Despite bug fixes, pro resentment remains high on the eve of the Playoffs

This is The Final Circle, a newsletter for competitive Apex

In a display of the universe’s innate sense of humor, the @PlayApex tweet addressing the latest bug fixes failed to display what was probably meant to be a wrench emoji. But the ‘wrench’ patch is live, and last night, the first NA scrims held after the bug fixes went largely well.

A well-deserved thanks to the hardworking employees at Respawn/EA who made this happen. It was a tall order to do this under such a time crunch and with so much riding on the outcome. The reconnect feature appears to work much better now. I watched NiceWigg crash and get back into the game before he was killed, the first time I’d actually seen this feature work in the ‘Private Tournament’ mode. The unplayable circles over lava, water or cliffs also appear to be fixed, or at least according to some players, reverted to their previous state, and pros seem to agree that the game is in a much better state now than it was on Wednesday. If these fixes are robust, this should go a long way toward repairing the sour relationship between the majority of the pro community and Respawn/EA. But even with the fixes, some players are still fed up, particularly those who are still experiencing problems:

Yesterday’s scrims also showcased new game-breaking bugs. Some players struggled to get into the practice lobby, unable to select a game mode, and at one point a bug (possibly the same one) prevented the GLL employee organizing the games from setting up the lobby altogether. While most pros were satisfied by the new state of the circle placement, Euriece has already screen-capped a post-patch bad circle:

NRG’s Rocker and Millions Gaming’s evzy have reported encountering the ‘disappearing portal’ Wraith bug, and at least one player has continued to experience the vanishing beacon bug, where, you guessed it, the beacons used by the recon class to determine the next circle location don’t load into the map. Either would obviously be catastrophic to a competitive lobby in the Playoffs, so let’s hope these are isolated or rare cases, and that it doesn’t happen during the tournament this weekend.

Hal and Snip3down pointed out that even if these fixes are robust, they came too late.

Better late than never, though, right? Finally, in other Playoffs news, the Japanese team DeToNator has unexpectedly withdrawn from the tournament .

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Playoffs at a glance

This weekend’s tournament boasts the biggest prize prize pool of 2020, and the largest Apex has seen since the $500,000 Preseason Invitational in Krakow last year. The tournament rewards all the teams who qualified, paying down to 20th place.

Total worldwide prize pool: $388,000

Americas prize pool: $140,000

Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) prize pool: $140,000

The podium teams in NA and EMEA will each win:

Asia Pacific North (APAC North) prize pool: $54,000

Asia Pacific South (APAC South) prize pool: $54,000

The podium teams in APAC North and South will each win:

According to the competitive coordinator Zac Conely, the Americas tournament begins at 3 PM Eastern Standard Time on Saturday and the APAC North tournament begins at 6 PM Japan Standard Time on Saturday. EMEA begins at 2 PM British Summer Time on Sunday and APAC South begins at 2 PM Australian Eastern Standard Time.

This tournament sees the return of the Match Point format, dreaded by some and loved by many. As I wrote back when it was announced, “I suspect fans love this (I love this) because it leads to incredibly tense, high-stakes moments. At the same time, as we saw in Poland, it forces good teams to potentially play lots of extra games, tiring them out, while allowing teams that were lagging behind in points to catch up and potentially eke out a victory from just one lucky win.” From Liquipedia:

This time around, Respawn has put prudently limited the amount of matches that can be played as well as instituting a time limit. From Zac Conely’s Twitter (where you can also find the starting times for a hypothetical Day 2):

Apex economics and the Autumn Series announcement

The ALGS Autumn Circuit was announced last week, simultaneously encouraging everyone who was worried about the future of the competitive scene and provoking criticism from pros. Pettyboss, a talented but orgless player, vented about his options as a free agent committing to the game. While a chunk of this is just complaining, his point about the Autumn Circuit awarding less prize money (and distributing it less equitably) is a valid one. The Summer Circuit Playoffs pay down to the 20th place, rewarding every team who qualified in some way. The Autumn Circuit Playoffs will only pay down to 10 places and award less total money. Furthermore, the Autumn Circuit has reduced the prize pools of the ‘regular season’ tournaments so that only the top three teams finish in the money, a similar step backwards.

Peesh, currently on the Sentinels roster, made a similar point about the economics of the competitive scene when he pointed out that Rogue’s sweetdreams has spent his time these past few weeks trying to grind for #1 Apex Predator rather than practicing for the tournament. Increasingly, the line between content creator and competitive professional are blurring in a competitive ecosystem that rewards high-profile streamers and YouTubers far more than unknown but talented fraggers grinding on the competitive circuit.

I’ll be back with a tournament debrief for those of you on the mailing list; for everyone else, my next post will probably be in early October, when I’ll discuss EA’s new partnership with well-known gaming teams and what it means for the future.

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