Top Mixer streamer Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek has been enjoying Apex Legends’ new lease of life since the launch of Season 4, but still has some improvements he’d like to see. Namely, he thinks the loot pool is a little too saturated, and some gold items too powerful.
Season 4 so far has enjoyed an abundance of praise, with the new legend Revenant proving to be a hit, and anticipation for the return of Kings Canyon later in the season.
However, back on World’s Edge, the current map, shroud thinks there are some tweaks needed to balance out the loot pool more. Gold items are, of course, the best-performing items, and supposedly the rarest, but are they becoming too common?
The streamer was playing a regular public match of Apex before hopping into ranked mode, and it struck him that there was a seemingly endless supply of gold items.
“Why is there so much gold stuff? I couldn’t tell you, this map has got a lot of loot,” shroud explained. “Actually, it’s got too much loot I think, I don’t think there should be as much gold shield as there is.”
At the time, shroud and both of his teammates were rocking gold shields and gold backpacks and helmets. Admittedly, they were playing well and had eliminated a lot of squads, meaning they’d had plenty of death boxes to loot.
Timestamp at 5:30 for mobile users.
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Gold Shields too strong?
But shroud also went one step further, suggesting that gold shields, at least in their current state, shouldn’t even exist at all. “I don’t even think gold shield should exist, that fast heal sh*t is broken man,” he argued.
Gold items, shield included, are meant to be the rarest of finds on the map. However, with all of the loot vaults, care packages, drop ships and designated high-level loot areas, it’s perhaps becoming less and less of a novelty to find these ‘rare’ items.
Rather, it’s pretty common for a member of your squad to be kitted out in gold if you survive past the opening stages of a match. Whether the abundance of gold items is a deliberate move on Respawn Entertainment’s part or not, is unknown.
As for gold shield itself, it did receive a significant buff, as its previous benefit (full refill after performing a finishing move) simply wasn’t that useful in practice. Fast heal used to be a benefit of the gold backpack, but was swapped to the shield instead. Perhaps now with this buff, Respawn may want to look into reducing the spawn rate of gold shields.