Good news, Apex Legends fans. The battle royale’s time-to-kill is going back to normal.
Apex design director Jason McCord broke down the team’s decision to revert armor values today after widespread complaints from players and pros. The change should hit all platforms today.
“From the start of Apex Legends development, one of our core pillars was that getting the drop on someone should give those players a significant advantage,” McCord said. “We aimed to promote strategy in battlefield positioning and map control. When these tactics were executed well, but a team still outplayed you because of mechanical skill – this felt bad.”
After the season six Evo Armor changes, internal playtests showed players were hitting Red Armor more often. Since more experienced players were running around with 225 total health, “good players were able to outplay teams more consistently, even if the enemy had worked for a much better position,” according to McCord.
Respawn devs felt lowering the armor values by 25 would compensate for players being able to hit Red Armor more often. And since feedback was positive from the internal playtests, the change eventually hit the live servers. But the Apex community didn’t share the same philosophy on the changes.
McCord admits that Respawn isn’t “always going to get things right,” but says it’s important to “listen and correct things” when it doesn’t go well.
