Apex Legends Hits 1 Million Players, But Replaced Titanfall 3

[AlphaAtlas]

Respawn's first attempt at a battle royale game wasn't even publicly revealed until yesterday, but the developers say the game is already doing surprisingly well. The CEO of Respawn Entertainment, Vince Zampella, said that Apex "broke a million unique players in under 8 hours." By many accounts, the game is pretty good as far as battle royale games go, if it a bit unpolished, which isn't surprising given its Titanfall 2 DNA.

However, the game's lead producer, Drew McCoy, told Eurogamer that "There are some people who think there are too many battle royale games or it's a fad, the world thinks we're making Titanfall 3 and we're not - this is what we're making." All things considered, their "surprise launch" strategy seems to have worked relatively well, as Apex got plenty of hype and launch traffic while avoiding the pre-launch, pre-review criticism that would inevitably come with another battle royale game.

Check out the gameplay deep dive trailer here.

"To try and convince a sceptical audience for months with trailers and hands-on articles, we're just like 'let the game speak for itself' - it's the most powerful antidote to potential problems. "We're doing a free to play game, with essentially loot boxes, after we were bought by EA, and it's not Titanfall 3. It's the perfect recipe for a marketing plan to go awry, so why have that - let's just ship the game and let players play." It's a surprisingly open response. But then, in the context of what happened with Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Apex Legends' release with the bare minimum of marketing makes sense. Respawn simply want the game to speak for itself, McCoy says.

 

[ryno9100]

"Bought by EA" "doing a free game, with essentially loot boxes" Who would've thought...

That said. I enjoy the game. It isn't Titanfall 3 by any stretch, nor does it pretend to be, but it's a fun game in it's own right. I'm not a huge battle royale fan for a few reasons, and this game solves 2 of them, communication and the neat respawn mechanic that solves the whole "dying right away but your teammates survive, so now you're waiting for them to finish" thing.

 

[Fleat]

The loss of Titanfall 3 is disappointing but I had a great time playing Apex Legends for a few hours last night. It seemed quite polished to me for a day one experience and I certainly enjoyed it more than Blackout in CoD.

 

[Brokennails]

Really loved Titanfall 2. It's a shame the devil bought Respawn and now we are not getting 3.

F2P games with lootboxes are the equivalent of "Ow my balls" from Idiocracy.

 

[AlphaAtlas]

Really loved Titanfall 2. It's a shame the devil bought Respawn and now we are not getting 3.

Respawn also said the decision to go battle royale was their decision, not EA's.

 

[Advil]

Got it installed and played a round last night.

Since I don't have to give EA money... but still stuck using Origin.

The gameplay has potential. 3 man squads of rock/paper/scissors added to Battle Royale and a bunch of classes to mix your capabilities in your squad. It appears you can only have one of each class in squad as there is a randomized order chosen for selection. Each teammate chooses a class before the drop. The game has auto "formation" on the drop to keep your team together, or you can break it apart. Weapons are diverse. Capabilities are diverse. It also has some interesting high speed movement mechanics like power sliding down a hill or sliding through doors from a sprint. At first glance it seems to keep the trappings of PUBG but massively reduce emphasis on individual gunplay (which still matters) while giving large advantages to 3 man groups that can manage to make all their special abilities work together.

 

[wootius]

"We're doing a free to play game, with essentially loot boxes, after we were bought by EA, and it's not Titanfall 3. It's the perfect recipe for a marketing plan to go awry, so why have that - let's just ship the game and let players play."

This man has the last two brain cells left at EA. When are they firing him?

 

[moldyviolinist]

I played a few hours last night. I quite enjoyed it; the feeling of the weapons is pretty good and the communications is amazing. Being able to ping locations or enemies is perfect. Loot boxes are there, but cosmetics items only, so that's fine with me. My only complaint is that it does seem to follow the Fortnite formula a little too much, with various colored tiers off items, and the map even looks quite similar to Fortnite. Wish it just had a deathmatch mode though, BR is just too much camping

 

[Advil]

"We're doing a free to play game, with essentially loot boxes, after we were bought by EA, and it's not Titanfall 3. It's the perfect recipe for a marketing plan to go awry, so why have that - let's just ship the game and let players play."

This man has the last two brain cells left at EA. When are they firing him?

Very soon. EA knows only one way... run franchises into the ground milking them. The formula is decades old.

 

[Dudhunter]

LOVE Respawn. Enough that I would play this game despite me EA embargo. That’s saying something, as you’ll find me in every thread asking people to not give EA money.

 

[ssnyder28]

This game is extremely fun and if it was just a playable beta or something i would gladly pay for the retail game once the trial period ended. But its FREE! I'm still kind of garbage at it but i usually do more damage than my teammates and I learned quite a bit watching shroud stream for a while last night.

 

[ssnyder28]

I played a few hours last night. I quite enjoyed it; the feeling of the weapons is pretty good and the communications is amazing. Being able to ping locations or enemies is perfect. Loot boxes are there, but cosmetics items only, so that's fine with me. My only complaint is that it does seem to follow the Fortnite formula a little too much, with various colored tiers off items, and the map even looks quite similar to Fortnite. Wish it just had a deathmatch mode though, BR is just too much camping

I mean all games tend to copy a bit from other games. The tiered items by color was copied from borderlands which was copied from world of warcraft and im sure they copied that from someone else before (diablo?)

 

[Shmee]

What I was surprised by was that the Source Engine really worked well for this type of game. It is not the most advanced looking game, but it is able to deliver a crisp and clean presentation with good art direction. Even though it is contending with a large map and a lot of enemies all while being light on system resources. Which is perfect for a F2P game which a lot of people will be trying out on low end machines. It is even able to hit 60 FPS on consoles. Makes me wish Valve would keep working on it. I know that Source 2 technically exists, but since no one is using it, it may as well not.

 

[Ocellaris]

The game is remarkably well put together and polished. They made classes feel important, which is hard to pull off. And they actually brought a lot of new features to a genre, which is very unlike EA. Makes sense why Battlefield 5 doesn’t have a Battle Royale mode.

 

[katanaD]

"To try and convince a sceptical audience for months with trailers and hands-on articles, we're just like 'let the game speak for itself'

neat. I really do get tired from the constant stream of trailers and such .. just give me the game to play..

thanks

 

[fadedlogic]

I don't have the twitch skills to play a game like this, but it has been very entertaining to watch some of the bigger name streamers enjoying playing a battle royale game for the first time in a long time. It looks like this game may have some legs and appears to be perfect for tournaments.

 

[STEvil]

I mean all games tend to copy a bit from other games. The tiered items by color was copied from borderlands which was copied from world of warcraft and im sure they copied that from someone else before (diablo?)

I literally just choked on my food reading this.

 

[ssnyder28]

I literally just choked on my food reading this.

Jeez its not that bad. Apparently you haven't read too many internet posts.

 

[Absalom]

And the masses have spoken.

Seriously though, I hope Respawn makes a nice chuck of change from all that lootbox whoring. But, for some reason I get the impression papa EA gets to pocket most of that. Oh well.

 

[Oldmodder]

pass.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Just what the world needs... Yet another copycat Battle Royale mode.

And everyone acts as if it is something new, when it's really just Deathmatch on steroids.

I got tired of that game format in the 90's.

 

[AlphaAtlas]

What I was surprised by was that the Source Engine really worked well for this type of game. It is not the most advanced looking game, but it is able to deliver a crisp and clean presentation with good art direction. Even though it is contending with a large map and a lot of enemies all while being light on system resources. Which is perfect for a F2P game which a lot of people will be trying out on low end machines. It is even able to hit 60 FPS on consoles. Makes me wish Valve would keep working on it. I know that Source 2 technically exists, but since no one is using it, it may as well not.

Yeah its pretty impressive. Seems to run reasonably well too, based on a few impressions I've seen.

That being said, BR isn't as technically complex as it looks on paper. The 60/100/whatever players on the map are naturally spread out and culled as it shrinks, so the game and server don't actually have to handle 60 players each rendering 60 other players all at once, AFAIK.

 

[Spidey329]

I read an article the other day that said the choice for this spin-off may have come early in TitanFall3 development when they realized that what they had planned was going to be too much for the source engine (it's aging). It went on to say they forked to this product in the interim to fill the void as the new engine is produced (or modified of another).

It kinda makes sense. Titles with newer engine tech (or major rewrites of a prior generation) tend to take much longer to produce. Small incremental changes and artwork are easily done in existing tech with minor additions to an existing engine. Example: The gap between BF2 and BF3 was from an engine swap.

 

[Aix.]

Yeah its pretty impressive. Seems to run reasonably well too, based on a few impressions I've seen.

That being said, BR isn't as technically complex as it looks on paper. The 60/100/whatever players on the map are naturally spread out and culled as it shrinks, so the game and server don't actually have to handle 60 players each rendering 60 other players all at once, AFAIK.

It makes me think of what Evolve might have looked like if it had been on Source. I don't think we'll be getting cool environmental effects, day/night cycles, etc., but it does look nice enough. It's surprising to me mainly because 32-player TF2 servers had issues if the maps exceeded a certain entity # threshold, so you'd think a 60-player game set on a giant island would run into similar issues, but I guess TF2's spaghetti code probably has a lot to do with it.

 

[Aix.]

And the masses have spoken.

Seriously though, I hope Respawn makes a nice chuck of change from all that lootbox whoring. But, for some reason I get the impression papa EA gets to pocket most of that. Oh well.

Well they give you the game for free, and they also give you lootboxes for free...I got like 5 of them last night with some skins and other junk in them. $0.

 

[Aix.]

Just what the world needs... Yet another copycat Battle Royale mode.

And everyone acts as if it is something new, when it's really just Deathmatch on steroids.

I got tired of that game format in the 90's.

 

[Poseidons Kiss]

I think I'll give it a shot, not in love with battle royale, but this seems a bit different.

 

[leezard]

I want to like battle royale games, I'm just not good at them. tried pubg and fortnite just not my cup of tea. I dont get the "just what we need, another (insert game type here) clone" comments. This happens with every game type that gets popular. One game becomes a huge success everyone tries (and usually fails) to replicate it. Every once in a while something comes along that is a "game changer" and everyone wants to try and cash in on it. Look at WoW, companies are still trying to unseat it and here we are what 14 years later.

PUBG pretty much started it, then Fortnite took the crown. Lots of people want a piece of that Fortnite pie.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I want to like battle royale games, I'm just not good at them. tried pubg and fortnite just not my cup of tea. I dont get the "just what we need, another (insert game type here) clone" comments. This happens with every game type that gets popular. One game becomes a huge success everyone tries (and usually fails) to replicate it. Every once in a while something comes along that is a "game changer" and everyone wants to try and cash in on it. Look at WoW, companies are still trying to unseat it and here we are what 14 years later.

PUBG pretty much started it, then Fortnite took the crown. Lots of people want a piece of that Fortnite pie.

Well, that's exactly the problem. Just because one game is a success, doesn't mean everyone has to do their own version of it. It doesn't even mean that doing their own version of it will be successful like the original.

One of the reasons Battle Royale was interesting when it first launched as mods and later in PUBG was because it was something new and different. (sure, I joke about it being deathmatch on steroids, but I'll admit, there was at least a little more to it. The scale was pretty impressive). If everyone does the same thing, it's no longer new and interesting. It's boring.

Developers need to not be such damned copy cats and instead focus on doing THEIR OWN new and interesting thing. Trends - no matter what they are - always suck, because they are a march towards lack of variety and interestingness.

So, good on Brendan Geene AKA PlayerUnknown for pretty much single-handedly making the style popular with his DayZ/Arma2 and subsequent mods, and later for working with Bluehole for making it a standalone game. It was new, it was fresh, it was interesting.

I mean, I found the premise a little silly, and requiring too much of a suspense of disbelief to be fun (why would 100 people ever airlift in on an island with the intent of killing everyone else and being the last man standing? Way too unrealistic, but once the First Person version launched, it was actually an enjoyable tactical style shooter for a short period of time before it got old.

Shame on everyone else for copying it, instead of doing their own thing, and creating their own new, fresh and interesting game concept. The copycats are the problem. They are what stagnate the industry and suck the life out of absolutely everything.

 

[leezard]

Well, that's exactly the problem. Just because one game is a success, doesn't mean everyone has to do their own version of it. It doesn't even mean that doing their own version of it will be successful like the original.

One of the reasons Battle Royale was interesting when it first launched as mods and later in PUBG was because it was something new and different. (sure, I joke about it being deathmatch on steroids, but I'll admit, there was at least a little more to it. The scale was pretty impressive). If everyone does the same thing, it's no longer new and interesting. It's boring.

Developers need to not be such damned copy cats and instead focus on doing THEIR OWN new and interesting thing. Trends - no matter what they are - always suck, because they are a march towards lack of variety and interestingness.

So, good on PlayerUnknown AKA PlayerUnknown for pretty much single-handedly making the style popular with his DayZ/Arma2 and subsequent mods, and later for working with Bluehole for making it a standalone game. It was new, it was fresh, it was interesting.

I mean, I found the premise a little silly, and requiring too much of a suspense of disbelief to be fun (why would 100 people ever airlift in on an island with the intent of killing everyone else and being the last man standing? Way too unrealistic, but once the First Person version launched, it was actually an enjoyable tactical style shooter for a short period of time before it got old.

Shame on everyone else for copying it, instead of doing their own thing, and creating their own new, fresh and interesting game concept. The copycats are the problem. They are what stagnate the industry and suck the life out of absolutely everything.

The publishers buying up all of the developers are only interested in $. Why spend money developing when you can copy the game type and play style and add a few of your own tweaks to it.
It is a formula just like everything else, If we do X it makes us this much money. Same way in the music industry, there is a formula to songs that sell. It will most likely take another PlayerUnknown to come up with the next big thing.

 

[rudy]

One of the reasons BR is so popular is because the gaming community is getting so big now. back when tribes 2 launched which think of as the real first massive FPS game the game had a lot of trouble simply because fielding a 16 man team for competition and filling servers with 64-128 player / side wasn't really that easy. So after that games just seemed to keep reducing the max players. Many years later we have just so many millions more online gamers that we can actually start ramping back up. BR is really a great game type because it nails down so many problems with massive gaming. It keeps the game personal because even though you are playing with 100 people or so you are in small squads. 2 when millions of people game you really really realize how other people are just way above you in skill. So that demoralizes people but just like how counterstrike was one of the first massive games to lower the skill ceiling BR keeps running with the trend. Randomness allows people to get kills or win when they otherwise had no chance and BR takes randomness to the next level even where you land and how other people land around you can cause you to win or lose a game.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

The publishers buying up all of the developers are only interested in $. Why spend money developing when you can copy the game type and play style and add a few of your own tweaks to it.
It is a formula just like everything else, If we do X it makes us this much money. Same way in the music industry, there is a formula to songs that sell. It will most likely take another PlayerUnknown to come up with the next big thing.

That assumes that something will be successful just because it follows the latest trend (in this case, has a Battle Royale mode). I'm not convinced this is the case. The game buying public may be annoying, but they are not stupid. Lets see if adding a Battle Royale mode saves Battlefield V.

 

[Absalom]

Well they give you the game for free, and they also give you lootboxes for free...I got like 5 of them last night with some skins and other junk in them. $0.

In the narcotics business, this is simply giving you a "taste".

 

[5150Joker]

The game has a very similar UI to Blackout which is unfortunate because it's the worst one ever made for BR imo. They copied roe 3d ping system but should have also copied the looting interface and qol that roe introduced. Other than that it feels like a smaller and slightly slower version of Blackout except with classes and fruity graphics.

 

[Aix.]

Well, that's exactly the problem. Just because one game is a success, doesn't mean everyone has to do their own version of it. It doesn't even mean that doing their own version of it will be successful like the original.

One of the reasons Battle Royale was interesting when it first launched as mods and later in PUBG was because it was something new and different. (sure, I joke about it being deathmatch on steroids, but I'll admit, there was at least a little more to it. The scale was pretty impressive). If everyone does the same thing, it's no longer new and interesting. It's boring.

Developers need to not be such damned copy cats and instead focus on doing THEIR OWN new and interesting thing. Trends - no matter what they are - always suck, because they are a march towards lack of variety and interestingness.

So, good on Brendan Geene AKA PlayerUnknown for pretty much single-handedly making the style popular with his DayZ/Arma2 and subsequent mods, and later for working with Bluehole for making it a standalone game. It was new, it was fresh, it was interesting.

I mean, I found the premise a little silly, and requiring too much of a suspense of disbelief to be fun (why would 100 people ever airlift in on an island with the intent of killing everyone else and being the last man standing? Way too unrealistic, but once the First Person version launched, it was actually an enjoyable tactical style shooter for a short period of time before it got old.

Shame on everyone else for copying it, instead of doing their own thing, and creating their own new, fresh and interesting game concept. The copycats are the problem. They are what stagnate the industry and suck the life out of absolutely everything.

Well the existance of films "Battle Royale" (2000) and "The Hunger Games" (2012) - both based on novels - doesn't exactly support the notion that PlayerUnknown should be the only one who gets to make a BR game. In fact, I was thoroughly enjoying Fortnite while the PUBG playerbase was up in arms about the rampant cheating and unfixed bugs, performance issues, etc. - all issues that I took into account before deciding to steer clear of PUBG. There is no "copycat problem," only games that succeed and games that fail. Did the world need ClayFighter when we already had Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter to play? Of course not, but it didn't ruin fighting games or gaming in general.

 

[spintroniX]

Played for a couple hours last night, and it pushes my 2080ti at 4K / highest settings. I enjoy the art direction and gameplay, seems like a winner to me.

 

[Armenius]

And the masses have spoken.

Seriously though, I hope Respawn makes a nice chuck of change from all that lootbox whoring. But, for some reason I get the impression papa EA gets to pocket most of that. Oh well.

Let's revisit that in a month.

 

[criccio]

This game's additions to the BR scene and general gameplay make it quite fun. Sunk 4 hours Monday and last night into it with a buddy and we're having a blast. Got a win last night too!