I finished off the battle pass with this excellent match!
It could've gone even better but I started the match getting crushed by the train.
I'm not sure if I'll keep playing regularly in later seasons, but as long as Respawn keeps things fresh I will. I hadn't intended to play much in season 3, but Respawn added a whole new map!
I stopped playing a few weeks ago because I didn't feel like I was getting better. I finished off the Season 3 Battle Pass, but my K/D ratio just seemed to be stuck at 0.75 for ~2 months. I don't normally enjoy competitive games, but I stuck around with this one a lot more because "winning" became less of an objective than just improving in general. Even though I kind of felt like I was improving, the in-game statistics seemed to suggest otherwise. Sounds like a lot of people have problems with the matchmaking? I have to admit it seems a little unfair to solo queue and be put up against full 3-man teams with absurd kill counts.
I still play this pretty regularly. It doesn't demand I play every day, but I can if I want to. The new content has been solid enough and I'm hopeful they're getting into the swing of what works. The Halloween event was great for instance.
Well so much for that Apex break. This sounds fun. Gold weapon duos, third-person mode, nighttime King's Canyon and more!
+1
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited January 2020
I haven't played in a while... my problem with the matchmaking is that it doesn't seem to exist at all. It seems like every server is just filled with anyone they could find in the queue, completely ignoring their stats or played time.
The other thing that discourages me from playing this, other than just that its battle royale in general, is that the damn zone can very easily overtake you, even when fully running in a straight line away from it. Why would they even design it like that? Dying to the zone is just not amusing. I get why zones exist in BR games, but there's absolutely no reason to make it move faster than the players other than spite. It needs to move pretty slow just to folks a chance to take terrain into account... sometimes you cannot run directly away from the zone because there's mountains etc in the way. They need to take that into account as well.
If I were designing a BR game, I'd have two major features: The zone would start creeping into the center at the very start of the match and never stop. The center point it was moving to would change often to keep things unpredictable, but this would be a seamless transition, and would never go faster than maybe 50% of top speed for a average player running. The second feature would be to get rid of the idea of dropping in and just spawn people on the ground, evenly distributed across the entire map, so folks have some kind of chance to, you know, have a gun at all, before they are forced into a fight.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
I haven't touched this game since the new map dropped, except for a few rounds in the Halloween zombie event (so I still haven't see the new map), but I'm going to have some time for the next few months and I'm thinking it's Apex time again.
The other thing that discourages me from playing this, other than just that its battle royale in general, is that the damn zone can very easily overtake you, even when fully running in a straight line away from it. Why would they even design it like that? Dying to the zone is just not amusing. I get why zones exist in BR games, but there's absolutely no reason to make it move faster than the players other than spite. It needs to move pretty slow just to folks a chance to take terrain into account... sometimes you cannot run directly away from the zone because there's mountains etc in the way. They need to take that into account as well.
Only the first ring or two move faster than the player, and it gives you like two minutes heads up where it'll shrink to. Note the map ahead of time to determine when you need to move.
Nah that's definitely not true. I am platinum ranked, if I play solo, I see 0-2 diamond platinum trails in casual. If things go bad, I definitely see my opponents skill drop. I had one drunken night where I ended up fighting level 30s.
If I go on the Apex discord, and play a premade with a diamond, I will pretty much only see diamonds and predators. Only people with multiple thousands of kills.
This season has been a bit long though. It needs some spice.
Just had the dumbest win. Rando group, the caustic wants to jump the train. We lose the bin lottery, and bail, spamming "go here"
He stays on the train, and gets downed I get lucky and pick up a devotion.
So I'm already moving on him on the map, 5 seconds away, and he disconnects. So now we're a duo at the start of the map.
But Devotions are good if noone has health, so I kill 1 dude, and the other 2 run away.
Noone else is at the location, and the zone keeps centering on us. We loot for a while, but as a duo trying to push fights is hard, so we just turtle.
5 squads alive, 4th circle, everyone arrives at the train station at the same second. We watch them fight from a distance, planning to pick off the winner.
Somehow only 1 squad dies and everyone gets the fuck out.... and circle around our hidey spot .... all into the same building.
And I really, really don't understand, but only 1 squad dies in there. The fight just keeps going, at least 90s of it.
So we defend the 5th circle instead. Win a 2 v 2 vs the first squad coming out, win a 2 v 2 vs the second squad (That was heavily zone damaged).
1 10s fight at the start, 10mins of looting, 6mins of watching other people fight ineffectively, then clean up....
The other thing that discourages me from playing this, other than just that its battle royale in general, is that the damn zone can very easily overtake you, even when fully running in a straight line away from it. Why would they even design it like that? Dying to the zone is just not amusing. I get why zones exist in BR games, but there's absolutely no reason to make it move faster than the players other than spite. It needs to move pretty slow just to folks a chance to take terrain into account... sometimes you cannot run directly away from the zone because there's mountains etc in the way. They need to take that into account as well.
Only the first ring or two move faster than the player, and it gives you like two minutes heads up where it'll shrink to. Note the map ahead of time to determine when you need to move.
The ring move speed is relative to how far it has to move. The time it has to close is set, so if the next ring is more to one side then it's going to move a lot faster on the side that has a longer distance to travel.
The ring move speed is relative to how far it has to move. The time it has to close is set, so if the next ring is more to one side then it's going to move a lot faster on the side that has a longer distance to travel.
That's my problem with this... in the worst case scenario you are on that largest side that is moving fastest and there's a mountain in the way and it just becomes physically impossible to outrun the zone. As far as I'm concerned that's a huge design flaw.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
Waiting until the zone starts to collapse to move to the next safe zone whilst simultaneously being along the line of largest separation is the tactical flaw
Being aware of the circle is important.
There are plenty of tools to move fast. You can out heal the first zone on bandages and make it out.
You can heal just outside of the circle if you know enemies are close, because looking outside the zone is difficult and most people are bad about it.
There are very few times I go "oh fuck the zone" anymore. And it's usually late game.
You develop an internal timer.
Knowing the map is also a huge help. Worlds Edge has only a few passages through the middle, and the centre most ones are very high chance of encounters if the zone ends near them.
I've seen that first building in Capital city be teamfights for the entire match.
In Apex news, there will be 7x 2 day rotating new modes to starting the 14th.
Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
+2
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited January 2020
I disagree with the design choice to have to be constantly worried about the circle. But the game is the way it is, I get that. To me, the zone only exist to ensure games eventually end, and I wish it had a reduced role.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
I disagree with the design choice to have to be constantly worried about the circle. But the game is the way it is, I get that. To me, the zone only exist to ensure games eventually end, and I wish it had a reduced role.
You don't have to constantly worry about it. As long as you loot relatively efficiently and move more or less in the direction of the in-bounds ring as you move from loot zone to loot zone it usually won't come up.
The zone also makes sure each ending is different. You can't prepare for the finale too much.
My last game yesterday was a second place where circle 5 was on sniper hill (hard to access, very NW of the map). But then circle 6 was actually outside it. So the people turtled had to move far or climb a few rocks.
This created an interesting fight as we tried to prevent the other team from moving there, which gave us a shot 2 v 3.
In the end we didnt shoot well enough, but it was the kind of mini story that makes me like Apex so much.
It seemed we had no chance, but then we reacted well to the new situation, and nearly pulled through.
In general, in Apex I still really care about winning and losing fights, after 300 hours.
While the season has been long, probably way too long for the most aggressive players, it's been perfect for me because I'm able to 110 at the rate I play. Maybe I shouldn't have 110'd, but it's nice to do so.
We played a few Golden Duos games, it's pretty rough when everyone has badass stuff. I'm just rusty as well. It ended up being fun regardless, though this new map is a mystery to me.
While the season has been long, probably way too long for the most aggressive players, it's been perfect for me because I'm able to 110 at the rate I play. Maybe I shouldn't have 110'd, but it's nice to do so.
This season has been so long in fact, that despite the fact that the challenges show Weeks 14-17 having new challenges, there actually aren't any! Every time we hit the weekly reset, the counter just rolls over to 6 Days, 23 Hours, 59 Minutes until unlock
I don't like the Golden Duos playlist because everyone is just 2-shot Krabering me from a million miles away.
If the spawns didn't have Krabers, Mastiffs and L-STARs sitting around everywhere, it would be interesting to be playing with the gold weapons, but that's not what we've got.
Live die was underwhelming. Respawning on anything past the first ring was borderline useless but it was at least fun watching teammates trying to survive.
3rd person mode is so fun and refreshing. I played a bunch yesterday afternoon and it's so nice to see the character models and animations. It's janky, impractical, and needs work to be functional (better camera, swapping shoulders, etc), but I loved it.
Gold Rush duos was also fun. It was nice to have access to weapons like Kraber more often. I just wish that there were more gold weapons present than just this season's.
I like the idea behind Live Die Live, but it practice it means a lot of downtime for the dead players and is less fun than the normal mode. Dying early means waiting a few minutes for the first ring to start closing, then another two minutes or so for that first ring to finally close. The mode should embrace the mayhem of respawns and have the ring close more often.
Something the Third Person mode I mentioned yesterday, when playing FPS you feel like you're moving faster but when you see yourself you realize how slow you usually are. It makes sense why I like the mobile characters now because the slow run speed definitely drives me crazy. Octane is perfect for Third Person mode.
I have to assume they're farming data and ideas from these modes, so I hope they're learning good things. I like that they're at least willing to throw some random stuff out and see what the community does with it.
Getting back into this on PC now instead of PS4 for a few different reasons. Curious, are the music unlocks/etc from like season 2 available in general loot ticks now or is there just never a chance of getting that sort of thing ever again?
Yeah, I'm not thinking I'd really get to it any time soon and I don't really buy loot ticks anyway but it's a bit of a bummer to have so much progress on PS4. And they haven't talked about Cross-save at all since some time around launch afaik.
Doesn't matter too much but it would be nice. My unlocks are so bare atm.
edit: ALso coming to the Battle Pass late is a bit crazy. I think I went from level 18 of the Battle Pass straight to 24 because I did like 10 objectives in one match.
The new mode for today is Kings Canyon After Dark. It's basically what it says, a nighttime version with extra Threat Detector scopes lying around. The map looks great.
Welp, I barely got any games of Night Mode in, but the new and final mode is Dummies Big Day. The events will repeat again one time each, but this is the last new mode.
No characters, you can only select from several colored dummies. The LB ability is replaced with a random drop of ammo, small health or an attachment every 30 seconds. The ult is apparently random too, it can either heal allies in the area near you, or randomly call in a care package... There may be other ults but that's the two I've gotten so far. Honestly this is the weakest mode, it's an interesting experiment but it removes a lot of the vertical play you can pull off with the mobility characters. It would be nifty alt set of rules for a tournament mode but, it feels like diet Apex.
Also apparently they've been teasing a new character, Revenant, since the Halloween event. He looks like a kinda evil Pathfinder, very tall, robotic and skinny. Obviously we're getting the MMA duder in this next season, but them building up hype on Revenant in the background makes me wonder what his abilities would be. I like that the dummies have a RNG based kit, it would be interesting if a character had a similar 'mimic' ability where they could copy any enemy or ally, or maybe pull a random move from the entire pool of characters. Would be fun.
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It could've gone even better but I started the match getting crushed by the train.
I'm not sure if I'll keep playing regularly in later seasons, but as long as Respawn keeps things fresh I will. I hadn't intended to play much in season 3, but Respawn added a whole new map!
Well so much for that Apex break. This sounds fun. Gold weapon duos, third-person mode, nighttime King's Canyon and more!
The other thing that discourages me from playing this, other than just that its battle royale in general, is that the damn zone can very easily overtake you, even when fully running in a straight line away from it. Why would they even design it like that? Dying to the zone is just not amusing. I get why zones exist in BR games, but there's absolutely no reason to make it move faster than the players other than spite. It needs to move pretty slow just to folks a chance to take terrain into account... sometimes you cannot run directly away from the zone because there's mountains etc in the way. They need to take that into account as well.
If I were designing a BR game, I'd have two major features: The zone would start creeping into the center at the very start of the match and never stop. The center point it was moving to would change often to keep things unpredictable, but this would be a seamless transition, and would never go faster than maybe 50% of top speed for a average player running. The second feature would be to get rid of the idea of dropping in and just spawn people on the ground, evenly distributed across the entire map, so folks have some kind of chance to, you know, have a gun at all, before they are forced into a fight.
If I go on the Apex discord, and play a premade with a diamond, I will pretty much only see diamonds and predators. Only people with multiple thousands of kills.
This season has been a bit long though. It needs some spice.
Just had the dumbest win. Rando group, the caustic wants to jump the train. We lose the bin lottery, and bail, spamming "go here"
He stays on the train, and gets downed I get lucky and pick up a devotion.
So I'm already moving on him on the map, 5 seconds away, and he disconnects. So now we're a duo at the start of the map.
But Devotions are good if noone has health, so I kill 1 dude, and the other 2 run away.
Noone else is at the location, and the zone keeps centering on us. We loot for a while, but as a duo trying to push fights is hard, so we just turtle.
5 squads alive, 4th circle, everyone arrives at the train station at the same second. We watch them fight from a distance, planning to pick off the winner.
Somehow only 1 squad dies and everyone gets the fuck out.... and circle around our hidey spot .... all into the same building.
And I really, really don't understand, but only 1 squad dies in there. The fight just keeps going, at least 90s of it.
So we defend the 5th circle instead. Win a 2 v 2 vs the first squad coming out, win a 2 v 2 vs the second squad (That was heavily zone damaged).
1 10s fight at the start, 10mins of looting, 6mins of watching other people fight ineffectively, then clean up....
The ring move speed is relative to how far it has to move. The time it has to close is set, so if the next ring is more to one side then it's going to move a lot faster on the side that has a longer distance to travel.
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
That's my problem with this... in the worst case scenario you are on that largest side that is moving fastest and there's a mountain in the way and it just becomes physically impossible to outrun the zone. As far as I'm concerned that's a huge design flaw.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
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Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
There are plenty of tools to move fast. You can out heal the first zone on bandages and make it out.
You can heal just outside of the circle if you know enemies are close, because looking outside the zone is difficult and most people are bad about it.
There are very few times I go "oh fuck the zone" anymore. And it's usually late game.
You develop an internal timer.
Knowing the map is also a huge help. Worlds Edge has only a few passages through the middle, and the centre most ones are very high chance of encounters if the zone ends near them.
I've seen that first building in Capital city be teamfights for the entire match.
In Apex news, there will be 7x 2 day rotating new modes to starting the 14th.
My last game yesterday was a second place where circle 5 was on sniper hill (hard to access, very NW of the map). But then circle 6 was actually outside it. So the people turtled had to move far or climb a few rocks.
This created an interesting fight as we tried to prevent the other team from moving there, which gave us a shot 2 v 3.
In the end we didnt shoot well enough, but it was the kind of mini story that makes me like Apex so much.
It seemed we had no chance, but then we reacted well to the new situation, and nearly pulled through.
In general, in Apex I still really care about winning and losing fights, after 300 hours.
https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/arteen/video/85215527
https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/arteen/video/85215526
It was so cruel.
PS - Local_H_Jay
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The is the most Caustic play from Lifeline
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
This season has been so long in fact, that despite the fact that the challenges show Weeks 14-17 having new challenges, there actually aren't any! Every time we hit the weekly reset, the counter just rolls over to 6 Days, 23 Hours, 59 Minutes until unlock
If the spawns didn't have Krabers, Mastiffs and L-STARs sitting around everywhere, it would be interesting to be playing with the gold weapons, but that's not what we've got.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I'm amazed I was able to hit these guys at all
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I want something like the Halloween event back.
Gold Rush duos was also fun. It was nice to have access to weapons like Kraber more often. I just wish that there were more gold weapons present than just this season's.
I like the idea behind Live Die Live, but it practice it means a lot of downtime for the dead players and is less fun than the normal mode. Dying early means waiting a few minutes for the first ring to start closing, then another two minutes or so for that first ring to finally close. The mode should embrace the mayhem of respawns and have the ring close more often.
PS - Local_H_Jay
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I'm sure it'll be a fan fav around here 😉
PS - Local_H_Jay
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There's so much crap that you'd never 100% it anyway.
Doesn't matter too much but it would be nice. My unlocks are so bare atm.
edit: ALso coming to the Battle Pass late is a bit crazy. I think I went from level 18 of the Battle Pass straight to 24 because I did like 10 objectives in one match.
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No characters, you can only select from several colored dummies. The LB ability is replaced with a random drop of ammo, small health or an attachment every 30 seconds. The ult is apparently random too, it can either heal allies in the area near you, or randomly call in a care package... There may be other ults but that's the two I've gotten so far. Honestly this is the weakest mode, it's an interesting experiment but it removes a lot of the vertical play you can pull off with the mobility characters. It would be nifty alt set of rules for a tournament mode but, it feels like diet Apex.
PS - Local_H_Jay
Sub me on Youtube
And Twitch
PS - Local_H_Jay
Sub me on Youtube
And Twitch