Apex Legends - battle royale in the Titanfall universe

75% down…the stupid…it hurts. Of course twitch viewership is going to be down, what in the proverbial fuck did people expect? New game comes out, it has a lot of hype, a bunch of people stream it. Months go by, people realize it’s just a FPS and move on. What’s to figure out?

Streamers, by nature, are always looking for the next new/big thing. It’s Pavlov’s dogs gone mad on mountain dew. How long can you watch someone playing a FPS? I watch some game streams, but it’s stuff that has a lot of strategy and complexity to it, like AOE2 etc. I watched a couple of TF streams at the start, to get a handle on what the game was, but I’m hard pressed to figure out why anyone would watch it much beyond that… I suppose there is a bit of value to mirror receptors, and watching someone really good if you’re trying to improve your game…but for entertainment?..nah.

Turn this into an esport with prize money and permanent teams, that will generate some views.

I still love this game.

The game is still good.
Attracting streamers is something that games really need to… not give a fuck about.

In terms of “why aren’t they making new content???” honestly, I can’t really give that much of a shit about it. It’s not like an MMO or something where you are completing quests and crap.

It’s a shooter. The content is the other player who you are shooting in the face.

Should I play this again?

@DaveLong plz update on if game still great.

I’m not Dave but the game is still great.

It’s still great!

I only ran it twice yesterday, but both were satisfying and fun. Killed the Champion in one of the rounds too.

I have been playing some Call of Duty: BLOPS IIII lately too and while I really enjoy that game’s deathmatch a ton, the notable thing is that mobility is limited by comparison with Apex. BLOPS IIII is great, but it’s not Apex when it comes to your ability to use terrain to fight.

Shooters, and especially BR ones, live and die by the availability of new content though. Otherwise, it gets stale pretty fast.

As for streamers, they’re just an indication of the game’s popularity. And BRs need a lot of people playing in order to avoid long queue times (just ask Firestorm).

Does a game like CS:GO have new content? It’s been a long ass time since I played it, but I know it’s still going, and I kind of figure it’s the same game it always was.

BR games may be dependent upon new content, but I get the impression that part of that may be that, prior to Apex, BR shooters tended to all be hot garbage.

Like Fortnite, for instance. That game’s basic mechanics in terms of playing the game are straight up trash, compared to any real shooter. Its controls are mushy and bad. Tons of its audience are simply little kids.

So for that kind of audience, sure, I can see a constant stream of shiny stuff being important. If you are a streamer, who is catering to little kids watching you, then that stuff becomes important.

But for a shooter that you are actually playing, for the sake of competition? You don’t need some endless stream of new content. All you need is a large enough player base to get matches, because what makes the game interesting is getting better at it and winning.

Something like twitch viewership is a noteworthy mark.
It isn’t about people “watching” a particular game… It’s that the influencers on twitch, the big names, aren’t drawn to it anymore - it doesn’t sustain their interest. So their audience is no longer watching it. That in itself is a telling barometer. (and could signify the sun setting on a game)

I’m sure some people watch streamers for the games they play, but often it’s about watching a streamer for that streamer itself. Their product/show that they are delivering.

Apex payed a lot of money for many top streamers to play it. They players enjoyed it, their fan base joined in on the fun… that waned quickly, and they flipped back to Fortnite again.

The streamers that I follow that played Fortnite and then Apex, and now Fortnite again - seem to have lower numbers now as well - so perhaps the masses have finally decided that BR games are in their twilight.

I’ll the more power to those that like Apex, I gave it a fair shake, but didn’t work for me.

Well put Timex, and I think this extends to pretty much any competitive game.

Except a lot of people have a ceiling, skill-wise that they can reach. The only way to keep those people playing is by adding to/tweaking the game.

Maybe every game doesn’t need to be made for those people.

Literally every person has a skill ceiling. If you don’t cater to those people, then you don’t have matches filled with easy kills for the elite players, and, without that, a bet a bunch of the elite players leave as well. There must be a reason skill-based matchmaking doesn’t exist in these battle royale games.

In these kinds of conversations I always think of how I’d treat chess or Counter-Strike or Rocket League. Clumsy I know, but it helps me.

Adding matchmaking or ranked brackets, absolutely, that’s a great QoL feature for everyone, but new maps and modes and characters/weapons are just nice things to have for variety. I don’t think they’re things that need to be churned out constantly to keep a game enjoyable or even relevant though. Players who are chasing the shiny are always going to want more so catering to them is a fool’s game, I think. The meat is the mechanics and the competition, not the quantity of things.

I’m still happy playing Titanfall 2 in its current (probably) final state, even without ranked brackets and even though I get consistently destroyed by a handful of players. I’d have been happy with Splatoon 2 ‘locked-in’ some years ago, but Nintendo have kept supporting it (more than I can keep up with). These are two of my favourite online shooters because I loved trying to get better at them. The core gameplay loops were a blast and I could feel myself improving. Splatoon 2 had the added bonus of a ranked ladder which I loved trying to climb. I didn’t need much else!

The problem with Apex for me is that I played for tens of hours and never felt like I was getting better (I’ve not had that in a game before!), but I also wasn’t wild about the variability of the BR core gameplay loop. New genre to me.

(typing on my phone isn’t fun.)

PUBG has skill based matchmaking, but speed is also taken into consideration. And the last one if the main reason BRs don’t have only skill based matchmaking, otherwise you’d be waiting far too long getting into a game.

You can add as many maps to Counterstrike as you please and everyone will still play de_dust2 ad nauseam.

So… a weird aside, but try playing some other shooters now that you played a lot of Apex. I found that I’m better at ALL shooters because I spent so much time playing Apex. Like, I’m seriously better at BLOPS IIII post Apex. I’m leading the EKIA boards consistently now.

So maybe you got better, but maybe because Apex players are really good and you might not always have the gun you really want, you also don’t notice it as often?

Only Titanfall 2, and I did kick ass at that!

The gun I really want is the thermite launcher :-D