Apex Legends Dev Tracker

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 wa...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Josh is my favorite because when he’s around you never know what to expect. Pure chaotic energy. You need an adventurous spirit to withstand long exposure to Medina.

Yes, I can confirm if we might see more new LTMs in the coming months or not

There aren’t any current plans to do events similar to War Games. Squeezing multiple modes into 1 event ends up multiplying the work more than it can seem for everyone involved. Lots of work going in close together and many things to test and verify stability. If we consider something like War Games again, it would probably need to rely more on established modes and add 1-2 new, lower scope modes to play

Hello r/ApexLegends! We’ve already done our first AMA alongside the Beast of Prey update (ICYMI: link here). Are you ready for round 2?!

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We’re always prototyping new ideas and working on things at different stages of development. There is certainly a chance that we see more LTMs with the respawning mechanic in the future!

I tend to not really have favorites for anything in general. I will call out Vlaada Chvatil though as maybe my favorite board game designer? He’s got such a wide range of games and they are all great. Tons of respect for his work

I can sometimes get into and really love a heavy game like Twilight Imperium (Eclipse is good too). Through the Ages is another one of my top heavier games. I love the economic engine aspect and building up my civ. Lighter games will hit the table more and can end up being a favorite more consistent option. I always bring Love Letter with me to board game sessions, because it’s such a good game and so easy to fit into your game night. I’ll play anything with worker placement or deck building mechanics. Some of my other favorites in no particular order - RftG, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Factory Manager, Terra Mystica, Suburbia, Agricola, Space Alert, Everdell

I think Gun Run could definitely exist in previous seasons! Gun balance can shift as updates are made from patch to patch, but it doesn’t influence choice of LTMs too strongly. For Gun Run specifically, it’s mostly considering what weapons are in or out of the air drop and how that affects the weapon track, if at all.

Hey Hexedz, this is a good question! I would say there are multiple ways to approach it.

It can range from a small singular goal, like “BR but with X” to a grand new mode idea that takes the Legends, weapons and everything and puts them in a new format. In some ways, I’d argue that all of our LTMs use base Apex mechanics but of course there are some changes here and there that aren’t just mode rules changes. Mechanics like fast healing in Winter Express, or auto healing in Control can sometimes be surprising how drastic it actually changes up combat or the feel of the game. You’ll learn the pacing of combat, react to cues like shields cracked, get a sense of when to push and then have that intuition thrown off with something like fast healing. When trying to strike that balance and keep it feeling like Apex, we end up playtesting a lot and iterating to get it right.

Know we're coming up on time, but keep an eye out for more answers to trickle in. Try as he might to speedrun this, Rob is just one person at the end of the day! But we're going to hang around and tackle more of these great questions you all are asking over the next little bit.

There isn't necessarily a hard line here. Like you said, we have some modes that have a very different structure or rules compared to other modes, and some that are similar and just a variation off the base. For me, the difference between LTM or Takeover just comes down to if it is an additional playlist or “takes over” Trios and replaces it during it’s run.

Originally, we were thinking of ending it with melee, but even if it was lethal melee it didn’t feel right combined with Apex’s movement. We wanted something difficult but achievable, with some range but optimal at short range. Throwing knife fit the bill and was prototyped really early on in development. /u/RSPN_Jello took the arc star, removed the explosion and upped the initial hit. We loved it right away and started concepting the final visual design

When you're engaged in combat in most other modes in the game, it’s pretty common to empty your gun and swap to your secondary to finish the kill. In Gun Run, you don’t have a secondary to swap to though. With more armor, you end up in a goofy reload dance while staring into your enemy's eyes—or someone else steals your kill. With white armor, you can get into that nice flow of kill->new gun->kill->new gun etc

It can vary quite a bit. A brand new mode that doesn’t share a lot with other modes can easily be a year or more. Smaller LTMs, like say Armed and Dangerous which is mostly just changing what loot spawns and what loot is available, can be much quicker to get going. Once they're up and running, we dedicate resources as needed for liveops and maintenance purposes.

Sometimes! We’ve done this in the past with things like EVO armor and I wouldn’t be surprised if we ran more BR LTMs that influence baseline BR in the future