[AMA] Let’s talk about Takeover’s Legends and Weapons

Hey, r/ApexLegends!

Takeover brought with it many changes to our meta with updates for Legends and Weapons a like. Now that you’ve had a chance to jump in yourselves, maybe you’ve got some questions or feedback around our latest season’s meta adjustments. If you’d like a quick refresher, check out our Takeover Patch Notes.

We’ll be answering as many Legends and Weapons (including Arsenals) questions as possible tomorrow, March 5, 2025, at 1pm PT. Drop your questions here ahead of our AMA and tune back for replies when we go live. As always, feedback is also welcome and we’ll be collecting everything to share with the team. 

Here’s our Legends & Weapons team on deck:

• u/RSPN_Caseroos: Casey, Game Designer
• u/RSPN_Eric: Eric, Lead Designer
• u/RSPN_JayBiebs: John, Game Designer
• u/RSPN_JJ: JJ, Technical Game Designer
• u/RV-Devan: Devan, Lead Game Designer

Reminder: please keep your questions focused on Legends & Weapons and limit 1-2 related questions per reply to help us stay organized. If you’ve got off topic questions, let us know which AMA we should host next.

Chat soon! 

3:00pm PT: Thanks for joining us! Our Legends & Weapons AMA has now concluded. For those that didn’t get a direct reply, be sure to check out the dev’s replies as there may have been an answer to a similar question.

Reminder to please keep replies on topic (Legends and Weapons) and limited to 1-2 related questions (drop any more questions in additional replies). Seeing a few questions and feedback around modes, skins, matchmaking, and Ranked. We'll look to do a future AMA on some of these to get your questions covered!

Question from our JP community

Why hasn't Seer received any updates or buffs compared to other Legends? Are there any plans to improve his abilities in the future?

Question from our JP community

The Nemesis seems to outperform other weapons. With the ability to equip an Accelerator, it becomes even stronger, making it feel more favored than other weapons. Are there any plans to review its weapon balance?

Question from our JP community via Twitter/X

Will Fade and Rhapsody from Apex Legends Mobile, ever make a return to the game?

Question from our JP community via Twitter/X

Are there any planned updates for specific classes? It seems like certain classes receive updates more frequently than others. Will there be a more balanced approach in the future where all classes are improved equally?

Question from our ZH community:

Regarding the buffs to the Assault and Support classes, when will Legends in other classes receive similar buffs or reworks?

OCE server issues are being investigated and on the Trello.

Update just went live to address this. Some additional details in linked thread.

Update just went live to address this. Some additional details in linked thread.

The "third-party problem" is a fascinating one in Apex, something I've thought about deeply over the game's lifetime. The Support changes and prevalence of red armor were a very deliberate attempt to increase survivability and boost multiple Legends with abilities that help you reset, or simply have a moment to process what to do for your next move. But that also made fights more drawn out, increasing the risk for third-parties. But maybe because fights conclude sooner now, players have more time outside of combat and are more frequently looking to third-party? Looking at some dashboards, there doesn't appear to be any notable shift in "dead time" between this season and last, but lobbies are expectedly dying slightly faster than last season. Why do you think there have been more third-parties? Shouldn't there be less, if fights are concluding faster? Could it be the map rotation? These are some of the questions we ask ourselves when trying to understand player experience and motivation.

As someone climbing through Diamond ranks right now, I would challenge the assumption that there have been "a lot more third parties." I sense a slight uptick, possibly because players feel more empowered to seek fights with an aggressive Legend meta and higher success rate converting damage into kills. This is compounded by the map rotation. But I also think the distinct lack of survival focused Legends makes us feel more powerless when things turn south, compared to last season. When the third-party came last season, you dropped Gibby bubble/Newcastle walls/Lifeline halo (or your Loba solo-queue third has already teleported to the crafter two POIs over). Reset potential gave good players more agency to react, whereas now there's more of an emphasis on rewarding preparation and strong positioning before a fight starts unfolding. I think "managing the third party" is a necessary skill to master in higher Ranks, and I think players at all skill bands are adjusting to the radical shift in "combat feel" between this season and last.

Personally, I think Ranked is not punishing enough for poor placement. As long as that's the case, regardless of meta, you will have players that are motivated by KP more than strategizing for end game. Unfortunately this isn't a Ranked AMA and I'm not a Ranked designer, but I do provide my input from a dev and Ranked player perspective. It's all I play, and I hear your concerns about ladder progression.

On your last point, on the impassable wall ability. I've thought about that exact same thing but I think the devil is in the details... how big is it... Seer ult size? A whole POI? Wouldn't that attract more players to the area? Can other players see it? Is audio muted inside of it? Can enemies leave it? Is it an ult? What other "stuff" should it do to feel ult-like? Make your pitch!

In regards to Q1, update just went live to address this and there are some additional details in linked thread.

Yes. Personal bias aside, I'm excited to get Wraith back to her effective skirmishing state.

Ash does have "Skirmisher" elements, but similar to Valkyrie, she has some overlap with another class. Her tactical is still very Assault-y (all Skirmishers have movement tacs) and since nerfing the dash cd her squirrelliness it's not quite as omnipresecent. But, we've shifted Legends to other classes before and it's definitely something we evaluate when looking at the lineup patch to patch.

To answer your question directly: they were all made at once as the culmination of a couple design teams (namely weapons and Legends) working to shake-up the "survival-heavy" meta with the tools at their disposal. For weapons, that was widespread buffs and some loot massaging (inspired partly by how punchy weapon identities felt in Launch Royale and "loot creep" over the course of five years). For Legends, it was a new Class focus that excelled at intiating and closing out fights, with a goal to elevate a couple Legends that were always middle-to-bottom of the pack in terms of popularity and power fantasy. In early playtests, it just felt good to convert damage into kills more consistently... we knew there was something there worth pursuing.

To answer that second part: It's easier to find that middle ground by taking big (measured) swings and reacting. It also creates a more dynamic live experience season over season, and resets the skill floor in some ways, allowing players to rediscover and relearn elements of Apex that may not have been at the forefront before. "Perfect balance" is (1) unobtainable and (2) boring, even in a sweaty, competitive game like Apex. We just need to be diligent about keeping the sharp edges in check with things like frequent targeted hotfixes.

As a live game, we want things to feel fresh yet familiar. We're proactively planning season over season while also reacting to the live climate. We get more feedback in one hour of a seasonal update going live than we do in the months of playtesting leading up to it, and we'd be doing everyone a disservice if we didn't leverage that to better balance the game. It's easier to tune hot and dial back than it is to ship something that's compelling on paper but not sticky/powerful enough to get players off what's familiar to them. If they don't find success with the new thing early, they will stick to what I know and go back to gaining RP. Ballistic is an example of this: if players are calling a Legend balanced on release, we know we didn't push hard enough. Now he's got some wild upgrades, his whole team gets a huge speed boost when he ults, and he can access unlimited ammo crate weapons. And now that people are playing him, we're better equipped to identify what is and is not working for him specifically and adjust accordingly. Same goes with other elements of the TTK design shift.

On your second question...

This is the double-edged sword of movement in our game. It's really fun, and really powerful. So why not give it to everyone? The players obviously want it!

Our job as designers is to separate what players want from what players need. Apex is a game with deep mastery, discovery, and interplay between Legends. Movement mechanics and map, loot, weapon, and Legend design are all interconnected... you can't touch one without affecting the other. What would happen if we gave Ash dash to everyone? It would feel fresh and fun for a week, but then some issues would bubble up. Caustic's whole kit isn't designed around that level of movement. He doesn't need to dash to conduct experiments on his enemies, and he doesn't want other people dashing because he's all about area denial and crowd control. Controller legends on whole would take a hit. Same with Recon. Grenades are less meaningful now because enemies can just dash away. Map design becomes less interesting... everything feels more samey when you can dash to the nearest piece of cover. SMGs take a hit because it's way harder to track enemies moving at fast speeds up close. Long range combat takes a hit.

Basically, the game's not built for it. It's also why as a Titanfall fan, I'm still a wall-run hater in Apex. It would let you down more than it helps you.

That's not to say we shouldn't explore or dismiss what players want or ask for. Maybe there's a version of wall-running that's more traversal focused than as a combat tool, and level designers can plan for it accordingly. And we can rebalance and rework Legends as the game evolves. I just hope to shed some light on the level of thought and care that has to be put into core gameplay changes. There is a cascading effect that we must be cognizant of as stewards of the game.

In the meantime, I'll still be playing Ash (cuz she's fun) and eagerly await changes to a couple of my mains that have fallen by the wayside. Apex has evolved, and they must too in order to stay relevant.

No. Sounds like a bug.

We'll just have to remove Loba from mixtape for like a month, maybe a whole year.

Sounds like a bug - anything added to the weapons in Ballistics's sling shouldn't remain. ( outside of what's gained with each level )

Willing to give supports back the double heals - yes. It's a possibility - but likely not until after we see where all the classes align with their final perks and see if there's a need to anchor their identity harder again.

We've historically been fairly opposed to hard counters, but as the Legends have grown we recognize that there is some value in the chess match counters of the meta that can go on - and it's possible we could lean in that direction in the future, but there are no current plans to do so yet.

Seer we want to do something about in general - but we don't necessarily want one character's identity to be solely determined by whom they hard counter. So we likely need to look at Seer from multiple angles to get him out of obscurity.

We are not likely to see all characters have Ash's passive or Lifeline's glide.

We actually tried that internally - and it was a pretty confusing mess. You couldn't tell who could do what, building tops and second floors were suddenly able to be accosted by everyone in a squad. No where was safe, and tracking player movements or capitalizing on any well planned long-range assaults was difficult and frustrating. In a small arena with respawns, that element is fun, but less so in a one life to live BR setting. So there are some actual downsides to giving every character movement like those Legends that we'd have to find clear ways to solve for before that becomes a realistic prospect for Apex.

Larson also covered this as well in another post: https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1j3lnup/comment/mg8at93/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Nah, can't say anything yet. But it's coming soon, hold tight!

Cheers! Glad you're enjoying it!

Thank you - I'll pass that along to the team. And yeah, loved all the "shut you up" lines he used to have. As for the Assault scan - we'll have to see where that ends up once the season simmers down. It's actually an aspect of the Battle Surge perk that might be doing more work than it needs. We'll see!