Apex Legends players request respite from relentless Ring in season 14

pcgamesn.com:

Recent changes to the early game pacing have left Apex Legends players wishing for a little more calm before the storm, with fans of the battle royale game saying that season 14 changes to the Ring are causing them to spend more time running than fighting. Apex Legends season 14 is off to a roaring start, pushing the FPS game to a record Steam concurrent player count with the arrival of new Legend Vantage and her adorable bat companion Echo.

Among the other changes introduced in the season 14 update, which launched on August 9, were some hefty tweaks to the Ring mechanics. Much like its battle royale counterparts, the Ring in Apex Legends gradually closes in on a certain point on the map, slowly forcing players to move closer and closer to one another and forcing engagements to happen. Anyone who moves outside the Ring will take constant damage over time, starting at a low value early in the match but increasing dramatically with subsequent shrink periods to ensure that players are forced to move.

Season 14 introduced three key changes to the Ring. Firstly, the ‘preshrink time’ – the amount of time after a round begins before the first ring starts closing – has been reduced from 180 seconds down to 60 seconds. The closing time on each map has been slightly increased, by about 20 seconds on most maps and by 50 seconds on World’s Edge. Finally, the damage caused to players outside the Ring during its first period has been increased from 2hp to 3hp every tick (equivalent to every 1.5 seconds), bringing it in line with the second Ring period.

The effective result of this is that players now have far less time after a round begins before they have to start thinking about where the Ring is going to end up. While the first Ring