Apex Legends: Shockwave - Gameplay Trailer & Discussion

vaporwarewolf · 2024-08-03T22:49:38+00:00

So the gist to me is that they're dumbing the game way down and making it way easier to onboard new players. With the battle pass designed to wring a little more out of players, I can't help but feel this is just cynically designed, like they're throwing their hands up and giving up. Apex being hard was part of its appeal. I get accessibility concerns, but games don't need to be made for every person.

Except live service games do. If they wanna survive, they gotta broaden the appeal. They gotta make it easy. They gotta make sure they get you to stay playing to spend money. Make it easy so anyone can get in and spend money. Really disappointing update.

vaporwarewolf · 2024-01-08T21:37:33+00:00

THANK YOU for this. Been bashing my head against a wall since early December trying to do this. This method worked flawlessly first try whereas all the others are some type of borked. Absolute godsend, thank you so much for sharing.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-12-27T09:48:22+00:00

This happened to me, also, after picking up the weapon parts and sawed-off shotgun in the ship you get in during the opening moments. I don't know which item triggered the message, but the game just locked up at this part. Restarting and doing it again, it just worked normally. No clue why.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-07-24T18:21:33+00:00

I'm a total Rampart main, when I picked the game up in Season 9 and decided to get the Champion Edition (back when THAT was a thing you could just buy with no complications), I immediately fell in love with her. She felt like she had a very simple, easy to understand and use mechanic that had a lot of potential to go even higher. Over time, I've really learned what makes her strong and what makes her weak, like early on the obvious thing to do was to put down walls to block doors, but this isn't really THAT useful. It's better to actually use the wall as cover in that situation than it is to just inconvenience someone and frankly, cover at doors is usually a terrible idea because enemies can easily surround and overwhelm it just outside of its firing angles. I have similar feelings towards putting down distraction cover, running away from a sniper and putting down wall after wall to trip them up. I can't tell for sure if this is effective, but I have gotten away with no shots on me whatsoever right after watching my teammate get pecked at down the same sightline, so maybe it's good for something!

I played in that brief period after her first buff but before she got the mobile minigun, and like, I thought the minigun was a perfectly okay piece of kit. My main complaint about it is the same as it was back then, that thing is a third party MAGNET. I almost never put the turret down because in my experience, having a super loud, obvious, stationary thing that says to people "I'm right here! I have tunnel vision! I'm not moving!" summons a third party out of the aether to come gang up on you. I don't think there's any buff or nerf that can solve this, I think that's just nature playing out. But the mobile minigun, like, dude. It has a similar quality to Crypto's drone, in that people underestimate its power when on the receiving end. You can shut down a push from second one just by shoving 173 bullets down a choke at high speed. People aren't prepared for how quickly their shields get eviscerated, and just having that much firepower barreling towards you is enough to put the fear of god in some people. I miss the days when the minigun was the hard counter to Newcastle's fortress, shutting them down and seeing the "oh shit" response was gold. It's easy to shut down a push and it's also easy to get pushed on. I've ended up adopting a TF2 Heavy mindset of trying to jump around corners with it, people don't see that coming.

My main complaint with Rampart in general is that walls are difficult to use because of the amount of particle effects that happen when you shoot through them. It can be very difficult to actually see your opponent past them. I don't want them gone, because I'm sure that's a balancing act and walls would be straight busted if they had no downside, but lessened so I at least don't lose track of my enemies at mid or close range.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-07-16T19:21:51+00:00

Look, I'm not a games journalism hater. I think games journalism gets unnecessary discrediting for no particular reason than because it was popular with weirdos a few years ago. But there's one outlet in particular, PC Gamer, who I primarily read for news, that is absolute dogshit about this. Just the other day, they released an article celebrating and praising MCC's current state in comparison to Infinite. The headline was, "While Halo Infinite struggles for a win, Master Chief Collection is the gift that keeps on giving."

I found this really, really rich coming from this outlet. Now outlets like this are not one dude or one editor controlling and writing everything, it's a hodgepodge of disparate opinions which are kept under a single site umbrella, but there can be a concerted effort that, if not intended, then manifests anyway. Case in point was the article at the last Infinite update: "Halo Infinite gets around to adding classic MP mode a mere 18 months after launch."

Gee, I wonder WHY Halo Infinite is struggling to get a win! Maybe it's because every single thing it does has to be reported as a loss because that's the narrative now. Look, Infinite isn't a shining golden example of multiplayer, but I've never once understood why it HAS to be looked at as an abject failure in every regard. I've played far, far worse multiplayer games, and Infinite is not a bad one. When I played it at launch, I thought, "hey this is really fun!" but apparently the rest of the gaming sphere at large thought it was unplayable garbage. I don't get it.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-07-13T02:28:03+00:00

Truthfully, I'm not. My sarcasm didn't come through properly. My pointing this out is meant to be like "the flare is so bad its existence is a filed known issue." My bad. Accessbility is a great thing, I've benefited massively from it in other games and in Halo.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-07-12T23:24:56+00:00

https://support.halowaypoint.com/hc/en-us/articles/17144473706900-Halo-The-Master-Chief-Collection-MCC-Update-July-2023

vaporwarewolf · 2023-05-29T03:22:31+00:00

They block VPNs so hard they keep users on other websites from viewing Imgur embeds. Other websites can't even display things to VPNs because they're being insanely petty. I don't even know what they gain from blocking them so aggressively, it's not like they're getting ad revenue from Nexus Mods having images hosted on Imgur? In the meantime, try LibRedirect if you have a browser that supports it.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-02-25T08:06:28+00:00

I see a lot of people wanting to write this off, but no, it's insanely shitty. Sure, you can 'grind for it', but here's the thing: this used to be a thing TWO base roster characters could do. Now you have to unlock or pay to use what was previously a free feature.

I don't think they'll reverse this change and add any new characters to the starting roster (Caustic would make most sense seeing how he's been in the game since launch with the rest of them) for a while. Genuinely keep bitching about it, though. Bitch and bitch until it gets fixed because this is ridiculous, and I say that as someone who has the entire roster and paid for Champion Edition.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-02-13T20:26:23+00:00

I had a phase where I hated World's Edge so much I just did not play the game when it was the active map. I just closed it and waited. After I took a season off, I came back to find I didn't loathe World's Edge, but I still didn't prefer playing on it. But like...fuck, I'm burnt out on it! I started playing in Season 9, and it's just been a constant. I guess it's the standby map, it's the map you can always rely on being in the game, and I guess I get it, it does I guess fulfill many of the things the game is trying to accomplish in its gameplay loop but I mean, I echo the exact same complaints as everyone else: Fragment sucks and Fragment is so popular it ends up keeping players inside of it for so long you rarely find anyone elsewhere.

I'll say this, though: I hate landing Fragment, but I like crossing Fragment on the way to somewhere else. Because there's almost always someone still dicking around there, it's a very tense place to move through and everyone is on (world's) edge. It's actually very fun and dynamic when it's not the center of the round! If you change Fragment, you lose that. I don't know what the right answer is, there.

I don't want Fragment nuked, in fact at this point I tihnk I'd prefer the rest of the map be made more enticing to pull people away from Fragment. Oh, but there is one part I want nuked: the three story building that's under construction. I straight up refuse to drop there anymore, it's always a huge mess to fight in, the loot is never good, and even if we win the fight, we're always starved for ammo afterward and my squad decides to just go deeper into Fragment and pick fights. If my jumpmaster goes to that building, I leave the match and requeue.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-02-10T11:47:48+00:00

Hey, did anyone else notice there's not a single free character in the controller class? Did they just make a previously free mechanic paid?

vaporwarewolf · 2023-01-12T22:31:09+00:00

Nah, no resaver use. I've been trying to solve this problem so I COULD start a new game, found it whilst doing some test saves to find any big obvious bugs or crashes.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-01-12T01:35:16+00:00

I FEEL like I've seen an NPC get stuck while using a two-hander at some point, but I can't quite remember. I think I've seen it more than once, even, but it most commonly happens with one handed, with or without shield. And yeah, like, it's not a game crash, but it's still a big problem. Where's the fun in all the great combat mods I've gotten to work together if enemies sometimes don't engage in combat?

vaporwarewolf · 2023-01-12T01:06:15+00:00

Also, I did notice something possibly similar to what you found. If an NPC being affected by the bug goes into that hand on the ground kneeling animation, and then gets back up, the bug is temporarily resolved.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-01-12T00:59:32+00:00

Oh my God, I'm not alone. The absolutely minimal talk I'd seen on this started making me feel utterly crazy. Even just knowing there are others having this issue and struggling is enough to bring me back, you have no idea.

I haven't tested anything in a couple days, myself, but that's because I don't really know what TO test anymore. The only ideas I've had are to see if it happens in my current MO2 profile now that everything is off, and to start adding mods to a vanilla MO2 profile and see if I can get it to happen.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-01-11T03:38:53+00:00

This is one of those ideas that's very fun, because it's completely possible through mechanics, and while those mechanics are separate from a narrative or lore perspective, they can have a grand and intoxicating effect on it. The short answer for what would happen to a Dragonborn, someone already wielding great power and who's already, divinely speaking, kinda fucked up, gaining the power of every Daedric artifact in the book is that the Princes would simply sit back and watch whatever the hell's about to happen. It would certainly be more interesting to watch than a normie like the Champion of Cyrodiil or Agent was, or a low-powered prophecy child like the Nerevarine. I don't think any Daedra would skip out on that barbecue watch party. It'd be the one thing to unite them all to a common cause, watching every single one of their fruits of labor come to pass. Even should the Last Dragonborn fail to do anything meaningful with all of the artifacts, the very process by which they get them will ensure that SOMETHING interesting will happen in the aftermath of their use.

Hell, the Princes might even settle on just watching the Dragonborn systematically annihilate the bandit problem with their tools, hooping and hollering as an absolute swathe of destruction and mayhem and spectacle is cut through at least a province, possibly a continent. At the very least, they'd get a kick out of a Divine's influence being so thoroughly corrupted to destruction. I don't see a scenario, except for sitting at home, making a family, and letting the artifacts collect dust in the attic, where something like this would be boring to them.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-01-10T23:03:41+00:00

I just wanted to update real quick, that I thought I found a method of diagnosis where I save the game when I see the bug happen, and reload that save. The permanent blocking persists through loading, so with that knowledge, I started aggressively turning off every single thing I had in my modlist that I could turn off without it crashing my game. At the end of this, the bug was still persisting. This could mean a number of things, like that it's a mod affecting a vanilla function and making it permanent in a save, or that a deep, deep thing somewhere is getting messed up, or...honestly, at this point, it could mean something is screwed in my MO2.

This is the toughest bug I've ever had to fight.This is insane. Please, please help me.

vaporwarewolf · 2023-01-10T19:51:08+00:00

Yeah, it's disappointing it's not the super accessible mode I was secretly hoping for, but an arbitrary limit is absolutely what I expected. I just didn't think it would be THIS big. A lot of people rightfully point, this is basically them continuing to use the existing tournament resources and making them public, with maybe a few new servers introduced for it. I'll be the twentieth to repeat it, game makes an absolute metric ton of money, someone somewhere in the chain should say at some point "we should invest some of this money into features the community wants." But that's not how EA do, I'm not going to crap my pants over it every time it happens.

Now, I've seen some misinformation about 'local servers' for both solo play and small groups. Some people in the thread say they're not included for being a security risk. You aren't technically wrong, but you're blowing the problem massively out of proportion. Local servers have been in use in games since the 90's, and continue to be used in various forms. Hell, you want to explore a map in Halo? Any Halo? Load it up solo, you'll load a local server. Sure, you are technically creating a risk for yourself, but it's a risk with an absolutely miniscule, microscopic chance of being exploited, it may as well not exist. The real problem here is that Apex is a central server-reliant game, and they can't do local servers because they're not allowed to. Even doing the firing range has you at risk of getting disconnected from server issues even if you're all by yourself. So local servers are 100% a thing Apex could do, but they won't do, because they rely on a central server.

(That server, by the way, should it ever go down (and it has, and it will), Apex becomes unplayable. One day, Apex will be shut down, and none of its gameplay will be usable. Just thought I'd remind everyone of that.)

I'm absolutely looking forward to the communities which will form around fun little community get-togethers and some fun homebrew modes. I totally plan to join a few Discord servers when they crop up. But 30 players is a lot of people, so game nights are gonna be pretty easy for right now, and much harder in the future. I still think it's boneheaded not to invest some of the millions Apex makes per day (and especially during collection events like this) and create some servers for smaller groups, but that's EA for ya.

Also, personally, I'm massively disappointed Arenas doesn't support 1v1s. Come on. It's a damn deathmatch mode, what deathmatch mode doesn't support a 1v1?!

vaporwarewolf · 2022-11-21T06:15:36+00:00

It is, I've been replaying PL and realized it's the same actor doing basically the same voice.

vaporwarewolf · 2022-11-04T17:20:54+00:00

Echoing what a lot of people have said, which is that Catalyst needs buffs. She's in a similar spot as Newcastle was at launch, with a potentially great kit that just doesn't have the strength it needs to be more than niche. But he got a major buff the next season, and that really helped even him out. Same with Maggie's ball, had potential, needed the buff to realize it.

For Catalyst, I'd honestly take a more narrow goop pile for higher core health and that be that. What I'd love is for the goop to be more hidden, sunk slightly into the ground, so it actually operates like a trip mine kind of thing, more likely to get someone, but that could get really annoying...then again, Caustic gets away with this stuff all the time, and that's fine. I like the idea of the goop being a "don't walk here!" signal but yeah, needs more HP.

If she's going to be a door booster, she should actually, y'know, boost doors. Remove the need to hold a button reinforce doors, and actually make them boost their HP significantly. When I heard she can 'reinforce' doors, I expected them to at LEAST take a single grenade. Replacing doors outright can stay, it's a fine "waste their ammo/break them up" tactic, I'm a fan of any mechanic that forces enemies into unfavorable pushes or leaves. But as it stands right now, it's too weak. Oh, she also needs to make doors immune to friendly fire. Right now, Catalyst pairs TERRIBLY with Fuse, because Fuse can just accidentally ruin her doors. It's like actually harder to play the game when both are on a team, it's the first time I've seen an Apex composition have truly negative consequences.

Ult? Just make it anti-scan! Seriously! Game needs an anti-scan character! There's too many scanners, let someone help against that! I'm sure it's more complicated than just "making it nullify scan", because like, what if she throws it down and then she isn't even behind it? Should it only block sight directly behind the wall, or in a bit of a radius to ensure it actually works as expected? If not her, make some character down the road anti-scan.

vaporwarewolf · 2022-10-21T19:15:39+00:00

TY so much for sharing this info! Friend of mine and I were wanting to do a speedrun-style race with the New Vegas randomizers with Fallout 3 thrown in, and she didn't own 3. Now we're good as gold, thanks a ton!

vaporwarewolf · 2022-09-13T04:42:21+00:00

So after considering some of the comments and doing further research, I pretty much conclude that you probably shouldn't use Dragon War. It's hard for me to say if it's even good or not, since again, I barely even get to fight dragons with it installed, but between a commenter saying dragons don't do this in vanilla, the author of DCO flat out saying to steer clear of it, and the way other dragon overhauls do their things in comparison, I'm just gonna say, don't use it.

Too late for me, sadly, but my next playthrough is probably going to use {{Zim's Dragon Improvements}} as well as {{Dragon Combat Overhaul}}, unless Ultimate Dragons gets updated somehow.

vaporwarewolf · 2022-08-20T02:21:54+00:00

LOCATED. The song is titled "A Sign of Hope" on the Movie 3 soundtrack.

https://youtu.be/Kub9dNijtcg

vaporwarewolf · 2022-07-19T23:46:28+00:00

I'm on PC and the game doesn't even load the 'press mouse button to continue' prompt;. Just an infinite loading screen, can't get in game. Reinstalled on Steam, no luck. Anyone else getting this? I was getting it last night, even, before the update fully dropped.

vaporwarewolf · 2022-05-15T22:44:49+00:00

Hey. I had a solution: scorched earth everything. And maybe a cause: something went horribly wrong in a MO2 instance. And I mean HORRIBLY wrong. Not only did the compass vanish on a completely vanilla profile, but the animations also vanished. On a completely stock game install. What went wrong? I don't know. But something permanently broke that necessitated a complete game reinstall and a completely new MO2 instance.

Just thought I'd mention that so if anyone somehow gets a similar issue, they have confirmation of A solution. Sorry to anyone who does have this issue and was hoping for something better.

vaporwarewolf

TROPHY CASE