Catch all the information here: https://www.reddit.com/live/155r29koqshzr
STILL LIVE! (Tho the Apex stuff seems to be over, we'll have a VOD when it's all over!)
Click the YouTube link below, Apex is about 45 minutes into the VOD!
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdmSlwn6GjI
External link →Wow, that Caustic buff really made a massive difference, no wonder why I feel like I see him in nearly every squad now (can’t say I enjoy him being picked more personally lol). I didn’t expect Octane and Bloodhound to be tied third either, considering they’re both niche in terms of what’s meta. I’m gonna assume Pathfinder’s pickrate has drastically dropped because of the grapple nerf, wonder if he’s still in the top 5.
Again, can’t wait to see the patchnotes with the details to our speedy boi, I’d love to use him more as my secondary, and hopefully I can if the buffs are decent.
Yeah I think they both have super broadly appealing fantasies (speedy boy and hunty NB) and abilities with immediate satisfaction (even if good players know BH's ult isn't great due to it giving away your position, it feels like you're the PREDATOR). What's meta really only matters at the very top; most people don't play the game at that level.
So when are you going to nerf Gibraltar?
Third lowest encounter win rate, second lowest pick rate... I hear your frustration, but the data don't support a nerf at the moment.
Third lowest encounter win rate, second lowest pick rate... I hear your frustration, but the data don't support a nerf at the moment.
(To be clear he has a super high game win rate; his team utility is through the roof)
Y'all got anymore of that Titanfall though?
I wished! Hey, at least Titanfall 2's coming to Steam. With some luck that'll inject a little life into the game. (I've been playing a bunch recently and I can generally find a match in a minute or two, but it's just attrition mode)
I still think he deserves like 25% explosive damage resistance added to his passive, unique and fits his character! Or even like a free stim effect when hit by a grenade/ult? Imagine thinking during a fight... throw a grenade at me i dare you 😬
So what you're proposing there (25% explosive damage resistance) is definitely neat lore wise and it's a design space we haven't gone to at all yet... but it's also odd to put that on a Legend that is visually thin and tiny and not on, you know, the Legends with the "fortified" buff. Also the event that would trigger it is pretty rare in the game. We reduced grenade spam (and thank f*ck for that) and there aren't many Legends that use explosions as part of their abilities.
Not saying we'd never do that, but gut feeling is that's probably too niche to be truly useful and in the few instances where it would come in clutch it would mostly feel weird and unreliable to the enemy that threw the grenade.
I feel like these might be a lot of questions, but any chance we'll see some Crypto adjustments?
I know that he is a very good character, but he doesn't really cater to new or impatient people, just feel like he could use something but I never know what.
And I also think that if you guys were to buff the EMP at this point in any way shape or form he would become a problem, so he seems to be in a super weird spot.
Yeah EMP is clearly an incredibly strong ability. It'll be buffed indirectly next patch because of an unrelated change. (I'm being cagey on details again because I don't want to steal anyone's thunder).
I think Crypto is probably the one Legend where you could make the argument that he should be niche; he's very intellectual in a game that's all about adrenaline junkies sprinting at each other guns blazing. That said, I think he's in a weak spot, and we've got a small buff (don't get your hopes up too much!) coming soon. I've got a long-term task on my todo list to take a closer look at him. My goals are to surface the usefulness of his scouting more to his team, make piloting the drone more interesting, and perhaps if inspiration strikes solve the "I used my drone correctly and now I'm 200 miles from my team and they're dead" problem.
I get it but there's nothing more terrifying than a Gibraltar with a lvl 5 Evo shield + fortified + gun shield + devotion.
It's honestly pretty unfair in 1v1s.
Yeah that totally makes sense on paper, but the data do not bear it out at all. Gibraltar performs very poorly in terms of encounter win rate. Sure in that moment where you have to burn through all that health it feels extremely unfair, but it's offset by a few factors:
What is actually out of whack for him is fast res in dome, I'm pretty sure, but it's the least obvious thing when you're the enemy.
22k octane kills checking in.
Can you tell us the name of the designer so I can tell him thank you !
Haha! It's /u/pinedsman but he doesn't look at reddit much I think. I'll let him know you said thank you!
I think Gibby is in a really good spot right now tbh. Not only that, but I do main Revenant and since he basically hard counters Gibby, I honestly don’t mind fighting him too much.
Oooh interesting! How does Revenant hard counter Gibby? Is it just the silence to stop him putting up a dome? That can't be it, right?
I think her Ult timing could be sped up slightly(?). Like gibby’s gives about a second of warning before it starts doing damage, but bang’s takes like what, 3-4 seconds before it starts dealing damage? Maybe if the impact stunned and then the explosion came after? That might be too strong, but I think speeding it up would make it less of a wet paper towel ult and more respectable. As of now most people just have so much time to get away from it compared to gibby’s.
Yeah like I said in my original reply, I'd be careful about touching her ult just for the sake of touching her ult. It is sad that it's so underwhelming, but if we look at the full Legend, she's a super well balanced character with versatile uses, and she's also the ideal beginner character.
Bang's in a good spot all except one thing - any chance we can tone down the clinking noise she makes when she runs?
Sound while moving is so important the higher up you go in the ranks and this is the one thing keeping me from playing her competitively. It also doesn't make sense to me thematically. You'd think a soldier of her caliber would understand the importance of stealth.
Huh! That is actually the first time I heard of this. (Loading up the game in the background to check it out). That's... interesting! I don't think we consciously balance around foot step noise but now that you mention it, we obviously should.
I mentioned this to you elsewhere, but I think the only thing she really needs is to not be so ridiculously loud when she runs. I will never pick her just because I feel like good players will practically be able to wall hack me just because of how loud my normal walk is. It makes her much less viable in high level play where people use high end headsets.
For the record, this is also the only thing keeping me from using Bloodhound, but at least for him it's only while he ults.
I don't think either needs to be silent - just not so loud that they put a target on their back and are at a disadvantage strictly because of sound.
So basically, him "staying off the grid" in the playrates is a reference to his personality.
The only buff I would imagine you guys giving him was for him to be able to destroy activated Caustic traps with the EMP (kind of contradicting myself). It's super annoying when pushing a building in ranked and the Caustic simply triggers his traps, giving his team time to heal again.
Not like I don't like Caustic, but he feels like he is at his definitive state, so instead of him being the only counter to himself, maybe adding another viable legend to the Caustic counter list would be amazing for ranked meta, and wouldn't affect Public matches that much really.
I hear you on Caustic being frustrating, but in general I'm dubious about fixing a problem with one Legend by giving ONE other Legend the answer. It's a systemic problem (in that everyone can encounter Caustic and Caustic can use his barrels against everyone), so everyone should have an answer.
- Crossplay is coming between consoles and PC this fall, Apex Legends is also coming to Steam and Nintendo Switch around the same time
- New Collection event, with a new town takeover for Crypto, and a mode to introduce a new item into the game
Buffs coming for multiple characters, including Lifeline and Octane
New Collection Event, with return of Armed and Dangerous Evolved, with only Evo shields, and no respawn beacons. Everyone gets one portable respawn beacons at the start, more can be found as loot
These portable respawn beacons are coming to the normal game after the event finishes, both casual and competitive
Mirage heirloom to go with this collection event, obtainable for free after getting all 24 items or for heirloom shards after the event
New town takeover for Crypto, Crypto's Map Room, south of repulsor, being built into/replacing the small group of buildings there
24 new premium items to get from event boxes or by buying them with crafting metals or coins 12 legendary and 12 epic
New section with rare limited event skins, available for 500 coins, cheaper than the epic and legendary
Prize map like the last few events, this time with 2 legendary weapon skins, for what seems to be the P2020 halfway through and the Mastiff at the end
All of that starts June 23rd, so next Tuesday, and lasts for 2 weeks
Apex Legends is coming to Steam
Apex Legends is coming to Nintendo Switch
Crossplay between all consoles and Origin/Steam
All of those have been said to come this fall, likely on the same day or a few days apart
Lifeline is seen letting her drone res someone while she gets up and shoots someone, shield stays up
Dev replay said Octane getting buffs, potentially the rework that was supposed to come with S5 launch
Trailer shows him sprinting with Stim while shooting, normally you can't sprint and shoot at the same time
Potential Crypto buffs, as he's the one getting the town takeover here
Another interesting thing to note is that they said the event items from the rare page are limited for 6 months, so that might mean that past event skins or holiday skins can return, and that battle pass skins are the only ones never to return again. It could also only apply to those 500 coin ones come back, we'll have to wait and see.
And a whole lot more! Wait till you see the patch notes, coming soon :) I can’t wait for Tuesday to play with everyone.
Crossplay is finally here! Lets just hope they do it right and don't force controller vs m&kb.
Can’t reveal details but hey I like what you’re saying.
Respawn absolutely killed it today. I am so excited for the new event and everything that is to come.
Thank you! It’s days like today and reading all your comments that gets the team really pumped and motivated to keep crushing it.
parroting someone else's idea here: what about letting players see where the bombs are going to land on the minimap like Loba's Ult?
See this is sort of the problem I'm having a hard time communicating: we haven't even formulated a design goal yet. We don't know what we want to achieve by changing Bangalore's ult and yet we're talking about potential changes. That change you suggested isn't bad by any means! I do like better communication of gameplay effects! But what I've been saying is that to make any changes to Bangalore right now runs the risk of ruining an otherwise balanced character. I'm sure eventually the meta will move on to the point that Bangalore requires work, but at that point I'd want to take a holistic look at what her entire kit is trying to achieve (I think "safe pushing" is the best summary?) and find ways to make the ult support this.
I think Bangalore's general play with tactical and passive is great. Her ult is just so slow to actually go off it feels like it's incredibly easy to avoid. It seems like it is meant for area denial, like Caustic Ult or Revenant tactical, but with how long it takes to trigger the actual explosions for Bang it seems as though anyone that keeps their head simply goes where they were going to go anyways.
From what I hear from designers who were here when she was made, the idea for her ult was to use it to push, where you'd run in just behind the wave of explosions. I don't think that's manifesting in game? I've not seen it used like that.
My brother and I were talking about a Crypto buff that would make us want to play him more, as currently he's both of our lowest picks.
We were thinking he'd be more of a team player if he could ping a place for his drone to fly. Either with the ping wheel, or alternate button. This way he could run along with the team while getting the emp ready.
Yeah, we've definitely talked about this (and other ways of making your drone keep up with you as you run around) before, but this is what we game designers call breaking pattern: you're basically making a mechanic do something it didn't do before. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a LOT more work than adjusting numbers on the same mechanic; a lot of follow-up playtesting and tuning work. I absolutely think we should do this work for Crypto specifically, but I wanna set the expectation that the timelines on something like this are long; like, quite likely you won't see this in 2020 long.
It would be nice if friendly footsteps were consistently a bit quieter than enemy footsteps. There's definitely a pretty big difference between the footstep audio of some legends!
I think they are! From a quick test locally they seem to be, but it's hard to tell in the heat of battle. There's definitely a lot more work we can do on footsteps. The goal for them is that they're distinct but equally noticeable. I don't know a lot about audio in Apex yet, so I'll shut up until I've had that conversation with our friends in audio.
Will crossplay have the option for console only?
Hey, so as a general rule I try not to talk about work that I don't know enough about; this goes doubly if that work was just announced but not fully explained yet. Sorry, this falls in that category; I'm not confident enough in the answer to give it here.
I work in data analysis and being able to sift through some of this for a game I love would be so satisfying haha
Yeah, but then you also know how much of a risk there is that people will completely misread that data. Live first party data for a competitive multiplayer game is like the third rail of a subway: it's crucial to keep the thing going, but if you don't know how to use it, it can do a lot of damage ;P
Take a look at the Crypto thread that was up this week. Many seem to agree that his biggest weakness is that if his drone is on cooldown, he's got absolutely nothing. For 40 seconds. Not even a passive. It's a bit harsh, wouldn't you agree?
I do, absolutely! That's something we can at least change with some number changes. Some of the stuff in my maybe column for season 6 is a drone hp buff and a drone respawn cooldown buff. I think him having nothing without his drone is an important state of weakness that the enemy should get as a reward for shooting his drone down, but it's almost certainly too long and too easy to hit right now.
My goals are to surface the usefulness of his scouting more to his team, make piloting the drone more interesting, and perhaps if inspiration strikes solve the "I used my drone correctly and now I'm 200 miles from my team and they're dead" problem
This problem can be mitigated with adding "auto-fly" command that is active when Crypto does not control the drone by pressing W twice.
However, Crypto's problem is not that his drone is underpowered - it's pretty overpowered. When people complain about no passive (btw he doesn't have an ultimate either) they mean he has only a single oversaturated tactical ability and nothing for the rest of the legend. So when the drone has been destroyed, 40 seconds he turns into a dummy with no backup plan whatsoever.
For a legend that constantly speaks about being prepared, being "drone or nothing" is kind of a bummer in multiple aspects.
I agree! We've talked about a bunch of ways we could do autofly (waypoints, follow pings, follow Crypto, send to team mate etc) but that is long term work. I think we can give him something meaningful now with just number changes and then broach a rework for the future.
Make friendly caustic gas a different color in the same way a friendly dome shield is a different color.
That is an ongoing conversation with good argument for and against that I cannot do justice here right now, but it's definitely something I believe would be great for the game.
bruh you guys forgot about that rev buff?
he can disable gibby gun shield
Ah that's right! We made the call to let some passives be affected by silence. (I still think that gunshield and fortified are frustrating but not the main source of Gibby's power; that remains his dome and the fast res he gets in it)
the fixes were mentioned before ( i know im saying this before the reveal) but the obvious things that do not make octane too much harder to fight 1vs1 :
- mid air jump strafes
- resistance to grenade 50%
Let's talk about this when the patch notes for 5.1 are out! Remind me then!
Hey! What if you made crypto immune to every type of scan such as wattson traps, bloodhound scans and ult, caustic traps (but give caustic a new passive I guess) wraith passive (make wraith a lil worse) and any other type of scan that makes sense towards his lore. If all of those in the game I’m certain it’ll be op but I think it would be cool if that was his passive, call it Off the grid
You're coming at the problem from the ground up: you're thinking "what makes sense for the lore / theme / fantasy of the character", and I agree what you suggest does make a lot of sense for him that way. That's not a great way to do character design though: I've found that thinking gameplay first (what do Crypto players want/need moment to moment) produces better results, and once you have an answer to THAT question you can try to theme it in a way that fits the character.
The thing is "piloting the drone". The idea is cool, the utility is great for the team (much more than Bloodhound) but the time to deploy + time to flight is a lot of wasted time for your team.
I don't play him because it's just cumbersome and slow to use the drone.
Other abilities are fire and forget, and he should have at least that, some way to have an very basic AI drone or some way to throw the drone (keeping the pilot option, ofc).
Deploy time got cut by a second in 5.1. And FWIW I do agree with you that the cost of staying in the drone and piloting it is SUPER high. Before we try moving the drone to some form of AI I would love to play around with ways of making your piloting time shorter / giving you more power in the drone so you're not entirely absent.
I know I’m late to the party and I really appreciate you answering all of these questions. I’ve learned a lot about what goes in the thought process behind designing the legends and gained an extra respect for what y’all are doing. Can you give some insight in to why lifelines D.O.C. Can no longer be pushed around? Maybe something to do with what we saw in the new trailer but it just seemed like such a minor QOL thing that could have stayed
I think that was an unintended change, and I think this was my bad! I fixed a bug where you could push DOC onto a jumppad and DOC would just go up into the air and stay up there until he timed out. I didn't mean to change any other behavior (and from memory I only excluded the DOC drone from the list of entities that can get bounced), but I seem to have been the most recent person to touch this, so I probably introduced it! I'll check with my colleagues to see if anyone meant to change this behavior, and if not I'll change it back (if I can! I've not had a close look at what actually changed)
I'm curious as to what the argument against could be, because I can't think of one, but I appreciate the response!
There's an axis of aesthetics/"realistic" visuals vs gameplay clarity. It's never black and white, and I'm not doing the against argument justice here but it's basically "why would the gas be green for you but red for the enemy". Again, we already violate that in a bunch of places like Gibby dome.
third lowest encounter win rate? how, after all the buffs, that's hard to understand, and just for curiosity who are the 2 legends with lower encounter win rates
It's Crypto (~47%) and Bloodhound (~45%) at the very bottom. Last I checked Gibby was very close to Crypto.
I don't think anyone fully appreciates just HOW much of a disadvantage the large hit box is.
very interesting, everyone i pllay with still feels gibby is super strong and all have encounter where we feel we've lost to gibby just because he's gibby (gun shield is OP, he has 300 hp type complaints) to hear that he is third lower encounter win rate is weird. Maybe he's getting focused. I notice if i play gibby or caustic in ranked I get focused more by multiple players
It's really just he's so much easier to hit because of his big hit box.
Ever since the Silence effect disables the gunshield Rev has been a great counter to Gibby.
That's awesome! It doesn't fully address the Gibby frustration IMO; the answer to one problematic legend can never be found in just one other legend.
The fact that Silence cancels his Gun Shield too is a game changer in many of the fights I’ve had versus him. Definitely allows my teammates to be a bit more aggressive/confident fighting him as well while silenced. Not to mention negating one of the best ults in the game, especially in late game circles. I’ve also noticed that Silence creates almost a placebo effect or something similar with less skilled players. I’ve had several fights with multiple different Legends where they choke/run away despite having an initial advantage. The only thing I think Rev needs, if I may say, is a small buff to the height in which he can climb, but otherwise, I think he’s in a fantastic spot where he is. Many people just don’t play him well, I think.
We removed the range restriction on his ult. I don't think we ever needed to have it. Hoping that'll help him. Another thing the pros brought to our attention is that Revenant is much less reliable at wall jumping (where you slide jump into a wall, let go of controls, and then jump off the wall). We think that's because of his passive and how "sticky" it is to walls. Gotta figure out what we can do about that.
I see :)
Thanks for the answers, you're going ham in this thread
I'm a little overwhelmed! I had no idea people were that excited to talk :) I'm falling way behind on my messages (because I also have to, you know, work ;P) but I'm doing my best. In my mind, when I grew up playing games you could never get any answers from devs, so now that I'm on the other side of that I can give you all what I didn't have.
is there any chance lifeline revive shield gets any bigger or at least vertical
Interesting! Do you feel enemies often shoot over her shield?
thanks for buffing the speedy boi! We can clearly see you are all working hard and im so happy that this community is one where we can all interact and discuss the game that we all love
Let me know how you feel about the buffs!
How do you feel about the following:
If guns are holstered, Stim gives +40% speed.
If guns or ordinance is in hand, Stim gives only the current +30% speed.
This way Octane as an opponent would remain the same as he is now, he couldn't attack or even reload if he wants to keep his higher speed, if he wants to fight he has to come back down to the speed we're used to. Speedy strafing while unarmed isn't that bad for the opponent as the tradeoff is Octane's offense. This might not even boost Octane's efficiency rating but speed is life amigo.
I understand if you can't give an opinion on it but maybe you could just say you've read it?
As you can see from the patch we felt that always giving 40% while sprinting is acceptable. The important part is we did NOT speed up how quickly Octane strafes left/right while stimmed (because that's what really makes you hard to hit)
Anything in the works for Crypto? His passive is super lack luster (almost non-existent) and all of his abilities revolve around a drone on a 40sec cooldown.
Thanks again for all the work you guys do. Super happy to seem some really good information and balance changes being made.
5.1 saw buffs to how quickly Crypto gets in drone. I'm working on some more stuff for him for 6.0; unfortunately I also discovered a bug that, if I fixed it, would be a giant nerf to him. So, uh, I'm figuring that out atm. (Don't wanna talk about the bug yet while it's still in game)
I personally find her ult underwhelming
I love it. It gives me time to make decisions and potentially revive or run away. I never played Bang until this season and now holy crap I can't stop playing her.
Sidenote, I'm a software designer and developer and just want to say I love y'all's game and the work you put in.
<3
The data you guys have is exactly how I feel about octane. Love to play him, I think he’s extremely fun to use but I’d never pick him if I need to win a match. I’m usually fine doing my daily challenges on ranked but once I get a octane one, I go into pubs for him.
Hah, yeah, that's probably the "correct" choice, as depressing as it is. Let's see how the double jump change does.
I think Wraith is the only character to fit both appealing fantasy (ninja with super powers) and amazing gameplay wise (invincible map rotation, oh shit button, and small hit box). Probably why she’s number 1
Oh absolutely, yes.
Thank you for spending some time on reddit. Please keep it up and encourage more devs from other departments to drop by once in a while. It's healthy for the community.
Agreed! It can be easy to lose yourself and spend too much time on reddit when I do also have work I should be doing, but for now I'm erring on the side of spending time here. Clearly you all wanna talk ;)
I think her Ultimate should obscure vision more. Maybe even leave a full wall of smoke.
I don't wanna put the same "output" on two of her abilities. Ideally your tactical and your ultimate have slightly different uses. (This is incidentally also why we changed Caustic's barrels to be destroyable while building; he shouldn't be using barrels to push, that's what the ult is for)
It might not be a good idea to reduce footstep sound. It's already hard to know if you are being approached by another team and gun shot sounds are too loud - that makes things even worse. I understand that it makes sense in the real world but from gameplay standpoint (since it's a game after all), not being able to tell if there are enemies nearby is really frustrating especially when they end up getting the kill on you just because they could sneak on you.
I don't think anyone is looking to just reduce footstep sounds. I do think we should make sure they all are equally noticeable.
I love this kind of data. Are yall willing to share any other interesting stats? Like what is the winningest combo? Who is the least picked character?
We wanna be careful with how much we share. For stuff like judging combos it'll be incredibly hard to exclude other factors and actually get good info out of the data.
Bang is pretty much perfect right now. She doesn't contribute much to team utility but she's one of the best soloq selfish legends with her amazing passive and ability to just kite teams and pick them off as they get separated chasing her.
Just look at how shiv uses her in soloq rank.
I'm pretty sure her smoke adds a lot of team utility.
What players do y’all look at? Top sbmm pubs? Apex predators? The entire population?
We gotta make a game that everyone can enjoy. We try to find out what the pain points are at different levels of play and then we try to find solutions that don't negatively affect other skill buckets. There isn't a "we balance for X" line of thinking at all.
Out of pure curiosity, who's lowest in pick rates?
Crypto.
As a crypto player I usually look around when I’m fist deploying my drone but I only sign back on to reposition it.
I think doing something like “Crypto controls the drone manually the first time he’s using it. Once it is out he can hit his tactical button again to ping a location for the drone to fly to by itself, It flys above the pinged location and looks straight down.”
You could also give crypto a passive along the lines of “ crypto can finish a downed enemy and reveal the location of there team mates for 2 seconds”
That could gives him something to do when his drone is down mid fight.
I do like the "question doomed enemy" passive; definitely has come up around the office (so to speak; these days, around the Slack channels)
Give octane a double jump on his jump pad. If that happens I'm maining him.
Done.
What is “NB” in this context (“speedy boy and hunty NB)? Non binary?
Correct!
Being able to EMP while the drone is on his back would also be a cool, but extremely situational, buff.
Could be used for giving the team a few seconds to heal during a third party, or if you’re being aggressively pushed with no shields!
That really goes against the pattern though, because he does hurt and slow himself with the EMP; that's meant to push you to make sure the drone isn't near you when you EMP.
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