[2022] [AMA] Let’s Talk Weapons and Legends!

There's a power curve in any given match of Apex and these weapons represent the beginning of that power journey. We're always looking for interesting ways to spice our early game weapons up and provide meaningful ways for their impact to remain relevant farther into the game but there must still be a natural progression. We have clear graduations of power like the Mozambique into the Peacekeeper and we've got ones that are fueled by preference like the Peacekeeper into the Eva. What each of these provide is a clear decision point in which players can choose what works for them. If everything were preference the game would lack depth throughout the phases of a match and if everything were a linear power progression the game would lack agency. Apex is about doing your best with the hand you were dealt, and sometimes that hand is a Mozambique and 2 sniper stocks.

It's not always just the number of weapons within each ammo type. We look at many factors and one of the determining factors in this decision was the balance of medium to late game viable weapons within the ammo types. The early game light ammo offerings are plenty, but lack robustness towards the later stages of the game, whereas Heavy ammo had quite a fleshed out late game line up. Pulling the Spitfire into light ammo helps even out the spread and gives us more breathing room when we think about what weapons will be going into the crafter or care packages. A perfect example of this is when the 301 was in the crafter and Scout in the care package—it didn't feel like light had enough viable weapons in the late game which pushed us into a lopsided heavy meta.

Now we're talking. We prototyped a shotgun where each of the pellets was basically a bouncy ball, you could shoot it into a room and it was pure chaos. Each bounce reduced the damage of the pellet and it was designed to be sort of like a flushing out tool, but ultimately taking bullet damage from enemies you cannot see yet felt... unfair. We ended up scrapping the idea but it was a pretty hectic couple of playtests.

One very early iteration of the Rampage lit people on fire and allowed you to "paint thermite" wherever you shot. It was actually pretty cool to tactically put thermite patches down but we found layering in shooting the ground people walked on to maximize their panic and your own area control was just too much—in a number of ways.

Good question, we were actually talking about this just the other day in one of our balance syncs. We actually do like that the capacity increases on mags from gun to gun differ and aren't linear. There's some interesting micro decision making to be had when some weapons scale better with attachments than others. We like that players can discover things that might make them think about the loot differently. The Scout is a great call out as a weapon that scales very well with a white mag, whereas a 301 only gets 2 more rounds. If I wanted to get the best bang for my buck on white light mags I know which one I'll use until I get the blue mag. This gives weapons more personality, something that we're always looking to enhance and push on. Our line-up is unique and it's fun that players have strong opinions about each weapon on the roster. We don't want to lose that by normalizing something like mag size increases- as trivial as that may sound.

We're very aware of this perception of Pathfinder, and we've heard numerous suggestions of new Passives from the team and the community.

We are looking at it, but we don't want to slap a new passive on a Legend who is already well-liked, powerful and performing well at the risk of adding to his already potent combat power or shifting development time that is needed to service other Legends or meta concerns, when there's no immediate need. But I'm hopeful the future is friendly in upcoming seasons.

It definitely varies. We often start with a single weapon we want to add some flair or functionality to either because it's dipped in relevance and needs some help or it's been stale and unchanged for a long time. Sometimes though we look for shared mechanics and push on that like the Dual Loader on the Mastiff and 30-30.

We had originally designed the Kinetic Feeder to go on the Volt and Triple Take with only the ammo component but through playing and iteration we found an opportunity with the Triple Take's precision choke to make a fun mechanic that sped up the choke time. We really liked how it played but it didn't do anything on the Volt so we swapped it over to the Peacekeeper where it found a more fitting home.

This sounds like a joke, but it's actually a good question and one that came up often in Vantage's development, and was discussed a number of times.
The short answer is, there's no gameplay need to.
Unlike a Crypto Drone, Echo provides no direct threat to the enemy player.
He doesn't deal damage, or scan or track opponents. If anything, he's a tell for opponents that Vantage is near and foreshadows her plan allowing for potential counterplay.
So the only value to shooting Echo, would be to deny the tactical movement altogether and grief the Vantage player.
We had considered at one point that players might be able to shoot AT Echo, disrupting the targeting as he played a brief dodging animation, but it only served to make the ability less reliable.
Flying to Echo to reposition for height is a core part of Vantage's identity as a character, and we wanted counterplay around reading and reacting to that action, rather than denying it outright.
That way you feel good as a Vantage who gets to USE her ability.
And you feel good as a player who reads that action and successfully punishes a poorly used launch - rather than removing the fun of the gameplay altogether.
Also, Echo's so cute!

We understand the frustrations around Legend abilities that scan and their tactical dominance at higher levels of play.
Some of these abilities, however, are core to the play patterns and identities of the Legends themselves so it's not a simple task to address.
We are actively looking into it, and playtesting potential iterations, but we want to be comfortable with changes that reduce the frustration without reducing the value of these Legends in the squad before any release.

Early in Seer's development we actually prototyped giving enemies feedback when the heartbeat locked on - however, given that it was tied to Seer's camera movement and actions it became an irritation to have any notification propagate to other clients and clouded other audio/scan combat information that actively affected the player. It also angered Seer teammates to have enemies jump on them because the Seer was just "looking around" and proc'd the intel to the opponents.

We even had the heartbeat play in the enemy player's head at one point that told them they were being tracked - it was terrifying, and induced panic in players to feel constantly haunted by this presence, so we backed away from it.

Given that the information was limited to Seer himself and not shared intel with the team, we opted for more subtle feedback (audio cue, eye glow), which worked well and played into his fantasy of Ambush Artist - seeking out opponents for his team and then using his abilities to make team plays.

However, considering Seer's recent rise into the Meta, we're noticing the power of Seer's passive taken to great extremes, and it's been a big topic of discussion in our balance meetings.
We have no updates at this point, but targeting the power of Seer's passive is something we have been actively looking into.

When we release a new Legend, the designer creates the unique trackers for that Legend, and "Bullets Fired" was chosen for Sheila.
It's possible we could add this tracker in the future, but it might not retro-actively count your Sheila kills to-date.
Glad you're enjoying her!

Rampart's identity is built around LMGs, and her passive was meant to reflect that synergy and provide incentive when opting into that style.

This topic has been discussed before, especially back when we were looking at ways to empower Rampart (when her effective pick and win rates were low).
But the passive was never the aspect holding her back so we opted to invest more in the core parts of her kit to bring meaningful change.

In the end, appending the passive to other weapon types meant that it took away meaningful choice from the player.
If you just get it on ALL the good weapons, it doesn't carry the same meaning - you're just always better, and you still always pick up your favourite R-301 like you do with other Legends.
If it's tied to LMGs... they are special. And you make an active decision to wield a Rampart-special - We felt that choice/feeling was important to maintain.
Could this passive be extended in other ways in the future to provide more value? Perhaps. But at the moment, we're satisfied with how Rampart is playing and are not looking to expand the power of the passive.

We are actively looking into the frustration that can come from these abilities and finding ways to reduce it without crippling the identity of the Legends who wield them.

The weapon-focused passives exist to encourage their use, and make them feel like an interesting choice while playing as a character with an affinity for them.

There's never a penalty for not picking one up - but the act of playing that character seeds that option for a minor gain so that when you come across that weapon type, you make a consideration you might not as a different Legend, and encourages the idea of playing more towards the style/identity of the Legend.

With Rampart, it can make spotting an LMGs a more attractive option to play into the spray.
With Maggie, the shotgun bonus encourages you to think up-close and personal.
With Vantage, the passive encourages the idea of long-range to gain the intel and bullet drop.

So, in short, the character's passive promotes the identity of that Legend, without shackling you to that choice.
They're meant to be a boon for players who like that playstyle. Will we alter how they work in the future? - Potentially. But there are currently no plans to do so at present.

You'll have to wait to see what each new season holds I'm afraid, but Support Legends are one of the more difficult roles to bring to Apex without over-indexing in healing and resets that make fights drag on and upset the already high TTK of the game.

That being said, we do want to bring a more balanced roster of class roles to the table in the future at some point.

Another way to think of it, is that you get free time back for less effective grapples.
Pathfinder's original cooldown was very short and brought very overpowered and unreadable mobility to his plays.
With his low cooldown, a good Pathfinder could fling into a fight wildly, and use it to immediately escape making him incredibly difficult to track and punish for more selfish and reckless plays.
However, when this was changed to a higher cooldown in order to balance those behaviours ...a faulty/short grapple was now punished severely and Pathfinder was forced to wait over half a minute to recover.
The current version was made to ensure the more balanced cooldown stayed in play to combat those exploitative and unreadable situations, but allow shorter/failed grapples to refund sooner.
You get to make your skilled play to dive or escape, but if you mess it up - you can likely get it back in time to make another play soon.
The idea of a tactical lowering its cooldown on success might creep us away from our core pillar as a gun-first game and make the ability the focus of your engagement.
Ideally, our Tactical abilities aim to create a moment to play off of with your gun skill or strategic movement.

I can't speak to future changes at this point.
However we're aware of the concerns surrounding scan abilities in the game.

Bangalore's smoke hard countering scan abilities has come up before, but we are more keen to find a way to address the frustrations with scans on whole rather than enforce a her to be the answer to the problem, especially if the result would take away from Bangalore's personal play potential off her own smokes.

Will there EVER be a wraith tweak? - Absolutely.

Absolutely, the Wingman is incredibly lethal in the right hands and the sniper ammo changes have allowed it to keep its lethality but tamp down how easy it can be run. We're really happy with the ammo economy this season and the Wingman feels like it's in a healthy spot. It was a medium risk/high reward weapon, we've steepened the risk on it but wanted to retain the reward.

There is a competing reality in a Live Service game like Apex where developers have to prioritize their work efforts between feature development for future seasons, and balance changes to the existing game.
Sometimes minor balance changes are simple to make, and just require tuning numbers.
Other times, they require rewriting abilities or pulling in new animations, visual effects or audio that must be added to development schedules on top of current release timelines.
However, none of these changes can go out without testing - both for bugs, and to validate that the impact of that change actually works to solve the problem, and doesn't create new ones.
Because of this, it can take time to see balance changes make it into the game.

It's not completely off the table, and we've definitely prototyped some care package only weapons- but ultimately with the amount of work it takes to build new and exciting weapons, limiting them to the care package feels underwhelming. I'm not saying we won't ever do it, but when evaluating how we want to spend our dev time weapons that can be cycled onto the floor are valued much higher because they can impact the meta in a more meaningful way as we continue to refine and balance the game.

The Softball is an interesting one and we've definitely considered bringing more Titanfall weapons into Apex. Truth be told, it's an Anti-Armor grenade launcher designed specifically for Titan combat and we just don't have those sorts of challenges and enemies in a typical match of Apex. I know what you'll say, "But Eric, what about the Charge Rifle! That's an anti-titan weapon too!". We feel the precision on the Charge Rifle translates a bit better to Apex's boots on the ground gameplay and fits nicely into our sniper category. For the Softball we'd need to look at a new weapon category or making it specifically a care package weapon, and in a previous thread I've talked about why designing and building care package only weapons has it's own challenges.

Yes. They've had some tweaks since the removal of Low Profile, but they are still relatively smaller in stature and thus their hitboxes are as well since they are built to closely match the shape of the model.

While we can't speak to or spoil any future content, many of these bugs are known and logged.
They are odd interactions with the terrain that are difficult to track down, but hopefully we can make improvements here in future seasons.
We did recently fix a speed issue when a Mirage Decoy is launched, but we know there are still plenty of areas to improve.

There is always a chance.
Especially if a Legend is under-performing or the competitive balance of the game could be positively impacted.

As far as weapons and loot goes we get an absolute wealth of data from our Analytics team that provides us a view into what's happening on the battlefield. We break that data down in various ways (rank/unranked, playtime, mode, time of day, favourite colour, preferred ice cream flavour, etc..) and spend time each season discussing peaks and valleys in the data and trying to understand specifically what they mean. It's never enough to look at one single stat, even if it's win rate. There's a lot of data science that goes on behind the scenes that help us understand and articulate what the data represents. But data is just one tool in the toolbox for making balance changes. We also listen. We try and understand the conversations that are happening around these pieces of content so we can better understand the picture the data paints. Then we play, both the live game and in playtests. We play as much as we can to validate these balance changes before we roll them out to the public. There's no perfect process to nailing a balance change but we're working every season to become better at it.

Player perception is absolutely considered, and real.
A community's perception can mold trends and influence behaviours on mass. Seer is a prime example of this.
We made a balance update early in Season 10 after his launch, and the community perceived him dead to rights, he fell off the map, and his power went unnoticed for three seasons.
We consider this perceived impact/power when making decisions around balance changes, and have to weigh the impact of perception constantly against the healthy changes needed for the game formed by design insights, discussion, playtesting and analytical data.
As for tenants or philosophies specifically around Legends, we try to ensure that our Legends own their own unique gameplay spaces and that their abilities have clear patterns and counterplay surrounding them. This is to ensure that players understand what the Legend is about, how to use them, and how they might deal with the threats they bring. Their gameplay should be reflective of their archetype and personality at its core and drive home the sense of who that character is when you play as them. No Legend is perfect for every situation, and must also fit within the dynamic of a squad with a clear role on the team. We're also a weapons-based Battle Royale at our heart, so while the Legends bring a tactical dynamic and personality to the field, we aim for their abilities to never trump the weapons of the game or the BR experience on whole.

None that we have set.
Screens can change. Impact on the game is the larger concern.
We want to release Legends that have ownable playspaces and bring value to the squad.
But as the roster grows, this task gets harder, and we also want to ensure that we're not just bringing new powerful Legends to Apex but that older Legends still have a viable place in the landscape.
It's important that we take the time to do this for the health and future of the game.

Ditto on the Legends side.

Though we often ask the Legends themselves what ice cream flavour they prefer first.

Just because a passive has been around for a while, doesn't mean it doesn't still have value.
Generally, we prioritize changes to Legends that have problems to be solved, or have an imbalance in power that allows them to dominate unfairly or prevents them from being competitively viable.

At present, we don't feel that Wraith is victim to these concerns in a way that adjusting her passive would address.

Yeah, we've seen a lot of suggestions from the community on ideas for Lifeline.
It's awesome to see how passionate people are to show her more love and give her more power!
Lifeline is one of our most popular and approachable Legends and people gravitate to her for her style, her role and how easy it is to understand her abilities.
If we end up looking into additional Lifeline buffs or reworks, we will be considering angles that preserve her Combat Medic identity, ensure that she has her own playstyle that doesn't overlap directly with other Legends or their abilities and solves problems with her current kit to improve her competitive viability without sacrificing her ease of play.
This approach is something we like to do with all our Legends to ensure that any change we make answers the problem correctly without causing new issues in the game, or sacrificing the identity of the Legend itself.

Gibraltar's been on our radar for a while, but has been difficult to slap an easy nerf with his low pick rate (since the bleedthrough change to his arm shield).
And the desire to make him more enjoyable to play is still the ideal to couple with a change to his bubble or any of the suggestions here.
However, In Season 14, we made changes to Newcastle to improve his viability and provide an alternative option at the competitive level to Gibraltar and we've seen some positive traction pulling weight off Gibby as the must-pick anchor/support for the team. Additionally, with the rise of Seer, Gibraltar's revives are also not quite as free anymore and aggressive teams have more opportunities to push.
Given the shake-up we've seen on the competitive scene recently, we're currently evaluating the evolving meta to see if any actual adjustments are needed for Gibraltar at this time.
The game and the meta is constantly changing, and as a goal, we try to ensure that changes we want to make to any of our Legends will have the right targeted impact across without hurting the identity or viability of the character.

Many of the comments in this thread do a good job outlining the differences between the two abilities that give merit to the different handling of their cooldowns.
Pathfinder's change was an answer to a problem in the game that a longer cooldown did not solve alone.

In Loba's case, the use-cases and outputs are very different. The longer cooldown makes you think about the most effective time to use it - which is often for escape or high ground repositioning.

A shorter cooldown would lead to less conservation of the ability, and more repetitive, untrackable mid-combat evasion.

At present, we're not seeing any egregious issues with her playstyle or balance that would warrant this type of change.

These are interesting ideas!

Generally, when we consider making abilities that can be re-positioned we need to ensure they're serving to solve a problem with the kit, while still offering clear counterplay and not breaking the identity of the character.

Vantage repositioning Echo makes sense, because the ability hasn't been used yet. Newcastle walking his shield forward is a core part of his kit identity and play pattern.

Currently, there are no plans to adapt these patterns to Crypto or Lifeline.

This season we swung big at bringing some definition to the weapon classes and engagement ranges. AR's took a hit to close-quarters combat, SMG's were enhanced with Lasers, Marksmans and Snipers get some hop up love and ammo stack increases, and the list goes on. The Skullpiercer and enhancements to the long range weapons are only a part of the meta vision this season. Vantage entering the scene is absolutely something we considered and wanted to make sure players had viable tools to synergize with and combat against our exciting new legend!

The Throwing Knife was designed and built specifically for Gun Run. Everything about it from the animation timings, decisions on how ammo works, to the actual model and VFX were designed to support Gun Run and what we needed out of a final hype weapon in Apex- a very different design philosophy than creating something for the core BR. We're not currently thinking about a new class of weapons to enter the BR but as the dust settles and players get to experience and enjoy Gun Run and the Throwing Knife more opportunities might begin to present themselves.

I'm personally super happy with how the Survival Slot turned out, it's one of my favourite additions to the game and we're always prototyping and looking for more interesting ways to utilize that equipment slot. We're not ready to share anything yet but rest assured it's an area we're keen to explore.

We're always going to be developing new ways to beam one another. But as the weapons roster continues to grow, its needs begin to change and lessen. Finding the right addition to the game that's not only fun to use but improves the weapons roster by filling in a missing design space or creating new meaningful gameplay becomes harder the more we add, balance, and refine. We're not really interested in slapping a new gun into the sandbox every season unless it's a meaningful addition. So we've slowed down our weapon releases to make sure we're growing at a sustainable pace and the sandbox is healthy and stable along the way.

SMG's have been quite a dominate force in Apex for some time. One of the major factors that contributes to this was their ability to use barrels to extend their range giving AR's a run for their money. When they were also the preferred CQC choice it starts to feel like they're a must-pick weapon type. This starts limiting decision making and loadout diversity so we wanted to shake it up and define our engagement ranges a little better this time around. The lasers enhance an SMG's CQC ability while simultaneously limiting their range by taking the place of barrels. Combining this addition with the AR hipfire nerfs creates a more cohesive balance between two weapon classes whose lines have begun to blur.

We absolutely believe it needs the laser tell to let you know you're being targeted by a Vantage Ult.

In early playtests before the laser was added Vantage players could target and oppress players for free at any point in the game.
It was very frustrating. Vantage didn't need to risk going for a care package, loot into the scope power, or even sacrifice a weapon for the long range advantage.
It only finally started to feel fair when there was a chance to know Vantage and her team were near, and it allowed us to balance the power. Like when Rampart pulls out Sheila, it was a warning that the character was using their power weapon Ultimate. This lets players anticipate the ultimate so they can look for cover, move, etc. Without it, there was no counterplay, and abilities need counterplay in Apex to feel fair.

The hardest to implement buffs/nerfs is a great question!

There are some that are just technically difficult, and involve multiple departments stepping out of their current production schedule to alter something fundamental to how the Legend was originally built. Rampart's change to mobilize Shiela was pretty challenging on this front. Turning it into a (functionally) an entirely new weapon, handling the desire to return it as a placeable or drop it were all really big challenges from an animation and engineering front that required a sizable effort from lots of teams. It also went against the fundamental initial counterplay of having an HMG in the game, and required a lot of iteration to find how to handle movement correctly.
We haven't specifically looked at Weapon-based passives as a means to reinvigorate older Legend's abilities. But as the game grows and playspaces press together, we definitely analyze older Legends for oppotunities to breath new life into, but it takes time and testing to get right. I would love to see more of those too.
The animation team outdoes themselves each time they add those special little details. It's great!

It's Bilal. Surprise! He is single-handedly the root structure on which the garden of Apex is supported, the sunlight what lets the flowers of battle bloom, and the irrigation system what supplies the lifeblood of our BR.

All hail Bilal, glorious gardener of Apex Legends. Please upvote if Bilal should become a Legend in Apex.