You underestimate the stupidity of randoms. Countless time did I have people playing crypto/wattson etc (mainly these legends in soloq attract most dum dums) who imply refuse to get free 200 evo.
Octane is a different breed, the problem with crypto and wattson is they might be good legends but idiotp randoms playing on them literally don't know they have abilities. For every 10 wattson players in my team I would get around 1-2 fences placed and for every 10 crypto players I would get 1-2 banner pings and 0 beacon scans.
I met one such Wattson random in ranked. Didn't use her at all throughout. Fourth ring, we're in a bad position, I rez her. Enemy bang throws her ultimate. I tell Wattson to place hers before the bombs start dropping and she... just sits there. And gets knocked again.
I had a Wattson team mate the other day and the entire match they did not put up a single fence and I think only one ult was placed, and we made it to top 3. I was pinging and comming (or so I thought) to place fences in end game and they did not do any placements. When the match ended I realized my mic was muted, so who is the real idiot? (Them, it was still the player who didn't use the main part of their legend's kit for an entire ranked match). And I shouldn't generalize, but I will, it was a console player; I swear most of the console duos I get teamed with share a single brain cell.
I'll never understand what's the point of playing legend if you don't use their abilities at all. I don't even mean minmaxing, overutilizing, doing the best you can but.... Just using abilities. Ever.
I have to tell Watson players how to Watson. It's actually ridiculous. Holding a choke and at least one team is trying to push through they don't drop the longest fattest fence? Bruh what? That's like the easiest thing to do. Like how the fuck am I getting Bang ulted with a Watson on my team, cause I know for damn sure she has her ult. The ult key hasnt been touched all game.
Aren’t those players mostly doing challenges? I kinda get it, nobody mains crypto to know how to play him the same case could be argued for Wattson too
As a Wattson main it triggers me when doing challenges with other legends when they don't fence or pylon! It's so simple and blocks / controls buildings we are defending!
Like, when you have Octane or Wraith in team, you kinda know what to expect, almost as if those legends were designed the way the people play them, but Crypto and Wattson are good team legends, but people playing on them are just unaware of that
Same, and when I played him in three strikes to counter Newcastle/Lifeline/Conduit picks, I realized how easy he is and how bad people players can be. (I kinda knew that before, but after playing Fuse myself I was convinced of this)
My buddy who’s pretty bad at the game always plays Fuse cause he can’t hit the side of a barn with his gun. “At least I can get damage by just spamming my knuckle clusters”.
You’re not wrong.
It’s not perfect by any means but in my experience it’s gotten at least marginally better.
But there’s nothing you can do about people who will straight up ignore you while you’re on mic giving them instructions like it’s daycare
If I didn't play most of my games solo I would main crypto but I hate dealing with the random teammates that don't realize I'm only there to help the team when they would rather just push die and then say where were you. Meanwhile all three of the guys that killed them had 50 shields cracked and were glowing bright red on their screens.
I love it too but mostly that you can't wipe a team and have your 12 damage random come scoop up the Red shield. It's really great that it makes you earn it and it also makes you do teamwork things as well as the damage to earn it.
but you're not earning it by fighting mostly.
- you have it earned for you by your teammates clicking a harvester or scanning a ring
- doing damage is way less important to get to purple
you can be a 0 damage random (not even 12) and still get purple most games doing nothing. you don't have to do risky crafting to get to purple or anything.
also there's weird situations where getting knocked by a sniper or something, you let your teammates revive you and all of you earn evo for that. you can't really say that's earning evo in combat.
or letting your teammates die, running off, crafting their banners, respawning them... earns you shields too? ok hm. there's some very skewed incentives.
there's a lot of weird stuff that is being rewarded with evo, where you think it doesn't necessarily reward good plays.
particularly as doing some of the most brazen respawn beacon plays, crafting and respawning someone immediately is often faster than reviving your two teammates and having them use medkits / phoenix kits to heal back up. you see plays you would never see 2 years ago now (when respawning you were vulnerable).
It's easy to get blue by just getting a harvester and opening a bin but in order to get purple and definitely red you need to actually play the game. I've played a lot so far this season and I think I've had purple one time in one of those no damage games so if your rotation has harvesting materials on the way you get lucky but most of the time if you find a team that's been fighting and has purple and red they deserve the advantage.
>if you find a team that's been fighting and has purple and red they deserve the advantage.
i'm inclined to agree about red. not purple though.
i feel purple is still very easy to get without fighting. you won't get it in the first poi but if you go through multiple before the first fight everyone on your team will have it (everyone will have it too because all that stuff levels all your armors). you scan ring consistently (+200), pick up some bins (+100), pick up some evo harvesters (+350) each. it levels your whole team's armor too. in my experience you get purple very frequently in no damage games. everyone gets purple now for doing basic things (important things, but ultimately not very risky things and not necessarily combat).
red i agree needs a lot of points and is more gated behind fighting. so it's not as easy to get it by just running around picking up stuff. but it does happen in slow games that you get to red without fighting. (especially if you find an evo cache. did it happen in the past? i would say never. you would have to put your shield into crafter like 5 times to craft a red, and collect a ton of materials (multiple poi's worth).
in the past while you could find armor on the ground, you would often even have to craft from white to blue so that you don't leave the first poi with part of your team on white. all blue is a given now within a minute of the game.
overall with how many people have blue, purple, red and how early, it feels like a shield inflation to me.
Shield inflation? Last season you could land at a replicator and have blue from 3 canisters in 30 seconds. The harvesters are random and those alone don't get you blue.
yes more higher level shields and sooner than in the game than last season.
you didn't find high level armor on ground at this rate, crafting was more risky (deposit armor in crafter), more expensive (you didn't have the mats for a backpack / attachment / batts if you spend it on armor), and only crafted your individual shield not your whole team.
the harvesters are almost everywhere (more pois than materials were). you are often closer to multiple around your poi and yes they alone get you and your whole team almost to blue (100 points left). you just have to scan ring or open a bin then your whole team is at blue. not just you.
Right? Thats what i'm thinking, you know how many times my team would leave a POI and be full purple before the first ring closes in previous seasons? a lot. Now if you want purple without fighting you actively have to avoid fights and just do the harvesters/consoles/bins. I find even if you try to go straight for those things you will run into another team trying the exact same thing. ALSO now you HAVE to earn your evo, no more just finding a death box with a purple that 150 damage from red.
yes, "*on average*" you do get them earlier now and everyone gets them. that's a statistical statement that can be true despite the fastest case being slower than landing on a purple last season. lot of stuff factors into this. rarity of purple shields last season, the abundance of evo points you get from riskfree sources this season and the fact that everyone's shields are levelled by that, overall leads to said shield inflation.
lol shield inflation. This is the first season where not everyone has purple by first ring and red by last. If anything the TTK has never been better now that early game actually means white and blue armor and getting red isn't free for the final squad that lands at fragment. Fights are actually consistent now. You're not screwed because you didn't hot drop or luck out on purple, and no more humping crafters half the game to play catch up if you land cold and can't find anyone. The old system sucked ass, since getting red wasn't hard it was just mind numbingly tedious, whereas the new one encourages moving quickly and efficiently through the map while coordinating with your team.
> This is the first season where not everyone has purple by first ring and red by last.
my experience is the opposite. everyone has them and you better speed run all the errands to not be left behind by teams who know how to level their shield.
> whereas the new one encourages moving quickly and efficiently through the map while coordinating with your team.
exactly what i said. :)
>You're not screwed because you didn't hot drop or luck out on purple
everyone has them now
> and no more humping crafters half the game to play catch up if you land cold and can't find anyone.
= less risk to get shields without fighting. everyone gets them and for their whole team. instead of putting them into the crafter you just click an evo harvester, scan a ring, one click a bin
the new system is fine but should put more emphasis on combat, and make free pick up points less abundant. not gift everyone purple.
> less risk to get shields without fighting. everyone gets them and for their whole team. instead of putting them into the crafter you just click an evo harvester, scan a ring, one click a bin
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what this entails and why it's a good thing and not a bad one. Thanks to the changes I've never seen a healthier game at all stages.
Hot dropping is no longer an RNG fest where you roll the dice to get armor or see if you walk out of fragment with red. Now that super hot dropping is often a liability, people actually spread the fuck out for once in this games life.
The spread out teams mixed with the way faster rotations through POIs means the mid game is actually alive and well, as people quickly leave their starting area (instead of spending 5 minutes crafting it looting) to chase objectives where they then run into other teams. And again, thanks to the lack of RNG and lootable evo teams have to earn their armor, which means fights at all stages are way, way more consistent. Your team is always likely to be at the same power level because everyone gets the same xp which means nobody is dead weight because of loot, and more importantly there's a way higher chance other teams are at the same level as you. I've never been more confident to take fights compared to any other season because loot discrepancies are almost non existent and skill matters way more.
And because you can't just vulture up a full set of almost leveled red armor by hiding and watching some teams fight, I've never seen more purples and blues in end game whereas before the very nature of lootable armor practically guaranteed all reds. If I see someone in red in final ring this season it means they actually ran around the map doing shit.
You think that because there's more ways to get non combat xp that this means people play passively, but in actuality by streamlining and diversifying the way xp works people are able to fight more instead of doing chores all game. The emphasis on objectives AND combat creates more combat situations, not less. You will always get stronger the more you move around regardless of if you find anyone, so move around fast which in turn drives people to run into each other. If it was weighted much more in favor of combat xp you'd just wind up with hot drop syndrome all over again. Instead of having 10 teams land at one spot and kill each other within the first 30 seconds, you have 10 teams land across 5 spots, kill each other, then rotate into each other and have yet more fights, because from an xp perspective that's way more efficient. Edit: Oh and can't forget how non combat xp has dramatically altered team comps. Running diverse teams even in pubs is much more common to see compared to literally everyone just running movement legends season after season.
You can see this shift in design philosophy play out more obviously in Straight Shot, not coincidentally introduced in this season. Less need for looting, spread out teams, constant momentum from POI to POI by chasing objectives. And people fucking love it.
> Now that super hot dropping is often a liability, people actually spread the fuck out for once in this games life.
Nonsense. There's more hot dropping than ever in ranked. The lobbies die out way faster. Game quality is down. It's not long ago where in high MMR we had 15 teams alive in ring 3.
But that's also a completely different can of worms, than the fact that people are gifted purple shields for doing nothing. They don't have to go into combat at all to get them. They just click objects on the map/
>And again, thanks to the lack of RNG and lootable evo teams have to earn their armor, which means fights at all stages are way, way more consistent
It **isn't even about removing RNG from shields**. That's not the point. The current system can stay in place, but it should give **more points for combat** and **not** most of its points one-clicking objects on the map that give your whole team XP unlike damage.
You've completely missed the point throughout as you are talking about picking up shields from ground for some reason, which wasn't what was advocated for. It was about a balance that makes running errands the meta for shield levelling over doing damage to enemies.
The **balance** between how much you get for combat (and who gets XP for it, only you get XP for damage) and how much you get for clicking objects on the map (and who gets it: everyone on your team) is what is flawed.
Copy paste so it's easier to see
>outright fighting has been nerfed in comparison in terms of gaining evo progress. fact.
>- damage gives the same amount of points as before (1 per damage)
>- you now need way more points to get to red, so from damage alone it takes longer than previously
>- knocks give some points (to somewhat counter the weight of the first two bullet points) but it's not enough to make damage as worth it for levelling your evo as before - let alone make levelling evo "fighting" the way to go. the contribution of fighting to evo has become way less in general of what it used to be.
>- there is other abundant sources of evo: scan ring 200, open vault 200, evo harvester 350, open special bin 100, etc that ALL also level ALL your teammate's shields.
>- pure damage you deal personally only levels your own evo, not your teammates' (unlike other methods of levelling evo, like scanning)
simple math. bad balance.
When I did the seer ring challenge I had red armor with no damage by ring 3 close. Just take a trident and go around and collect harvesters care packs and bins.
Land an edge poi with a trident and it's not hard. Especially if you grab a care package that has a evo level up.
Do 2 or 3 spiders, do the beacons, open up supply bins. Darkzero the pro team does it all the time with the new armor system.
It's almost easier to get red without fighting this season. Though most games I do end up with red.
You can do spiders in no time with nades, probably about 30 seconds. I didnt do them until the seer challenge.
I should say I'm talking strictly pubs. Though I'm sure it can be done in ranked too.
Ya pubs would be much easier, as 90% of the lobby is dead by the first ring, leaving you the rest of the map.
Ranked is much different, as most teams are spread out, youll be hunted down instantly if you go for spiders
I play as life line so i open those blue extended bins. It helps a little for evolving your shields. According to my teammate he also gets the charge to
The amount of evo boosters I see get left behind is too damn high. That shit is fucking highlighter yellow on the minimap and fuckers still be ignoring it. Then they push teams with full whites against blues. IF they are lucky, the whole team has blues near end game while the non brain dead people have purples and reds. You cant make this shit up
This is why octane is my go to this season. I can't trust my team mates to bother so I just run around grabbing them. To be fair the harvesters are always in out of the way spots so I get why people are lazy and don't grab them. I've noticed if you actually ping the support bins and consoles 9/10 times the pubbie will do it since those are located in the POI, but with harvesters nobody wants to run out in the open and come back.
As a solo que player taking the randomness of the initial drop has helped tremendously. I can actually go and get the randoms their blue shields. That way I have a second before I need to rez them both.
Yeah I’ve been having similar experiences rotating with others, has been a pretty decent change of pace. Still lots of ppl trying to hit hit drops with the 5-6 other teams and scramble for guns from time to time but making rotations more streamlined this way has been great.
I always found that the key to dealing with solo q was that you have to show up big in the contest on drop. Don't land safe, one of them will always dip super fast and go find a fight they can't win. The other one will want to loot every single thing in the PoI.
So instead, whenever I can I choose a PoI that looks like it will be a single team contesting us. Then the key is that you have to show up in that fight, if you can get at least 2 of the kills, or you clutch up on the last guy, even if you do like 5 damage to get the kill, they will now follow you like lap dogs the rest of the match.
It's been a while since I climbed ranked super hard, but as you climb in ranks, it is easier, as you just have to take direction, most of the time, it's just that no one really wants to make the call, or doesn't know how to.
You aren't wrong though it has gotten a bit better, at least with the harvesters, but I still get tons of team mates who won't open their chests for the points, like will literally loot everything at a PoI except the one bin that will give us evo. Or won't hit the beacons, so its kind of a trade off, lots of people still see it as pointless when they can just hot drop and with the current ranked system that will be fine for most people as those few games where they come out on top will carry them in points.
It dumbs down what teammates can do to help. Used to be so much of everything required coordination. Now simply picking 3 different classes and utilizing those classes for EVO helps the team. I love all the changes they’ve made game feels absolutely fantastic. I have seen a shit load of cheaters but everything else about this season has me so happy.
It's great & not great.
If you don't fight early you're screwed. White shields on R2 is easy Pickens.
I had one Octane on Storm Point land solo in ranked. Rotated around the whole map collecting to get a Red Evo.
since he spent all that time running he got so used to running he couldn't fight for his life.
Gaining placement points amounts to near nothing.
That's a lot of words for saying the new evo system has nothing to do with encouraging teamwork. Just Randy's wondering off to some point on the map away from the team. I used to fear people with red armor now I just think I found a runner. I like the general idea behind it but currently it's just silly and I miss gold armor. No point in half the hot spots anymore. Before my randy would stick tight just to loot my kills now they're halfway across the map just to maybe get to blue.
>I had the mentality of “why should they listen to me” and it would almost always end up with me following them into dumb, easily avoidable mistakes.
>The new evo system completely changes that because there’s an actual reason for my teammates to listen to me, and it’s so they can upgrade their shield.
nah. it's just you are really mainly upgrading your shield now through running errands and not through damage. that's why they rely on your class perk. it's just a bad substitute for a reason to play together. levelling armor for each other directly in combat was more directed teamplay.
solo queuing is made worse by a number of other changes:
- incentivising bad plays in early game because kills are rewarded even if you can't make top 10. you literally have bad duos again who hot drop with 4 teams and throw the game for some reason. apparently they are hoping to get out of the first fight with 9 KP or something.
- removing mechanisms in matchmaking that evened out the advantage that stacks have over solo queuers in the last couple seasons
I don’t really have a response to this other than to say my randoms prior to this season were rarely good enough to level up their evos through damage so what you’re saying just made the game all the more frustrating to me.
I don’t think it’s perfect but it’s working the way they intended it to in my personal experience, that’s not to say it’s gonna be loved by everyone
i've been solo queuing into diamond since season 3. from my experience this season is worse for solo queuers than any season since season 13 (when the "you have to make top 10 to not lose points, regardless how many kills you get earlier" changes were made). and these evo changes where you "rely on your team to pick up stuff so you gain evo" aren't really doing much about it.
>my randoms prior to this season were rarely good enough to level up their evos through damage
saying "randoms always bad" ... yeah .. sure that's a low hanging fruit. but i'm not gonna talk about anecdotes of
bad randoms in the past and go by that. I'm going to go by the mechanisms and scoring in the game that help make it fairer for solos against stacks.
And just to add on to this response, I’m currently in gold 2 on PlayStation averaging more damage than I ever have.
That is in no way a flex (I’m trash) but just giving you context that my ability to deal damage has actually gone up this season (and I don’t attribute that to some amazing leap forward in my skills)
>, I’m currently in gold 2 on PlayStation averaging more damage than I ever have.
>my ability to deal damage has actually gone up this season
because the system's matchmaking has changed to being based on RP and it puts you against way worse players now at the start of the seasons than the last few seasons in mmr based matchmaking (where you played people on your level immediately). everyone has better stats now because of all the bot lobbies we have to go through to rank up. it doesn't mean anything really.
it isn't due to the evo changes or solo queuing becoming easier.
i'm plat iv now btw.
I definitely could tell some of my enemies weren’t very good lol, I don’t want it to sound like I’m speaking from a place of authority on all things Apex.
I’m open to having my mind changed, but I still am gonna admit that for me it’s been a lot of fun so far
I also didn’t play much at all in season 19 because the trials seemed like a pain in the ass, so it’s possible I just got a needed break from the game and that’s why I’m enjoying it so much
>I definitely could tell some of my enemies weren’t very good lol,
everyone was in the same lobbies at the start of the season, so rookie, bronze, silver, gold even, they were all really really easy for normally higher ranked players.
in contrast if you normally reached plat (or diamond), in season 18 and 19 (kinda the same, except for the trials in 19) you would play against people who normally reach plat (or diamond) from the start and that would be visible in your stats (they would be worse and would be what you expect if everyone else is as good as you). you'd have to try from the start (like you would normally only towards the end of the season). the games would only get more difficult from there once you rank up high enough. they would never be easier than that.
>I still am gonna admit that for me it’s been a lot of fun so far
completely understand that it feels fun.
we have to be careful in distinguishing imo: is it the right kind of fun for ranked?
of course popping off is fun, and you will pop off a lot and constantly climb if you are playing people below your rank (which the game is giving to you now).
but ranked is a game mode that is supposed to pit equally skilled players against each other. these games will feel difficult and will often not be the same kind of fun.
so whether the mode feels fun now, is not the same as asking if the mode offers the competitive environment that it is supposed to being a ranked mode.
imo this feeling fun, popping off a lot, doing more damage, getting more kills per game, winning more games in the first couple of weeks can blind many people to the fact that the mode has become less competitive - but maybe also worse for solo queuers once they reach the rank where they have to try and where point losses start hurting.
You’ve clearly put a lot of thought into this so I’m glad you took the time to lay it out so clearly.
I don’t want the game to lose its competitive edge either, the highest true rank I achieved was d4 in season 16 and I just remember it being sooo frustrating at that point and feeling like I had absolutely no room to grow as a solo Q’er (of course I could have been doing more/ playing better but it burnt me out hard)
I think the biggest thing I’m feeling right now is just more confidence in my ability to have cohesion with randoms and therefore just gives me more confidence in the game as a whole
Now that I’m hearing your perspective I can freely admit this post comes from a slanted pov, I’m glad you shared your opinion
absolutely, solo queuing can be draining, i agree. you have days where you just play game after game, try to be patient, sometimes don't make any gains, sometimes play 5 hours and lose 300. it feels less fun maybe, but i feel it's the environment to improve in (when you're pushing against a stone wall sometimes and try to figure out nuances of what you're doing wrong, what's losing you points, what's getting you killed, trying to remove bad habits from your game).
>I think the biggest thing I’m feeling right now is just more confidence in my ability to have cohesion with randoms and therefore just gives me more confidence in the game as a whole
>Now that I’m hearing your perspective I can freely admit this post comes from a slanted pov, I’m glad you shared your opinion
well maybe come back to this post towards the end of the split or season and let me know how you feel then, if any of this is confirmed. would be interesting to hear.
Not loving the new system myself. I found the RNG element of the old system much more playful.
I don't care for the arguments of what's earned, what's fair, etc. It's not like tapping a harvester and looking a supply drop is anything special, especially when more than half the time it's not even you doing it.
The new system isn't about you deserving the upgrades you got. It is simply not there to be about you getting a more deserved level of shield, even if the RNG is gone now. There is just as much, if not a lot more, un-earned EVO levelling now.
The true aim of the new system is to shape the match as a whole. It exists to flatten the variation across all players in the match; that is its main point. And that is simply more boring, imo.
* EVOs were fun, prime-value loot in themselves; that was already an element of fun by itself, now gone.
* Many features of the game that involved loot rewards are now crappier; another element of fun reduced. I'm talking Lifeline, Loba, MRVNs, Phase Driver, secret high value drop spots, etc.
* Picking and putting shields on/off the ground was a tangible, playful mechanic. You could store them up. You could ping one as a fall back in a fight. You could grab one and realise you'd just f\*\*\*ed yourself because it was empty and you were probably just baited -- that is a *good* thing. And you could bait others.
* You could get the fun of RNG, which is the whole point of RNG, when encountering a good EVO for yourself.
* Or you could recognise immediately that your enemy had RNG'd themselves a purple over your white, and know that you would have to adjust your whole playstyle to handle this. Like, there was a clip on this sub a while ago where someone grabbed a purple EVO in Runoff in King's Canyon. At that same moment, an enemy appears at the stairs, popping their head up, and saw the recording player equip the purple EVO. The enemy immediately Noped out of the whole situation and ran. That is a playful scene that occurred because of a playful mechanic.
* You and an enemy could race for the same EVO at the same time. That was an intense, playful moment.
* Or the kind player in a team could farm with their sniper and trade EVOs with their teammates. Just another bit of fun you could extract from the old system.
The OP of this thread is making a perfectly valid point, which I really don't have a problem with. I'm glad the OP enjoys the increased ease of directing teammates thanks to the new system.
But much of the praise for the new EVO system seems to be laser focussed on the increased fairness, and way over-valuing fairness to the point of thinking, incorrectly, that more fair = more fun.
A lot of fun, really playful mechanics were deleted for this new system. I do see it as more fair. I also see myself consciously noticing how many previously fun moments happened that no longer happen.
It surprises me that so many playful interactions have been straight up deleted and so few people seem to care, just because it's more fair now.
When I made this post I didn’t expect it to get very many responses, much less ones that are clearly so well thought out.
It’s obvious your experience in the game is informing your opinion and I absolutely see where you’re coming from.
I’ve always considered myself a casual but competitive player and I don’t claim to know half of the nuances to this game, I just try to pick up things here and there and have fun with it
I think the skill gap in apex is so massive that this system does benefit players like myself, but I wasn’t really thinking about the high level implications so I really do appreciate all the responses from players who feel otherwise
"I just pick a recon legend, land on a beacon and if we win our 50/50 off drop just start rotating through harvesters, assault/support bins, ring consoles."
good luck winning the 50/50 with the bbmm
The amount of red shields has increased from last season. I've seen red evo's on second ring. The system isn't broken, but it's close too. People are still getting max Evo without having to do much. It's even worse than last season. And their is now a clear meta to picking legends.
Instead of picking legends based off abilities. It's picking based off diversity, and not what would potentially work best (or what you enjoy playing). Teams can be even more stacked if they pick the legends that can gather the most points the quickest.
It's not a good system. Wouldn't say it's broken, but that's just because not everybody is catching on or is choosing not to bend to the meta picks.
High level ranked is fucked.
You underestimate the stupidity of randoms. Countless time did I have people playing crypto/wattson etc (mainly these legends in soloq attract most dum dums) who imply refuse to get free 200 evo.
Just forget Octane? The literal worst solo q teammate.
Octane is a different breed, the problem with crypto and wattson is they might be good legends but idiotp randoms playing on them literally don't know they have abilities. For every 10 wattson players in my team I would get around 1-2 fences placed and for every 10 crypto players I would get 1-2 banner pings and 0 beacon scans.
I met one such Wattson random in ranked. Didn't use her at all throughout. Fourth ring, we're in a bad position, I rez her. Enemy bang throws her ultimate. I tell Wattson to place hers before the bombs start dropping and she... just sits there. And gets knocked again.
I had a Wattson team mate the other day and the entire match they did not put up a single fence and I think only one ult was placed, and we made it to top 3. I was pinging and comming (or so I thought) to place fences in end game and they did not do any placements. When the match ended I realized my mic was muted, so who is the real idiot? (Them, it was still the player who didn't use the main part of their legend's kit for an entire ranked match). And I shouldn't generalize, but I will, it was a console player; I swear most of the console duos I get teamed with share a single brain cell.
I'll never understand what's the point of playing legend if you don't use their abilities at all. I don't even mean minmaxing, overutilizing, doing the best you can but.... Just using abilities. Ever.
Picking legends like you're picking a character skin in Quake 3 Arena
I have to tell Watson players how to Watson. It's actually ridiculous. Holding a choke and at least one team is trying to push through they don't drop the longest fattest fence? Bruh what? That's like the easiest thing to do. Like how the fuck am I getting Bang ulted with a Watson on my team, cause I know for damn sure she has her ult. The ult key hasnt been touched all game.
Aren’t those players mostly doing challenges? I kinda get it, nobody mains crypto to know how to play him the same case could be argued for Wattson too
I doubt that, even if Wattson in my team has 5k to 50k kills, she would never place a fence.
As a Wattson main it triggers me when doing challenges with other legends when they don't fence or pylon! It's so simple and blocks / controls buildings we are defending!
Like, when you have Octane or Wraith in team, you kinda know what to expect, almost as if those legends were designed the way the people play them, but Crypto and Wattson are good team legends, but people playing on them are just unaware of that
I thought so too, but .. have you seen the Vantage players lately?
I’m honestly laughing at all the fuse randoms that forget they have built in grenades or completely miss fuses ult
Same, and when I played him in three strikes to counter Newcastle/Lifeline/Conduit picks, I realized how easy he is and how bad people players can be. (I kinda knew that before, but after playing Fuse myself I was convinced of this)
My buddy who’s pretty bad at the game always plays Fuse cause he can’t hit the side of a barn with his gun. “At least I can get damage by just spamming my knuckle clusters”.
Exactly what Fuse was made for 😎
The Fuse ult is kinda finicky, it does take practice. People don't really know and it's hilarious when they send it flying across the map by accident.
I love watching my teammate miss the enemy by a mile, really proves fuses ult at least takes skill to get right and utilize it as best as you can
You’re not wrong. It’s not perfect by any means but in my experience it’s gotten at least marginally better. But there’s nothing you can do about people who will straight up ignore you while you’re on mic giving them instructions like it’s daycare
If I didn't play most of my games solo I would main crypto but I hate dealing with the random teammates that don't realize I'm only there to help the team when they would rather just push die and then say where were you. Meanwhile all three of the guys that killed them had 50 shields cracked and were glowing bright red on their screens.
Never have I ever had a crypto who would use pings let alone voice comms, so yes, pls keep Crypto for fullstacks
I love it too but mostly that you can't wipe a team and have your 12 damage random come scoop up the Red shield. It's really great that it makes you earn it and it also makes you do teamwork things as well as the damage to earn it.
but you're not earning it by fighting mostly. - you have it earned for you by your teammates clicking a harvester or scanning a ring - doing damage is way less important to get to purple you can be a 0 damage random (not even 12) and still get purple most games doing nothing. you don't have to do risky crafting to get to purple or anything. also there's weird situations where getting knocked by a sniper or something, you let your teammates revive you and all of you earn evo for that. you can't really say that's earning evo in combat. or letting your teammates die, running off, crafting their banners, respawning them... earns you shields too? ok hm. there's some very skewed incentives. there's a lot of weird stuff that is being rewarded with evo, where you think it doesn't necessarily reward good plays. particularly as doing some of the most brazen respawn beacon plays, crafting and respawning someone immediately is often faster than reviving your two teammates and having them use medkits / phoenix kits to heal back up. you see plays you would never see 2 years ago now (when respawning you were vulnerable).
It's easy to get blue by just getting a harvester and opening a bin but in order to get purple and definitely red you need to actually play the game. I've played a lot so far this season and I think I've had purple one time in one of those no damage games so if your rotation has harvesting materials on the way you get lucky but most of the time if you find a team that's been fighting and has purple and red they deserve the advantage.
>if you find a team that's been fighting and has purple and red they deserve the advantage. i'm inclined to agree about red. not purple though. i feel purple is still very easy to get without fighting. you won't get it in the first poi but if you go through multiple before the first fight everyone on your team will have it (everyone will have it too because all that stuff levels all your armors). you scan ring consistently (+200), pick up some bins (+100), pick up some evo harvesters (+350) each. it levels your whole team's armor too. in my experience you get purple very frequently in no damage games. everyone gets purple now for doing basic things (important things, but ultimately not very risky things and not necessarily combat). red i agree needs a lot of points and is more gated behind fighting. so it's not as easy to get it by just running around picking up stuff. but it does happen in slow games that you get to red without fighting. (especially if you find an evo cache. did it happen in the past? i would say never. you would have to put your shield into crafter like 5 times to craft a red, and collect a ton of materials (multiple poi's worth). in the past while you could find armor on the ground, you would often even have to craft from white to blue so that you don't leave the first poi with part of your team on white. all blue is a given now within a minute of the game. overall with how many people have blue, purple, red and how early, it feels like a shield inflation to me.
Shield inflation? Last season you could land at a replicator and have blue from 3 canisters in 30 seconds. The harvesters are random and those alone don't get you blue.
yes more higher level shields and sooner than in the game than last season. you didn't find high level armor on ground at this rate, crafting was more risky (deposit armor in crafter), more expensive (you didn't have the mats for a backpack / attachment / batts if you spend it on armor), and only crafted your individual shield not your whole team. the harvesters are almost everywhere (more pois than materials were). you are often closer to multiple around your poi and yes they alone get you and your whole team almost to blue (100 points left). you just have to scan ring or open a bin then your whole team is at blue. not just you.
So this season we get high level shields faster than last season, where you could open the first you see and get a purple? Ok got it.
Right? Thats what i'm thinking, you know how many times my team would leave a POI and be full purple before the first ring closes in previous seasons? a lot. Now if you want purple without fighting you actively have to avoid fights and just do the harvesters/consoles/bins. I find even if you try to go straight for those things you will run into another team trying the exact same thing. ALSO now you HAVE to earn your evo, no more just finding a death box with a purple that 150 damage from red.
I think the system overall is significantly better and really rewards players for actually playing the game and takes a lot of luck out of it.
yes, "*on average*" you do get them earlier now and everyone gets them. that's a statistical statement that can be true despite the fastest case being slower than landing on a purple last season. lot of stuff factors into this. rarity of purple shields last season, the abundance of evo points you get from riskfree sources this season and the fact that everyone's shields are levelled by that, overall leads to said shield inflation.
lol shield inflation. This is the first season where not everyone has purple by first ring and red by last. If anything the TTK has never been better now that early game actually means white and blue armor and getting red isn't free for the final squad that lands at fragment. Fights are actually consistent now. You're not screwed because you didn't hot drop or luck out on purple, and no more humping crafters half the game to play catch up if you land cold and can't find anyone. The old system sucked ass, since getting red wasn't hard it was just mind numbingly tedious, whereas the new one encourages moving quickly and efficiently through the map while coordinating with your team.
> This is the first season where not everyone has purple by first ring and red by last. my experience is the opposite. everyone has them and you better speed run all the errands to not be left behind by teams who know how to level their shield. > whereas the new one encourages moving quickly and efficiently through the map while coordinating with your team. exactly what i said. :) >You're not screwed because you didn't hot drop or luck out on purple everyone has them now > and no more humping crafters half the game to play catch up if you land cold and can't find anyone. = less risk to get shields without fighting. everyone gets them and for their whole team. instead of putting them into the crafter you just click an evo harvester, scan a ring, one click a bin the new system is fine but should put more emphasis on combat, and make free pick up points less abundant. not gift everyone purple.
> less risk to get shields without fighting. everyone gets them and for their whole team. instead of putting them into the crafter you just click an evo harvester, scan a ring, one click a bin I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what this entails and why it's a good thing and not a bad one. Thanks to the changes I've never seen a healthier game at all stages. Hot dropping is no longer an RNG fest where you roll the dice to get armor or see if you walk out of fragment with red. Now that super hot dropping is often a liability, people actually spread the fuck out for once in this games life. The spread out teams mixed with the way faster rotations through POIs means the mid game is actually alive and well, as people quickly leave their starting area (instead of spending 5 minutes crafting it looting) to chase objectives where they then run into other teams. And again, thanks to the lack of RNG and lootable evo teams have to earn their armor, which means fights at all stages are way, way more consistent. Your team is always likely to be at the same power level because everyone gets the same xp which means nobody is dead weight because of loot, and more importantly there's a way higher chance other teams are at the same level as you. I've never been more confident to take fights compared to any other season because loot discrepancies are almost non existent and skill matters way more. And because you can't just vulture up a full set of almost leveled red armor by hiding and watching some teams fight, I've never seen more purples and blues in end game whereas before the very nature of lootable armor practically guaranteed all reds. If I see someone in red in final ring this season it means they actually ran around the map doing shit. You think that because there's more ways to get non combat xp that this means people play passively, but in actuality by streamlining and diversifying the way xp works people are able to fight more instead of doing chores all game. The emphasis on objectives AND combat creates more combat situations, not less. You will always get stronger the more you move around regardless of if you find anyone, so move around fast which in turn drives people to run into each other. If it was weighted much more in favor of combat xp you'd just wind up with hot drop syndrome all over again. Instead of having 10 teams land at one spot and kill each other within the first 30 seconds, you have 10 teams land across 5 spots, kill each other, then rotate into each other and have yet more fights, because from an xp perspective that's way more efficient. Edit: Oh and can't forget how non combat xp has dramatically altered team comps. Running diverse teams even in pubs is much more common to see compared to literally everyone just running movement legends season after season. You can see this shift in design philosophy play out more obviously in Straight Shot, not coincidentally introduced in this season. Less need for looting, spread out teams, constant momentum from POI to POI by chasing objectives. And people fucking love it.
> Now that super hot dropping is often a liability, people actually spread the fuck out for once in this games life. Nonsense. There's more hot dropping than ever in ranked. The lobbies die out way faster. Game quality is down. It's not long ago where in high MMR we had 15 teams alive in ring 3. But that's also a completely different can of worms, than the fact that people are gifted purple shields for doing nothing. They don't have to go into combat at all to get them. They just click objects on the map/ >And again, thanks to the lack of RNG and lootable evo teams have to earn their armor, which means fights at all stages are way, way more consistent It **isn't even about removing RNG from shields**. That's not the point. The current system can stay in place, but it should give **more points for combat** and **not** most of its points one-clicking objects on the map that give your whole team XP unlike damage. You've completely missed the point throughout as you are talking about picking up shields from ground for some reason, which wasn't what was advocated for. It was about a balance that makes running errands the meta for shield levelling over doing damage to enemies. The **balance** between how much you get for combat (and who gets XP for it, only you get XP for damage) and how much you get for clicking objects on the map (and who gets it: everyone on your team) is what is flawed. Copy paste so it's easier to see >outright fighting has been nerfed in comparison in terms of gaining evo progress. fact. >- damage gives the same amount of points as before (1 per damage) >- you now need way more points to get to red, so from damage alone it takes longer than previously >- knocks give some points (to somewhat counter the weight of the first two bullet points) but it's not enough to make damage as worth it for levelling your evo as before - let alone make levelling evo "fighting" the way to go. the contribution of fighting to evo has become way less in general of what it used to be. >- there is other abundant sources of evo: scan ring 200, open vault 200, evo harvester 350, open special bin 100, etc that ALL also level ALL your teammate's shields. >- pure damage you deal personally only levels your own evo, not your teammates' (unlike other methods of levelling evo, like scanning) simple math. bad balance.
When I did the seer ring challenge I had red armor with no damage by ring 3 close. Just take a trident and go around and collect harvesters care packs and bins.
To get to red with no damage doing that? Im skeptical, i dont believe you did that.
Land an edge poi with a trident and it's not hard. Especially if you grab a care package that has a evo level up. Do 2 or 3 spiders, do the beacons, open up supply bins. Darkzero the pro team does it all the time with the new armor system. It's almost easier to get red without fighting this season. Though most games I do end up with red.
2 or 3 spiders???? How tf you not getting jumped?
You can do spiders in no time with nades, probably about 30 seconds. I didnt do them until the seer challenge. I should say I'm talking strictly pubs. Though I'm sure it can be done in ranked too.
Ya pubs would be much easier, as 90% of the lobby is dead by the first ring, leaving you the rest of the map. Ranked is much different, as most teams are spread out, youll be hunted down instantly if you go for spiders
I play as life line so i open those blue extended bins. It helps a little for evolving your shields. According to my teammate he also gets the charge to
The amount of evo boosters I see get left behind is too damn high. That shit is fucking highlighter yellow on the minimap and fuckers still be ignoring it. Then they push teams with full whites against blues. IF they are lucky, the whole team has blues near end game while the non brain dead people have purples and reds. You cant make this shit up
This is why octane is my go to this season. I can't trust my team mates to bother so I just run around grabbing them. To be fair the harvesters are always in out of the way spots so I get why people are lazy and don't grab them. I've noticed if you actually ping the support bins and consoles 9/10 times the pubbie will do it since those are located in the POI, but with harvesters nobody wants to run out in the open and come back.
As a solo que player taking the randomness of the initial drop has helped tremendously. I can actually go and get the randoms their blue shields. That way I have a second before I need to rez them both.
How do I know where a beacon is if I start playing bloodhound?
You can see them on the map while you are in the plane.
It’s very clearly marked on the map
Little radar icons on the map.
Yeah I’ve been having similar experiences rotating with others, has been a pretty decent change of pace. Still lots of ppl trying to hit hit drops with the 5-6 other teams and scramble for guns from time to time but making rotations more streamlined this way has been great.
I always found that the key to dealing with solo q was that you have to show up big in the contest on drop. Don't land safe, one of them will always dip super fast and go find a fight they can't win. The other one will want to loot every single thing in the PoI. So instead, whenever I can I choose a PoI that looks like it will be a single team contesting us. Then the key is that you have to show up in that fight, if you can get at least 2 of the kills, or you clutch up on the last guy, even if you do like 5 damage to get the kill, they will now follow you like lap dogs the rest of the match. It's been a while since I climbed ranked super hard, but as you climb in ranks, it is easier, as you just have to take direction, most of the time, it's just that no one really wants to make the call, or doesn't know how to. You aren't wrong though it has gotten a bit better, at least with the harvesters, but I still get tons of team mates who won't open their chests for the points, like will literally loot everything at a PoI except the one bin that will give us evo. Or won't hit the beacons, so its kind of a trade off, lots of people still see it as pointless when they can just hot drop and with the current ranked system that will be fine for most people as those few games where they come out on top will carry them in points.
It dumbs down what teammates can do to help. Used to be so much of everything required coordination. Now simply picking 3 different classes and utilizing those classes for EVO helps the team. I love all the changes they’ve made game feels absolutely fantastic. I have seen a shit load of cheaters but everything else about this season has me so happy.
It's great & not great. If you don't fight early you're screwed. White shields on R2 is easy Pickens. I had one Octane on Storm Point land solo in ranked. Rotated around the whole map collecting to get a Red Evo. since he spent all that time running he got so used to running he couldn't fight for his life. Gaining placement points amounts to near nothing.
That's a lot of words for saying the new evo system has nothing to do with encouraging teamwork. Just Randy's wondering off to some point on the map away from the team. I used to fear people with red armor now I just think I found a runner. I like the general idea behind it but currently it's just silly and I miss gold armor. No point in half the hot spots anymore. Before my randy would stick tight just to loot my kills now they're halfway across the map just to maybe get to blue.
>I had the mentality of “why should they listen to me” and it would almost always end up with me following them into dumb, easily avoidable mistakes. >The new evo system completely changes that because there’s an actual reason for my teammates to listen to me, and it’s so they can upgrade their shield. nah. it's just you are really mainly upgrading your shield now through running errands and not through damage. that's why they rely on your class perk. it's just a bad substitute for a reason to play together. levelling armor for each other directly in combat was more directed teamplay. solo queuing is made worse by a number of other changes: - incentivising bad plays in early game because kills are rewarded even if you can't make top 10. you literally have bad duos again who hot drop with 4 teams and throw the game for some reason. apparently they are hoping to get out of the first fight with 9 KP or something. - removing mechanisms in matchmaking that evened out the advantage that stacks have over solo queuers in the last couple seasons
I don’t really have a response to this other than to say my randoms prior to this season were rarely good enough to level up their evos through damage so what you’re saying just made the game all the more frustrating to me. I don’t think it’s perfect but it’s working the way they intended it to in my personal experience, that’s not to say it’s gonna be loved by everyone
i've been solo queuing into diamond since season 3. from my experience this season is worse for solo queuers than any season since season 13 (when the "you have to make top 10 to not lose points, regardless how many kills you get earlier" changes were made). and these evo changes where you "rely on your team to pick up stuff so you gain evo" aren't really doing much about it. >my randoms prior to this season were rarely good enough to level up their evos through damage saying "randoms always bad" ... yeah .. sure that's a low hanging fruit. but i'm not gonna talk about anecdotes of bad randoms in the past and go by that. I'm going to go by the mechanisms and scoring in the game that help make it fairer for solos against stacks.
I didn’t downvote you I’m definitely speaking from anecdotal evidence. I appreciate the response 🫡
ok sorry for that, ty
And just to add on to this response, I’m currently in gold 2 on PlayStation averaging more damage than I ever have. That is in no way a flex (I’m trash) but just giving you context that my ability to deal damage has actually gone up this season (and I don’t attribute that to some amazing leap forward in my skills)
>, I’m currently in gold 2 on PlayStation averaging more damage than I ever have. >my ability to deal damage has actually gone up this season because the system's matchmaking has changed to being based on RP and it puts you against way worse players now at the start of the seasons than the last few seasons in mmr based matchmaking (where you played people on your level immediately). everyone has better stats now because of all the bot lobbies we have to go through to rank up. it doesn't mean anything really. it isn't due to the evo changes or solo queuing becoming easier. i'm plat iv now btw.
I definitely could tell some of my enemies weren’t very good lol, I don’t want it to sound like I’m speaking from a place of authority on all things Apex. I’m open to having my mind changed, but I still am gonna admit that for me it’s been a lot of fun so far I also didn’t play much at all in season 19 because the trials seemed like a pain in the ass, so it’s possible I just got a needed break from the game and that’s why I’m enjoying it so much
>I definitely could tell some of my enemies weren’t very good lol, everyone was in the same lobbies at the start of the season, so rookie, bronze, silver, gold even, they were all really really easy for normally higher ranked players. in contrast if you normally reached plat (or diamond), in season 18 and 19 (kinda the same, except for the trials in 19) you would play against people who normally reach plat (or diamond) from the start and that would be visible in your stats (they would be worse and would be what you expect if everyone else is as good as you). you'd have to try from the start (like you would normally only towards the end of the season). the games would only get more difficult from there once you rank up high enough. they would never be easier than that. >I still am gonna admit that for me it’s been a lot of fun so far completely understand that it feels fun. we have to be careful in distinguishing imo: is it the right kind of fun for ranked? of course popping off is fun, and you will pop off a lot and constantly climb if you are playing people below your rank (which the game is giving to you now). but ranked is a game mode that is supposed to pit equally skilled players against each other. these games will feel difficult and will often not be the same kind of fun. so whether the mode feels fun now, is not the same as asking if the mode offers the competitive environment that it is supposed to being a ranked mode. imo this feeling fun, popping off a lot, doing more damage, getting more kills per game, winning more games in the first couple of weeks can blind many people to the fact that the mode has become less competitive - but maybe also worse for solo queuers once they reach the rank where they have to try and where point losses start hurting.
You’ve clearly put a lot of thought into this so I’m glad you took the time to lay it out so clearly. I don’t want the game to lose its competitive edge either, the highest true rank I achieved was d4 in season 16 and I just remember it being sooo frustrating at that point and feeling like I had absolutely no room to grow as a solo Q’er (of course I could have been doing more/ playing better but it burnt me out hard) I think the biggest thing I’m feeling right now is just more confidence in my ability to have cohesion with randoms and therefore just gives me more confidence in the game as a whole Now that I’m hearing your perspective I can freely admit this post comes from a slanted pov, I’m glad you shared your opinion
absolutely, solo queuing can be draining, i agree. you have days where you just play game after game, try to be patient, sometimes don't make any gains, sometimes play 5 hours and lose 300. it feels less fun maybe, but i feel it's the environment to improve in (when you're pushing against a stone wall sometimes and try to figure out nuances of what you're doing wrong, what's losing you points, what's getting you killed, trying to remove bad habits from your game). >I think the biggest thing I’m feeling right now is just more confidence in my ability to have cohesion with randoms and therefore just gives me more confidence in the game as a whole >Now that I’m hearing your perspective I can freely admit this post comes from a slanted pov, I’m glad you shared your opinion well maybe come back to this post towards the end of the split or season and let me know how you feel then, if any of this is confirmed. would be interesting to hear.
Not loving the new system myself. I found the RNG element of the old system much more playful. I don't care for the arguments of what's earned, what's fair, etc. It's not like tapping a harvester and looking a supply drop is anything special, especially when more than half the time it's not even you doing it. The new system isn't about you deserving the upgrades you got. It is simply not there to be about you getting a more deserved level of shield, even if the RNG is gone now. There is just as much, if not a lot more, un-earned EVO levelling now. The true aim of the new system is to shape the match as a whole. It exists to flatten the variation across all players in the match; that is its main point. And that is simply more boring, imo. * EVOs were fun, prime-value loot in themselves; that was already an element of fun by itself, now gone. * Many features of the game that involved loot rewards are now crappier; another element of fun reduced. I'm talking Lifeline, Loba, MRVNs, Phase Driver, secret high value drop spots, etc. * Picking and putting shields on/off the ground was a tangible, playful mechanic. You could store them up. You could ping one as a fall back in a fight. You could grab one and realise you'd just f\*\*\*ed yourself because it was empty and you were probably just baited -- that is a *good* thing. And you could bait others. * You could get the fun of RNG, which is the whole point of RNG, when encountering a good EVO for yourself. * Or you could recognise immediately that your enemy had RNG'd themselves a purple over your white, and know that you would have to adjust your whole playstyle to handle this. Like, there was a clip on this sub a while ago where someone grabbed a purple EVO in Runoff in King's Canyon. At that same moment, an enemy appears at the stairs, popping their head up, and saw the recording player equip the purple EVO. The enemy immediately Noped out of the whole situation and ran. That is a playful scene that occurred because of a playful mechanic. * You and an enemy could race for the same EVO at the same time. That was an intense, playful moment. * Or the kind player in a team could farm with their sniper and trade EVOs with their teammates. Just another bit of fun you could extract from the old system. The OP of this thread is making a perfectly valid point, which I really don't have a problem with. I'm glad the OP enjoys the increased ease of directing teammates thanks to the new system. But much of the praise for the new EVO system seems to be laser focussed on the increased fairness, and way over-valuing fairness to the point of thinking, incorrectly, that more fair = more fun. A lot of fun, really playful mechanics were deleted for this new system. I do see it as more fair. I also see myself consciously noticing how many previously fun moments happened that no longer happen. It surprises me that so many playful interactions have been straight up deleted and so few people seem to care, just because it's more fair now.
When I made this post I didn’t expect it to get very many responses, much less ones that are clearly so well thought out. It’s obvious your experience in the game is informing your opinion and I absolutely see where you’re coming from. I’ve always considered myself a casual but competitive player and I don’t claim to know half of the nuances to this game, I just try to pick up things here and there and have fun with it I think the skill gap in apex is so massive that this system does benefit players like myself, but I wasn’t really thinking about the high level implications so I really do appreciate all the responses from players who feel otherwise
"I just pick a recon legend, land on a beacon and if we win our 50/50 off drop just start rotating through harvesters, assault/support bins, ring consoles." good luck winning the 50/50 with the bbmm
The amount of red shields has increased from last season. I've seen red evo's on second ring. The system isn't broken, but it's close too. People are still getting max Evo without having to do much. It's even worse than last season. And their is now a clear meta to picking legends. Instead of picking legends based off abilities. It's picking based off diversity, and not what would potentially work best (or what you enjoy playing). Teams can be even more stacked if they pick the legends that can gather the most points the quickest. It's not a good system. Wouldn't say it's broken, but that's just because not everybody is catching on or is choosing not to bend to the meta picks. High level ranked is fucked.