The immediate assumption when people criticize S6 is that, "Oh you just need to adapt, and play smarter, and think about positioning, and pay attention to the ring, and lowered TTK means you get more kills and more damage, you're just bad and need to adapt." Yada yada yada.
26 hours of play later, a 1.94 K/D ratio, a 2.36 Knockdown / Death ratio, 454 Average DMG / Match, 156 total games with 15 wins and 44 top 5s, and honestly truly, I've come up with nothing to praise for S6. To address the above:
1."You just need to adapt, play smarter, think about positioning, pay attention to the ring." Within the first hour I changed my entire playstyle, I carry less ammo and more meds, I've picked up sniper rifles again, I prioritize having a safe route rotating from area to area rather than the quickest, I've put more emphasis on holding or getting to cover and shooting from it rather than firing back in the open, I camp the zone edge and give up more fights outside of the zone in favor of shooting rotating targets more often, per fight I scan the area more frequently being even more wary of third parties, constantly checking the enemies position and looking for a better position to fire from, and I constantly give up fights mid battle to prioritize having a better position from closing ring. I've adapted, and it's not rewarding.
2. "Lowered TTK means you get more kills and damage, you're just bad." Sure, that's why I constantly play with Diamond / Master / Predator players every match. My last 7 matches before this all had me paired up and against level 500s who have hit Diamond / Master / Predator. Lowered TTK also means you die quicker, which only extrapolates the issues we've had for seasons now. Terrible audio has lost me countless engagements due to third partying, fights are one dimensional and usually decided by who shoots and cracks shields first rather than anything else, I'm more frequently fighting 1v3, most fights 2v3 are often lost simply because we don't have another player, the lack of mobility for a lot of characters and lowered shields means there's no room to create distance to heal and rejoin the fight, more often than not you're locked into a situation where turning away will kill you because of movespeed penalty when getting shot, and shooting back won't save you even with movement because of aim punch and the current Volt / Devo meta.
Crafting is no better either, and deserves no praise IMO. It's implementation is gimmicky and barely fulfills the role it was supposed to do. The system overall is clunky and obtuse, and not designed with the player in mind, rather it's just some half-baked idea slapped onto half of a Care Package and half of a standard box. The lack of flexibility in it's options leaves much to be desired, being unable to select an ammunition type and craft it in bulk, craft different types of consumables, or upgrade / create attachments for weapons. Daily rotating weapons and attachments are randomized and barely changes game to game weapon selection, the only weekly rotation that saw more people use the crafting system post launch was purple bags (and even then it's easier to kill someone and grab theirs) and leveling up your shield is typically only done when no one dropped near and you couldn't get damage, or done after killing everyone in your immediate area.
Shield Changes are the most controversial, but putting aside lowered TTK, the shield changes itself aren't beneficial whatsoever. Initially I assumed that we'd all start with a 25 health body shield that we could keep or drop for a standard shield, and I had initially praised the idea. Upon further inspection, and after playing for another 26 hours, this isn't the case. Not only does it start off empty, offering players no protection and thus not helping their early game, it also requires damage in order to activate, and even then, requires a shield cell in order to start being useful. In 156 games, I've leveled up the initial level 0 bodyshield, 15 times, and even then, died all 15 times right after. Level 1 body shields are still super common as well, meaning there's quite literally no incentive to level up your initial shield except pure desperation. Let's not also forget that the overall loot pool is populated with too much stuff, and while crafting was supposed to trim it down by randomly taking out equipment, I think we can all agree it simply would've been a better idea to remove level 1 shields as a drop and give said item to everyone upon leaving the drop-ship. Lowered shield values I can live with, increasing total damage required while also lowering total overall health is not a welcome change.
But by far the most disappointing thing about Season 6 is the fact that it's been 6 Seasons and we still don't have fixes, or even a Developer addressing issues that have been around for seasons now. Server performance and net-code are still horrid, audio continues to be a thorn in Apex's side, no re-mappable controls to swap revive / finisher / interact to different keys, no map selector, no rotating LTMs, and no mention of any SBMM changes. IMO Season 6 is an overwhelming disappointment due to the continued lack of consistent communication from the developers, shotgunning buggy untested content with no regards to their player base, and continuing to ignore community feedback.
