Apex Legends has a big problem according to pro player Shroud. The game is boring in the mid-game. This has a fundamental reason hidden in the design.
Why is Apex boring according to Shroud? Shroud is one of the best and most influential players in Apex Legends. And he is precisely the one complaining about boredom. Because the “human aimbot” currently faces too few opponents.
The reason: Too many of the 60 players in each match die within the first minutes of the round.
Hot Zones are the problem
These are the causes of player loss: As many players are greedy loot raccoons, they jump in large numbers to the supply ship or to the extra marked hot zone.
At these locations, particularly abundant and high-quality loot can be found. This leads to an enormous bloodbath in a confined space.
The one who lands first and finds the big guns usually gets rid of the rest of the players in the area. Only a few survivors emerge victoriously from the mayhem in the hot zone.
This ensures that not much happens for the rest of the match until they inevitably meet again in the endgame when the death zone forces the last players together in close quarters.
Until then, the mid-game, which was already never particularly exciting due to the relatively large map and the small number of 60 players, slows down even more.
Should hot zones be removed?
This is what Shroud says about the problem: Shroud did not have anything good to say about hot zones during a stream. They are just dumb to him:
“Hot zones are just as stupid as hell! Everyone drops into the hot zone, but no one realizes how dumb such a ‘hot dropping’ is!”
This is what can be done about the hot zones problem: When a professional and tester like Shroud sees a problem in the game, developers should take this seriously. But what to do? A solution to the dilemma would be to simply eliminate the hot zones and distribute the loot randomly across the map.
It might also be conceivable to increase the player count. More players inevitably means more opponents in the game, even in the mid-game.
Whether Respawn will change anything about the loot mechanics is not known. What would you do?
