Apex Legends Dev Tracker

Happy to be tagged. Doubt I have much help in the short term beyond just "lower your settings wherever possible." But I can talk to our UIUX team to see this is something we can look at specifically addressing as part of the settings profile. It's always a tough balance with doing work to make sure the experience is good on older machines while also making sure that players on newer hardware reap the benefits they expect.

I play on a regular XBox One and I can't say I've ever noticed a drop off, but that's *probably* because I also don't ever get much of an increase. I'm typically 30fps (+/- 2-3) during fly-in and then 60fps (+/- 1-2) during the match. So it might just be that it's low enough by default that it handles the fall-off.

My machine is pretty bad

Can I ask what this means specifically? Like CPU / RAM / GPU / VRAM?

hahaha cheers for enjoying our game!

Hi hi, I have two questions:

1) How does the data for this get collected? I'm curious from a methodology standpoint just asking as a fellow gamer. I'm trying to theorycraft how I would do it if I didn't have direct access to the game code and all my ideas seem super wack. You don't have to tell me if you dont wanna!

2) Secondly, more of a feedback: If you're trying to show pickrate you're not just trying to convey the order of legends but the space between them. This visualization is basically making me hunt down the percentages and compare them in my head and maybe notice the deltas. Two ways to do it 1) bar chart, 2) the numbers in the boxes could be the change in pickrate itself (the delta), similar to how a F1 race displays intervals on the left side of the screen.

I had no idea this was a thing. And now that I've discovered it, i am literally laughing out loud. Thank you.

All I know is that for sure the right folks are aware. But as a prime example of specific skill sets, I know barely anything about how Loba's bracelet works - other than that it is a mix of both her specific ability and the map itself working together, and that it's among the more complicated gameplay systems as a result. But that's literally all I know. So as far as the rest of your questions, I just have no idea. I'm sorry I can't help more.

It varies widely across studios. Within Respawn, technical designers are generally more akin to software engineers because of the nature of our tech stack, but their primary focus is still on "design." The lines are very blurry. Historically, it had to do more with which language you worked in - C++ or our scripting language - but even that line has blurred. I actually switched roles - to software engineer - in April, though it was more of an acknowledgement of the work that I do than an actual shift of any kind in my day to day. At least in my specific case, I work largely on meta game systems design. Not so much the "what" of them but the how. Like, I do a lot of the work on our stats and challenges. Not what they are, but how they work under the hood.

But at other studios the "technical" might refer more to technical aspects of systems design (e.g. the math underlying progression systems). Game designer is probably one of the least clearly defined roles within the indus...

Specific problem posts are often the most challenging. Big issues we're almost always aware of pretty quickly. And overwhelmingly the focus is on figuring out WTF is going on - which is sometimes easy and sometimes very hard and sometimes (worst of all) seems really easy at first but then turns out to be much harder. And it's not clear if, "we are aware of the problem and are working on a solution..." type of responses are appreciated or just feel patronizing. Probably both, depending on the audience. Add in the fact that there's apparently a viable business model in scraping Reddit posts - especially Dev posts - for content and spinning that into (often mischaracterized) "news stories," and I'd say that posts about bugs can be are often super unappealing to try to respond to.

Definitely not a toxic question. The team has grown a lot and we continue to have quite a lot of open roles. But additional man /woman-power in software development is often less clear than it might seem. If it's of interest, the legendary "Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick Brooks (written in 1974!) is still probably the seminal work on the topic - https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~yfcai/CS451/RequiredReadings/MythicalManMonth.pdf

Yes, there are some problems that can be solved by simply throwing more people at the problem. But it's often less than you'd think. I *personally* believe a PTR / public-beta program would be fantastic, but that's way above my pay grade to decide. But that's like a whole tangent in and of itself. But putting that aside, it is really hard to...

I think it's important to call out toxic behavior, but I also believe it can be self-fulfilling. Like, if everyone here just thinks the sub is full of trash, people will start to hold themselves to that standard. And, likewise, I think if people think that this is generally a pretty positive place - as I do, then I think people also hold themselves more to that standard.

I haven't worked on many games, but I think the community engagement we have is pretty amazing by any measure. I don't know of any other game that does something like the community-driven prize tracks we've been able to do with content creators.

And, of course, the internet is pretty rough in general. So I also think you need to balance that sense of despair with a bit of, "Hey, the world can be pretty great too..."

Speaking only for myself - and I have a very different job than Hideouts - I will say that it's really just a matter of hours in the day. I try to *read* Reddit a lot to keep an eye out for issues that are specific to me and my team, but I also sometimes think it can be more frustrating for y'all if we can't actually take the time to engage. I.e., reply once, but then never follow up. So I try to only engage when I know that I have the time to actually commit to a real conversation, which is hard. Because I think that most of the time, it's probably better that I work on the game itself.

Overall, my experience on this sub has been overwhelmingly positive. I try to always treat people here with respect, and that's pretty much always been reciprocated. Just read through this thread - I think it's almost entirely civil.

I really do wish that I could spend more time here. But between work and family and other commitments, it's just hard. I thi...