Just when Respawn Entertainment was about to show one of those extremely modern Apex Legends clips that everyone on Twitter loves to share, the one with the exaggerated action and chaos of Sentinels, grenades, Valkyrie ults, and pure mayhem, the month in Apex was again presented visually. The PlayApex account surprised the community with an athletic-looking gameplay moment that was probably the main reason to post—to stir everyone up about the status of the game. But, oh man, the players in the replies were far from the same fiendishly excited state… The community’s reaction could be called less ‘hype montage’ and more ‘cry for help’.
In a few words, the Apex Legends community is boiling hot due to some of the problems that have been plaguing Respawn for a long time and are not getting any better. The complaints of the players consist mainly of two issues: one is cheating that is widespread to an unbearable extent and the other is the matchmaking system that is working against casual players almost actively. The situation is critical and the gamers do not hold back in letting the developers know how they feel about it.
Cheating is the issue that the majority of the players point out and it is always in the first place when the problems are listed. However, the cheating is not only of the kind happening with PC hackers who visualise the entire map through wallhacks. Console players are also facing the same worst nightmare. Gui, a player, put the cheating issue very briefly when he said, ‘I can’t stand the thought of being matched with Cronus users on console any more, it is horrible. Nobody ranks up till you reach Diamond when all the users of Cronus and Xim are there and it’s clear.’ For the uninitiated, the Cronus and Xim adapters enable console users to play with a mouse and keyboard through the regular console controller or run scripts for zero recoil; thus, an enormous, unfair advantage is created which is very common in the gaming domain. Jaidashie, another user, even identified a particular cheater whom he named ‘KING_TREN1488,’ and then his appeal to the developers was: ‘stop fucking being useless and ban him.’ The voice of the frustees is so loud and clear.
It is not a matter of only a couple of players complaining. The whole community shares a similar view and the opinions are expressed in every reply. HoundRaiser described the ‘well-known Cronus players with aimbot who are taking over our lobbies.’ Carlinhos Mac went further and stated that the issue of cheaters has brought the game to ‘terminal condition’ because of ‘Teams with nine players, Zeus, Cronus Zen…’ He is referring to the ranked ‘6-man’ teaming issue, where pre-made squads somehow get matched in the same lobby and help each other out which is totally against the rules. So, on the one hand, you have the cheating issue and on the other hand, there are players teaming up; and that too in the same lobby. It is indeed a very serious challenge in terms of fair play.
But wait a minute, we have just begun! Now let us turn our attention to matchmaking or as some players call it ‘pain-making.’ The matchmaking issue has really split the players into two groups and almost all have strong opinions either for or against it. In fact, Jas has even told the developers ‘for the love of God fix the matchmaking. I have never had a positive kd a day in my life stop putting me in pred lobbies 😭😭😭 please I can’t compete against sweaty pred horizons please make it stop 💀’ That is quite an emotional expression of one’s feelings. Apparently, the skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) is completely out of balance and thus it jumbles together the absolute novice or mediocre players along with the top-tier Predator-ranked sweats. This pairing creates a miserable experience for those who are not so lucky.
The points mentioned above are directly linked with the problem of smurfing. A user named JollySmokeEater mentioned this and said, ‘Listen I know you guys are desperate for players on your game but for the love of God, can you pleaseeee get the smurfing on console under control? Half of gold and above lobbies are 2 and 3 stack smurfs just absolutely ruining the play experience for the rest of us.’ The term smurf refers to a highly skilled player who gets a new, low-level account to crush the unseasoned players. So in the case of JollySmokeEater, who spoke about a 27-level account that has already wall-bounced with the R-99 and a Wingman like a pro, this doesn’t quite add up and it also creates confusion for real players who are temporarily trying to rank up at the end of every season.
As if that was not enough, there are also battle royale issues affecting the broader genre. The ongoing challenges in PlayStation and Xbox gaming communities highlight how persistent these problems are across platforms.
