Dumb Things About Apex Legends Everyone Ignores

If there's one aspect of Apex Legends that captured people's hearts right away — outside of the ping system, of course — it would likely be the fact that there's no fall damage in the game. Unlike its competitor Fortnite, no matter how far you fall, you'll keep on going. This makes tactical retreats and traversing large portions of the map much easier and quicker than in other battle royales. If you need to escape a battle, jump off that cliff. Need to make it into the ring in time? Leap off that building. It's a refreshing characteristic to have in the genre.

But because of this mechanic, it makes another aspect of the game seem extremely silly: you basically can't touch water. There are a few areas of the map where, if you jump off, you'll fall straight into the sea, which eliminates you instantly. Shallow creeks and stagnant water throughout the map won't harm you, but anything deeper sends you to your doom. It's not something that comes into play often, but every novice player makes the mistake of falling off while scrambling away from a fight at least once. Frankly, it's just funny that you can leap from a giant mountain and land without harm, but a bit of water can kill you.

Realistically, few gamers go into multiplayer shooters with the goal of racking up assists. Sure, you want those kills, but when you're on a team with other good players, chances are that they'll get some of them regardless. Yeah, it's ultimately about the W, but people want to pad their stats. That's why keeping track of assists is actually very important. High assist totals can show potential teammates that you have a willingness to work hard and help your team win in any means necessary. Nobody likes those players who are just out for themselves.

In Apex, you'll get notified of your assists onscreen. Basically, if you don't knock an opponent down, you're not getting credit for a kill. You could do quite a bit of damage, but you won't see that kill number go up. Still, it doesn't make assists any less important. You can be a vital part of your team and end up with zero kills, but a high damage number. Except you'll probably never know how many assists you actually get, because the game doesn't keep track of them. There's no tracker you can add to your legend and there's no stat column after a match ends. Why give players an onscreen alert if the game won't keep track of them?

Mirage, aka The "Holographic Trickster," doesn't seem to be one of the more popular legends in Apex. If you watch any high-level squads, especially in the pro tournaments featured on Twitch, you won't see him very often. His skills don't exactly fit within the game's current meta — it's all about Wraith, Bangalore, and Lifeline these days. Still, in casual play, you'll find the occasional Mirage player. He certainly brings some quirkiness and personality to a squad. Some would argue that's all he brings, though, as his abilities aren't exactly killer. His character focuses on decoys, duplicates of himself that serve as distractions. His Tactical sends out a single, moving decoy which offers up a distraction that, when hit, pings an opponent's exact location. It's useful, but pretty easy to avoid if you're an experienced player.

His ultimate is arguably one of the weakest in the game, as it sends out a cluster of decoys that don't move. Well, at least on flat ground. If you're running on level terrain and pop your ult, the decoys will stand in one place, and that rarely fools opponents. However, you can get them to run upon deployment if you're on a decline or jumping off of a cliff. It's an odd design choice that renders it less than useful. Mirage would instantly become a better legend if those decoys would move no matter if you're on flat ground or not.

When you have a game featuring multiple characters with different traits and abilities, the mark of a strong training mode is one that lets you test out each one to get a feel for them and start learning their various intricacies. Bizarrely, Apex Legends' training mode doesn't let you do this. When you boot up the game for the first time, you'll be introduced to the training, which will take you through the basics with Lifeline. This five-minute tutorial gives you a look at healing, respawning, and lets you test out the various weapons on the firing range. It's well-designed and to-the-point. If you never want to use that mode again, you don't have to.

And, unfortunately, there's really no need to unless you want to test out new weapons when they're introduced into the game, because you can't actually train with any legend besides Lifeline. No matter what character you select in the menu — the one that appears on your squad screen before you select "Play Apex" — you'll always load into the training mode with Lifeline. If you want to learn the other characters, you'll just have to get experience with them in-game.

"The hot drops are stupid as hell. Everyone is hot-dropping, but they don't realize how dumb it is to hot drop." That expert insight comes directly from Shroud, a prominent streamer and one of the most high-profile Apex Legends players on the planet. Whether you're familiar with him or not, you should know that his opinion carries a lot of weight, especially because he was a consultant on the game during its development. The man knows what he's talking about, and he certainly knows that the map's hot zones — those blue circles you'll see on the map as you prepare to drop into Kings Canyon — aren't worth the hassle.

Hop into a game of Apex and watch how many people head for that blue circle — it's often half of the 60-person squad. Whether you're a pro-level player or a novice, it's really not worth it to drop with half the players and duke it out for a small amount of gear. "There's no reason to hot drop in this game at all," Shroud went on to explain. "There's loot everywhere, right? It's all about the same. And each game lasts 15-20 minutes long, it's not like a [expletive] hell of a commitment. You're going to find action regardless." Listen to the expert and stop dropping in the hot zones. You'll live longer.

No one likes a quitter, especially in a cutthroat game like Apex Legends. Without a full, dedicated three-person squad, winning won't come easy. That's why players that quit early are hated in the community. During your Apex journey, you'll likely encounter teammates who quit your game the moment they get knocked down, and that's frustrating if you have a good shot at reviving or respawning them. It's the risk you take every time you join up with randoms. It's an even bigger risk because there's not currently any penalty for quitting.

Peculiarly, Respawn accidentally implemented a feature back in April that penalized quitters. This feature forced players into a five-minute "cooldown" after every three matches they quit early. After the community started to notice this, Respawn patched it out and essentially said that the team was working on that feature but didn't have any intention of going live with it at that time. You have to wonder why, because it seems like something that should have been a part of the game from its inception. Despite the accidental addition of the feature, Apex remains without a penalty for quitters, and that's a problem.