Is Apex Legends dying or can Season 6 save the day?

Is Apex Legends dying or will the newest features in upcoming Season 6 ‘Boosted’ revive the professional scene from its ashes?

EA’s addition to the battle royale genre last year was a huge success upon its release in February. Within only 72 hours of its official release, the game had accumulated a staggering 10 million players. To put this into perspective, it took Epic Games with Fortnite around two weeks to hit the 10 million mark. Apex Legends had announced itself to the gaming world as a true contender for its battle royale competitors, as well as with other major esports titles.

However, this boom was extremely short lived. After only two months from debuting, the game’s reception and initial hype had been drastically reduced, with multiple threads on Reddit alluding to the “dead” state of the game. Apex simply did not execute the snowball effect of success that popular games usually do after releasing, it’s almost as if EA (Publisher) and Respawn Entertainment (Developer) just were not ready for the success and had not prepared accordingly.

To be fair to Respawn, video games that achieve gigantic hype when they come out can almost never maintain the viewership and player association as before. This is quite normal and happens for every game; Valorant was peaking at numbers beyond 1 million viewers on Twitch during the first week of its release and has since declined in viewership from this number by a great margin. 

But there just seems to be something different about the state of Apex. With members of the community pronouncing the game to be in a “dead” state only two months after the release, the buzz of winning or progressing through the ranks must have been seriously unsatisfying. At present, I think it is fair to say that the idea of Apex being a “dead” game has just become a meme in the gaming community now.

Going back to Valorant’s release, Riot’s addition to the FPS genre managed to snag many professional players away from their respective games, such as CS:GO and Apex, Brandon “Aceu” Winn as an example. Winn, who went by “Ace” in Apex, was an extremely popular player who represented NRG Esports in tournaments and was widely considered to be one the best in the scene. He is still with the organisation but has stepped back from pro play to be a content creator, regularly streaming Valorant in recent months. 

As well as Winn, several CS:GO pros also made the switch to Valorant for a fresh start and a chance to shine in a newer limelight, but rarely spoke about the deathly state of Counter Strike when explaining their reasons for leaving. With “Aceu”, he mentioned during a Valorant stream that he was “done with Apex” and that there was “no reason to play it” anymore, simultaneously solidifying his commitments to Riot’s shooter instead. His tone was bitter and he gave viewers the impression of Apex feeling unrewarding and not satisfying to play anymore, or as it once was.

Consistent complaints from the community have included frustrations related to the lack of new legends, guns and maps. The majority of the legends that Apex has to offer were first released all the way back in pre-season, with only one legend coming out in each season that followed. The game is now preparing for its sixth season, labelled ‘Boosted’, and fans are hoping the newest features that have been announced will finally bring some life back to the game.

The community can expect to receive and play with a new gun and a new legend named ‘Rampart’, as well as a brand new crafting system that will allow players to modify their looted weapons during a match. EA’s website shares a description on this feature, “Don't like your gear? Collect materials around the map and build something better!”. The new weapon is called the ‘Volt’ and is a SMG (submachine gun) that ‘packs a punch’. Furthermore, Rampart has been dubbed ‘an expert modder who made her name in underground fight clubs’. She ‘talks big and has the ballistics to back it up.’

The Volt is a gun that was first featured in Titanfall 2. It is not your traditional SMG as it uses energy instead of bullets to shock your enemies to ‘pack a punch’. The crafting system seems to be somewhat similar to Hyper Scape, Ubisoft’s answer to the battle royale genre. In Hyper Scape, players are consistently upgrading their weapons by picking up drops that are scattered around the map. Based upon the description given to us, we can only assume the similarity but will have to wait until August 18th to confirm.

Rampart leads the season 6 trailer for Apex and we have already been able to gather some knowledge on her backstory and kit. She has a trusty turret named Sheila, which is visible in the trailer, and is able to forge steel barriers in support for her teammates. Her abilities were leaked in June 2020 and after some speculation, have been confirmed to be true. They include:

• Amped Cover (Tactical) – Build cover with an upper barrier that blocks incoming shots and boosts the damage of outgoing shots.
• Gunner (Passive) — Boost to light machine gun (LMG) mag capacity and reload rate.
• Fixer (Passive) — Swapping to melee allows you to repair any friendly structures.
• Cover Fire (Passive) — Firing from cover overcharges your gun damage.
• Emplaced HMG (Ultimate) — Place a mounted machine gun that anyone can use. High ammo capacity, long reload time. Requires heavy ammo. (This ability was previously named "My Friend Maxim".)

There was also speculation of a new map named ‘Olympus’ being added from the next update, but the theory has since been debunked. A Twitter user named “iLootGames” uses his platform to promote and leak the latest news in Apex Legends. He has already highlighted a Rampart legend select leak, which was originally published in a now deleted Reddit post, and has since shed some light on the rumours of a new map.

https://twitter.com/iLootGames/status/1294149050044837888/photo/1

A teaser email from Respawn was sent to eager fans on August 12 and has been labelled a ‘promotional teaser’ for the new season. It mentions the Volt, Rampart and states players will also have the chance to explore a ‘revamped map’, with no hints of a ‘new map’, silencing hopeful fans. 

https://twitter.com/iLootGames/status/1293742586021068800

It is likely that Olympus has been placed on hold and could feature at some point in the future, rather than being scrapped completely, as ‘iLootGames’ stated the map file was referenced in the game files. With the situation of Covid-19 remaining a point of concern for the world at present, most of us are still working from home and game developers are no exception. It is fair to say that the feasibility of including everything in season 6 was unlikely and so delays should be considered as normal given the current climate. 

On top of a newly stacked Battle Pass, Apex fans can expect a bunch of fresh additions to the game and we’re also excited to see how the new season pans out. It would be nice to see the game thrive as a battle royale contender, seeing as the game still has a dedicated playerbase, with over a million online every day. The only problem is, arguably, Apex has not reached the same heights as its competitors in terms of the esports industry.

Perhaps EA and Respawn need to look at the way they will conduct the professional scene for the near future. The time since the birth of the game has been unimpressive and has left little to no backing to those who do not consider Apex to be a “real” esport. The Arlington Major was the first tournament in the $3 million Apex Legends Global Series and was set to be both EA and Respawn’s big response to the lackluster efforts so far, but was postponed due to Covid-19. 

It is particularly unfortunate for Apex as the tournament was beginning to attract the right attention from elite players and organisations, despite the prize pools being less than some of its competitors. But it was a promising start for the game’s professional scene, a chance almost wiped out in an instant and with March for the original plans, a new date has not yet been confirmed. 

The pros have already expressed frustrations with the “professionalism” of the scene, even before the announcement of the major. For several months, pro players have been unable to scrim in private lobbies, which meant that practising for online tournaments was virtually impossible. 

“We lost the right to our own private lobbies,” said Jack “Nicewigg” Martin, a pro player for Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) and one of Apex’s most popular streamers. "[EA/Respawn] ended up not really screwing us over, but they made our practice hurt even more; anyone can play. You can be Gold 1 and play against pro players, and that doesn’t make the quality good.” 

Similar problems continued in the lead up to Arlington. The tournament was boasting a total prize pool of $500,000, but the online qualifiers were met with a string of bugs, crashes and disconnects which left teams, in some scenarios, to be playing with one or even two members down for matches. Many top teams and players respectively failed to qualify due to the unpredictable nature of the competition, leaving them embittered and quizzical on the quality of the game’s esport potential. There were also other issues that arose amidst the chaos of the shambolic tournament.

But there is hope that still remains in the community. For Apex Legends, EA and Respawn collectively, the latest season could prove to be the turning point of frustration for many fans and pros alike. Respawn have already stated that they are working on seasons 6, 7 and 8 and are firm on pleasing their playerbase. For now, we anxiously wait to witness the viability and growth of a possible competitive scene that has enough backing from the publishers, sponsors and players.