I love Apex Legends. It’s the game I play most days, the game I fall back on when there are no shiny new releases to distract me. It’s my social game. The tight gunplay, slick movement, and high skill ceiling. For my money, it’s the best competitive shooter around.
That’s why it pains me to say this: Apex Legends is currently the worst it’s ever been. It feels like every new patch introduces some new kind of issue. For a large portion of the audience, it’s close to unplayable right now.
On Xbox, the biggest issue is input lag, which developer Respawn has at least acknowledged. In a game where movement and aiming are so important, feeling as if you’re wading through jelly is not it. And that’s when it registers your movements. Sometimes you’ll ping, or go to pick something up, and you have to spam the button for it to take.
Connection issues are a regular, ugly part of the experience. My friends and I had an all-day session last weekend, and one in three games had one of us suffering from lag. And when the lag doesn’t get you, sometimes you’ll wipe out a team and they’ll purposely crash the server in revenge.
Other players on Xbox have been reporting that the game shuts their controller down. Usually in the middle of a fight.
On PS4, some players are getting hard crashes when they try to pick up an ally’s death box.
If you enter the IMC armories late by using the teleporter underneath, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to mantle for the rest of the match. I spent an entire game last week where my character could only fall backward when using a Valk ult or a balloon, causing me to land facing away from the enemy team when making contact with the ground.
One character, Loba, has been broken for over a month. Flip a coin on whether her translocation bangle will actually work when you throw it. The same can be said for shooting at Wraith, who’s currently so broken that bullet hits often don’t even register on her.
That’s if you’re lucky enough to make contact. Some players are experiencing rubber banding on the drop, seemingly falling forever until suddenly, ping, there goes your loot box – you actually flew off the side of the arena. Sorry. The servers are awful.
Couple these issues with the new RP system for Ranked, which makes it extremely difficult to get promoted, and it’s a recipe for disaster. You can play a 30-minute game and end up losing RP. Not so bad when you’ve been outplayed, but infuriating when the myriad bugs factor in.
It’s gotten to the point where I just don’t want to play anymore. I’m excited about the season split, I’m looking forward to all the upcoming hero additions and map changes, and I’m sure the Ranked tweaks will balance things out, but the core experience needs emergency attention. It’s falling apart.
Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.
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