Armor is back, but bugs and bad circles continue with the ALGS playoffs in sight

This is The Final Circle, a newsletter for competitive Apex

After a swift and vocal response to the balance changes of Season 6, EA and Respawn reverted the new armor values in a new patch explained by Jason McCord, Design Director of Apex.

Pros were extremely grateful—for a moment or two.

But if you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll want a glass of milk. The quick dev response on armor changes has given the pro scene the idea that someone is listening to them when they complain, and that their collective action can and will have an impact on the competitive meta if they’re vocal enough.

The ALGS Super Regional Playoffs are set to begin this Saturday, September 12th, and while EVO shield values have been reverted, there’s plenty of other issues with the game right now. TSM’s Reps took the opportunity to speak his mind with a drastic but altogether reasonable suggestion, given the circumstances:

What would delaying the Super Regional Playoffs entail? They aren’t a LAN event, with real-world logistics to manage like venue booking and air travel, things that would be a pain to reschedule. Players and casters may have already set aside the time for the tourney, but surely, if it were delayed for two or three weeks, they could re-adjust to compete in the biggest Apex event of the season. Pros responded enthusiastically to the idea of delaying it:

Pros clearly feel that the armor was only part of the problem with Season 6 game changes. They’ve complained about unplayable circles, problems with the reconnect feature, disappearing survey beacons, and lots of crashes:

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But delaying the tourney, from EA and Respawn’s perspective, would mean admitting that the game wasn’t in a playable state for competitive, and committing to foolproof fixes for the kind of bugs that have plagued the game since release—all under a tight deadline. NiceWigg admitted it was too much to hope for:

Respawn’s competitive liaison, Shahin Kanafchian, assured players that these bugs would be addressed before the Playoffs begin on Saturday, retweeting game producer Josh Medina, who implied that they’d already been fixed. But pro skepticism continued:

Snip3down pointed out that one of the most crucial elements that needs to be fixed before the tournament is the reconnect bug. Anyone who’s watched a decent amount of competitive Apex over the last few months has probably seen this: the reconnect feature rarely seems to work in private lobbies, leaving players who crashed sitting ducks for opponents, and then unable to re-connect even after they’ve been killed.

The pro-amateur scene expands

There’s good news in the pro-amateur scene, at least. Esports Arena, the folks who put on a weekly tournament for a small prize pool, have announced the launch of Series E, a pro-amateur program that is set to pay 9 teams $500 a month per player for a 3-month contract—not a bad paycheck for skilled players currently without teams or big Twitch followings. It’s also great, from the perspective of the health of the game to see the pro-amateur ecosystem building momentum. Here's the caster JetSetJamerson’s Reddit comment about Series E:

Caustic is cancelled

Interestingly, “an inappropriate Caustic voice line” was removed from the game in the armor reversion patch.

Johnny Young, the voice of Crypto, weighed in, supporting the writers and adding that he didn’t find the line derogatory.

Some housekeeping

I want to address the announcement of both the ALGS Autumn Series and EA’s partnership program with selected pro orgs, but I’ll do that in more detail in the next edition. If you’re a subscriber, look out for another email this week before the Super Regional Playoffs this weekend; after that I’ll be on vacation for two weeks.

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