“The goal was to make it look the same as before, but that’s not what happened.”
The developer of Apex Legends, Respawn, has admitted that there is a problem with Legends Bangalore and Caustic after a recent patch significantly weakened the soldiers’ smoking ability.
When Chaos Theory was launched, the team created the particle FX score for legends that obscures the battlefield with smoke, making it easier for players to see through their enemies – and, perhaps more importantly, shoot.
This is especially a big problem for Bangalore, Caustic and Gibraltar as these characters rely on the cover of smoke to support their teammates.
“We’re investigating what happened here,” admitted lead game designer Daniel Klein on the questions on the official subreddit page (thanks, Dexerto). ‘There was a change to the underlying VFX we made with a view to optimization. The goal was to make it look identical to what was there before, but that’s apparently not what happened.
“We will let you know if we know more.”
Klein did not give a time scale, but players hope a solution will come sooner rather than later.
ICYMI, Apex Legends recently achieved a brand new simultaneous user peak on Steam. The free-to-play Battle Royale game – which was released on Steam in November 2020 after nearly 18 months as an EA Origin-exclusive event – hit 198,235 simultaneous players on Steam just a few weeks ago, the highest simultaneous user highlight ever .
The recent increase in new and returning players watching season 8 means that Apex Legends has seen the shooter as the fifth most played game on Steam, making it more popular than GTA 5, Rainbow Six Siege and Team Fortress 2 on a PC.
It was also in the top ten most watched games on Twitch, which meant that more people at the time agreed to watch Apex Legends than FIFA 21, CS: GO and Valheim.