Johnnysworld

What a time to be alive.

I’ve been meaning to do a post about Apex Legends for awhile. This was not the post I thought I was going to write.

Developers endure a lot of crap. Angry fans trashing them, rushed development dates, limited resources.. The list goes on I imagine. Prod too hard, and it’s only going to be a matter of time before they flip.

Well it happened. Surprisingly, it wasn’t from a Call of Duty dev.

So if you missed this like I did, let’s recap.

Iron Crown Event

Starting August 13th, developer Respawn kicked off a limited time event known as the Iron Crown. This event brought a new area to the map, some backstory as to how Octane lost his legs and his complicated relationship with Lifeline, some sick new skins Solos, a much requested feature since launch back in February, and an heirloom for Bloodhunter.

Pretty cool huh?

Yeah…

So the problem began when players realized that the Iron Crown brought new loot boxes that contained these sick new items, cost more than the regular boxes, and didn’t give you a guaranteed drop for the new items. What was even worse was that you had to collect a set of Iron Crown items before you had the opportunity to buy what you wanted.

*Sigh*

The community was quick to jump on this, and part of this has played a role as to why I haven’t played Apex since the launch of this event. I don’t want to get my hopes up for sick skins to not unlock them.

Anyways, community was pissed. Respawn saw this, and took action. Their response was to allow players the ability to purchase these limited time items, and every couple of days, you could buy one of the higher tier items. The problem with this is that players then realized it cost more to buy these items after the fix then it did to buy the loot boxes with no guaranteed drop.

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.. on both sides.

Reddit turned into a war between players and developers. Let’s take a look (pics provided by Medium).

A lot to digest here. It’s actually a pretty good read.

As a person, I’ve never been one to get into petty online quarrels, but I feel for the developers at Respawn. The Reddit community is divided into two groups:

• The nice people: Love Reddit interaction, give constructive criticism, very nice people.
• The naughty folks: Will clown on you for being new or posting the same content more than once, fight people, etc.

Pretty general groups I know, but some of Respawn’s comments stemmed directly from the community issuing death threats, insults, and all that like minded nonsense. Shoot, if you’re going to call me a freeloader for playing a free game that I enjoy, I’ll be a damn freeloader.

It’s really unfair that they’ve been labeled villains. However, as a public figure, you have to take the high road, and they clearly didn’t do that. So now, a game that is already teetering due to the lack of new content, is going to be ruined even more due to this set of events.

On the other side of this equation, we have the gamers. There are ways to voice your opinion but issuing insults is not an efficient way to get those changes. We have to be better, especially if we want better.

Now, for the micro transactions. I think the first I really experienced them was in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. I’ve never been bothered by them since I’m of the mindset that I refuse to pay for them so I don’t indulge in them. I think if implemented correctly, they’d be fine. There have even been instances where they actually benefited the community and developer such as in Destiny 2 where Luke Smith said selling items from the Eververse actually paid for the development of the Zero Hour quest. If true, that’s pretty cool.

However, seeing Activision’s massive success with loot boxes is only going to steer publishers like EA in that direction. Unfortunately, taking it out on the developers is not going to help because a lot of these choices are publishers shoving down the developers’ throats, at least from the outside looking in, that’s what it seems like.

Example: Also over the weekend (Jesus it’s been a crazy weekend) Treyarch’s Studio Director David Vonderhaar released a series of now deleted tweets stating somebody close to him asked him to step away from Call of Duty. Of course this triggered a flurry of responses far and wide seeing as Vondy is an OG of CoD and highly respected. He went on to elaborate that he hasn’t had a hand in multiplayer since Black Ops 2 which was seven years ago. Not surprisingly the multiplayer aspect of the Black Ops series has changed so much (good and bad) since he’s stepped away from it.

Anyways, I feel like I’m getting away from what I was discussing.

Listen folks, I’m on both sides here. Respawn had to defend themselves from the ignorant masses, but they should’ve been a tad more professional. Gamers have to stand strong, but there is such thing as too strong. As I mentioned before, Apex was already in decline due to lack of content. This might be the final straw which sucks because I do enjoy the crap out of this game. I’ve been trying to play competitively, and this doesn’t help one bit.

What are your thoughts on the scenario?