I have been playing ever since preseason, nearly 10 days after the game got silently dropped with no marketing whatsoever and it was an instant hit. I wasn't buying into it since I wasn't too fond of the Battle Royale genre back then and I was playing The Witcher 3 at the time. But a friend of mine has been bothering me to try the game. Eventually I gave in and I made a Origin account and gave it a try. (You can add +1000hrs of play time to my Steam play time btw)
And ohhh boy what a joy that was.
This game had some of the best, most refined controls, gameplay and feedback I've ever experienced in a game. And it didn't take too long for it to win my heart and take it's spot as my #1 PVP game.
It still is, as of the time of writing this, my go-to for when I just want to play a shooter against other players that isn't too tactical such as Rainbow Six Siege, too fast like Quake or too ridiculous like Fortnite. Neither is it leaning too much into the Hero Shooter aspect like Overwatch. And don't get me started on Destiny 2 PVP...

Anyway, I just want to say that this is one of my favorite games of all time. So it saddens me to see a game that I once loved go downhill so much. It had its share of ups and downs and some controversies, like when the first event came out and one developer called us "freeloaders". Or recently when a hacker managed to disrupt the ALGS tournaments and that caused people to think there are RCE exploits within Easy Anti Cheat or Apex. That was so severe that they even remembered their Twitter password to clarify that there are no EAC exploits lmao.

Now the upcoming "changes" to future Battlepass systems, and way-of-purchase, have caused me to share my thoughts about this game. Why change something that aint broke? I'll tell you: Money.
Well it's actually because the player count for Apex is dropping. So Respawn has to somehow increase the revenue they earn from the game. From now on players that do stay will have to purchase the new Battlepass, every half season, for the remainder that this game is going to run. That is 20€ per season. 40€ if you decide to purchase the "Premium+" pass which offers negligable rewards but players will still be inclined to purchase it for the small, little things it does offer. It's a drastic measure that is most likely going to turn off a lot of players and make them leave. But in the long term this is a clever idea.
This is one way of getting a steady income that is going to please the shareholders and have Respawn continue to run.
For a more interesting take see: https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1dyqtmi/for_people_wondering_why_ea_is_raising_bp_price/

And these changes in Apex's monetization have already been put in place in other aspects of the game. On the launch of a season, they reworked the item store without even telling so that it looks more like a Netflix dashboard where you can browse more items in a more convenient way. This features more items that are being presented to the player. More of the 18€ skins, 25€/30€/40€ etc. bundles, 5€ holosprays, 3€ stickers, which in a bundle cost 60€! That bundle isnt even discounted. It's just there so you can purchase all 20 stickers in one go.
Even the events have changed their UI to a more pleasing layout to get you to purchase them. No, the events themselves have changed! We had the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth event which could cost you like 300€! They made it even worse in the Shadow Society event where they took out the ability to purchase items individually so that you had to gamble until you got a specific skin or you bought the entire event. And these events are to blame for the loss of legend specific unique heirlooms that aren't recolors. We even had micro store collection events which functioned like the Shadow Society event where you could only gamble for items.
Now we're stuck with this garbage "Apex Artifact" system where you gotta get that stupid Katar so that you can buy more features to costumize your shiny blade. Yay... Oh and there's speculations that there's gonna be a second one of those artifacts that you can customize. Did I mention that you have to buy a second overpriced currency for that? Yeah Apex has 4 currencies, 2 of which are only purchaseable with real money. No game should have to feature multiple freakin types of premium currency
The Buster Sword universal heirloom was atleast a little bit unique...

I didn't care much about the monetization mistakes as I could just continue to play the actual game either way and have fun with it. Thats what I did for a while but its hard to continue to ignore issues that have been plagueing the game for YEARS.
Here are some of my personal gripes:

-Packet loss/Connectivity issues. Apex is the only game I have packet loss in and I have no idea why. This is so well known that players joke about it and Youtubers promote services that "streamline" your connection to servers for a smoother playing experience. This shouldn't even be a thing!
-20hz servers. I got killed through walls or cover SOOO many times its infuriating.
-Crashes. Recently my game even caused my PC to bluescreen from popping a shield cell lol
-Horrible matchmaking. I still get put against past and current Apex Predators which are no where near my skill level. Or just absolutely cracked players in general.
-Cheating. Some of the most blatant cheaters run around in this game. Some are even Predator and are still not banned.
-Aim assist. I have never seen a game that has a bigger split between M&K and controller. Controllers with aim assist have a VASTLY higher advantage than a person aiming with a mouse. Which btw is my prefered input ever since I switched to PC gaming. And I really can not go back to a controller. This is so bad that most competetively playing people prefer to play on a controller and tournaments are mostly being dominated by controller.
For a very interesting analysis on this in R5R check out: https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1dmliud/i_performed_mnk_vs_controller_statistical/
Or check out this exaggerated example: https://twitter.com/Riley_Aster/status/1659416788881272832
-Monetization. Already talked about it
-Balancing. More the lack thereof. Im kinda tired that we had an AR meta for multiple seasons and all we ever see people use is just the Flatline. Most balancing that happens is just increases or decreases to cooldowns, a singular point of damage being added or taken away from guns or a bullet less on guns. It's been a while since we saw a major rework. One of my nitpicks is the constant recoil adjustments.
-Recoil Smoothing. If you didnt know recoil gets lowered if you are moving your aim to the side. This is the only game I've seen such a feature in and I hate it. This can easily be abused by micro stuttering the mouse side-to-side to completely eliminate recoil.
-Scripting. Scripting to either remove recoil via recoil smoothing or to allow some of these insane movement techs like neo-stafing easily is just ludicrous.
-Developer Communication. I remember back in the first year of Apex a ton of devs went to reddit and talked to the community there. Or gave some insight. This is pretty much dead now.

So... yeah. I'm just a little fed up with this game. I've been hoping it would get better but it never did and my patience has run thin.
Do yourself a favor and play something that isn't as anger inducing and depressing to play like this slop.

An absolute masterpiece. Please play it.