https://www.polygon.com/platform/am...legends-content-decline-update-patch-fortnite
Apex Legends had the smoothest and most successful launch of any battle royale game. While games like Fortnite took months to build up a player base and a Twitch presence, Apex shot to number one in its first day. But a lack of updates, a litany of bugs, and some fierce competition has destroyed Apex Legends' launch momentum.
Apex was smooth until the game's first patch went live. What was intended to be a simple bug-fixing update instead introduced a host of new glitches. These bugs introduced unintended abilities like player flight and malfunctioning guns. All these issues were sorted out over the course of a couple of days, but it set all the wrong precedents.
While minor bugs are part of any major video game patch, Apex Legends' issues recently crossed a line. Respawn's latest patch for the game, Update 1.1, reset players' account progress as soon as they logged in.
"Everything gone, Legends, Skin, Statistics and all Currency besides Apex coins I really hope they can fix this otherwise this will be really bad," said Reddit user P3RrYCH of their deleted account. A few hours after the patch went live, the developer shut down its servers and eventually issued a new patch that reverted the lost progress.
This may seem like Respawn trying to get the hang of updating a battle royale game, but the slow pace is intentional. According to a post that went out along with the game's first balance update, Respawn doesn't want to change Apex Legends often. "We make less frequent, better tested, higher impact balance changes in order to minimize the impacts on your time spent mastering the game," Respawn said. Rather than upsetting the meta by shifting around what's powerful and what isn't, the developer would prefer to release carefully balanced and tested patches. The result is very few balance changes, and some very buggy patches.
Leave me with a Mozambique if old.According to twitchmetrics.net, Apex Legends enjoyed an average of around 200,000 concurrent viewers for its first couple of weeks, but since has dropped to an average of around 50k. A few select streamers, like Shroud, can drag the game back up toward the top spots, but for the most part, the streaming community has moved back to old staples like League of Legends and Fortnite.
Epic updates Fortnite every week. A new weapon or item comes to the game at least every other patch, along with new game modes, and points of interest on the map. In patch v8.30, Epic added an entire respawn feature to the game, the new Fly Explosives game mode, and the Buccaneer Bounty event, all just a week after a new weapon was introduced. It's a breakneck pace, but it's designed to always give players something new to do in the game. Compared to Fortnite, Apex Legend's pace feels glacial.
