Apex Legends

Apex Legends Revisited

August 23, 2021August 23, 2021 Not A Walking Tree

Last I wrote, I compared Respawn Entertainment to an owner that gives their dog all the best toys, and food, but it doesn’t matter because the dog lives in a state of absolute squalor. Absolutely nothing has changed. In fact, they’ve managed to make things much worse. They’re like an ostrich sticking their head in the sand, indifferent to any constructive feedback, but they don’t care because the idiotic masses will continue to toss bills at them as if they were a stripper.

Since day one, people have requested en masse, to upgrade to a better server to handle the load. Since day two, people have demanded a fix to the numerous bugs. It’s a simple request. Fix. The. Bugs. Now you may have read that as “fix the bugs” but Respawn read it as “more shiny cosmetics”. Why bother with talented software developers and programming when we can hire an infamous incompetent dev only to fire them later? Yes, Daniel Z. Klein I speak of.

Old man screams at cloud. That’s what bothering to write anything about Apex Legends feels like. Remember the ancient days, when peasants would storm the despot’s castle and throw their entire family to the streets as a reminder of “maybe you should try being a good human being”? Yea, that’s never going to happen. The old times are gone. Now you’re a slave to corporate greed.

The problem I have is I love the game but every decision made since season one has been questionable. Their latest hero, Seer is absolutely broken and breaks the game. Casual players won’t find problems but higher up, having free wall hack, plus an interrupt plus knowledge of HP/Shields, no point in bothering to play. Just quit the game.

Games

Apex Legends Season 6

August 19, 2020August 20, 2020 Not A Walking Tree

Alrighty, I’m done giving this game any praise. As far as I’m concerned, Respawn Entertainment deserves all the vitriol and hate directed their way, all that and more. Their idea of improving a live service game is to essentially keep throwing content at you to distract you from the fact that their core game experience is built upon a heaping pile of shit. You have bugs from Day fucking One, pardon my language in this post. And instead of taking their core development team and fixing those bugs, they keep adding new guns, new maps, new legends, new shiny cosmetics that’ll keep bringing in revenue. They don’t give a single care in the world as to their average player. They cater to whales that’ll spend thousands on the game. And no, EA did not choose the prices. They did that themselves, they have become the very greedy scum that left Infinity Ward to become Respawn in the first place.

Sound is the single biggest problem in the game. All the time you will not hear a player sneak up on you, or you won’t hear their gun firing, or you won’t hear abilities going off. And since this is a battle royal shooter, sound is your biggest and best asset. Knowing where the enemy is, is half the battle. Yet Respawn won’t, or seemingly can’t be bothered to fix that issue. And then to compound things further, they keep adding things to the maps that produce sound as a way to get you distracted from gaining the knowledge where your enemy is. Too bad none of it matters because hey, they’ll not produce any sound. Only some players will.

Secondly, it’s come to my attention that they hired a former Riot designer who is infamous for his wrong stance on a champion (Kayn) so much so that he got let go, then they fixed what he refused to do, and whatya know? The champion is in an infinitely better spot now. So you went and hired this incredibly stubborn individual? Yea, that’s the direction you wanna go. That’s a designer you want on your team. He fits right in, given how stubborn Respawn is with their game. You try telling them that there’s problems with the game on their official subreddit, and guess what happens? It’s infamous by now. They called users freeloaders and a whole bunch of other names. And they wonder, oh god they wonder, why they get vitriol sent their way.

Thirdly, their servers. With the amount of money they make, sorry have made, why haven’t they given it a go and acquired better or even more servers to avoid the plague of issues. Way too many server shutdowns, way too many code leafs, way too many random crashes because the game logic can’t handle you doing something simple as using a character’s ultimate ability while using a geyser. And they cannot use Covid-19 as an excuse because all these problems existed long before that ever came around. The answer is simple and ever so infuriating, they simply don’t care about the core experience as long as the whales keep bringing them revenue. That’s it. They are the furthest thing away from a consumer friendly company.

Now onto season 6. At this point, Apex legends has been around a year and a half. What did they add this season? Well you see, they made the bright decision to lower overall hp by 25 and then to add two guns that have a less than one second time to kill. A moron could see that using any other gun is a waste of time. Evenly matched, any gun vs the devotion or the volt will lose 10/10 times. A year and a half of data and this is what they come to. My favorite lie is when the developers come onto the forums and say they look at play rates, win rates, kill rates, down rates, professional play, etc. That’s a big stinking lie. And I’m tired of hearing it. They don’t, because if they did, they would have realized that those two guns are incredibly overpowered. No, what they should be saying is, “we don’t care, we do what we want. This is our game. You can stop playing at any moment.” And guess what? That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I was a top tier player. But now, Respawn, Fuck you. Sincerely.

Edit: Final thoughts; the sunken cost fallacy is why I kept enjoying the game. I had sunk too much time into it that I felt I owed myself to keep playing. But the game is like this, imagine you’re a dog and you live in total squalor. Your owner hardly ever changes your food bowl, and when he does, oh how excited you are! And you love your owner, and everytime you play fetch, it’s so much fun! We started with a tiny little stick, but now we got a large stick! This is what Respawn has done to the average player. The game is a lot of fun, but all the bugs, terrible changes and server issues are like living in squalor. Our food bowl is the LTMs and content they slowly drip out. And the stick changing is the different seasons of the game. But we stuck by them, because like a dog we are loyal. Not anymore. Time to bite the hand that feeds.

Games

Things I’ve noticed in Apex Legends

February 24, 2019 Not A Walking Tree

The majority of people always rush to the fight to try and get the enemy at a bad moment. And while the game rewards aggressive behaviour, I’ve won far more game by playing the waiting game. Hiding about and gathering gear, and then when it’s the final 3 squads… Then I engage. When my team listens that is. As a solo player, I’ll admit I’m kind 85% of the time, going so far as to drop ammo or shields or guns for my teammates. But those that feel the need to belittle and abuse others for their own deaths, or leave when I’m about to revive them – after I’ve run through hell and pulled some tricky maneuvers… These people I am not kind to.

I’ve also noticed way too many people duo with a friend and leave me, the third man, way behind even though I only turned my back for a second. Then I end up most of the match trying to catch up, only for them to die and then ping madly while blaming me for their mistakes.

This leads me to the next problem, too many players rush off into battle before their teammates have had a chance to find a weapon. 3 guns will always beat 2 guns + fists or any combination besides 3 guns unless you’re skilled. Secondly, if your team lands near a single enemy… ALL three of you need to punch/melee. They’ll die quickly. Too many times I see players run away searching for a gun.

The high ground wins. Every single fight I’ve lost, the enemy had the high ground. Every single time I’ve won, I’ve had the high ground. It’s over, Anakin.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading.

Games

February 23, 2019 Not A Walking Tree

Rarely does a game hold my attention for as long as this one does. What it excels at is shooting mechanics, and simply, the overall feel of it. Yes, it’s a battle royale. Yes, it’s free. Yes, there are microtransactions. I’ve dropped easily 40 hours into this by now and I haven’t spent a dime.

For those that are unaware, Apex Legends is team based/squads of 3 based first person shooter in the battle royale genre. 20 teams of 3 compete to be the last team standing. Players drop from a single dropship and can jetpack glide down to the surface/area they wish to land. Weapons are randomized across the playfield, with certain areas leading to better tiered loot than others. Supply drops land randomly (or purposefully, I haven’t figured it out) which contain high tier loot, possibly legendaries. Loot is separated into common, rare, epic and legendary.

Now even with the weapons being tiered off, each weapon is a powerhouse in its own respective range. The shotguns, mainly the peacekeeper, dominate the close range. The sub-machine guns dominate the short-med range, and assault rifles to alright all round, but better at medium to long range, and sniper rifles can actually work at all ranges provided one is skilled.

Being skilled is actually seen in this game because those that are such, will be absolutely deadly with certain weapons while the casual gamer will feel a sense of “this gun needs to be nerfed”. I personally dominate with the g7 scout and the wingman.

When you play the game, you have the choice of 6 characters to choose from at the start. The other two can be unlocked by leveling up and gaining currency or spending real money. It took me about 40 hours (roughly the last little while I been playing) before I got the last character. Each character has their own unique hit-box (which I absolutely love, and pray that it doesn’t get changed), and their own set of abilities with a passive as well.

There’s Bloodhound, it can track enemy player’s recent movements with its passive, it’s tactical is to scan nearby and see through walls where the enemy is – it doesn’t show if they move away, just where they last where – and her ultimate makes her run really fast, and all enemies are highlighted red that are in sight.

There’s Gibraltar, who has a off/on shield whenever he aims, his tactical throws down in an area a shield that blocks all outgoing and incoming damage, and his ultimate rains mortar strikes in a massive area.

There’s Lifeline, a combat medic who has more than one passive; she can revive teammates while providing a frontal shield to block incoming damage, and she heals 25% faster. Her tactical is a long cooldown drone that provides healing to both ally and enemy. And her ultimate is a care package that can kill if it lands on someone, and contains high tier loot, usually purple shields.

There’s also Wraith, who can tell when an enemy is aiming at her or her allies, or if she’s being pinged or her allies are. Her tactical makes her invisible and invincible for 3 seconds and her ultimate plants a portal at one location, then you run to another spot and place the exit. While she’s using her ult, she runs 25% faster.

There’s Bangalore who when she gets shot at, she runs twice as fast. Her tactical is a multi use, before cooldowns, smoke grenade. Her ultimate covers an area in missiles that blow up after 5 seconds or so – easily dodged.

Caustic (gotta unlock) has the passive that he can see his enemies, even through walls, if they enter his gas. His tactical is that he can plant up to 6 gas mines around the map, 3 at once before 30 seconds cooldown to recover each charge. His ultimate tosses a grenade that covers a large area in toxic gas.

Mirage (gotta unlock) has a pretty tame passive in that when he gets knocked down, he goes invisible for 5 seconds and has a clone do a death animation. His tactical is he sends out a decoy that runs in straight line and if anybody shoots it, they get revealed to only Mirage. While his ultimate deploys clones in a circle who just stand there, while he himself goes invisible for a bit.

And lastly, there’s my favorite legend. Pathfinder. This robot’s passive is that he can scan beacons which are found in tall places around the map, which will reveal the location of the next circle. It’s astounding how many players fail to realize that tactical value in that. You can plan ahead where to move. Most games when my teammates abandon (so aggravating, I’m almost to the respawn and they quit), i can get second easily because I’m already waiting inside the next ring. Pathfinder’s tactical is he shoots a grappling hook that propels him to a target location, and when used correctly, can send him to hard to reach places or move about the battlefield with such ease; you can also grapple enemies towards yourself. His ultimate lets him create a zipline that can reach up to 10,000 range, and the ziplines stay on the field. I play Pathfinder the most.

All in all, I highly recommend this game to both veteran and casual gamers alike.