If you’ve played Apex Legends at all since Season 6 dropped then you’ve likely felt the effects of the new lower TTK (time to kill). All shields were reduced by 25 points. So now if you have a red evo-shield, you have 200 effective health rather than 225. Purple gives you 175 instead of 200 and so on. It may seem like a small change on paper, but it’s something you’ll notice in a big way as you play.
A part of Apex’s identity
My biggest issue with this reduction is that it no longer feels like Apex, but instead more like a Call of Duty title. Players go down considerably faster than before, which takes a lot of getting used to. Maybe if Respawn decreased the TTK in intervals rather than all at once it would be easier to get accustomed to? Tanking it across the board all at once was a bit much. If the change had arrived in small portions over time, maybe players would’ve been more accepting.
Respawn’s intention was to “bring down the TTK a bit in order to better reward strategic positioning.” I understand wanting to reward players for acting strategically, but when pro-players are some of your biggest complaints I think that means you missed the mark.
Season 6 impression: The gun meta is complete trash now, every gun is so brain dead with no recoil with insane amount of damage, R301, Scout, Volt, Devo, havoc and fucking buffing burst weapons??? Skill gap doesn't even exist anymore
— ImperialHal (@TSM_ImperialHal) August 19, 2020
Gunfights were intense and hectic
Apex’s old TTK allowed you a chance to recover in a bad fight. Picked a bad engagement and got third-partied? You could feasibly reposition and survive long enough to eek out a win. If you won the fight, it gave you a good feeling of confidence, while reinforcing caution in the future and keeping the tension high. But if you lost, then you learned and could fix it for next time. The rewards for strategic play were still there, you just didn’t have hop from match to match every 5 minutes. That feeling of surviving by the skin of your teeth is exhilarating, and I think most Apex Legends players would agree.
Now if you have the better gun, you just win. And yes I do mean better gun. Let’s face it, the Devotion being a map pickup is a mistake. There’s a reason it was vaulted, it did tons of damage and fired faster than anything else in the game. If you want to keep the Devo on the ground, then lower the fire rate or make it less common. A Devo paired with amped cover and Sheila? There’s no way you’re getting out of that one. If you’re caught in the last ring against a squad like that, you’re SOL buddy — trust me.
There are two sides to the argument
Some have said that the problem is people playing the same way as before the change, and this is fair. This whole situation changes the game entirely, but you can’t go changing a game this drastically in an instant. People want to play Apex Legends, not CoD.
There are really good arguments on both sides for whether we need a higher or lower TTK in Apex Legends. Ultimately the decision is up to the devs — and they seem to have their own thing in mind. Let’s just hope it all works out in the end.
By the way, here’s a comprehensive look at the new TTK if you’re interested, courtesy of Reddit user Bears_say_meow.
Could not agree more, I played a few hours of the new season and haven’t played the game since. I can understand wanting to keep the game fresh with each season, but this moved seemed geared specifically to make lower skilled players feel better at the game. This was a misstep I think, since much of what was causing low player retention was a poor SBMM implementation.
Apex is one of the all-time most impressive games ever made, but for better or worse gameplay fun factor in gunfights is a really subjective and fragile thing. Making that part of the game no longer fun for the high-skilled players is going to backfire.
What makes the game good IS the skill ceiling, when you start messing with that you’re in for trouble.