It takes a tremendous amount of work for a game to establish itself at the top of a genre as oversaturated as the battle royale shooter. Over the course of its nine seasons, Apex Legends has had plentiful success that doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. With the recent season change and tie in to Respawn's other shooter series, Titanfall, more people are playing Apex than ever before.
Along with the new Legend, updated map, and new weapon, Respawn introduced a new permanent mode to Apex Legends: Arenas. Arenas is a 3v3 squad mode akin to the likes of Valorant, Rogue Company and Counter Strike where players purchase the equipment they want to use at the start of every match and the last squad standing wins.
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While the idea for and execution of Arenas is generally solid, some cracks have already started to show. One issue that Respawn is planning to address comes in the form of players leaving losing matches. At the time of writing, there is no penalty for someone abandoning their squad if things are taking a turn for the worse. Unlike the battle royale mode, it's immediately clear if a player's team is losing to bail if things are looking bleak. This results in a wildly unbalanced game because it's intended for exactly six people, no more, no less. Luckily, Respawn is working on a fix for quitters similar to those who quit in the ranked playlist.
Another issue already starting to form with Arenas is the way that characters are balanced. Since Apex Legends' release in 2019, Respawn has been balancing and rebalancing characters for the battle royale mode. While there is a hierarchy of which characters are more competitively viable, just about every Legend is a fine pick for casual play as they all serve different purposes for their squad. This doesn't mean that all of their abilities are suited for direct combat. Someone like Loba just doesn't have the same competitive edge as characters like Horizon, Octane or Wraith due to her abilities being centered around the looting portion of the base battle royale mode.
Yes, each character has a tactical ability that comes in handy during firefights, but having non-useful passive and ultimate abilities in Arenas makes the character drastically worse. A potential fix for this suggested by the community is having different character load-outs for Arenas and battle royale. The problem here is that consistency across the game might be lost and having to rebalance everything for the additional load-outs might cause more problems than it fixes.
All hope is not lost for Apex Legends' Arenas. It's clear when looking at its track record with Apex in the past that the studio behind it has dedicated itself to rebalance and rework things. While Arenas isn't a perfectly balanced masterpiece yet, there's still time to make its success on par with the battle royale mode. Even if it never overtakes the battle royale's popularity, its overall existence is a good sign for the future of the game.
The willingness Respawn has to add more permanent modes to Apex Legends hints that this might not be all the studio has up its sleeve. There's most likely much more to come in the future of Apex because of Arenas' success and because of Respawn's willingness to experiment. The excitement in the lead-up to season nine also showed that fans are receptive to such changes as well.
As issues are ironed out and Arenas continues growing in popularity, there will most likely be additions to the game such as a ranked Arenas playlist and Arenas playlist takeovers tied to in-game events similar to what's been seen from the battle royale mode. Apex Arenas is a great start to something off in the distance that's, hopefully, even greater.
Apex Legends is available now for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch.