, but they force people to congregate in a specific point and take a chance at finding loot they need by sifting through a menu. It presents a risk/reward opportunity for the victor of a firefight, and presents an opportunity for third-parties to come in and keep the action going (which is a key part of the game's design, fights on fights). The color of the death boxes indicates just how worthwhile it is to approach and spend time sifting through one, even from a good distance away via a quick glance. If you see a Gold box, you are going to want to check it out, even if the gold item is just an attachment. That's a risk you have to take.
The loot spilling out on the ground is one of the clunkiest looking things about that Warzone. I'm not going to bother rewarding Call of Duty with my time/download, so I have no plans on playing it. But the game just looks both far uglier art direction and design-wise and far less elegant, and things like this contribute to that in my opinion.
I think that right now, Apex is probably the best designed FPS in terms of gameplay, mechanics, and systems on the market and they don't really need to do much, if anything, to alter its systems balance. I think the tweaks/balance adjustments they've applied have been pretty intelligent and they just need to keep doing what they are doing. Nothing done in the new Call of Duty BR should be aped in Apex I think.
Agreed, I feel like if I don't have this (or an Eva-8 with DTT), I never feel as confident in a close gunfight as I would with it. Balancing it would be tricky since it only really shines with extended mags, so lowering the overall mag size would be too much and make it useless without the attachment, but maybe drop the damage or fire rate a few points. Far too often I roll up on someone when I have 150+ health and I'm downed in 2 seconds by one.I'm so sick of the R99 dominating every single fight I get into. It's extremely obnoxious and super frustrating to have to fight against it, since it can poke super efficiently at all ranges and hoses with ease up close.
So what you're saying is the current shield system we have, which can make fights extremely lopsided based entirely on luck should be retained because... you get excited to find better shields, and you think it's exciting to run away from a fight simply because you didn't get lucky enough?All of your suggestions in your post sound totally unappealing to me personally.
- Armor/Health: A fun part of the game is the excitement of finding better tier armor. The sensation of seeing a purple armor (or gold, even better!) laying there is great and this would totally remove that. Not to mention the awesome feeling of winning gunfights when you are in an armor mismatch disadvantage (white/blue vs purple), and how this compounds to incentivize moving in to kill opposition then acquire their gear or fleeing from fights where you are at too much of an armor disadvantage.
I said passive regen outside of combat. That doesn't mean Lifeline isn't suddenly allowed to be reworked so her drone has a slightly longer reach and becomes a more useful tool for teams needing healing during combat. Remember: just because Octane has passive health regen doesn't suddenly make Lifeline useless when she's on the same team as him. It doesn't need to be rapid passive health regen.Passive health regeneration would make Lifeline's utility to a team essentially useless, and take away one of Octane's unique traits too. Not to mention it would hurt the resource management of balancing ammo versus healing items as players would just hoard much more ammunition/grenades instead of keeping a balanced inventory. And making health regen passive, I feel, would just encourage teams to disengage from fights more rather than committing as they would know they could just recover health if they break away rather than having to make a fight or flight decision mid combat.
Warzone and Fortnite both show that you can have your cake and eat it too when it comes to engaging in fights to improve your gear. Also, do you suddenly just stop engaging in fights just because your gear is better? Having more resources at your disposal is a key part of the gameplay loop as well, and getting in fights encourages that, too. You don't always have the option to avoid fights due to the nature of the game, either.- Guns as tiers rather than attachments as tiers: This would just collapse the loot pool even further and even further place weapon success more in the hands of RNG rather than individual skill. Yes there's RNG in finding attachments to improve the weapons a player holds, but done via attachments rather than built into the guns themselves encourages the players to continue to move around the map/get into fights and try to improve their gear. It's a feedback loop that incentivizes moving and fighting both. Pre-built guns would de-emphasize this gameplay loop I feel. Once you found a good gun, you'd be set, especially if it was joined to your first point about everyone having decent armor from the word go.
I dislike how the game encourages third partying due to how slow the healing process is and how difficult it is to get back on your feet after a tough fight. Having a chance to get what you need and split in a pinch is something that I feel Apex could do with more of. It's part of why I enjoy the loop of Fortnite and Warzone, since Fortnite lets you fortify and heal while Warzone allows you to retreat and replace armor plates. Apex lets you stand slowly in one place and wait ten seconds to have a fighting chance against a third or fourth team of opportunists joining the action. Speeding that process up so you're not completely fucked when another team shows up after a tough fight seems reasonable.- Death Boxes: The idea that all of the loot should just spill onto the map is terrible IMHO. It would make the maps more cluttered, and players would spend more time looking at the ground rather than scanning the horizon/surroundings. Whereas the death boxes are not only elegant in loot management, but they force people to congregate in a specific point and take a chance at finding loot they need by sifting through a menu. It presents a risk/reward opportunity for the victor of a firefight, and presents an opportunity for third-parties to come in and keep the action going (which is a key part of the game's design, fights on fights). The color of the death boxes indicates just how worthwhile it is to approach and spend time sifting through one, even from a good distance away via a quick glance. If you see a Gold box, you are going to want to check it out, even if the gold item is just an attachment. That's a risk you have to take.
You should try it before arguing against it. Many of Warzone's features, such as dropping into the fight with armor and a gun, are really smart and make the initial run for a better weapon a lot less stressful.The loot spilling out on the ground is one of the clunkiest looking things about that Warzone. I'm not going to bother rewarding Call of Duty with my time/download, so I have no plans on playing it. But the game just looks both far uglier art direction and design-wise and far less elegant, and things like this contribute to that in my opinion.
I think that right now, Apex is probably the best designed FPS in terms of gameplay, mechanics, and systems on the market and they don't really need to do much, if anything, to alter its systems balance. I think the tweaks/balance adjustments they've applied have been pretty intelligent and they just need to keep doing what they are doing. Nothing done in the new Call of Duty BR should be aped in Apex I think.
Yes, I think the excitement of the luck-based nature of finding better shields is a fun part of the game and feeds into the combat dynamics and the decision making process of fighting/flighting. It allows for really clutch moments that baselining the armor would remove. I say this as someone who typically doesn't like RNG in my games as I'm primarily a Halo FPS player.So what you're saying is the current shield system we have, which can make fights extremely lopsided based entirely on luck should be retained because... you get excited to find better shields, and you think it's exciting to run away from a fight simply because you didn't get lucky enough?
I know you say outside of combat, but I still think this shouldn't be done. It would lessen the necessity of holding more health items if players knew that they could just regenerate, even if regeneration is slow. If players regenerated health and it was slow, they would hold less heals and it would make them more prone to play much more slow coming out of fights so they could recover naturally without expending the health items they did decide to carry. Players would naturally move into this state because functionally, it would just make sense to do so. Why carry more health items when you can recover? Especially at the expense of holding more grenades/ammunition.I said passive regen outside of combat. That doesn't mean Lifeline isn't suddenly allowed to be reworked so her drone has a slightly longer reach and becomes a more useful tool for teams needing healing during combat. Remember: just because Octane has passive health regen doesn't suddenly make Lifeline useless when she's on the same team as him. It doesn't need to be rapid passive health regen.
You also assume inventory size wouldn't get downsized to adjust for changes to how healing items work. It happened before, and it can easily happen again.
For the average player, I would say that yes, they would become disinclined to engage in more fights if they are at peak gear level. Me personally? I wouldn't, because I'm all about that action, pedal to the metal; and it's a big reason why I think Apex is so good.Warzone and Fortnite both show that you can have your cake and eat it too when it comes to engaging in fights to improve your gear. Also, do you suddenly just stop engaging in fights just because your gear is better? Having more resources at your disposal is a key part of the gameplay loop as well, and getting in fights encourages that, too. You don't always have the option to avoid fights due to the nature of the game, either.
I think third partying, fights-on-fights is a big part of the appeal of Apex, and that the game is at its most fun when you are in hectic, fast paced, fly-by-the-seat-of-your pants engagements. A lot of your suggestions, I feel, would slow the game down, de-emphasize map movement, and cause the game to lose a lot of its dynamic play.I dislike how the game encourages third partying due to how slow the healing process is and how difficult it is to get back on your feet after a tough fight. Having a chance to get what you need and split in a pinch is something that I feel Apex could do with more of. It's part of why I enjoy the loop of Fortnite and Warzone, since Fortnite lets you fortify and heal while Warzone allows you to retreat and replace armor plates. Apex lets you stand slowly in one place and wait ten seconds to have a fighting chance against a third or fourth team of opportunists joining the action. Speeding that process up so you're not completely fucked when another team shows up after a tough fight seems reasonable.
I know that it can be frustrating to land and die quickly without a chance to fight back in Apex. I experience this a lot. But at the same time, it is also very fun to be the one on the other end of the situation, where several of you are running to a gun and you get to be the one who has it in your hands. Not to mention how fun it is to hound fresh respawners precisely because you know they are chum in the water.You should try it before arguing against it. Many of Warzone's features, such as dropping into the fight with armor and a gun, are really smart and make the initial run for a better weapon a lot less stressful.
I realize we're not likely to agree on any points, but I want to focus on this last bit in particular.I know that it can be frustrating to land and die quickly without a chance to fight back in Apex. I experience this a lot. But at the same time, it is also very fun to be the one on the other end of the situation, where several of you are running to a gun and you get to be the one who has it in your hands. Not to mention how fun it is to hound fresh respawners precisely because you know they are chum in the water.
If the game was slow to get into matches, and the games themselves were slow to unfold like Warzone appears to be, maybe it would make more sense to have players equipped with some weapon at the onset. For Apex though, I don't think it's a great idea.
I also think the initial bum rush to find weapons is exhilarating, and it's also really fun and funny to gang brawl people with your squad when you all don't have firearms but an enemy does.
I don't plan on playing Warzone because I straight up don't want to reward Call of Duty. I don't care for its gameplay or its art. I learned, after Infinity Ward blew up originally, that it wasn't Call of Duty that I was interested in as an intellectual property, it was the games made by Infinity Ward, now Respawn. I've never particularly wanted to reward IW's/Respawns imitators.
I realize we're not likely to agree on any points, but I want to focus on this last bit in particular.
1. Landing without any means to defend yourself only to instantly die isn't just frustrating, it's a complete mood killer. I straight-up don't want to play as a result of dropping and not being able to arm myself immediately to respond to enemies attacking.
2. Warzone seems slow, but with almost triple the playercount of Apex (soon to be quadruple), it's actually quite easy to find fights. Add onto that the bounty system encouraging players to actively seek other teams out, and the pace winds up (surprisingly) being on-par. The only thing that's truly dramatic is engagement distances.
3. There's still a rush for arms. Difference is you at least have a gun to defend yourself if you manage to get beaten to the punch by an enemy, instead of being forced to defend yourself with a shitty, awkward melee attack.
4. You realize that Respawn had a mass exodus to Infinity Ward last year, right? A number of former Infinity Ward employees who went to work at Respawn went back to Infinity Ward, and many new employees Respawn picked up (such as Hyper, everyone's favorite gun meme animator) are working at Infinity Ward as well.
That would be insane. If you do that then Path wouldn't be usable inside buildings ever again for example. Sure Path is hard to hit while grappling but the grapple has a cooldown and isn't always useful lolI've been thinking for a little while that they could probably have 2 tiers of small target. Path and Wraith are considerably harder to hit than Lifeline, Revenant, or Wattson. Maybe a 5% and a 7.5%? 10 seems like it'd be too much.
I realize we're not likely to agree on any points, but I want to focus on this last bit in particular.
1. Landing without any means to defend yourself only to instantly die isn't just frustrating, it's a complete mood killer. I straight-up don't want to play as a result of dropping and not being able to arm myself immediately to respond to enemies attacking.
2. Warzone seems slow, but with almost triple the playercount of Apex (soon to be quadruple), it's actually quite easy to find fights. Add onto that the bounty system encouraging players to actively seek other teams out, and the pace winds up (surprisingly) being on-par. The only thing that's truly dramatic is engagement distances.
3. There's still a rush for arms. Difference is you at least have a gun to defend yourself if you manage to get beaten to the punch by an enemy, instead of being forced to defend yourself with a shitty, awkward melee attack.
4. You realize that Respawn had a mass exodus to Infinity Ward last year, right? A number of former Infinity Ward employees who went to work at Respawn went back to Infinity Ward, and many new employees Respawn picked up (such as Hyper, everyone's favorite gun meme animator) are working at Infinity Ward as well.
I didn't say more players or a bigger map is better, though. I was responding to your point regarding pacing, where I feel Warzone and Apex have a relatively similar pace. I think that's a compliment that goes both ways: Warzone has a huge scale and large playercount that keeps every match fast-paced, and Apex successfully scaled all that down into a far smaller package for more intense gunfights in a significantly smaller map.I don't think "more players = better", "bigger map = better". In fact, I think this is almost always not the case for any multiplayer game I play, regardless of scope. For instance, in Halo I'd much rather play doubles or standard 4v4 than Big Team Battle. Big games have their place and can be fun for what they are, but I never think that it should be the strive of the core game. I think that Apex's 60 players is a good sweet spot, at least on King's Canyon. For World's Edge though, I almost feel like the player count could be bumped to 80 due to the map's size, though that's a whole different problem.
And by game pace, I wasn't necessarily talking about moment to moment fights/gameplay, though I think that too would be slower compared to Apex. More the fact that it seems like the games take a long while to fully complete. Whereas Apex's games are typically 15-20 minute affairs. I much, much, much prefer my multiplayer games to have snappy matches, rather than overly long and drawn out. Though I know this is a preference thing for people. I'd just rather play three really good, different, intense games in the span of an hour rather than 1 longer, meandering, kind of mediocre match.
I get you. I was meaning in terms of the length of the matches, but you're saying they are about 25 minutes, so that doesn't seem too bad. I was just feeling like they could be much longer judging by the streams/videos I'd seen, the player count, and the ways players could be brought back into the game (the gulag system or being bought back in by a remaining squad member) which could all contribute to much longer games.I didn't say more players or a bigger map is better, though. I was responding to your point regarding pacing, where I feel Warzone and Apex have a relatively similar pace. I think that's a compliment that goes both ways: Warzone has a huge scale and large playercount that keeps every match fast-paced, and Apex successfully scaled all that down into a far smaller package for more intense gunfights in a significantly smaller map.
Also, in my experience, no Warzone matches I played were longer than 25 minutes. It's most certainly not PUBG.
Anyway, I don't want to sound like I'm wanking Warzone and dissing Apex. I enjoy both games for different reasons, and I'd love to see how Apex learns from what Warzone did right, just as Warzone learned from Apex and Fortnite.
This is the only thing I would ask them to consider for Apex. The initial dogpiling meta is stupid (even worse with latency and loot bin "refresh" issue), and there's very little satisfaction gained from being the lucky one. There's no need to copy any other Warzone traits, as the two games are very different. (The reason I got into Apex was because it was so different from other BRs.)You should try it before arguing against it. Many of Warzone's features, such as dropping into the fight with armor and a gun, are really smart and make the initial run for a better weapon a lot less stressful.
I've opened enough boxes that i somehow lucked out and got heirloom shards (I definitely opened up fewer than 500 though lol), and i have NEVER seen 2 legendaries in one box. That's sweet!opened up an apex pack. 2 legendaries omg omg omg.
1 crap Bloodhound Skin and a nonsense banner for them too lol :(
I've opened enough boxes that i somehow lucked out and got heirloom shards (I definitely opened up fewer than 500 though lol), and i have NEVER seen 2 legendaries in one box. That's sweet!
Also, I'm a bloodhound main so that sounds even better.