I was just thinking this today. None of the early fights feel organic. Contest style fighting is a skill and requires some thinking and planning. I think players should be able to determine what kind of fights and landings they want.

Hey everyone. Really appreciate this detailed feedback.

Just replying to see what others have to say about this. Will keep an eye out for this thread.

Originally posted by MOD_SidZapen:

Hey everyone. Really appreciate this detailed feedback.

Just replying to see what others have to say about this. Will keep an eye out for this thread.

The early engagements it creates is horrendous. Usually 4-5 POIs are within range of each other. Every team wants to secure early KP so what happens is that every team close to this POI group up in one location. It drags out fights in a way that isn't fun or engaging. You can never finish your fights. You maybe secure 2 knocks but start getting hit from a brand new direction. Want to run away? You get cut off by a whole team trying to enter the kill zone.

And if we assume this happens all across the map (North, South, East, West, or so) then these killzones quickly eliminate player count, often times leaving 4-5 squads left during RING 2 CLOSE. The whole purpose of this was to help encourage end game plays. But you cant change player mentality. Everyone wants that early KP. So everyone will engage the nearest POI.

With the drop ship system, players take their own risk. They assess how many teams they want to challenge and can also watch how many teams land near by. They know WHICH direction the threat is because they know where the players are landing. I'm not gonna get hit from the other POI from behind because no one landed there.

It also acts as a filter system. A high rank player shouldn't need hand holding. They need to be able to decide what kind of landing they want. It's a skill. If they land and die early, they drop back to Platinum. Helps separate the good and the bad.

It also causes terrible RNG with zones. I usually get edge POIs and often times struggle running all the way to the other half of the map. You cant safely cut out a path when players are everywhere. I think one of the reasons why Path and Loba are so popular is that they can move away from the ring quite well or help reset with banner crafting. But other Legends struggle with maneuvering bad ring RNG.

Sorry for the late reply here. We actually have an update on this:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1172470/announcements/detail/669505296465399169
Feel free to give it a read and share your thoughts.

Originally posted by MOD_SidZapen:

Sorry for the late reply here. We actually have an update on this:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1172470/announcements/detail/669505296465399169
Feel free to give it a read and share your thoughts.

I have seen this already and it does solve problems with matchmaking but my issue is with the drop zone system specfically. I do like a lot of these changes but a lot of them just arent particularly relevant to this discussion

I said when drop zones came out that it seems like it should have been for the lower ranked players not higher ranked, where you would assume they know how to play and land at higher tiers.
Why would they leave out lower ranked tiers?

Originally posted by SL4Y3R:

I said when drop zones came out that it seems like it should have been for the lower ranked players not higher ranked, where you would assume they know how to play and land at higher tiers.
Why would they leave out lower ranked tiers?

Only explanation is that, it was not made with the intention of upholding competitive integrity, but with making ranked more accessible to encourage more people to play it at the cost of competitive integrity. It originally was something in ranked as a whole but it did not work out very well and was changed but changed backwards.

Originally posted by Baal-zəvuv:

Originally posted by MOD_SidZapen:

Sorry for the late reply here. We actually have an update on this:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1172470/announcements/detail/669505296465399169
Feel free to give it a read and share your thoughts.

I have seen this already and it does solve problems with matchmaking but my issue is with the drop zone system specfically. I do like a lot of these changes but a lot of them just arent particularly relevant to this discussion

Yeah Dropzones will be restricted to the higher league with these changes, along with legend Banning. I remember there was massive backslash after we went back to dropship for all ranks, arguing that Drop Zones simply felt more competitive, but there was also a very significant portion of the community requesting for the Dropzones to be removed completely.

Feel fre to tell me what you think about how the Drop System will change depending on the league.

Originally posted by SL4Y3R:

I said when drop zones came out that it seems like it should have been for the lower ranked players not higher ranked, where you would assume they know how to play and land at higher tiers.
Why would they leave out lower ranked tiers?

To expand a bit more on this, the decision to separate these deployment methods isn't about teaching players how to land, it is about deliberately creating two distinct competitive environments that cater to different types of players.

In Season 32, we are officially splitting Ranked into the Open League (Iron to Emerald) and the Pro-Am League (Diamond to Grandmaster). The Open League is designed to be focused heavily on combat ability and kills, which is why it retains the classic Battle Royale start.

You are right

Originally posted by MOD_SidZapen:

Originally posted by Baal-zəvuv:

I have seen this already and it does solve problems with matchmaking but my issue is with the drop zone system specfically. I do like a lot of these changes but a lot of them just arent particularly relevant to this discussion

Yeah Dropzones will be restricted to the higher league with these changes, along with legend Banning. I remember there was massive backslash after we went back to dropship for all ranks, arguing that Drop Zones simply felt more competitive, but there was also a very significant portion of the community requesting for the Dropzones to be removed completely.

Feel fre to tell me what you think about how the Drop System will change depending on the league.

I assume the supporting matchmaking and general ranked enhancements will make ranked overall more palletable and as i said, i like a lot of these changes. They dont actually change much about my core complaint being drop zones themselves. Just to show im not blowing smoke, I will give a few examples:

Legend bans
- This does not really make that big of a difference because apex has several characters that are redundant to one another or to something in game (which is fine, necessary even to have alteratives). But half the time it is just going to be banning something like vantage when an amp'd senti can do the same thing she can do off drop but scales down the later into the game you are because the senti doesnt have a movement ability.

The Challenger v Goliath system
- This is a change I really like because the original underdog system was kinda weird due to you being able to get put in to lobbies with players with a standard deviation of 2 ranks. So if you die to a higher teir team, you still lose the same amount. I think Challenger v Goliath, in combination to an entry cost that more accurately represents your estimated chances of victory, significantly help things feel fair. This however, is a matchmaking enhancement and does not address the drop zone mechanic or its key problem of POI inequality.

Open v Pro-Am
- I do like the idea conceptually but in practice it just makes in Pro-Am almost the same as it is now without a fully coordinated team, fully optimized character comp, and to some extent even with one because of, again, the skipping of the filtration system of : choosing a bad drop = death. This means people who do not deserve to be alive because they made a massive mistake get to skip that hurdle and be alive in a system that prioritizes placement. Season 17 is a good example of why this has to be handled delicately even without drop zones. I understand the point is to make things more like ALGS but you also still want to keep ranked fun in the way that you feel satisfaction for good work (outplaying a team, just beating people in 50/50's through mechanics, making a good play from scratch) and if you start with some sort of advantage or, worse, are on the recieving end of that, it tarnishes that sense of satisfaction overtime or causes frustration.

As for the part about early community takes on drop zones, i do agree that drop zones feel more competitive. They just feel more competitive in a very artificial way that is sometimes just more favorable to some teams than others (without any player input) or just straight up luck of the draw based on who starts fighting first in your area.

Originally posted by Baal-zəvuv:

Originally posted by MOD_SidZapen:

Yeah Dropzones will be restricted to the higher league with these changes, along with legend Banning. I remember there was massive backslash after we went back to dropship for all ranks, arguing that Drop Zones simply felt more competitive, but there was also a very significant portion of the community requesting for the Dropzones to be removed completely.

Feel fre to tell me what you think about how the Drop System will change depending on the league.

I assume the supporting matchmaking and general ranked enhancements will make ranked overall more palletable and as i said, i like a lot of these changes. They dont actually change much about my core complaint being drop zones themselves. Just to show im not blowing smoke, I will give a few examples:

Legend bans
- This does not really make that big of a difference because apex has several characters that are redundant to one another or to something in game (which is fine, necessary even to have alteratives). But half the time it is just going to be banning something like vantage when an amp'd senti can do the same thing she can do off drop but scales down the later into the game you are because the senti doesnt have a movement ability.

The Challenger v Goliath system
- This is a change I really like because the original underdog system was kinda weird due to you being able to get put in to lobbies with players with a standard deviation of 2 ranks. So if you die to a higher teir team, you still lose the same amount. I think Challenger v Goliath, in combination to an entry cost that more accurately represents your estimated chances of victory, significantly help things feel fair. This however, is a matchmaking enhancement and does not address the drop zone mechanic or its key problem of POI inequality.

Open v Pro-Am
- I do like the idea conceptually but in practice it just makes in Pro-Am almost the same as it is now without a fully coordinated team, fully optimized character comp, and to some extent even with one because of, again, the skipping of the filtration system of : choosing a bad drop = death. This means people who do not deserve to be alive because they made a massive mistake get to skip that hurdle and be alive in a system that prioritizes placement. Season 17 is a good example of why this has to be handled delicately even without drop zones. I understand the point is to make things more like ALGS but you also still want to keep ranked fun in the way that you feel satisfaction for good work (outplaying a team, just beating people in 50/50's through mechanics, making a good play from scratch) and if you start with some sort of advantage or, worse, are on the recieving end of that, it tarnishes that sense of satisfaction overtime or causes frustration.

As for the part about early community takes on drop zones, i do agree that drop zones feel more competitive. They just feel more competitive in a very artificial way that is sometimes just more favorable to some teams than others (without any player input) or just straight up luck of the draw based on who starts fighting first in your area.

Also, is there a reason for the name change to Predator rank?

Originally posted by Baal-zəvuv:

Originally posted by Baal-zəvuv:

I assume the supporting matchmaking and general ranked enhancements will make ranked overall more palletable and as i said, i like a lot of these changes. They dont actually change much about my core complaint being drop zones themselves. Just to show im not blowing smoke, I will give a few examples:

Legend bans
- This does not really make that big of a difference because apex has several characters that are redundant to one another or to something in game (which is fine, necessary even to have alteratives). But half the time it is just going to be banning something like vantage when an amp'd senti can do the same thing she can do off drop but scales down the later into the game you are because the senti doesnt have a movement ability.

The Challenger v Goliath system
- This is a change I really like because the original underdog system was kinda weird due to you being able to get put in to lobbies with players with a standard deviation of 2 ranks. So if you die to a higher teir team, you still lose the same amount. I think Challenger v Goliath, in combination to an entry cost that more accurately represents your estimated chances of victory, significantly help things feel fair. This however, is a matchmaking enhancement and does not address the drop zone mechanic or its key problem of POI inequality.

Open v Pro-Am
- I do like the idea conceptually but in practice it just makes in Pro-Am almost the same as it is now without a fully coordinated team, fully optimized character comp, and to some extent even with one because of, again, the skipping of the filtration system of : choosing a bad drop = death. This means people who do not deserve to be alive because they made a massive mistake get to skip that hurdle and be alive in a system that prioritizes placement. Season 17 is a good example of why this has to be handled delicately even without drop zones. I understand the point is to make things more like ALGS but you also still want to keep ranked fun in the way that you feel satisfaction for good work (outplaying a team, just beating people in 50/50's through mechanics, making a good play from scratch) and if you start with some sort of advantage or, worse, are on the recieving end of that, it tarnishes that sense of satisfaction overtime or causes frustration.

As for the part about early community takes on drop zones, i do agree that drop zones feel more competitive. They just feel more competitive in a very artificial way that is sometimes just more favorable to some teams than others (without any player input) or just straight up luck of the draw based on who starts fighting first in your area.

Also, is there a reason for the name change to Predator rank?

Not a name change entirely. Predators will now only be there top 750 Grandmasters. To represent the best of the best.

Originally posted by Baal-zəvuv:

Originally posted by MOD_SidZapen:

Yeah Dropzones will be restricted to the higher league with these changes, along with legend Banning. I remember there was massive backslash after we went back to dropship for all ranks, arguing that Drop Zones simply felt more competitive, but there was also a very significant portion of the community requesting for the Dropzones to be removed completely.

Feel fre to tell me what you think about how the Drop System will change depending on the league.

I assume the supporting matchmaking and general ranked enhancements will make ranked overall more palletable and as i said, i like a lot of these changes. They dont actually change much about my core complaint being drop zones themselves. Just to show im not blowing smoke, I will give a few examples:

Legend bans
- This does not really make that big of a difference because apex has several characters that are redundant to one another or to something in game (which is fine, necessary even to have alteratives). But half the time it is just going to be banning something like vantage when an amp'd senti can do the same thing she can do off drop but scales down the later into the game you are because the senti doesnt have a movement ability.

The Challenger v Goliath system
- This is a change I really like because the original underdog system was kinda weird due to you being able to get put in to lobbies with players with a standard deviation of 2 ranks. So if you die to a higher teir team, you still lose the same amount. I think Challenger v Goliath, in combination to an entry cost that more accurately represents your estimated chances of victory, significantly help things feel fair. This however, is a matchmaking enhancement and does not address the drop zone mechanic or its key problem of POI inequality.

Open v Pro-Am
- I do like the idea conceptually but in practice it just makes in Pro-Am almost the same as it is now without a fully coordinated team, fully optimized character comp, and to some extent even with one because of, again, the skipping of the filtration system of : choosing a bad drop = death. This means people who do not deserve to be alive because they made a massive mistake get to skip that hurdle and be alive in a system that prioritizes placement. Season 17 is a good example of why this has to be handled delicately even without drop zones. I understand the point is to make things more like ALGS but you also still want to keep ranked fun in the way that you feel satisfaction for good work (outplaying a team, just beating people in 50/50's through mechanics, making a good play from scratch) and if you start with some sort of advantage or, worse, are on the recieving end of that, it tarnishes that sense of satisfaction overtime or causes frustration.

As for the part about early community takes on drop zones, i do agree that drop zones feel more competitive. They just feel more competitive in a very artificial way that is sometimes just more favorable to some teams than others (without any player input) or just straight up luck of the draw based on who starts fighting first in your area.

We are fully flattening the value from kills and placement. The previous formula allowed RP from kills to scale too much based on final placement. By flattening the RP values and removing the multiplier between kills and placement, we expect to see match pacing even out and players planning how they want to approach kills and survival in a more consistent way.

The others are some very fair concerns as well. Sent this to the team.