After Respawn Entertainment unveiled the patches for the Season 7 Fight Night Collection Event, Apex Legends players took to Twitter to express their concern that the game relies too heavily on Legend abilities.
Character abilities have always been a core pillar of Respawn’s design philosophy around Apex Legends. Each legend has their own set of special abilities that set them apart from the others and the developer works hard to ensure that all characters remain fun and balanced.
Despite the impact that capabilities have on Apex, Respawn’s BR experience is gun-based at the same time. Senior game designer Daniel Klein explained this on Reddit by saying, “you can learn to be good at controlling the Flatline, and now you’re good at controlling the Flatline with any character.”
With the Pathfinder-themed Fight Night event scheduled to launch January 5, Respawn has released their patch notes for the update. After seeing what the developers were planning with the adaptation of Legend capabilities, several Apex proponents expressed their concerns on Twitter.
Apex must stop using Legends abilities, otherwise I will not even know what game I am playing
– TSM Snip3down (@ Snip3down) 1 January 2021
TSM’s Eric ‘Snip3down’ Wrona criticized Respawn for using Legend abilities to the extreme. The professional player has expressed concern that, if he adds more skill mates, “he will not even know what game I am playing anymore.”
Several other professional Apex players responded to Snip3down’s tweets in line, including TSM’s Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen and Sentinels’ Nathan “retzi” Telen. Retzi joked that ‘we will not be able to recognize it [Apex] through all the gas ”refers to changes in Caustic that the community is dissatisfied with.
Snip3down responds to ‘retzi’ and explains that he agrees with changes in the meta, but argues that ‘we do not continue to give each character the Gibby treatment where we buff until you almost have him.’
Apex is actually being monitored at this rate. Used to be the one who can shoot the hardest now, who can use their abilities the best
– ceryal (@ceryal_) 1 January 2021
Fellow professional player Andrew ‘Ceryal’ Vargas tweeted similar concerns. The pro and streamer noted that Apex is actually becoming a watchdog with all the recent lovers of Legend capabilities at this pace. ‘
Popular Apex streamer Diego ‘diegosaurs’ Raymond Navarrette responded to Ceryal’s Tweet in agreement. He joked that ‘I feel like I’m [Soldier] 76 and all the others are Roadhog, ”referring to a very unbalanced meta – something that Overwatch players have dealt with many times.
Although some reactions to Ceryal and Snip3down’s reports were negative, the majority of the community seems to agree with their sentiments. While buffs from Legends like Rampart can be seen as Respawn to make her more viable, players have yet to go to the additional Caustic buffs that are in the offing.
yes except that it gets to the point where i feel like im 76 and everyone else is roadhog and playing these fat boys with fucking mastiffs lmfao
– diego (@diegosaurs) 1 January 2021
Ceryal’s comparison of Apex with Overwatch is, in fact, the opposite of the attitude that Respawn had previously identified in terms of game balancing. In the same season 7 Reddit thread where he discussed the Flatline, Klein also mentioned Overwatch specifically.
“Overwatch is primarily a skill-based game, and Apex is primarily a gun-based game,” he said in response to Legend Balancing. After discussing the differences, Klein moved on to his point regarding the Flatline and the importance of focusing the game around gun balance.
It seems that the professional Apex scene thinks Respawn has strayed too far from their original design philosophy. The developer did not respond to any post at the time of writing, and it remains to be seen if they will return any of the Fight Night balancing changes based on community feedback.