The story of Apex Legends is fascinating. It came from Respawn Entertainment, who made the team shooter as a spinoff of sorts to their mech shooter hit, Titanfall. The irony was two-fold on that front. First, unlike the two main titles in that other franchise, this series dropped out of nowhere on mobile platforms and was dropped for free! The other irony was that this shooter game was MUCH more successful than their other one. Who could’ve guessed? Since then, it’s been one of the main things they’ve focused on, and they’ve done over 20 seasons of content for players.
While that kind of longevity is to be praised, it can also come with serious problems. After all, when you release a new game, just about everyone’s on an even footing. After many years and multiple seasons, that starts to change. As noted by The Gamer, Respawn Entertainment is using Season 22 to try and do “sweeping” changes within the game to make things fairer and more fun. Lead Game Designer Josh Mohan noted this when he said:
“With [Season] 22, part of the philosophy is, can we bring that wider shakeup to the game more frequently throughout the year, at a midpoint as well as the anniversary?”
One key thing that he’s focusing on with his crew is bridging the skill gap between players. After all, no one picking up the game for the first time wants to go up against an expert who knows every nook and cranny of the title. So, they’re making tweaks to help with that.
Furthermore, they’re trying to fix weapons that no one uses to make them more effective:
“We really wanted to take basically dumpster tier weapons – weapons you get rid of as soon as you find something, anything, that isn’t them, you pretty much swap them – and we really wanted to see a world where people were actually finishing games with P2020s and Mozambiques.”
Oh, and for those who want to enjoy Apex Legends while using a controller, they’re trying to work on that, too:
“As we move forward, we’ll be continuing to improve and continuing to look at more holistic ways to make the whole experience of using a controller – and that cross-input lobby – just feel good, feel better, and feel competitive.”
So, if nothing else, Respawn Entertainment is trying to make things better, which is more than we can say about EA, who tried to make people pay more for less in the game recently.
