Ever since Respawn Entertainment launched Apex Legends across all the different platforms such as PC and consoles, only PC players had the ability to loot death boxes and move at the same time.
While this may not sound like a big deal, being able to quickly swap armor from a death box in the heat of the battle can be the difference between winning and losing in this battle royale game. Also, looting is a big part of Apex Legends as it is a battle royale game at its core.
In the current state of the game, Apex Legends supports both mouse/keyboard and controller with aim assist in the same lobby. And with the introduction of cross-play, even PlayStation and Xbox players can join lobbies that are dominated by PC players.
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Due to the game having different input options, general balance becomes a nightmare for developers. One such heated topic is the inability to simultaneously move while looting on the controller. Since moving while looting a death box makes you really difficult to hit as your hitbox keeps moving, PC players can have a slight edge in those close-quarter encounters.
Loot and move with controller
To compensate for this issue, some PC controller players asked Respawn to add the ability to loot and move at the same time by tweaking the current controller input settings. In response, Jordan Rapp, who is a Game Designer at Respawn explained how it’s not exactly as simple as adding a menu option for controller players so that they can use the right stick to loot death boxes.
“We have 16 inputs for controller; that’s a huge obstacle for nuanced problems like this.”, Jordan Rapp on adding additional input for controller players.
Looting and moving was apparently a bug from day one
Also, the devs revealed that moving and looting on PC was actually a bug from day one. Turns out, players aren’t supposed to loot and strafe from left to right at the same time even on PC.
“it’s not as simple as adding a menu option for ‘loot with right stick.’ The fact that the left analog stick moves the cursor when menus are open is very much hardcoded, and adding it (along with other advanced interact controls) requires UI, code, and design support that isn’t a top priority right now for the aforementioned reasons.”, Jordan Rapp further explained.
In short, the dev team is still taking feedback from pro controller players like Snip3down on how to tweak inputs on the controller so that they can be on the same level playing field as mouse/keyboard.
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