RobotHavGunz

Posted in in another thread, but just want to say that the good vibes/kudos threads like this are just awesome. After three years, I still love working on this game more and more each season. It means the world when the players love playing the game as much as I love working on it. Thank you for making my day brighter.

Thank you for making my day. I love working on this game. And, both in spite of and because of - it shows y'all care - the complaints, I love it more every season. I've been on the game for over 3 years, and I'm still excited every day by the challenges and opportunities. It really is a special game.

And I promise it really is 99% game quality and 1% (or less) skins.

Got this added to the official Trello - https://trello.com/b/ZVrHV38P/apex-tracker

Thank you everyone who responded!

Thank you. That's what we're seeing across the board, which is honestly a relief just because it means it's not one of those truly awful heisenbugs. We're working on a fix. Thanks again for the response and your understanding.

I *think* I know what caused this. But I'd like to ask for your help tracking it down.

If you go to the stats screen (the one with your seasonal stats), does that screen show you as Platinum or Diamond in split 1? I'm *guessing* it shows you as Platinum - not Diamond. If it shows you as Diamond, I'm much more confused, but that would be super helpful to know for sure since it would point me in a very different direction in terms of investigation.

Trying to get some data on the backend as well. Thanks in advance.

The most helpful info from anyone who's affected by this to share is:

• what does the stats screen show for split 1
• what does the stats screen show for split 2

PS: we have made a bunch of underlying changes that does make it easier to rectify this.

PPS: I do hope to have an update on the mixed up badges from S10 - 14 "soon." I promise we haven't forgotten...

Exactly. Specifically talking about this example, it highlights the complexity of all the possible permutations:

• if the Nemesis had been less popular, this bug likely would not have occurred. It was only *because* players actually like the Nemesis that this was an issue.
  • if we'd also put fewer Nemesis (Nemeses? Nemisises?) on the floor, it might not have happened; e.g., if the Nemesis was a crate weapon, this wouldn't have shown up.
• if hardware spec and player skill were more decoupled, this bug likely would not have occurred. It was because high-skill players overwhelmingly tend to also have high-end machines that run at higher FPS that we saw this bug.
• if the gameplay dictated that squads died faster, this bug likely would not have occurred. Because high level matches tend to be decided much later on, when players tend to be fully kitted in the gear they actually want, most players who wanted a Nemesis actually had one. If mor...

the level of accuracy in this example is astonishingly high.

Just want to say that, having been away from Reddit for a bit, this thread is awesome. Great to see so much constructive feedback, thoughtful criticisms and concerns, and - of course - the compliments and optimism. I really do feel lucky to work on this game and to have been one of the engineering leads on this particular project. Some nerves, of course, about something so significant. But just wanted to say thanks to everyone in here whose posted for having such a real - and nuanced - discussion about the new system and what we're trying to do.

first time we're applying to an entire mode of the game. It's been sandboxed to certain regions for testing - as we discussed here https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/matchmaking-2023 - but this is the first time we're using it as a core pillar of how a mode in constructed.

While the MMR system is newer and very different from the Ranked Arenas one - and definitely learns from it, it's also older in some important ways. We started data collection and analysis before Arenas even launched as a mode and have substantially more data (both historically and just from a pure quantity of information) on how people played ...

Don't use it in Apex. Having not worked on TF2, I'm not sure what functionality fell under that umbrella. The total LoC for the "cosmetics system" (as a whole) in Apex is substantially more than 10,000, but there's no single file that's that large.

I've been trying to fix this for the past like 6 months. My fix works 100% of the time in our Dev environment and so far 0% of the time in live. Because we've had a couple times when we're "sure" we've fixed it and then it turns out not to work, we've stopped making more public posts on this issue. We're working with a couple of Preds who we know are affected and each time I think I've figured out why it wasn't working and we get an update out, we ask them to see if the fix is valid. If they confirm it's good, then we'll make a larger announcement. But if - as has been the case - it's another bust, then we've avoided getting people's hopes up and failing to deliver. At this point, we're considering a more significant rewrite of the underlying logic, just because it's neither clear why *some* players don't get the correct badge nor why we can't actually fix them. Badges are a much more complex system than they might appear, and so EA support literally cannot do anything to help thes...

Happy to be tagged. Doubt I have much help in the short term beyond just "lower your settings wherever possible." But I can talk to our UIUX team to see this is something we can look at specifically addressing as part of the settings profile. It's always a tough balance with doing work to make sure the experience is good on older machines while also making sure that players on newer hardware reap the benefits they expect.

I play on a regular XBox One and I can't say I've ever noticed a drop off, but that's *probably* because I also don't ever get much of an increase. I'm typically 30fps (+/- 2-3) during fly-in and then 60fps (+/- 1-2) during the match. So it might just be that it's low enough by default that it handles the fall-off.

My machine is pretty bad

Can I ask what this means specifically? Like CPU / RAM / GPU / VRAM?

I had no idea this was a thing. And now that I've discovered it, i am literally laughing out loud. Thank you.

All I know is that for sure the right folks are aware. But as a prime example of specific skill sets, I know barely anything about how Loba's bracelet works - other than that it is a mix of both her specific ability and the map itself working together, and that it's among the more complicated gameplay systems as a result. But that's literally all I know. So as far as the rest of your questions, I just have no idea. I'm sorry I can't help more.

It varies widely across studios. Within Respawn, technical designers are generally more akin to software engineers because of the nature of our tech stack, but their primary focus is still on "design." The lines are very blurry. Historically, it had to do more with which language you worked in - C++ or our scripting language - but even that line has blurred. I actually switched roles - to software engineer - in April, though it was more of an acknowledgement of the work that I do than an actual shift of any kind in my day to day. At least in my specific case, I work largely on meta game systems design. Not so much the "what" of them but the how. Like, I do a lot of the work on our stats and challenges. Not what they are, but how they work under the hood.

But at other studios the "technical" might refer more to technical aspects of systems design (e.g. the math underlying progression systems). Game designer is probably one of the least clearly defined roles within the indus...

Specific problem posts are often the most challenging. Big issues we're almost always aware of pretty quickly. And overwhelmingly the focus is on figuring out WTF is going on - which is sometimes easy and sometimes very hard and sometimes (worst of all) seems really easy at first but then turns out to be much harder. And it's not clear if, "we are aware of the problem and are working on a solution..." type of responses are appreciated or just feel patronizing. Probably both, depending on the audience. Add in the fact that there's apparently a viable business model in scraping Reddit posts - especially Dev posts - for content and spinning that into (often mischaracterized) "news stories," and I'd say that posts about bugs can be are often super unappealing to try to respond to.

Definitely not a toxic question. The team has grown a lot and we continue to have quite a lot of open roles. But additional man /woman-power in software development is often less clear than it might seem. If it's of interest, the legendary "Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick Brooks (written in 1974!) is still probably the seminal work on the topic - https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~yfcai/CS451/RequiredReadings/MythicalManMonth.pdf

Yes, there are some problems that can be solved by simply throwing more people at the problem. But it's often less than you'd think. I *personally* believe a PTR / public-beta program would be fantastic, but that's way above my pay grade to decide. But that's like a whole tangent in and of itself. But putting that aside, it is really hard to...

I think it's important to call out toxic behavior, but I also believe it can be self-fulfilling. Like, if everyone here just thinks the sub is full of trash, people will start to hold themselves to that standard. And, likewise, I think if people think that this is generally a pretty positive place - as I do, then I think people also hold themselves more to that standard.

I haven't worked on many games, but I think the community engagement we have is pretty amazing by any measure. I don't know of any other game that does something like the community-driven prize tracks we've been able to do with content creators.

And, of course, the internet is pretty rough in general. So I also think you need to balance that sense of despair with a bit of, "Hey, the world can be pretty great too..."

Speaking only for myself - and I have a very different job than Hideouts - I will say that it's really just a matter of hours in the day. I try to *read* Reddit a lot to keep an eye out for issues that are specific to me and my team, but I also sometimes think it can be more frustrating for y'all if we can't actually take the time to engage. I.e., reply once, but then never follow up. So I try to only engage when I know that I have the time to actually commit to a real conversation, which is hard. Because I think that most of the time, it's probably better that I work on the game itself.

Overall, my experience on this sub has been overwhelmingly positive. I try to always treat people here with respect, and that's pretty much always been reciprocated. Just read through this thread - I think it's almost entirely civil.

I really do wish that I could spend more time here. But between work and family and other commitments, it's just hard. I thi...

Let me put this in front of the right folks internally.