- Respawn introduced team deathmatch with the launch of Season 16
- The game mode was received well but not without criticism
- The devs listened to the players’ plight and introduced some changes
Apex Legend’s much anticipated Team Deathmatch mod has finally arrived with the game’s Season 16 but was plagued by several quality-of-life and balancing issues.
TDM was Introduced in Apex
Apex Legends has seen a huge spike in players the past couple of days, with the numbers averaging a quarter of a million on Steam alone. This is largely because the game’s Season 16 started and coincided with the game’s fourth anniversary. Apex’s fourth anniversary brings a ton of events and giveaways, attracting an even larger number of players in the past few days.
Another thing that attracts more players to the game is the permanent addition of Team Deathmatch after it first made its debut in Apex Legends Mobile. However, despite TDM being received well by players, it also received a bunch of criticism. The game mode suffered from bugs and quality-of-life issues, so Respawn took note of the player base’s complaints and announced changes to the game mode.
What Problems did TDM Face?
The new game mode pits two teams of six legends against each other in past Arenas maps such as Party Crasher, Skull Town, and Habitat 4. The objective is to be the first team to reach 30 kills in a best-of-three format. Players cans switch legends and load-outs mid-game like in Control, and the teams switch map sides after each half.
However, what happens often is that teams who have lost the first round quit early, making the match imbalanced. Additional players leave because of this until the lobbies are completely empty. Not only would the game continue without any enemies to fight, but players would have to manually leave the game itself, all of which just wastes time.
In a Reddit post, players suggested this could be fixed by making TDM last just one round. To their credit, Respawn did exactly that, shortening the game mode to just one round and making the end goal to achieve 50 kills. This shortens the overall length of the game and discourages players from leaving early. This behavior is further discouraged with the addition of abandon penalties, which lock players out of joining any mode for a period of time, extended with consecutive offenses.
The revamped Team deathmatch will stay for three weeks until March 7, before joining the rotating Mixtape lineup of LTMs.
