RobotHavGunz

We have a fix coming in the 23.1 release.

The back story on this bug is actually quite funny. I'm one of the primary engineers on weapon cosmetics. During some random testing that required like super slo-mo playback, I noticed that when you do a dry reload, there's still a cartridge in the magazine, which of course there shouldn't be. Turns out this was universally true. There was just one model for the mags, and they all had cartridges in them, so we could use the same mag model for the ejected mag as well as for the new one. But that's just ... wrong. So we started fixing this, so a dry reload has a fully empty mag and a wet reload will have a cartridge in the mag. We're still fixing all the guns and not sure of final ETA. So if you dry reload and still see a cartridge in the ejected mag, that's why. Might also be some animation work on some guns needed as well. But we're getting there. But it is something we're fixing. Anyway, in the process of fixing this and setting u...

So I'll share a movement story that goes way back to TF. Hilariously, it's actually captured in the MSFT support threads - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/xbox/forum/all/the-dead-zone/389fd425-1184-4b27-b7c3-157ed72762c0

Here are examples of the dead zones on the controller. The dead zone is on EVERY game on the Xbox one, besides Titanfall.

This is absolutely true. Microsoft actually had some real problems with the outer sections of the thumb sticks on the Xbox One. In the most notable example, the input map was a square rather than a circle, so the very outer edges of the sticks just got lost. It was actually Respawn devs who discovered this, because they kept running in...

Thank you so much for this. These posts mean so much. I've shared it a bunch internally because this is just such a wonderful sentiment.

Devs do actually want players to feel rewarded

Yes! Yes we do!!

Katar - three customizations in total across all legends:

For example:

• Set 1 - Wraith, Horizon, Caustic
• Set 2 - Lifeline, Gibby
• Set 3 - Maggy, Seer

if you update set 1, those changes will apply to ALL legends that have set 1 equipped.

Karambit - any legend can equip any one of the colors you own. No swapping required.

For example:

• Lifeline - green
• Wraith, Bangalore - red
• Maggy - blue
• Caustic, Catalyst - grey
• Seer, Bloodhound - yellow

Changes you make to one legend will have no effect on other legends.

Customizable weapons are definitely on the table. See the Serpent's Sting with the kill counter. Will we do another Katar-esque weapon? I really don't know. We're experimenting a lot right now and seeing what player's actually seem to want. I certainly hope we do another weapon like the Katar where you can mix-and-match - and I definitely built the system expecting we would. But it's really up to players to help guide us there.

Color customization is super interesting. I wouldn't be allowed to say if it's something we're actively exploring, but I doubt it would surprise anyone if I said it's something that we've discussed. I know that's a sh*tty non-answer. But also hope you can understand why I couldn't just say yes/no.

I knew a response like was coming, but I nevertheless want to take some time to answer this. As I said, the overwhelming majority of those 18 months was creative work - concept art, 3d models, vfx, animation, sound fx, etc. These are not the folks who work on any of what players rightly pinpoint as core issues. An animator isn't going to work on anti-cheat. A VFX artist isn't going to dive into the nuances of matchmaking. A concept artist isn't going to unravel why footstep audio sometimes doesn't play.

Even among technical folks, there's specialization. Most of my expertise within Apex is on meta-game systems - challenges, cosmetics, stats, progression systems, etc. I would like to believe I'm capable enough to contribute in other areas - and I certainly have, but most of my expertise is in these systems. I've done work across a lot of different parts of the game - I was part of the team that made core changes to Ranked to make it easier for us to flag and revok...

Just to give some context on the Karambit vs the Katar from a development standpoint. The Katar was a close to 18mo project that necessitated building a lot of entirely new systems from the ground up. But most of the work in that time was creative work, making all the unique variants. I was the technical lead on that project, and it was arguably one of the most interesting things I've worked on in my four years on Apex. But it was also resource intensive enough - especially in terms of things that don't automatically scale like modeling, vfx, animation, etc - that it wasn't clearly worth it to you the players to do again versus putting those resources elsewhere.

The tech is there to have made the Karambit customizable like the Katar. But the actual humans who do the creative work of making those intricate designs do not scale in the same way as the code. A lot of the tech we built for the Katar is being reused by some of these newer Legend-agnostic heirlooms. But a lot of i...

all the time. this community is invaluable in so many ways. Speaking for myself, there have been numerous times when folks here have helped me rapidly debug an issue, allowing me to fix it much faster than I might have otherwise. Again speaking just personally, the hardest part is when I'm asked a question that I know the person asking knows I can't really answer. Absolutely I understand the frustration with certain things. I don't know what a question like, "are you going to fix [insert really big and complex issue here]?" is meant to achieve. But I also feel bad not addressing those questions, because I don't think we should shy away from those discussions. Those are hard conversations that require a lot of grace and empathy from both sides, and that is just really hard on the internet.

Yes. That's what I was referring to here:

The bug I remember was the BR win streak badge counted arenas by accident

That's the only big I remember with any of the streak badges 

I know we played other squad sizes when Arenas was being developed. But so much of apex is based around trios that I don't think there was a ton of investment in larger groups. But maybe with more varied squad size modes now it might play better. 

As a player I'd love to see arenas come back too. I played it almost exclusively for about three seasons. Still nothing quite like it. But I really have no idea. I don't work much on game modes stuff. I do mostly meta games systems. But I can say there are certainly still a lot of arenas fans. Both among the player base and internally. Arenas at its best was something truly special. Sudden death wins and losses were some of the hardest hitting games I've ever had. 

Can confirm there are a few legit 100 win badges. Not many - and I don't have the exact count offhand. But there certainly were a few. I remember the first one, we were tracking it internally ourselves waiting to see if the player would get it. Was pretty cool when it happened. Makes me want to go dig up who it was. I don't think this badge was ever bugged. The bug I remember was the BR win streak badge counted arenas by accident. 

acknowledged. we're on it.

The drop rate of shards is decoupled from the 500 pack guarantee. I.e., the drop rate is not 1/500. We keep track in the backend to ensure that if you have opened 499 packs and have not gotten shards, on your 500th pack you are *guaranteed* to get shards. This then resets that counter, as does receiving shards purely at random from a pack.

The guarantee was part of the level cap raise to 2000. If you reach level 2000, you are guaranteed to get 544 packs just from the standard progression flow. And because of that, you are therefore guaranteed to get shards. But it's the 2000 level cap, not the old 500 level cap.

easy enough to add in a Legend-specific craftable stat for wins-with-legend. I will ask about that. Certainly the data is there.

The other stuff - the image customization - is not possible (currently). These are just flat TGAs. We don't have a system to "skin" them. I mean, it's computers, so anything is theoretically possible, but that's like a major undertaking to basically make those images dynamic. Not that such a thing wouldn't be cool. It'd also allow us to do a longstanding request, which is that in-game squad banners reflect your skin. Same reason we haven't done that is the same reason we couldn't do this. It's just a big chunk of work to make something like that happen. Also same reason we can't pull the characters out of the art. Yes, certainly possible - it'd be like a much more involved version of the pose capture system for glad cards - but there are important differences between a 3D image capture and a 2D image capture. Definitely not plug-n-play there. And ...

I literally just got the ok. Changing it at this very moment to go in descending order. It'll go out with 22.1 patch.

I honestly do not know. I think we're hoping to see now that they system is so much more flexible what players actually want to do with this space. Like, now that this new form of customization exists, how do players use it? Now that you can use whatever art you want, what stats do you actually want to display?

Yes. The reverse sort on seasons is one of those things that I have no good answer as to why it hasn't been done. I remember one of my longtime squadmates reminding me how strange it is that it goes in ascending rather than descending order

I'll make a task to follow up on this.

please believe me when I say, I hear you...

Yeah, there are a bunch of places we need to add filtering. Weapon charms is the hardest to scroll and really needs the most work overall, but ideally we'd like to have a somewhat consistent setup for filtering.

We actually had it spec'ed out for this release - a single toggle filter like badges locked/unlocked, but we couldn't decide on *what* the actually filter should be. Our initial idea was seasonal/non-seasonal, but I don't know if that makes the most sense to players. I think we'll get feedback.

It was actually super overwhelming at first. That's when I was like, "whoa, I need to add some categories." But I think we could add more granularity. I did hope that the categorization into the three chunks would make the absence of filtering less painful, though yes to your point about it being a lot of scrolling...

Closer to four years actually. I pitched this on literally my first day at work - Dec 1, 2020. And kept annoying people about how we should do it. Finally they let me build it, probably at least in part to shut me up! :D For me, the main driver is that I'm bad, so my kills/wins/damage stats are ... not very good. So I wanted to be able to link something that wasn't purely skill based - Legend abilities are my personal favorite - but I also wanted the kick ass art. My original idea had more customization on the stats side, which I'd still like to do eventually, but it's a much tougher nut to crack on the UIUX side than this.

Glad you like it. And as for the suggestion, well, I think there's no real ownership of obviously good ideas!