ImperialHal lays out 3-point plan to make Apex Legends “great again”

Apex Legends pro Philip ‘ImperialHal’ Dosen has laid out his three-point plan for returning Apex to its former glory, as Respawn’s battle royale continues to bleed players.

It’s no secret that the community’s sentiment towards Apex Legends in 2024 has soured, with the player count, at least on Steam, dropping month after month.

Why exactly the game is losing momentum so quickly is up for debate, but many players point to the level of competition from other games, complaints about the ranked system, and the developer’s supposed focus on skins.

Hal, who is Apex’s most popular pro player and streamer, admitted in an interview with Dexerto that he is fearful for the future, but has ideas on how the devs can turn things around.

ImperialHal’s plan for Apex

His newest idea comes in three parts, all related to gameplay changes.

The first is, of course, a change to the ranked system, but he believes Respawn already had it perfected in the past.

Hal simply suggests returning to the Season 13 version of ranked play, which is when Apex launched “Ranked Reloaded.” These changes focused on “playing as a team, and playing for the win,” as well as making RP “a more accurate representation of your overall game skill.”

The next change Hal wants is to have Horizon return to her former glory, specifically her “Prime” – which was likely she was first added to Apex in Season 7.

Lastly, Hal suggests reverting controller aim assist values to 0.4. Aim Assist was changed in Season 22, nerfing controller players in crossplay lobbies, and controller players on PC, reducing aim assist by 18-25%.

Some were surprised that Hal would advocate for buffing aim assist, but he explained, “game is dying we need desperate measures now, in reality, it’s kind of insane to create a game with one of the least aim assist values compared to others considering controller is such a huge player base.”

Hal also added in another reply, that he believes “minute” changes have been the reason other titles have stolen attention away.

“The minute changes over time to Apex has hurt it massively, which led to other big games to take over slowly,” he added.

Respawn is certainly facing an uphill battle in 2025 to reclaim the players it has lost this year. In February, the peak player count on Steam was over 470,000, but this dropped to less than 150,00 in December.