Apex Legends season 11 launched yesterday with much fanfare and few server issues. And after taking Ash, Storm Point, the CAR, and the myriad of balance changes for a spin, streamers and content creators are already sharing their thoughts on Escape.
As usual, reactions were mixed. Just a few hours after the update dropped, TSM content creator Nokokopuffs shared that he was loving the new season. He said he very much enjoyed the map, especially since its POIs grant “top-tier loot.” He also liked the adjustments to crafting, which allow players to leave Replicator zones with blue shields after collecting 50 materials and depositing their shield once instead of hoping to find a better shield in the loot pool or EVO-ing to a higher tier.
At the same time, Nokokopuffs didn’t like everything about the new season. In the same tweet, he claims that the weapon meta still hasn’t quite materialized yet but feels “the L-Star [is] still broken,” even after it received nerfs. He also thinks that Ash’s passive ability, which allows her to scan death boxes to (briefly) see where the killers are on the map, provides too much information. In a follow-up tweet posted later in the afternoon, he said a lot of the game’s problems have a lot to do with audio. “Ash has no footsteps, [Pathfinder] grapple has no audio, Octane’s jump pad still [doesn’t have] audio, so far it’s mostly just horrible audio problems,” according to his playtime.
100 Thieves content creator NiceWigg had more positive things to say about the new season. “[The Apex team] killed it,” he said in a tweet. “New map feels amazing, Ash is definitely impactful, and the gun meta feels fun to play in.” He went on to say that he’s “excited” for the rest of the season and what’s to come.
On the flip side, Team Liquid pro and streamer Code Mendo tore into the new season after “playing … all day today.” In a long thread, he claimed that Storm Point is just “King’s Canyon with way more downtime, way worse loot, way more running and way worse audio.” He lamented that the jump towers from other Apex maps aren’t present on Storm Point and said he feels rotations are very difficult on the new map. Part of the issue is that he found people are camping the Gravity Cannons, making them more difficult to use.
Code Mendo also claimed that third partying, as well as “fourth/fifth/sixth/seventh” partying is extremely common and tends to ruin fights. He said players are “almost forced to invest a ton of … time into looting up, PvEing and crafting, [only] to fight a team and then get swarmed by five other teams.” He conceded that Storm Point looks great and said it could be improved by putting jump towers back on the map, making buildings easier to climb, and some way to counteract what he fears is an upcoming sniper meta.
He agreed with Nokokopuffs that Ash’s footsteps need audio, as do many other gameplay elements. Code Mendo said that sometimes, ziplines will just go silent, making it harder to track an approaching team. He called Ash’s ultimate “another way to silently [use] Octane’s [jump pad], but instead it’s a teleport.” In his shortest statement, he said that the CAR “is fun.”
The season just launched and new legends always get tweaked fairly quickly, so it’s likely that we’ll see a few Ash adjustments and additional balance changes in the near future. In the meantime, there’s still a lot to try in Escape, including a new story quest, the new ranked season for both battle royale and Arenas, and an all-new battle pass to work on.