The battle royale genre is known for its consistent updates and meta-tweaking and the popular title Apex Legends has recently received some big changes. With the launch of season 10, developer Respawn Entertainment has added new weapons, skins, and a new playable legend Seer, who may already be needing some tweaks to his abilities.
Apex Legends attempts to stand out from other battle royale titles by having its character have multiple abilities. Seer is a legend with a focus on recon abilities; one of his passive abilities allows him to reveal the next circle for his squad while the other allows him to see enemy heartbeats. His tactical ability sees the character use drones to send out an energy wave that interrupts enemies and reveals their locations and health bars. Finally, Seer’s ultimate ability has him create a large sphere that will also show enemy positions as long as players are in said sphere. With Apex Legends being a competitive FPS, it’s easy to see how knowing enemy positions can give players a substantial advantage in a firefight.
Respawn Entertainment decided to hold an AMA on the Apex Legends Reddit page to gather information from players about the launch of the new Apex Legends season, and feedback was mixed. Many users thought that the new playable character Seer is much too powerful in his current form. It seems Respawn agrees as well, with gameplay designer RSPN-Travis stating on the Reddit AMA that Seer has launched too strong and will be receiving balance updates in a future patch.
RSPN-Travis also states that they intended for new legend Seer to be powerful at launch - not broken. He admits that game balance and meta is always going to be a moving target that requires tweaking and the team does do extensive testing to make sure things hit the mark.
While Seer and the launch of season 10 may not have gone as smoothly as players would have hoped, it’s encouraging to see a development team that takes the time to communicate and be transparent with their community. Competition is in the battle royale genre is fierce and with other titles like Call of Duty: Warzone currently battling excessive hackers, Respawn Entertainment could be using this time to try and capture some disenchanted players for Apex Legends.
This isn’t the first time the game has been criticized, like when Apex Legends players complained about the latest update size, nor is it the only game in the genre with such issues. The game still has its loyal player base and if Respawn can quickly and effectively rebalance the title it will go a long way in showing that they do in fact listen to their players.
Apex Legends is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. A next-gen version is expected for PS5 and Xbox Series S/X sometime this year.