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Is there a name for the giant purple flowers seen around the map?
None that I'm aware of. What would you call them?
Is there a name for the giant purple flowers seen around the map?
None that I'm aware of. What would you call them?
Great fan of new pois added and changes made to the map. The only thing that i don't like is the lighting in new storm point. The map looks amazing don't get me wrong but a lot of the places in storm point are too dark. Can we expect any changes regarding this in the future?
I touched a bit on this in my prior answer to a similar question here https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/180tcus/comment/kad02qy/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Balancing visibility across large maps is not an easy task. We focus on the main POIs and golden routes first, but there are some secondary or tertiary areas that sometimes don't get the same amount of attention due to time and scope. You can expect tweaks here and there, but we won't do another big swing of a lighting or skybox change unless it's a potential future map update...
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- I love the new skybox but i dont like the lighting on the new storm point, its like were going back to the old Worlds edge lighting where nobody liked that red & dark hue of the game itself.
Of course theres going to be the hurr durr comments like "just turn your brightness up" or similar to those comments but i just want to know the reason.- 2nd would be the merging of 2 POIs (almost 3 already) into one POI, lightning rod and previously Thunder watch, ive played enough storm point to know that you are almost guaranteed a zone console on 2 points and a high tier loot, why? on a competitive stand point, this isnt balanced at all compared to the rest of the POI
I'll tackle the first question. Introducing new lighting into a map that's familiar is always going to open up opinions. We certainly take feedback re: visibility seriously, but we also want to create variety across our maps. If all maps had the same midday, blue skies they would all start to blend together and feel the same.
Thanks for doing the AMA! Not so much a question about Storm Point specifically, but would love to hear what the day to day work is for the Storm Point team is and how they prioritize work. How do you guys function? How’re different goals for the team structured and prioritized? Said differently, what a day in life of a Dev on the Storm Point team?
Thanks!
That's a very deep question...and certainly a tough one to answer thoroughly. I'll try and break it down as simply as possible.
LD (Level Design) does a paper design and proposal.
LD blocks out and we start to playtest.
Art Direction puts together a style guide and Narrative gets looped in for gut checks.
LD is iterating while Art starts doing Look Dev on biomes and assets.
LD starts handing off areas to art that are "locked" (iteration still happens but on a refined scale.)
Skybox and lighting starts development.
Art is in full production and LD is refining, adding cover and other gameplay elements.
FX and Audio start getting visibility and doing their passes.
PLAYTESTING AND REVIEWS HAPPEN THROUGHOUT.
Optimizations, bug fixing, polish from all departments
SHIP!
That is OVERLY simplified ...
Read moreAny chance you could put the armories in the firing range? Just have endless waves of drones, each harder and harder to kill? Would be a fun training drill and a good test to see how many waves we could beat?
That's a good suggestion! Something worth bringing up to the team!
I have more general questions about the maps if that’s alright.
I’ve noticed that new maps tend to take place on worlds mentioned prior in lore (such as Gaea, where Stormpoint is, being the home world of Caustic). Is there a chance that we could one day see a map on mentioned worlds such as Tartarus, Págos or Nexus?
My second question is in general when it is time to make a new map, what comes first? Where it will be located or it’s setting? Like for Stormpoint, was it already decided to make an island map and Gaea made the most sense for it, or vice versa?
Excellent questions! The Games take place on Syndicate Worlds, so Págos and Nexus would not be considered unless they were to somehow join the Syndicate. That's not to say the Syndicate would never expand (as we saw in Season 8 with Salvo joining.)
As for question #2, new maps are prototyped with a gameplay goal in mind. Level design focuses on the experience with some very light exploration around biomes or themes. As it starts to take shape, the narrative backstory starts to form, visuals and mood boards get put together and those help inform further development of POIs and possibly new gameplay ideas. Design always comes first! We add context and flavor later.
What damage did the storm cause to neighbouring city suotamo? Will we see any future development for cryptos home city
Suotamo has been dealing with blackouts ever since the storm hit and took out the infrastructure. The Energy Banks are running low and it's affecting quite a few districts throughout the city - in particular E-District which is the part of the city that Crypto was originally from. This in turn has caused turmoil in the streets as citizens have begun fighting over what remaining power there is. Wattson's "Project Electro" plans (as seen in her POI) is in reference to E-District and trying to help her friend's neighborhood. I certainly hope we'll see some sort of resolution to the energy crisis in the near future.
I hope it's not too late, but why were the ships removed on broken moon? Specifically the ship by that satellite/beacon poi. Was my favorite area to drop and without the ship, the abex is way way to open.
The ships on Broken Moon are an oversight and will be returned in a future patch. Apologies! Wasn't our intent to see these removed...but you may understand why soon.
This map update had a very long narrative setup: we saw the gathering of the storm on horizon in the second half of season 17, then it became very windy on Storm Point, then the map got completely closed and remained unavailable during entire season 18, including private lobbies. Was this done to make this update feel special and satisfy players who were expecting another completely new map this autumn? Also, did this idea come from the narrative team or from game designers?
That was actually an initiative between maps and narrative. We approached the narrative team with a pitch and we worked out the various stages. We wanted to build anticipation for its return by pulling it out for an entire season (to sell the severity of the storm). Definitely one or more ambitious map setups but we felt it was deserving since the update itself was rather large.
With the storm gone from storm point
Should the map be named "point"?
Fair "point". The region is still known for storms. It's not a matter of "it's gone", it's more a matter of "when will it return?"
Was Storm Point made having competitive in mind? It feels like the most balanced map. Is this by design?
The original designer, Rodney Reece always intended this to be a competitive map and he certainly delivered as it's been an ALGS favorite from day 1.
On Stormpoint as on the other maps, there are work and residential buildings, farms, etc. Where have the people who were there gone? Do they still to work and live here when there are no apex games?
The various buildings you see are of original settlements that predate the city of Suotamo (which is about to celebrate it's 400th birthday!) The island had been abandoned for quite a while and caught the attention of the Mercenary Syndicate as a potential playspace for the Apex Games.
On some of the posts talking about the PVE elements on the map, it sounded like they were going to be fully removed. I am aware that there are definitely still quite a lot around the map. Is there plans to ever fully remove the prowlers or spiders from the map? Thanks
I don't believe prowlers or spiders will ever be fully removed. Part of the fantasy of this map is the PvE feature. A jungle without wildlife just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Is there any plans to add more wildlife to SP? I’ve heard of “goliaths” so is there possibility of boss type wildlife?
There are currently no plans to expand the wildlife variety on Storm Point. Never say never though. If the right encounter makes sense for the map we'd certain entertain the idea.
Are there any secret Easter eggs in Storm point that we haven’t found?
I THINK most Easter Eggs have been found, mostly focused around Wattson's Pylon, but Storm Point still has some small secrets that will be revealed soon.
Where does Wattson get Nessies? Do the Apex games sell them?
The museum giftshop on World's Edge.
What was your decision on the drastic skybox change? The map has a ton of dark shadowy areas now that the sky box is so different.
We wanted players to FEEL that Storm Point changed from every corner of the map, regardless if any geo had changed in that area or not. Changing the skybox instantly reinforces that major change. We also wanted to take the opportunity to further differentiate our maps from each other. We pushed into an earlier time of day compared to other maps and that does bring some darker shadows in spots. We are constantly trying to find the right balance between mood and gameplay visibility. We know there's work to be done and we're finding ways to improve our lighting model along the way.
How does the storm work? It was said when Storm point was initially released that the storm is perpetually active, in which case, does it move around the planet, or does it occasionally die down?
For the most part, storms in this region are constant and predictable. However, this storm was a rare phenomenon. It was a massive surge, the likes of which had never been seen in centuries. Now that the storm has broken, we're seeing a relative calm until things build back up to the familiar cadence the region is known for. This unexpected surge is what caused so much damage to the power infrastructure. The islands supply power to the cities and this island in particular provided power to Suotamo. They weren't prepared to deal with a sudden energy crisis due to the island being offline for so long.
I don't recall seeing any Prowlers since the update.... the problem with them before was that they were a nuisance because they spawned/attacked too regularly, however they complemented the map. Is there any chance we'll see the occasional one roaming the map?
Creatures are still a signature of the map and there are still prowlers that can be found. They are still concentrated around dens to make for predictable engagements so you won't be seeing any strays roaming randomly through the map.
You said in S19 patch notes that the goal of the SP Changes was to find a nice compromise for Pubs & Ranked, do you feel like you’ve met that goal and will you do this with the other Maps in the future? (Olympus, Broken Moon etc;)
We learned a lot with Storm Point and how we approach our map updates. Early indicators suggest that the changes are fairly well received and addressing both Pubs and Ranked. We want to take that momentum and apply those same principals to future map updates. This means deeper analysis, more gathering of feedback and a deliberate approach to our changes. Map updates should feel impactful. That doesn't mean every update will be as large as Storm Point's was, but it SHOULD address a lot of the fundemental issues the map might have. The biggest takeway is that impactful change takes time and we want to give future updates that development time to really resonate with the community. As our map roster increases, we won't be spreading ourselves thin trying to update every map quickly, but rather take a focused and methodical approach instead.