Who really is the Apex Champion?

Just as a disclaimer I would like to start by saying I am not very good at competitive games, especially first person shooters. With that said, you can assume I don't really like the Battle Royal genre, somewhat due to the fact that I suck, but also because they have never been able to offer me anything; up until the release of Apex Legends. This was a direct competitor to PUBG and Fortnite, which I had tried before but really didn't enjoy that much so I was hesitant to try Apex, but damn was I proven wrong.

Respawn (the developers of Apex) really took it to another level with the mechanics and ideas of what a Battle Royal could really be. As soon as I entered the game I was greeted with an actual tutorial; nothing too complex but still nice in order to learn the game specific mechanics, so nice touch there. Next, the game was released with 8 playable characters (although two of which we locked but not hard to get if you played a lot) which already gave depth to the game and we all know I love depth. This opens players to already being able to enjoy the game 6 different times at least, but in reality due to the nature of the genre it's very difficult to have the exact same run every single time you jump into a game (pun intended). So with that, actually getting into a game was so different in comparison due your Squad; now I know other BRs have squad mechanics BUT not like this. Apex made you squad up with two other people and upon dropping into the map, you dropped together and you could chose if you wanted to break off from the drop leader. For me this was so reassuring because I didn't need to know anything about the map or the game on my first few drops due to my teammates being able to take me straight down into the fight. Even though I would probably still die pretty quick, I enjoyed getting into the game and was willing to play more instead of quitting and threatening myself to uninstall and never play again (dramatic I know).

Getting all that out of the way, I'd really like to mention the other aspects of design that really made the quality of life changes that really make me enjoy gameplay. Number one biggest bonus for me was pings and the amount of in-game communication possibilities you can use. Instead of telling your teammates to run North of giving them some random number coordinate to look, you can highlight the exact spot you want your teammates to notice and it will notify them via a sound cue and accompanied graphic. The really cool thing about this is not just notifying locations of travel or enemies, but also the depth of communication when you ping items or specific areas of the map such as open doors or open supply crates, letting your team know someone has been there. This is all with just the press of one button on specific targets, there is also a wheel of notifications that you can pull up for more information like enemies have been here, let's go this was specifically, or I need help; to name a few.

All that said and done, there is still so much that could be mentioned about what they did upon release and what they are continuing to do to better the game. I feel that Respawn has taken a very nice design approach to the genre and in my opinion is the Apex Champion of Battle Royals.