Past october, an unfortunate friend gave me a thoughtless recommendation and brought me to my first Battle Royale game, which should soon become an outlet for stress, frustration and exhaustion through work, private projects and high self-demands. Apex Legends became part of my everyday life and I told you back then that despite my longstanding and ongoing contempt for the Battle Royale genre, I was falling for this easy-to-access game all too quickly. By now, That has happened. I am an apex addict. Well, more or less. I want to talk a little bit about it, and also about the Christmas event, which will continue until January 2nd.
In the first post I introduced Apex fundamentally. This is no longer necessary - I have become an experienced player with over 200 kills and over 400 games. I have pretty much internalized all the functions of the combat system, got to know the rather large world map and, in addition to my main character Wraith(= Blind Waifu) I also switched to the embarrassingly striking Frenchwoman Wattson and the less gymnastic Caustic. I also used my PS4 headset to its original intended purpose and added an additional strategic component to my games by speaking to my teammates. It's a lot more fun. You can't and don't want to stop.
I think I've become addicted to apex in the past few weeks and months. Definitions for addiction include:
pathological dependence on a certain stimulant or intoxicant.
Excessive desire for something, a certain action.
In my case, the former does not really apply, the latter rather. I have played apex for 2-3 hours sometimes every three, sometimes every two, and less often every day for the past 2 months. That may not seem excessive in the context of addiction, but for me it is incredible much, just too much, to be clear. And there’s more telling me that I'm addicted - I neglect other duties and hobbies to a certain extent for Apex.
Write a text for the blog tonight? Oh come on, preferably two short rounds of apex. Start this new, dark role-playing game that has been lying around here for a long time? I'll do that soon, but Apex for now.
It is symptomatic and worrying.
And Apex doesn't really make you happy - yes, the game is a lot of fun. Yes, the winter train mode is much, much more successful than the Halloween event at that time and the fast and accessible search and find of games gets you into a loop of euphoria that constantly offers you new opportunities - just one more game. This time you can do it!
But Apex is a Battle Royale. You play against a lot of other people, who in my case usually slam you on the mat in a matter of seconds and throw you out of the game. I've become sovereign, but since shooters are really not my genre, my skills have their limits - I die in Apex. Very, very, very often. Sometimes in five games in a row. But worst of all are the games in which I survive for twenty minutes, then meet my first opponent, die, look at the clock and wonder what I've been doing for the past twenty minutes - no, three hours. The evening is over, but for what?
Games like Apex Legends or League of Legends (legends are probably popular in the Battle Royale genre ...) are a blessing and a curse. They are so successful BECAUSE their gameplay is such a seductive flow of fun and beckoning success, but you also get lost in them very quickly. The friend who brought me to Apex recently ironically told me that he is currently really against his will spending every free minute with League of Legends. I don't want to end up there too. You know, in this addiction, not in LoL. Although I don't want to end up in LoL neither. There are already enough cancerous things that I expose myself to every day, so I don't have to get closer to the LoL community too.
So what's next for me? Yesterday, after a long apex session, I played the from critics and players praised Hellblade, started and played for an hour. It was a nice hour, a quiet hour, an hour in which I could collect new, fascinating impressions. This intensified my reasoning and my thoughts that I blame myself for 'endless pursuing' fun experiences like Apex - think about what you could do in the time you're doing Addiction X. How many other video games could I have played instead of dying in apex? How many great articles to write or how many great anime to see? Instead, I played Apex and maybe had some fun with it. But I have not developed further. I just wasted lifetime and got a little closer to death.
I think I will soon have to draw a line. In my life, where there is nothing less than time, many time eaters play a role - anime, games, cartoons, films, books want to be consumed and at best be reviewed, stories are written by me and I got friends and family I every now and then actually have to see. Maybe all of this is more important than Apex. Maybe life is too short to play apex. Of course, it doesn't have to be just apex. League of Legends. Terraria. Fighting games. Stardew Valley. What you want. Do you know Terraria? Four or five years ago, a friend gave it to me for Steam and played it with me. I fell into an unprecedented loop and a few months later I had 500 hours of gameplay - I didn't know where they went, but had achieved and built everything I wanted and decided to quit Terraria and not play it again. To this date I have not returned and I do not regret it. My apex experience is far from 500 hours. But I think it's time for me to draw a line.
My goal is to end it after the winter event on January 2nd permanently and stop using Apex and delete it from my PS4 - I had an unexpected, good time. But now it is appropriate to move on. After the winter event. (Update: Didn’t work permanently…) And as abstruse as it may seem, I would like introduce said winter event briefly.
As I had said, with its new game mode 'Conquer the Christmas train' it is more or less more successful than the frustration parade and balancing disaster for Halloween - the principle is a simple King of the Hill variation: three teams (!!) are on one on the let go of the train traveling around the Christmas decorated world to be conquered - either you are the only team on the train for a certain time or you kill everyone else - both earn you a point. The team that has three points first wins. The usual looting is omitted, because each character has a different, fixed inventory every day.
The charme of the Christmas procession is clear - in contrast to the bloated and demanding Battle Royale mode, in which a death in most cases means that you can quit if you don't want to wait 20 minutes for a respawn, this mode is small and fast - If you get killed, you get the next chance in thirty to sixty seconds. If you lose, you still have enough chances to score points yourself. Fighting a few opponents in a small space (the train) is also much more fun and grants you significantly more success experiences than if you had to survive against 80+ opponents on a gigantic map. So someone like me has managed to become the Christmas Train Champion + Kill leader four times in a row. The mechanics with the fixed inventories also save you the hard loot and move injustices between players out of the way - everyone has the same chances and it's about the skill. You can also switch characters between the respawns. This keeps the mode fresh and entertaining.
The main mode has also got a few updates - In addition to the Christmas decorations mentioned on the winter map, there is now a large party ship of the character Mirage, on which a New Year's Eve party can be started and which is a kind of a LOOTHUB - In almost every here’s where the most opponents collect, often between 10-15 players. It's a huge mess and a bloodbath, sort of a Battle Royale inside the Battle Royale, or in other words, it's a fantastic idea where you either die immediately because bullets come from everywhere or you shoot yourself to survival while Disco music and dancing holograms pop through the scenery.
It's a shame and good at the same time that these changes, along with the fun mode in January, will pointlessly be gone for good again - I honestly don’t understand the logic behind time-limited game modes - If you work hard to program a new mode which can be fun all year round and which is an alternative to the same old main mode, WHY in the world would you only make it accessible for a few weeks? Why not leave them in the game and gradually fill them with varied modes to be more than just another Battle Royale? As I said, it is beyond my understanding. But I am thankful for it, otherwise I would maybe sink more time into Apex. (Edit: I did….)
One last thing. Respawn Entertainment, the developers of Apex, and of course also the higher-level EA, have something to be accused of. Namely, the Micro Transactions. In the first post I described them as extremely fair, a statement that I take back by now - I was wrong at the time. You can’t earn content such as skins, sounds, poses, sayings and so on with in-game currency, but only with real money coins that you have to buy. There is always a large amount of themed costumes, weapon skins and the like for events such as the winter event that is now taking place again. All of this has to be bought at completely overpriced usury prices or unlocked with virtually impossible in-game material quantities. Imagine spending 20 € on a costume because there is no other way to get it. And the Apex Packs, which you only get very, very rarely in later levels, usually contain only trash or outrageously small amounts of in-game currency. Respawn Entertainment may live from micro-transactions, but the unpredictable methodology behind making optical content possible only through money if you don't want to grind forever is bad and at best questionable.
Oh, and I mean - I would even have been willing to spend 3-4 bucks on a Wraith costume as a Thank you for how much fun Apex gives me - but it didn’t work because the cool costumes are for some reason time-exclusive: Limited events that are long gone. Eh okay respawn entertainment, then I just keep my money. Thinking is not your strong point, is it?
Smells like a Mindblog. Ha!
If you are thinking about starting Apex or are already part of the community - it is an honestly good Battle Royale. I don't regret my time with this game. But be aware, it's just that - A Battle Royale. It can't and won't give you more than entertaining fun, short-lived experiences of success and an increasingly vehement urge to succeed. Everyone has to decide for themselves whether it's worth it to leave a good role-playing game, two great films or an interesting series for it.
I already did. (Did I, though?)
- Yoraiko
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