Most players believe that Apex Legends is in a good place right now. Season 20 introduced game-changing level-up skill trees, while changes to crafting and the shield system have simplified and streamlined gameplay.

I’m still not convinced ranked is where it needs to be, despite doing better than last season. However, the longer time goes on, and the more people settle into their correct placements after the reset, the better it will feel. But the most important change in Season 20 has been forcing players to work as a team.

The biggest alteration is to looting. In previous seasons, opening a loot bin gave you a handful of crafting materials, which you could then spend on crafting items like shield batteries, medkits, and even weapons. This season, that whole system has been scrapped. Developers at Respawn told me at the season launch that this was mostly to streamline gameplay and not confuse new players with a bunch of in-match currencies, but it’s had a secondary effect as well: encouraging team play.

In previous seasons, teammates would fight to open loot bins in order to get those few extra materials. Because strangers on the internet who might not be as into Apex as you don’t understand splitting a POI and forming sensible loot paths, they don’t break away from the jumpmaster, they don’t pick their own building to loot, and they’re desperate to get their hands on any minimal amount of crafting materials for themselves.

That entire dynamic has been eliminated in Season 20. Sure, people still race to the loot bins you land by, but you now lose nothing by running in the opposite direction to find a quiet place to grab a gun and gear up.

This isn’t the only change that promotes teamwork. The new evo armour system rewards all teammates for work your team does, which helps keep the dynamic positive and prevents one player from running away with better armour than the others. In the past, I remember multiple instances of landing on a purple shield and wanting to push a contesting team, only to be hamstrung by my teammates’ white shields. I’m just too good you see.

Now, everyone is awarded evo if one of your team kills an opponent. You get more if you assist, and more again if you strike the killing blow, but the experience is shared regardless. Wiping a squad gives everyone another boost, and suddenly working together becomes paramount if you want to level up your shields and make it to the final circle. Even selfish players are funnelled towards fighting alongside their teammates in order to progress through the match, as nobody can rely on winning 2v3 or 1v3 engagements to level up.

Extra evo points for reviving and respawning teammates also help encourage teamwork, although I rarely found players unwilling to do this in the past. Support Legends have long conferred the ability to craft banners to their teammates, too, which is vital for getting feet back on the ground, and I do wonder if that perk will be made universal in the future.

There’s still a huge skill gap between pre-made teams and solo queuers. The discrepancy in communication is an insurmountable task for Respawn to tackle, but it’s still something the developer should be thinking about.

There are areas for improvement. I’ve been matched with Recon and Controller players who don’t scan beacons, despite the information and evo it gives the whole team. This could be signposted better, and perhaps rewarded more, although the latter would present its own problems, especially at higher levels of play.

I’m also not sure about Evo Harvesters in their current state. These items, which randomly spawn across the map, contribute a huge 350 evo to each member of your squad, making them extremely powerful tools. While it’s a better system than the crafting material juicers, which every player had to collect individually in order to receive the bonus, their power in Season 20 seems a little on the high side. Instead of taking fights, opening class bins, and scanning beacons (all of which reward evo if successful), it’s a far more optimal strategy to rotate past multiple Evo Harvesters to boost your shields and unlock skills quickly, before taking unfair fights in the mid-game.

I’ve nothing against this strategy – teams that farm evo by engaging with the game’s systems deserve to have an advantage over teams that don’t – but it’s a boring playstyle. Players want to drop, loot, fight. They might go out of their way to open a class bin as a part of looting or scan a beacon for that early game buff, but the success of game modes like Three Strikes and Straight Shot that vastly reduce the time between fights show that players want fights. This is a first-person shooter, after all.

Nobody wants to run the circumference of the map to then sit in a building with Caustic and kill the final two teams with Nox Gas, but that’s currently the best way to rank up. At the top level, is the ALGS any more fun with a return of the Caustic meta than it was with Catalyst as the top dog?

I recently learned that the game essence of Apex Legends was about managing risk/reward – thanks, Masahiro Sakurai. Respawn risked a lot with the changes in Season 20, and has been greatly rewarded. Players are happier, teamwork is thriving, and the game has seen its biggest spike in players for 12 months. Long may it continue.

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