Earlier this week, Respawn announced plans for the next Apex Legends season. Apex Legends: Takeover will see some big changes, but arguably none bigger than the list of buffs and nerfs. That list includes all buffs and zero nerfs. It's the first time in the game's history that Respawn is going ham and letting players jump into battle royale with only buffed-up weaponry and it sounds like it's going to make for a more exciting experience.
To learn more, Shacknews was invited to Sapporo, Japan for the conclusion of the Apex Legends Global Series season. There, I had a chance to speak with Lead BR Designer Eric Canavese. We talked about many of the changes coming to Apex Legends with the Takeover season, as well as some of the action at the ALGS Year 4 Championship.
(Editor's note: The following interview was conducted on Friday, January 31, prior to the ALGS Year 4 Championship Match Point finals.)
Source: Electronic Arts
Shacknews: Apex Legends is heading into year six. A lot has changed over that time. So where do you feel the matter is right now, specifically in regards to a weapon balance?
Eric Canavese, Lead BR Designer: The weapon balance is in a very interesting place. Weapon meta is often driven very heavily by the Legend meta and Legend compositions. And right now we see a lot of wall play, we see a lot of Gibraltar bubbles, and all that stuff sort of leads us into a very shotgun-heavy meta. And we're seeing that here in ALGS, but that's not to say that our long-range weapons are sleeping, with the changes that we've made in 23.1 by adding the accelerator hop-up baked into a number of weapons. It's made marksman rifles and those kind of weapons have some more relevance than they've had previously.
I would say that we're in a pretty fun and interesting meta at the moment, but all of that is about to change heading into Season 24. In Season 24, we've taken a big whack at our weapon meta and have sort of upended it. I think there's going to be a lot of interesting things for players to find and new metas for them to crack into.
Shacknews: Speaking of Season 24, you're going to introduce a new Arsenals system. Explain how this new system works.
Canavese: Arsenals are a new weapon station that we've peppered across the map. There's many of them to find, multiple in each POI. The locations of the arsenals are static, so they'll be in the same spots every time you load into a match, but the ammo type that they provide is random every game. So [players will] choose an ammo type and provide all of the weapons from that ammo type. Then you'll be able to grab one, grab some ammo, and they also provide a quick little upgrade to the. You can interact with them and grab an optic if you're missing one, or get an upgraded attachment for them to get you a little bit farther ahead in your loot game, and you're ready for combat a little bit faster so the players can always find the weapons that they want to find.
You can open your map or see them from the dropship so that you can make a smart choice on where you drop, so that you're able to play with your favorite weapons or the weapons that you're most comfortable with.
Shacknews: What sorts of balance challenges do you anticipate from introducing Arsenals?
Canavese: I think the thing that we are looking at the closest as soon as the Arsenals drop is, well, dropping on the Arsenals. So the first time, are you really able to deterministically grab the gun that you want right off the bat? The iteration process to get them tuned and balanced into the state that they are when they drop was quite extensive. We tried many different iterations that challenged what it means to first land in a game of Apex.
To achieve what we think is a good first stab at the Arsenals tuning is lowered ammo count in the beginning of the game that as the game progresses, you'll end up being able to get more ammo. You'll be able to get more potent attachments as the game progresses after Bin reset. And this is just a design to make it so that you're not slingshotting super far ahead and on an early drop. You'll still need to go scrounge up some ammo. You'll have enough to be in a little bit of a skirmish, but it's not enough to carry you through the game. You still have to definitely loot.
The final thing that we did to try to make it an interesting choice and not like a "must do" is we put them in locations that are more outer cover and they're a little bit more dangerous than it would be if you were to, say, go into a building and start looting in through there. You've kind of got this choice that you have to weigh between, you know, "Do I want the guns that I want? And that's kind of all I'm going to get right here? Or do I want to get some meds, get more ammo, get a better variety of weaponry, get better attachments by leaving that more dangerous spot and going into the buildings and into the normal looting paths you would have applied?"
Shacknews: Balance is often associated with nerfs. When people hear the word "balance," they think, "Ok, what's getting buffed, but mostly what's getting nerfed?" So what does it mean to you as a man in your position to get to buff every single weapon in the game?
Canavese: It's a pretty wonderful thing to be able to do. We know, as developers, that buffs are the most exciting thing. Buffs are what get people excited when they read patch notes. Buffs are... if you're a gamer, it's very special when your main weapon or your main Legend gets a buff, because the thing that you already like is now going to perform even better. I think that it's a very unique moment in Apex's history where every single person is going to read these patch notes and hopefully say, "My favorite gun got buff, this is exciting. I'm going to be able to do more with it."
It's really wonderful. I've been doing weapon meta on Apex for five or six years now and we've never been able to do this. There's always been like an ebb and a flow, between what comes up and what goes down. This is the first time we've said, across the board, to match the rising tide of player skill and all of the amazing legend abilities and capabilities that players have developed over the years that it's time to bring weapons up to that same watermark and have them be a little bit more lethal, so that the game feels a bit more punctuated and conflicts are resolving a little bit faster.
Shacknews: How do you expect the player base to react to the removal of white, blue, and purple helmets in BR?
Canavese: I expect players will read that we've put it in the patch notes, say "Oh, that's interesting," and then promptly forget that they ever existed. I think that the helmets, while a defensive piece of loot, I don't really think anybody's ever said, "Whoa! Cool! A helmet!" unless it was the gold helmet. I'm very aware of that.
It's always good to have pieces of loot to chase in our game, but I do think that the helmets that we had fell a little bit short. It was very difficult to understand if it was even doing anything for you. It made the headshot and damage capabilities of weapons a little bit muddy. You couldn't really understand what the total damage potential with a weapon because you don't know what level the enemy's helmet was. I think this is going to make the damage and everything else feel a lot cleaner, a lot easier for players to understand, and hopefully improve learning and the ability to say, "Ok, if I tap a headshot and two body shots with this gun, I know I'm going to get the down." And I think that that's going to create a really interesting space that we haven't seen for Apex weapons. I think players are really going to enjoy the removal of some of the clutter in the loot space.
Shacknews: I'm talking to you here on ALGS championship weekend. It's a good time to ask, how does ALGS and the pro player base help provide a basis for what needs balancing in Apex Legends?
Canavese: We try to talk with our community and our professional community as much as we can and gather their insights, have them playtest matches for us to get as much high-level feedback as possible. They're an infinite well of feedback and they have so many opinions when it comes to Apex balance, but it's not the only source of feedback that we use to make our decisions.
When we're here and we're watching the peak version of a player use our toolbox, our sandbox in these ways, this is not something that we can do ourselves. When we playtest for the game, it does not look like an ALGS match, I can promise you that. So we need their feedback and their help to understand. When you are flawlessly executing with these Legends and with these weapons, what does it look like? We see this on stage here today that the compositions are all fairly similar. And so, we look at that and we say, "How do we break that up? How do we how do we make fun and exciting meta changes that challenge the status quo, prevent staleness, and prevent repetitive things, so the game is always feeling fresh and interesting?"
We use them as a as a benchmark to say, "Well, if this is the best, how do we how do we make other things compete with the best so that the game is always feeling like there's something new to discover?"
Shacknews: What does it mean to the team to bring ALGS to Japan? What does it mean to you for Apex Legends to be as big in Japan as it is?
Canavese: It is very difficult to describe. It's an incredibly humbling experience to come here and see the fans. We sit at our computers back home and it becomes very easy to not think about the millions of people that celebrate this game. I'm incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to come to Japan and see the reception, see how all of the people, even the people that you wouldn't expect. I've had multiple taxi drivers say, "Are you with Apex? That's amazing!" They tell me their mains, they tell me what they like and love about the game, they tell me what they want to be buffed or nerfed, and I've never experienced anything else like that where the game seeps outside of these clusters that we've put together. And you see that when your server at a restaurant has got an Apex pin on and you're like, "Whoa, that's insane!"
It's just something very unreal, the thing that we are fortunate enough to work on every day and pour our passions into, and have that kind of mirrored back to us by the community. It's an experience of a lifetime. I can absolutely say that this is something I'm going to remember forever and I'm so happy to be in Japan and see all of the amazing things that the ALGS team has put together to help celebrate the competitive scene.
Apex Legends: Takeover will begin on Tuesday, February 11. To learn more, check out our recent preview.
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replyOzzie Mejia posted a new article, Apex Legends Lead BR Designer talks about weapon buffs, helmet removal, and more
