Apex Legends dev responds to complaints about War Games event
After Apex Legends players were unhappy with the upcoming War Games event, Respawn Entertainment’s Design Director addressed their concerns.
The next Apex Legends event, War Games, is set to release on April 13. Rather than releasing a separate limited-time mode (LTM), this event will take over the entirety of the game. Over the course of War Games, five modes will take over the normal ‘Play Apex’ playlists and introduce a variety of new mechanics.
However, LTMs aren’t for everyone, so fans are worried about how this event will affect the game. In a detailed Twitter thread, Respawn Entertainment’s Design Director, Jason McCord, addressed players’ concerns about the new event.
“Let’s chat quickly about the War Games event that’s coming next week, and ‘Takeover’ modes,” he began.
He said that for the most part, these Takeover modes keep their matchmaking healthy. “More people jump in to try the modes, earn the cosmetics, etc. – and they all play in the same queues,” McCord explained. “This means you get faster matches at better quality for more hours of the day.”
“Having more players playing in the same queues does amazing stuff to the game ‘feeling’ better,” he continued. “Separate LTMs just split people off. Those queues are smaller, which makes them take longer to start and the matchmaker can’t do its job as well.”
McCord then went on to explain how Apex Legends’ other Takeovers, such as Locked and Loaded and Ring Fury shaped their approach for Takeovers in the future.
What we learned: Takeovers are best when they change the game in positive ways for the player. This seems obvious, but designers like to make new challenges for you to overcome. Like big ring flares! Ring Fury would have made a better LTM than a Takeover, I think.
We looked over the schedule of the War Games event after we heard feedback on Ring Fury. Here’s what we did:
- Remove Flare Up from the event. It was another variant of Ring Fury.
- Removed another mode from the event that wasn’t fulfilling the goals.
We discussed removing Killing Time, because the reduced round timer can be surprising, but we think this mode is important to test. It aims to solve oddly paced games, and it’s something I’ve wanted to try since we launched.
McCord encouraged players to try out each of the new modes and let the devs know what they think. He also reminded players that if they don’t enjoy the new modes in the War Games event, “Ranked is still classic Apex.”
If you’re keen to grind Ranked while the War Games event takes place, you can check out our guide for the best weapons to use in Ranked Apex.
Image Credit: Respawn Entertainment