Apex Legends players claim constant “sweats” make it impossible to have fun
Respawn EntertainmentAn Apex Legends player who decided to start learning the game over Christmas break sparked a conversation about how several long-term players haven’t been able to have fun with the game due to constantly matching against “sweaty” players.
Apex Legends became an incredibly popular game almost overnight when it came out back in 2019, and the game hasn’t stopped since. If anything, its only grown in popularity, with new seasonal updates pulling easily half a million concurrent players on Steam alone.
However, as players have gotten better and better at the game over the years, there are some who feel that they’ve been left behind and can’t compete in their matches anymore.
While this may be a problem that’s impossible to entirely solve, this hasn’t kept veteran players from feeling like they’ve fallen behind despite playing for years and new players from feeling like the game is impossible to get into.
Apex Legends players hit out at “sweaty” lobbies
The conversation was sparked by a new player who took to the Apex Legends Reddit to tell the tale of his experience trying to learn the game in 2023. It’s expected for someone who’s coming into a game that’s been out for years to get smoked for a bit, but their experience was one that made the game unappealing after just a few matches.
They claimed to have been killed in their very first real match by a player with 20,000 kills on their Legend of choice, with the next game being a similar experience. Even if OP wants to like the game, they’re having a hard time getting into it.
As other players flooded into the thread to comment on OP’s plight, it was made clear that this isn’t an experience unique to new players. Apex Legends players of all skill levels seem to feel this way, though some were less optimistic than others about the current state of the game.
“You will get better, that’s not the problem. The problem is no matter how good you get, it will always feel like what you’re experiencing now,” claimed one player, explaining that they’d always get matched against players better than them. They continued, “That’s the Apex experience. Forever.”
This was met with replies from folks who claimed things like they “couldn’t be happier” after quitting the game, and that being matchmade against players who were much better than them drove them away.
Even the Mixtape mode that’s meant to be more about casual fun than the core BR game type isn’t free of Master or Predator players according to some users.
“Yeah same here as you mate. I’m also probably Level 600 (if you include the old Leveling system in) and even Mixtape is full of sweats and you get beamed from every direction possible.”
While this is a widespread problem, it’s also hard to solve. Do you go the Fortnite route and add bots? Do you make matchmaking more strict about putting players within their skill bracket at the cost of queue times? There are a number of “solutions”, but all of them have significant drawbacks.
It remains to be seen if Apex Legends’ player count is affected in the long-term by players who feel that they’ve hit a wall and that they can’t compete with others they get matched against.
