Apex Legends Summer Wish List

Apex Legends developers have announced that a content drought is on its way. The next month of Apex looks to be dry, as the developers plan for a big 9.1 update at the end of June.

With this break in the action, now seems like as good a time as ever to address the current state of Apex Legends. Instead of focusing on new content, the developers can work on and improve the content currently in the game. With that said, here is our summer wish list for Apex Legends.

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Fix Apex Legends Ranked Mode

Ranked Mode is an area of Apex Legends that needs some serious attention. Ranked Mode is riddled with issues, including the matchmaking system, the way Ranked Points (RP) are calculated, and cheating (which we’ll get into later).

Ranked Mode’s matchmaking has been a topic of debate for many seasons now. Ranked Mode’s description reads, “play against similarly-skilled players.” However, this statement could not be more false. As a matter of fact, standard public matches do a better job abiding by this notion. The skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) in Apex’s standard lobbies is cranked up to the max. For better or worse, this ensures that almost everyone in your match is similarly skilled.

Ranked Mode has no SBMM. Ranked Mode matches players loosely by their ranks. Someone could have 20 bomb badges on multiple Legends but never play Ranked, and they’ll be placed in lobbies with brand-new players. 

Similarly, Ranked Mode can become increasingly unfair as you push higher ranks. Once you get to Platinum and especially Diamond rank, your games will be flooded with Apex Predators. This is because there are simply not enough players to fill a lobby entirely with Predators. So, Platinum and Diamond players become fodder for Preds.

All of this is made worse by the ranking system and the way RP is calculated. Why does Respawn have to reset everyone’s ranks halfway through a season? All this does is push the skilled players back down into the beginner ranks, where they can continue to prey on less experienced players.

Why should there be a cap on Kill Points? If a player is good enough to achieve more than six kills in a match, they should be rewarded for it. This would also force good players up the ranks more quickly, preventing them from repeatedly preying on Silver and Gold players.

There is no one clear fix to Ranked Mode, and different people have different ideas on how to improve it. Regardless though, most players are in agreement that something needs to be done.

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Punish Cheaters In Apex Legends

Every game has its fair share of cheaters, but Apex Legends is overrun with them.

Back in March, the head of Apex’s security confirmed that they had banned over 700 cheaters between the ranks of Gold and Predator, all within a week’s time. Not only are cheaters a problem, but it’s happening at the highest level of play. 

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and aimbots run rampant, not to mention stuff like StrikePacks and colluding. Respawn needs to seriously address and discourage this widespread presence of cheating because it’s only getting worse and worse.

Legend Ability Reworks

New content is great and keeps Apex fresh, but some of the game’s original content could really use some revisiting.

In particular, the original cast of Legends needs some love. With the release of newer, more powerful Legends such as Valkyrie and Horizon, many of the game’s original Legends are becoming obsolete. This is especially true when it comes to their Passive abilities.

Valkyrie’s Passive ability allows her to fly around with VTOL Jets, grants Valkyrie the ability to scan enemies while her Ultimate is active, and she can scan Survey Beacon as a Recon Legend. Meanwhile, Legends such as Pathfinder and Crypto barely have a Passive ability at all. 

Then there are Legends such as Revenant that have key abilities capped for questionable reasons. The devs limited Revenant’s climb height because they want movement in Apex to be predictable, and they thought that giving Revenant unlimited climbing would be overpowered. Meanwhile, Horizon and Valkyrie can fly around in the sky to their heart’s content.

Respawn should take this content drought period to focus on the game’s current content and revisit some of Apex’s OG Legends.

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Expand On Arenas Mode

Arenas Mode was an amazing addition to Apex Legends. However, it could definitely use some spice.

As things stand, Arenas Mode is a little bland. Arenas has a very limited map pool, and games tend to play out in the same manner. There’s a lot more variety in the Battle Royale mode.

To address this, Respawn has recently released Arenas Flash Events, where players can complete Arenas-only challenges in exchange for exclusive prizes. This is a great step, but it still leaves more to be desired.

Ranked Arenas could change all of this, but things are still quiet on that end. Hopefully, this content drought will give the Apex developers some time to touch up Arenas Mode.

Fix Or Remove Skill-Based Matchmaking in Apex Legends

Skill-based matchmaking has been a pervasive topic in the Apex Legends community. Sure, most games nowadays have some sort of SBMM system in hopes of increasing player retention. But, Apex’s SBMM is egregious. It’s a community-wide consensus that pretty much every single Apex Legends match feels extremely sweaty — even in the unranked modes. There’s no leeway to mess around or play casually. If you try, you’ll end up getting run over by a team of Apex Predators.

One can argue that SBMM haters are the vocal minority, but polls and other discussions on the topic consistently show that the majority of the community despises this SBMM system.

And why would you like it? If you want to sweat, there’s a Ranked Mode right there. As things stand, Apex basically has two Ranked playlists, one just doesn’t have a visible Match Making Rating (MMR). Unranked playlists are supposed to be a place where players can go and relax. Right now, that is simply not possible in Apex Legends.

Usually, the saving grace of SBMM is that it at least protects new players from getting destroyed by veterans. It may hinder the enjoyment of the top players, but it protects the casuals. However, this is not the case with Apex. Smurfing runs rampant thanks to the current iteration of SBMM. To avoid SBMM, all of the super-skilled Apex vets are creating smurf accounts and terrorizing new player lobbies. If SBMM was removed, this wouldn’t be as prevalent of an issue.

There’s a reason that the community is so outspoken on SBMM — it’s just not fun. Respawn needs to take a hard look at their SBMM system and make the necessary adjustments over this content drought period.

Can we get Christmas in the summer? With a long content drought approaching, now is the perfect time for Respawn to deliver some items on our wish list.

Images via Respawn Entertainment