Despite being weeks into season 13 and having multiple rounds of bug fixes go live on multiple platforms, Apex Legends still has some serious issues with the game not working as intended. This time around, the biggest bugs in the game revolve around hit registration.
Hit registration is fairly simple in concept: It’s a conversation between your game and the server that you and everyone else in your game is playing on. When a player shoots an enemy, proper hit reg ensures that those bullets register as hits to the enemy, and the enemy takes the corresponding damage associated with those shots.
That’s not happening very well in Apex at the moment.
Streamer and former TSM coach Martin “gdolphn” Skrydstrup captured the issue perfectly. You can see his shots landing on an enemy Wraith and even hear the sound design of the game working as the game projects the sound of bullets hitting an enemy with shields. But the actual damage doesn’t register from an entire magazine of gdolphn’s Havoc rifle.
Sometimes, high ping in online play can be the culprit of hit reg issues, but that’s not the case here, either. Gdolphn displays his game’s technical performance numbers in the top right and his game hovers right around 20 ping for the entire fight, while showing no packet loss, either. Of course, players who’ve spent time grinding Apex can easily tell you that the hit reg issues surrounding Wraith aren’t due to any one player’s internet connection.
Apex has already had to address issues with Wraith still taking damage while using the phase abilities that are supposed to make her invulnerable, as well as an exploit some Xbox players could use to crash entire lobbies and avoid losing points in the game’s ranked mode. But these ongoing hit reg issues prevent players from enjoying fair and competitive games.
Competitive integrity is also a massive question for the game’s pro scene, with the $2 million Apex Legends Global Series Championship happening in just over a month. And hit reg isn’t the only problem pros are facing, either. Custom lobbies, which are used to host tournaments, haven’t worked properly since the beginning of season 13.
If players can’t rely on servers to register the damage they do to an opponent, or simply to remain stable for a single match, how can they have faith that the biggest tournament in the history of Apex will be legitimate and fair for all players?
At all levels of play, hit reg issues threaten the game’s popularity and momentum. And if these issues persist much longer, it could spell serious trouble for Apex.
