MY PROBLEMS WITH BATTLE ROYALES
Why they will not stand the test of time

Battle Royale, the popular genre which came after the zombies craze. The idea of
1-vs-99 and to come out on top as number one is massively appealing to a lot of
competitive minds. The rush of finding equipment, to the heart pounding hiding
underneath stairs or in a nook, listening to your enemy search for you. No doubt
the genre has some aspects which others don't lend themselves well to.

The issues of Battle Royale makes themselves more apparent on each playthrough
though. The amount of investment to play a round becomes brutal as the skill
level increases. The statistical outcomes become more prevalent and important to
acknowledge, turning a game into an optimization problem. Punishments are dealt
to players who fall out of the narrow range of optimal play style.

Let's explore the problematic aspects of Battle Royale.


S 1. TIME

This is the absolute most annoying part of Battle Royales for me.

The idea of a "lobby" in games is very common, especially in those where a game
is expected to be long. This is the first huge issue.

In Battle Royales, the lobby usually consists of 3-4 people. The wait time after
everyone is ready is on average around 2 minutes, but it can happen
occasionally to be up to 5.

After this, sometimes there is another selection screen (such as in Apex Legends
where players select their character) or it goes to the "drop ship",
"battlebus", "airplane", where players then wait to skydive toward the play
field, which is a huge island. Skydiving adds at least another 2-3 minutes to
this pre-game "setup".

Once a player has fallen somewhere, each scrambles for their life looking for a
weapon to start the frenzy. This part of the game is pure luck. If they are not
lucky to find a weapon, there is a good chance their game is already over. The
reason why there is a "good chance" is because there are objectively better
weapons than others. Having done the calculations for Apex Legends, there is a
1-in-3 chance of a bad start.

What this translates to is, for each hour of gameplay, 20 minutes is wasted on
restarting. For each night of 3 hours of play, 1 hour is wasted on restarting.
That's not even counting the "setup time" of waiting for the game to start.
This is not fun. There is a chance someone finds this fun, but then I seriously
question their sanity. It's the equivalent of starting a racing game and ramming
the car into a wall 8 minutes in, and having to restart the race, for an hour.


S 2. HOLDING INTEREST / MENTAL EXHAUSTION

The above means most players gravitate toward defense styles of play, in order
to increase their chances of a full game. What this means is there are a lot of
non-defense players playing against how they'd normally play games. The wide
open areas keeps players guessing where the next attack will be from, forcing
them to be on the defensive non-stop. Aggressiveness must be dealt in extremely
small fractions. There is no inbetween, no gradient, between the two states.
This becomes very apparent when a team wins a battle, and another arrives
shortly. They are still in an aggressive state of mind when they shouldn't be,
as they will be at a disadvantage for rushing into the open.

This on/off state transition causes mental exhaustion over a night. Interest in
playing defensively becomes tiring. Interest is hard to hold; to be defensive is
to keep distance and minimize engagements. Less engagements means less
interacting, and for me at least, less interaction is boring. As the night goes
on the tendency to become aggressive grows, as the goal of a game is to
*interact*. This causes a lot of competitive players who would normally continue
to play in other games, to quit before this happens. Remember that 60 minutes of
play is actually 40 minutes of "good" play, and of that 40 minutes, an extremely
large portion is be defensive; a small portion is to engage. Bo-ring.


S 3. COMPOUNDING IMBALANCE

Back in the days of Arena FPSs, it was prevalent that all players had access to
the same equipment. The only imbalance would that of skill. Players could choose
their weapons of choice and get to business. At competitive levels other players
would try to stop others from getting their weapon of choice, forcing everyone
to become better with all weapons. Regardless everyone had the same chances at
the same weapons, and all weapons were equally effective, minus the default
pistols or assault rifles. Regardless players could still make finishing kills
with these default weapons when they respawn.

In these days of Battle Royale the entire idea of balance has been thrown out
the window. It is clear there are weapons with a distinctive advantage in these
games. The aspect of luck-based looting compounds this issue further.

If a player or team is able to take out the opposition, they inherit their
equipment. If the opposition felt confident to engage in a fight, there is a
better than not chance they had some confidence in their equipment, which means
it's probably good. Now the player or team has a significantly better chance
at crushing others. The ones who rise through the ranks are usually the ones who
get a good early game. The combination of excellent equipment and defensive play
is the equivalent of having the power and confidence of a tank squadron.
Remember that everyone is incentivized to be defense too, so taking on such a
team is a massive risk because they will be extremely difficult to defeat, and
dying means resetting once again.


S 4. POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS?

While I'm listing out all these issues with Battle Royale, I want to end with
saying I do like the genre for its survivalist-based themes, but it continues to
need refinement.

The reset time between games needs to be resolved. On death players should be put
back into a queue right away instead of needing to wait in a lobby and having to
ready up again. I think this would help resolve the mental exhaustion issue but
not entirely.

Maps need to be large enough to give players adequate amount of time to gather
equipment. Maps need to be "equipment balanced", such that each area on a map
has nearly the same equipment.

The amount of weapons cannot be too large and must be consistent. Changing
weapons each season or even every month is terrible for mastering. It also makes
it less fun for those who enjoyed using a particular weapon!

Balancing the equipment will help give back joy to those who like different
styles of play other than being defensive.


S 5. CLOSING

Battle Royale needs work still. The above was written with Apex Legends in mind
but can easily be applied to PUBG, Fortnite, and whatever else exists.