Pro players provided feedback on Apex Legends balance issues

Apex Legends international online qualifier tournaments will be starting from Jan 25, 2020. Pro players shared their concerns over some of the recent updates. This includes weapon balance, muzzle flash, and loot distribution, etc. Here is some feedback that pro players think will make the game more balanced in a competitive environment.

Visual Clutter

• Problem
  Visual clutter shouldn’t block entire enemy target especially in buildings / when leaving RedZone to white, or when looking upward towards the sun – due to lack of aim assist when using mouse and keyboard it is NOT a competitive or enjoyable experience to guess where your enemy is when shooting (golden stabilizer isn’t a reliable source of balance to muzzle flash)
• Solution
  Remove muzzle flash, remove the golden stabilizer, remove red zone flash when leaving, remove sun brightness when looking upward.

Loot Scarcity

• Problem
  Looting an entire building with no gun or armor, multiple low tier loot items stacked on top of each other (ex: 1 pill /=/ 3 white knockdown shields)
• Solution
  Increase ammo count for each ammo box looted by 100% (20 light per box to 40 light per box), increase overall loot density in general (more weapons, armors, ammo, and grenades, etc per building), check suggestion about removing white items from the game to reduce low tier loot / lower overall amount of items in-game.

Related topic: Reddit is going crazy about Respawn not addressing about SBMM

AUDIO

• Problem
  The primary issue is audio stacking – can’t hear footsteps + ziplines + other immediate noise // hearing gunshots at extreme distances forces 3rd party and noise clutter (ex: Watson fences) // self-healing is extremely loud.
• Solution
  Audio for gunshots at extreme distances (fuel depot to the capital city) should be split by zones or at least cut off by structures like mountains.

Cheaters in high level ranked

• Problem
  Cheaters can make new LVL 10 accounts & group with anyone in ranked to get into THEIR lobbies.
• Solution
  If we make it so each rank requires an increased level cap (example: 10 per rank) then low lv accounts won’t be able to group with plat/diamonds/preds to cheat or boost in high-level lobbies.

G7 SCOUT

• Problem
  Damage + Fire rate is too much together
• Solution
  increase time between shots with double tap activated & reduce fire rate of a scout without double-tap.

Golden Armor

• Problem
  Fast heal is too strong and not healthy for the competitive balance of the game.
• Solution
  Give Golden Armor out of combat shield slow regeneration

CHARGE RIFLE

• Problem
  Damage too consistent because of no leg damage + hitscan
• Solution
  add leg damage reduction

COMMUNICATION

• Suggested improvement
  COMMUNICATION – A lot of our frustrations and voices seem to be left in the dark outside the few responses from employees on Twitter/Reddit. A more formal/public response to show awareness of our frustrations would go a long way (example: we are aware the community is fully against muzzle flash being so oppressive and have a roadmap of a possible solution.

A Solo game mode is needed

• Suggested improvement
  People want to be able to drop in-game, loot & shoot without fighting a team of 3 every game or feeling bad about leaving teammates after you die. This is also great for pros that just simply want to practice by themselves.

Add killfeed for dead players spectating

• Suggested improvement
  Not having a killfeed limits players from helping their live teammates & full dead squads also can’t enjoy spectating the game as well because there is no feed.

Looting boxes with controllers

• Problem
  Controller players are forced to stand still while looting.
• Solution
  Using the left and right bumpers to move the character left and right while looting OR other various options.

Golden Backpack

• Problem
  There is no indication of players having a golden backpack or not.
• Solution
  Add a visual + audio cue to revives to characters who have golden backpack equipped.

Horrible Ending Circles

• Problem
  Quite a few circles in this game ended with 70%+ covering areas you can’t go to & others that give extreme advantages to people on height like sniper nest ending + trainyard endings.
• Solution
  These are manual changes for bad endings. Though Respawn recently added some changes to circles.

Limiting the number of throwables held per player

• Problem
  with backpack size, it’s really bad for the game to have players holding 10+ throwables in a competitive environment.
• Solution
  6 throwables total (of any type)

Devotion balancing

• Problem
  The gun can be pre-charged and has too fast of a fire rate for the magazine size.
• Solution
  Slow the fire rate even without turbocharger active or magazine size-reduction.

Landing from Balloons/Geyser Jump

• Problem
  Unable to pull out a gun for too long of a duration
• Solution
  Shorten the amount of time it takes to take out your weapon
  

Pathfinder no audio when landing from grapple / general audio when people land from high elevations

• Pathfinder’s audio issues

• Problem
  This should be a heavily distinguishable sound if a pathfinder lands on top of a truck roof
• Solution
  Make pathfinder have a landing sound when he lands from a grapple OR people making sound in general when they land from high elevations
  

Reverting R-301 random recoil nerf

• Suggested improvement
  R-301 gets completely outclassed by R99 close to mid-range and outclassed by Scout midrange to long-range; while also being outclassed in general by the damage of other guns like Flatline. It has no niche and is less fun to use because of the nerf.

High-Rank lobby threshold increased as the competitive season progresses

• Problem
  Currently, gold/plat/diamond players can get into Apex Predator lobbies while there are already 4,000+ predator players which is an insane skill gap.
• Solution
  This might be okay early on in a season while there are limited players in high ranks but 60+ days into the season it should change to Diamond/Predators only (unless que times become too long)

Wingman default crosshair not aligned properly

Leaving game prompt when all teammates are not dead (gold res shield)

• Problem
  Sometimes players leave the game when their 3rd teammate gets downed because they think they lost which leads to a penalty because your teammate had a gold knockdown shield
• Solution
  Put the leave game prompt in an off-center spot so players don’t spam click through it & also put a reset on the abandon game penalty over the course of time

Changing Attachments

• Problem
  Anvil Receiver to Purple, Select Fire removal (make prowler auto as secondary fire) this would also help with loot table clutter // havoc doesn’t need select-fire, REMOVAL DIGITAL THREAT SCOPES FROM GAME it is not healthy because you have no information of the enemy had one and it denies Bangalore from ever being viable – these 2 scopes are extremely overpowered (maybe specific gold guns can have them like L-Star because it’s unique)
• Solution
  put 4/10 digi on golden snipers or changing tracer color of bullets when people have digital threat equipped.

General Legend Balancing

• Choosing Top 3 character to select before the game starts
• Bloodhound should have a Changing ping ability to be a throwable knife that can be destroyed (like pulse blade) that sticks to a wall and are wallhack pings every few seconds, change ultimate (remove FOV change and noise during the duration of the ultimate), +% towards ultimate every kill bloodhound gets.
• Mirage’s current abilities are underwhelming. If the mirage clone gets shot it does a bloodhound ping on the location of the enemy that stays on them for small duration of time, allow mirage to heal while in stealth ultimate, reduce ultimate cooldown to 2min, remove the audio sound for enemies when mirage deploys a clone (what’s the point of a bamboozle if they can hear the creation of a clone)
• Allow Crypto’s drone to scan pathfinder beacons // remove the self-damage of crypto if he is in the vicinity of his own EMP (this would allow him to be more useful mid-fight instead of teammates fighting 2v3) // EMP only does 50 damage on LOS targets but breaks Watson fences, ultimate, and slows all targets through walls.
• Octane’s Speed boost doesn’t consume HP & doesn’t change FOV (just short cooldown) & change ultimate to be like geyser redeploy that can used for a limited time duration.
• Make Lifeline’s revive shield a toggle option + ****we can talk about heal drone not dying as quickly in the red zone.
• Remove Caustic’s slow effect on teammates + remove gas caustic squad dying.
• Remove Bangalore’s slow effect on teammates.
• Remove Pathfinder’s low profile (+5% damage taken) // test small cooldown increase (1-2 seconds) on the grapple. Pathfinder has one of the biggest hitboxes in the game regardless of his pick rate.

Change the grenade indicator to be more noticeable

• Suggested improvement
  I believe there is a bug where the grenade indicator doesn’t show sometimes as well.

Option to enable auto skin swap when you loot someone else gun

• Suggested improvement
  With so many gun skins offering different scopes/sizes in Apex it is important to have the same skin for competitive reasons. An option to auto-swap to your weapon skin after you pick up someone else gun can help a ton.

Option to re-bind or unbind melee on left click when you don’t have a weapon out

• Suggested improvement
  Getting locked into the melee animation when you are trying to shoot your gun can lead to frustrating deaths

Sensitivity Scaling

• Sensitivity is scaled based on sight.
• Mouse Accel is probably on for all sights >1x (even when off)

These were the main feedback of the pro players around the world. All the stats in the articles were provided by the Apex Legends Pro Feedback by PVPX & Community. This feedback is updated almost periodically to help pro players communicate with the devs.