Respawn has finally released an update today that has fixed the "whoosh" sounds that Apex Legends players could hear during matches, mainly in the Ring Fury LTM. The audio bug was caused by players repeatedly walking through the bubble of the new Heat Shield item which made a loud sound that seemingly everyone else in the match could hear.
The new Heat Shield survival item was added as part of the Chaos Theory collection event, along with the escalating Ring Fury LTM. While Ring Fury has not been as well received as other LTMs, the previous Locked and Loaded LTM received a lot of positive feedback, and players calling for its ruleset to become the default in Apex Legends.
The Heat Shield audio bug was most noticeable in the Ring Fury LTM since all players start with two Heat Shields in their survival inventory slots for each match to help against the threat of the ring flares. Apex Legends players took to Reddit to ask about the sound and realized that this was a game-wide bug affecting all players. Soon after, many players started saying it made the game unplayable, including prominent Apex Legends professional players and streamers, such as LuluLuvely and Nokokopuffs.
Problems persisted in the Ranked playlist too, eventually leading to Heat Shields being removed from the mode until further notice. Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier previewed the patch notes for the hotfix on Twitter, showing players that several other issues, such as problems with Loba’s bracelet and some missing Legend skin textures, would also be sorted in the hotfix, which went live earlier today.
It seems that the Apex Legends community has really been whipped up into a frenzy because of this extremely annoying bug. Now that Season 8 has been going for over a month, players are starting to get bored of Kings Canyon despite its expansion. The Ring Fury LTM has apparently been a bit of breaking point for many players, and has only exacerbated some of their current issues with Apex Legends, especially the fact that it removed Olympus from the map rotation and leaves players with Ranked play as the only alternative.
While Respawn’s rapid response to game issues and transparency with the community has been excellent to see regarding balance updates, many players are still unhappy with changes brought in with Season 8 and the Chaos Theory event. With a new Ranked split coming soon, this time featuring Olympus, and teases for Season 9 already coming from developers, Apex Legends players should hopefully be able to quickly forget about the woes of Ring Fury once it leaves.
Apex Legends is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.