[2023] [AMA] We’re Respawn. Let’s talk about Competitive Meta!

How much do you guys like JIRA tickets

Ash.

During development we were extremely concerned over the power of her tactical. Seems like a joke, right? But for a long time it was very potent and internal feedback on it's power was loud. Even after reeling it back to what we eventually launched with, a well coordinated team could snag an enemy and reign inescapable grenades on them securing a kill more consistently than a Horizon ult combo. With the power to follow-up and chase with her Ult, the offensive team potential, and the map knowledge from her passive - she seemed poised for a strong foothold in the meta for edge play, but there were cumbersome elements to each of her abilities that bogged her down and never let her fully excel or play as reactive as you need to be in the high level. And once Valk arrived with superior macro-rotation and beacon scan, there was no real place for her on the squad. Tac changes have helped, not sure if it's quite there, and the ult is still unreliable though.

Something to look at for the future to help her find a place - but also still be mindful of. The wrong push and she could end up being as oppressive as super-stun Seer was.

Yes. I think it's short-sighted and naive not to think about how we can affect the meta with system-level changes to breath new life into the ever-growing cast of Legends. We've learned a lot from the Legend Class Rework!

Great question. We don’t have a steadfast rule around which abilities get two charges. It’s easy to turn on as a balancing tool, but two charges have big, potentially scary consequences. However, I do think we have a history of being overly cautious when shipping new Legends with tacticals that have potential to be “aggressively imposing” in good players’ hands.

It’s preferable for players to feel like they got outplayed by their opponent, not that they simply died to a tactical. Tacticals that restrict the ability to fight back or inflict damage on a low cooldown are much more viscerally connected to the latter. (“Where’s the skill expression in Knuckle Clustering a rock?” or “I couldn’t move/shoot/use my abilities!”) A lot of Assault abilities creep towards this slippery slope. If we’re doubling the cadence at which you can use those abilities, sure, it’ll add power and open up a bunch of new gameplay opportunities, but at what cost?

Similar to the response from u/Cazirus, I don’t think the charge count is the primary reason Fuse and Bang are meta and other Assault legends aren’t. But, would granting a second charge to other Assault Legends open up gameplay and add power in a healthy way? My gut is a timid “yes,” but we’d have to go case-by-case. Standby.

If something's problematic at the comp level, it's probably only a matter of time before it rears its head in some way down the chain in Ranked. We want to preserve parity between comp and the main game so that spectators don't feel a disconnect: "This could be YOU one day."

I think it’s had its fair share of time in the limelight. Any “I can’t see sh*t” meta does not make for a great viewer experience or player experience. Bang and Cat’s rise over the past year was a slow shift that started back when there were intentional efforts on our end to create more diversity during the Gibby Mastiff meta (even though now we might look back at elements of that fondly).

Gibby could’ve fallen off for a multitude of reasons… Seer’s release, the CAR a season later, Valk maturing in the meta and edge comps evolving. We saw Shiv and the SoloQ GOATS raising Bang visibility, while competitors were thinking, “How can we increase survivability without a 360° dome of damage protection?”

That same question was a common theme for us during Cat’s development. Apex as a game was maturing, players were getting better, third-parties were happening quicker. How can we provide players a sense of relief for a couple beats in order to make a decision for their next action? Traditional Controllers like Wattson are often viewed as too one-dimensional, boring, or not conducive to the pubs playstyle. Some of the most compelling/strong Apex characters are the ones that don’t fit in one box. Bangalore has always been a jack-of-all-trades, and Cat is in a similar spot. The obvious commonality with these two flexible legends is that they can cutoff sightlines. What are the healthy elements of that, and what can we learn about the unfun cases to influence future design decisions?

There will always be something uncomfortable or tiring in any given meta… I can’t see, I’m exposed through walls, I just exploded in two pumps/one Kraber bullet, Gibby’s Gun Shield negated my damage, I just got one-clipped by another R-99, I can’t move, Horizon and Co move too much, we can’t rotate, everyone can rotate for free, etc.

I also didn’t like Caustic meta, or how one dimensional OG Wraith, Path, Wattson meta was before playing edge was really a thing, or wallhack meta, Gibby + Charge Rifle meta, Scout meta, 3030 meta, Valk meta was contentious... I could talk the evolution of metas all day (shoutout to a couple goat big brains u/hodsic and Raven for chatting with me a couple years ago… we need to run this back).

For your sake and for mine, as viewers and players of Apex, I hope Bang + Cat popularity falls a bit soon. And when it does, something else will take their place. I’m pretty excited for some of the Legends stuff in the pipeline; we’ve learned a lot in the last year in particular with how Legend Classes can influence the meta.

This is something I think about as well as Apex matures. I actually do think we are shifting more towards a hero shooter in high skill bands, but I think it's somewhat inevitable and just a natural evolution. I think we'll always be a competitive FPS first with the high TTK and rich gunplay/movement systems. But given a strong mastery of those core elements, top teams will be the ones with the most proficient legend flexibility from season-to-season or map-to-map. Unlike your weapons/loot, the Legends that you drop-in with are the constants in a sea of ever shifting variables. For players that solve that equation quickly, it makes sense to just choose the best constants given the season's variables. I suspect theory-crafting and experimenting with Legend comps early and often will become more indicative of success, especially as we add more maps to comp. I think top-tier coaches will become more valuable.

Yeah, the beacon scan loss was definitely a hit, but Valk has more advantages with her Ult than the Evac Tower ( balloon ) provides. She can deploy from cover, take her team with her, and doesn't have to wait for it to rise -- plus there's no giant tell for other teams to focus down splitting the team in transit - so there's still a lot of power within her Ult that differentiates it from the Evac Tower.

Part of the reason for the addition of Evac Towers was to take some of the weight off Valk who had a monopoly on those kinds of rotational plays.

That being said, does it mean allowing her to regain some of her lost height is off the table? Absolutely not. It's possible we will see her able to achieve those heavenly heights in the future.

When a Legend reigns at the top of the competitive scene for too long, things become stagnant. The meta feels solved, every team gravitates to (or feels forced to play ) those Legends and there's little variance in squad composition. Which over time is not exciting to watch, and ( as I've heard ) becomes tiresome to play. While it's not our sole reason for changes to Legends, its something we look at and try to address. Sometimes its through direct hits to those Legends ( Caustic, Wraith, Seer ), sometimes its through the addition of new features or other Legends that look to take the weight off a character's dominance ( as was the case for Valk and Gibraltar ). Horizon and Bangalore are certainly still on our radar, we know they're still feeling strong - even after the adjustments they've received to date.

I can't speak to any upcoming patch details, but odds are low they will receive a rework anytime soon - we generally don't look for full overhauls of Legends when they're performing well.

The Support Class' perk hasn't been particularly strong in the comp scene, crafting/retrieving banners and revives have traditionally been such a risky play to take on - for example.

The Skirmisher perk is also fairly niche within comp - but generally, we don't need huge boosts for a class that already has a lot of power both in and out of comp. That being said, we've learned a lot from how these classes play and may look to infuse more power into them in the future.

Personally, I'm interested to see how the recent systemic changes to respawning could affect the comp scene and the support class perk's power in general as teams adapt to the landscape of a more powerful revival swing.

I would also love to see more diversity in the spotlight. And we do make efforts to do so, though it's often more difficult to make small changes to an under-performing Legend and have them rise up.

Take Rampart for example, she's undergone an incredible number of tweaks and adjustments to make her more viable, and only recently have we finally seen her slip into the competitive scene. With Revenant, we took a much larger swing to pull him from the bottom of the dream pool to a powerful Legend.

So we're learning and adapting with how we handle certain changes over others and trying to find the right ways to bring lower pick characters up. But sometimes the best way to give them room to shine, is to knock someone off a higher perch for a while - so when there's stagnation at the top end, we look for ways to end those reigns as well.

Re: Shotguns vs. SMGs

I think SMGs are still a little strong overall, namely in their versatility and the fact that they're more forgiving than shotties at the moment. Definitely less likely to see controller players running a PK with a 3030 secondary... too easy to be caught out at an awkward range where an SMG will have you covered and be more consistent up close.

We have a huge roster, and finding new, unique and ownable spaces for new Legends year over year is increasingly challenging. New Legends need to carve our their own playspace to the best of their ability, and if they can't they risk falling into obscurity or overshadowing the Legends who have come before - which sacrifices the health of the game.

Revenant has shown that significant changes to a character's kit can help reinvigorate that character's identity and help them find a stronger place amidst the roster - but it needs to be right for the game.

So are we looking at the possibility of revisiting other character's kits, sure - but with Legends like Crypto or Rampart who DO have a niche place in the meta, we would need to be very careful. Unlike Revenant, who had very little impact on the comp scene - Crypto and Rampart have some unique strengths that we wouldn't want to completely compromise - so no plans on the horizon yet.

From a Legend standpoint - Comp viability is certainly a factor as we review and refine a Legend, but it's not often something considered when immediately designing a Legend, as the Legend often needs to appeal a wide variety of players and varying skill levels and focusing too heavily on comp might make the Legend inaccessible on the grander scale.

What we DO try to do, is ensure the Legend has a competitive role in the squad - that they're servicing the team in more than one way that is important to the competitive landscape - area control or denial for anchoring or zoning, movement potential for fragging or team rotation etc. - It doesn't mean they'll be perfect for comp, but having that potential built into their kit allows them a promise that we can push on to try and have them show more or less comp value for highly co-ordinated teams and allows them viability in the game in general.

The rise of the Bang meta, while decreasing visibility for everyone, has increased visibility for us when it comes to thinking about the Digi Threat in Apex. “I can see you, but you cannot see me,” is the main reason we’ve dismissed any ideas around adding a digi threat to AR optics. As it stands now, at least you have to be up-close and “involved” in the fight before taking damage through smoke from an SMG/Shotgun (or deep af with the Sniper Digi where you're likely not even able to capitalize anyway and are probably being a menace with or without smoke). Getting sprayed from 150m meters from a 2x digi 301 would likely create more moments of confusion/surprise on a loot item that already has poor readability. Anecdotally, I can generally get a sense if a Bang has a digi based on their smoking habits... "We're in a Bang R9 meta and she's smoking my way while closing the gap from 40m out," triggers the same spidey sense as when someone is giving me the "Kraber stare"... I don't know right away, but I suspect she has a digi and respond as such.

Ultimately, the Digi Threat isn't perfect and we've been experimenting internally. What would you like to see (other than the enemy)? Would removing it altogether ultimately be a Bang buff?

That sounds awesome - and terrifying! :D

I didn't see others have already answered this for me while I was crafting my response, but I'll reply anyway!

I think adding glint would hurt the identity and power fantasy quite a bit. Lurking from afar and patiently waiting for the right moment for that first shot is unlike anything else in Apex. Once that's been fired, the cat's out of the bag. I think the Skirmisher perk added some counterplay here as well. Pinging a looted Kraber already has the squad on high alert, but the thrill/panic of that uncertainty is palpable.

The short answer is that during development we thought the Arc Snare was incredibly strong! TOO strong in fact!

The others didn't restrict movement like hers did and it was incredible frustrating to deal with. So much so that we felt she NEEDED to stow her weapon to give her some disadvantage to not simply throwing it on a target mid-flight and rendering them helpless. So we actually wanted the ability to not be appealing to use during a gun fight. We wanted it as an initiation tool that she could follow up on - rather than something to pin an opponent down with while trading blows. It was a very dominant strategy in early playtests that made her feel too powerful to deal with, and too surprising to instantly be locked down and unable to make an escape.

That being said, times are different, and Ash has been scuttling in the lower end for a while, so we've had discussions around her abilities and what could be improved. This and her Ult precision specifically have been topics of discussion and I think Larson and I would like to take a look at her sometime soon.

There is no set metric...

But, lemme say... when we saw 95-98% of team comps were using Valk... "hoo-boy!" we certainly took note and felt more confident with Valk changes and the introduction of the Evac Tower. And seeing that much Seer-Cat-Bang / Seer-Cat-Horizon certainly influenced our decision to look at adjustments over last couple seasons.

But we DO want more diversity in the Legends in comp. More underdog teams with off-meta picks that feel viable in their element. If something seems to dominate, it's likely a sign we have an issue we should have a look at. And sometimes we make a change as a result.

The “LMG identity crisis” is something we’ve discussed quite a bit lately. Turns out removing reloads a la L-STAR is all we need!

But seriously, you bring up a lot of the same observations we've had internally. So I'll flip it back to you: How would you like to see LMGs change to make them more viable, unique, but not oppressive in higher skill bands? It can be tricky to make weapons with that big of a magazine feel fair on the receiving end, especially with our TTK hovering around a lot of classic reload moments for most meta ARs/SMGs.

No set time... I think it depends on the specific meta and how well it's being received. Gibby meta for example... that's one that stuck around for awhile because we deemed it "healthier" than Caustic meta. Bubble fights were super engaging and interesting, even though they eventually became stale. Sometimes certain balancing changes require more overhead to get right... how do you nerf Horizon tac correctly without gutting the ability or making her unfun to play? Is it a numbers change or will it require other departments? There is hesitation sometimes, not because we're not thinking about/working on it, but because we want to get it right.

I certainly have not given up on Mirage. We're not done with him yet.

He's my favourite Legend ( him and Newcastle ), and I'm eager to iron-out all the buggy nuances with his clones. We've added a number of things that have certainly helped him, but nothing yet that has really pushed him into the spotlight. I still want to see how we can push on him to give him more team utility and squad viability.

u/RV-Devan can attest, I literally started every balance meeting with, "They're still using Bloodhound over Seer, I don't know why. He should be busted in comp."

We absolutely theory-craft and try to predict how the meta will shift, and I can't remember the last time something has flown completely under the radar. We definitely over/under estimate things though... I've personally been surprised by the amount of Conduit usage in scrims, but I love to see it.

I do think their are a couple niche picks that are on the precipice of gaining popularity. Maybe I'm off the mark, I'll let y'all continue to explore that yourselves :)