Apex Legends Isn’t Safe from Bad Teammates
I had an Apex Legends session for about 50 minutes, taking short breaks here and there no more than two or three minutes in length. In that 50 minutes, there was one scenario where my random team lasted more than 2 minutes (we lasted ten minutes, and placed 7th I wanna say). That last game was good, our team stuck together after a bit of a rough start two minutes after landing. I was stuck with a Longbow and a Wingman, which pushed me towards lagging behind to get good aim on a player but was quickly gunned down. Our Lifeline managed to resurrect me just as we got to a building for cover, I knocked down a fellow enemy Bloodhound, and my other teammate managed to take care of the other two enemies in the team. After that it was smooth sailing until we decided to venture into Bunker and came face to face with a very prepared team with a Wraith waiting for us to open the big door, and Caustic down the hall in case we advanced. We didn’t make it. And I decided that was the end of my session for the next couple hours. But one thing that was on my mind for the first 40 minutes was just how frustrating it was to start at least five or six games and for them all to be over within 2 minutes or less. The wait time between end of game and the start of the next wasn’t too bad, but in each game I found problems stemming from just poor teamwork.
It’s pretty frustrating to see that poor teamwork is still a problem in a game that has what some are considering the best teamwork communication systems in video games in decades. The realization isn’t all that hard to face that there are people who are bad at teamwork, bad at recognizing actions that are good or harmful for the team, but it is debilitating. And I think it is something worth recognizing and looking at in a game that enables some very advanced non-voiced contextualized communication. For those who have worked long enough with a team in real life or played enough competitive team-based games, this is going to seem painfully obvious: I’m pretty sure all this falls on is just attitude and execution.
So I’m going to try to do a rundown of “bad teamwork” moments in the matches that stuck out for me, where things went wrong and where these behaviors maybe come from. The first thing I wish to make make clear is that I don’t think Apex Legends sucks because of these realities the game faces. I really enjoy Apex as my community/social/competitive game of choice at the moment (the first real one in years it seems). And since the game itself dropped hot for us, I actually expect communication and teamwork in this game to be something that improves, but teamwork is still at the mercy of attitude and execution.
Observation #1: Dropping Hot is Bad for Randos
The “hot drop” vs. “late drop” is a debate I’ve had between friends and other players: Do you want to drop into territory where tons of others are landing (or likely to land) and have a huge fight at the start of the game, or try to avoid this? This is actually a personal preference, though some people really prefer the fast paced “get good” mentality that definitely leads to some hilarious moments when you’re just looking to have a fun time.
But when you’re playing with random people who aren’t voicing things at all, that feeling isn’t present. Dropping hot with strangers equates to either a good hot drop (tense start, you survive the blood bath against one, two, or ten teams and slowly pick yourselves up and get moving) or feeling absolutely ignored, poorly planned, and/or like you’re not here to help each other. Part of this I think extends from having to get stuff at the start of a match: Everyone needs to get shields, helmets, and hopefully two weapons. When you’re with friends and talking to them, the needs of your fellow teammates are more easily voiced and a sense of what your friend needs is much more apparent. You can ping “I need a weapon” but when I’m in a call with friendly teammates, “I have no weapons” means your buddy is so much more likely to not grab that Peacekeeper (I mean, they might, but at least you can throw a fit at them for leaving you that Mozamique instead of sitting there in silence and awaiting your doom).
Observation #2: Teammates that “Only Care” About Frags Have a 50/50 Chance of Being the Worst
You know the teammates I’m talking about. These are the people who clearly are just that good at video games or haven’t put the controller down steadily since launching four weeks ago. These players tend to have Wraith’s knife banner and animation, they have logged damage in the millions, and logged kills in the tens of thousands already. You know when you join a game with these people that you are definitely the one about to be carried.
In the best of scenarios, some of these people have legit been the absolute best people to play with. They recognize the capabilities of their teammates, help them out, pick them up when needed, get them ammo or items they need, they communicate effectively while simultaneously having their own personal goals for the match. I once joined a match with two random players like this, and I didn’t kill a single enemy (I did some damage, to be fair). They often were running ahead of me, moving straight into fights they saw coming and we wound up winning the match. I thanked them for carry round and they responded with, “Hey, you tried to help too. That’ what matters.” I’m not the first to say it: Random team players in Apex Legends are love stories that come and go in a matter of 20 minutes or less. It’s why we see so many cool posts shouting out the people who passed in the night and stuck around and were patient for those not that good (or vice versa).
But if your top-frag teammate that you’ve never met isn’t a team player, they’re kinda the worst person to be around in the game. I’ve heard stories of people who actually talked trash to the friendly reviving them, blaming the player for stealing their kills (when, y’know, they’re incapacitated and could just be left to die). I’ve personally dealt with people who put themselves in that situation (charged, got incapped) and then threw a tantrum when I didn’t revive them right away because there were enemies nearby (reviving takes time, I didn’t have enough of it and the teammate died while I was trying to clear the area) These people called me a bad word and then quit before we could respawn them (everyone’s eagerly awaiting Apex’s “report a player” system). Other variations of this teammate just immediately flies somewhere else during the game’s drop. It almost feels like these players want Apex to have a solo mode so the game could be more like PUBG. But honestly the lone shark self-interest attitude doesn’t come from PUBG, it comes from a bad attitude that blames those one has to rely on for any and all failures, and spews toxicity at every opportunity. I’m not against Apex having a solo mode, there’s clearly people who want to compete in that sort of space and more power to Apex if a solo mode draws in more of those players. But not having a solo mode right now is revealing why some (not all) people try to play solo in a game that doesn’t have a mode for it yet: They don’t get along with other people. At all.
Observation #3: Pinging Everywhere During Drop Time Isn’t Funny to the“Deaf”
I don’t know if I’m alone with this, but I have a pretty large sense of pressure once drop time comes when playing the randoms. I don’t know if I’m playing with a 2-stack (that’d be a good little visual feature to add Respawn! ❤) or just two randos and so I really don’t know if I’m dealing with people who are DEAD SET on certain zones or are going to throw a fit if I ask for anything that’s not Artillery. I don’t cave and always pick Artillery or anything, but even when you’re not jumpmaster, you have no idea what type of person you’re going to be dealing with during the drop process and only getting “Yes”, “No”, and “How about here?” as the options during the drop process doesn’t leave a lot of room for knowing what type of person you’re working with. And that pressure doesn’t even include the already meme-ified “You are the jumpmaster” statement. I don’t know that there’s a lot of ways to avoid this when playing with random people though, it’s just the fear of meeting new people and being thrust into the situation that is Apex Legends.
So, just as an observation and suggestion: It’s not funny or helpful when you’re just pinging everywhere. Are you saying you’re okay jumping everywhere? Are you just doing a funny thing on your livestream that I’m not watching and thus don’t really understand what you’re doing? And if you’re pinging enemies, that’s really gonna throw me off and cause me to spin my camera a bit with a right click to check for enemies, then I won’t be steering anymore. >_< It’s just not helpful, at all, nor funny, to those without context.
Observation #4: Going Too Wide and Too Far Hurts the Team
It’s really simple, Apex is a team based game until solos come out. So if you run off into the distance at the start of the game, that’s cool and all that you are that good, but I promise you I won’t quit right after dying (you can even LET me die if it means you got all those kills you wanna hoard, or maybe it was just too tense and I bled out, I did say up above quitting after dying is a bad thing, so I won’t do it, promise). And from a numbers standpoint, your odds of success are technically better if some of your teammate’s bullets are added to the fray. Friendly fire’s not even on, so I can’t hurt you and I might even soak up some bullets meant for you.
But other players aren’t the ones up above that just run away and want to play alone, some just don’t seem think there’s anything dangerous with going to a place teammates can’t follow. I had a match where a Lifeline ran up the giant staircases at the Hydro Dam after hearing gunfire. I (and by the looks of my teammates’ shields and rough start) was not really ready to get into a bigger gunfight quite yet. Me and the other player were headed around towards Repulsor, but once the Lifeline was very far away, they got downed. So the Gibraltor and I found a semi-efficient way towards the bleeding Lifeline and got downed pretty quickly. I always try to play with randoms like they might be a two stack in a call of their own, not because it’s particularly beneficial to me, but because I’ve been the two friends in a call many times in the 60 hours into this game watching the third player just kinda meander around and not really look to where their teammates are. If my random teammates are running ahead and leaving a zone behind, I do so (and run through a building or loot spot on the way if I need to), if they’re sticking around and considering going the other direction, I might ping the footprints I saw but stop and wait to see what they do instead of just running off somewhere they’re not. Because I’d ask what my teammates in a call want to do too, and this lovely communication system is supposed to make this whole thing viable without having to speak to each other. But none of that matters if someone likes to just endanger themselves and not pay attention to whether or not their teammates have their back.
I know what you’re thinking: Just leave that idiot behind, they ran off into danger. And to some degree I’d be willing to accept that, but they were a Lifeline, she’s a pretty valuable class. I just think it’s a good rule of thumb to follow your teammates in random matches, that’s all. You don’t have to stand next to each other 24/7, but going where they can’t help you within say a bleedout timeframe hurts everyone.
Observation #5: Despite Apex’s Great Comm System, There’s Room for Improvements
So ping systems in games haven’t been some stranger to video games for those that have been around long enough. Most people remember mashing numerical voice prompts in games like Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2 from a decade ago, but even games like Battlefield 2 had the ability for this type of stuff and would map spotting on the in-game map. There was even a separate team commander communication system where you could request artillery, UAV spotting, supply drops, and request orders for your squad (and the commander would ask teams to do stuff, or reply with Yes/No on those requests).
Systems like this have been around for quite a while, but the difference is that Apex has managed to contextualize a LOT of these things to specific items in the game, mostly breaking down this system where you have to pull up a radial wheel and select something into just two buttons: You’re pinging an enemy location, or you’re select/pinging anything else. You ping a building to suggest going there, you ping a marked open door as Bloodhound to let you team know they’ve been here, you ping your shield bank in your inventory to let your team know you still need shields, you ping your gun in your inventory to let them know you needs some ammo. That is new and really really well done: Two button prompts, all the requests in the world you could need.
Except the tactical communication options are still a little limited. What’s great is that all the problems I talked about in this article, totally solvable with a change up or an addition of prompts. Preferences to drop hot or drop safe can maybe be expressed better if we can order our pings during this process. “Let’s go here first, let’s go here second” (no more than 2 pings, and they’re replaced in a leapfrog order so you don’t even have to get rid of your old ping while you’re making new suggestions). This helps jumpmasters under pressure feel like they might know more specifically what their teammates want to do / where they are willing to go. And Mr. “I wanna ping everywhere” gets to ping two locations now, whoo! (srsly though, not that funny to those without context).
A select ping when we put our crosshairs on our downed teammate might speak out, “We’re coming. Hang on.” And a contextualized hold ping option could be “We can’t get to you yet.” Tactical concepts like “let’s wait before fighting” or “let’s fight them” can be added as a lot of people still have to differentiate between “enemies spotted” and “go time!” because sometimes it’s going to be smarter to wait it out until the enemy is in a vulnerable location, especially if they haven’t spotted our team yet. I desparately want ways to tell my teammates that I hear incoming care packages that are definitely from an enemy team, and I want to be able to ping compass numbers / directions. “Gunfire from the East.” “I hear a fight in the distance at 320”. “Enemy care package on the horizon at 140.” Tying these things together might be difficult (some I’m sure just aren’t viable), but they can break down some of the additional barriers that still exist when playing with randoms and not using voice chat at all.
People who are just bad teammates will always be a problem, people who just want to play solos will remain a problem until Apex gets the solo mode up and running. People may have fingers crossed for when Season 1 drops this month but honestly I think Solo won’t be out till later, the team still has a lot they clearly want to handle and improve with the current game mode in relation to cheaters, drop issues, and all those little quality of life improvements we want (knowing what ammo your team carries, what their ult % might be, options to stay with your team and auto-start a new match, or add player as a friend, etc. etc.). Adding a whole game mode with its own potentially unique meta and adjustments for testing would be a bit too much for the team right now I imagine.
But for now, do what you can, take a breather when it gets too frustrating, and always remember, “Honor is in the challenge, pride is in the victory.”
