Apex Legends Dev Tracker

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Ditto on the Legends side.

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

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.

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 re...

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. Th...

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

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.

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

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.

Will there EVER be a wraith tweak? - Absolutely.

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.

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...