Ever since Epic Games took the genre by storm with Fortnite, a critically important ingredient necessary for any battle royale to succeed has been a low barrier to entry. Despite Apex Legends being Respawn Entertainment’s first foray into the market, it had clearly done its homework in that regard. No subscription or upfront cost is required to gear-up and make the jump into Kings Canyon – the only prerequisites are a good internet connection and a well-trained trigger finger.
That accessibility has been a major contributor to the title’s initial success, a strong start that has since dissolved into a progressive decline. Content droughts, performance problems and stability issues are considered by the player base at large to be the major contributors to Apex‘s current predicament, but how does Respawn intend to tackle these glaring faults? As part of a candid address to fans last week, the studio provided an in-depth breakdown of each obstacle preventing growth as well as an accompanying sit-rep.
Server lag and performance, it seems, is high on the list of priorities demanding a fix, the blog post deeming a remedy to both an “extremely high priority.” For the sake of transparency, executive producer Drew McCoy explains how the issues currently plaguing players appear to be a result of certain data centers not performing properly, adding that the root cause appears to be that “one instance on the same machine seems to be doing more work than the others,” resulting in an overload effect.
As for any ETA on a hopefully permanent fix, McCoy has no date to share, though stresses that the community will be kept in the loop on any developments. I hope for the sake of all involved that Respawn discovers a fix soon, or one of 2019’s most promising new releases could find itself dead in the water before year’s end.
With several high-profile streamers already voicing their discontent over the current climate, it’s clear that time certainly isn’t on Apex Legends‘ side.
