Apex Legends update: Latest patch notes

Respawn on Updates

Respawn's Approach to Updates 

In Apex Legend's season 1 update, Respawn set out how it hopes to handle updating its characters and weapons:

"Our goal is to make less frequent, better tested, higher impact changes, so it minimizes the effects on your time spent mastering a particular mechanic, weapon, character, etc.," writes the update, which was co-authored by four Respawn developers. "You shouldn't have to read our patch notes every few days just to keep up with how characters and weapons now work … We know y'all are putting a ton of time into the game and mastering every nuance (like Wraith portalling people off cliffs for the final kill lolz)."

As Apex's Season 2 approaches, Respawn has remained committed to the pace it set early on. Executive producer Drew McCoy told USgamer "Most people don't realize how long it takes to make anything" and "We're thinking years ahead at this point." McCoy also said that Respawn won't be making an Apex Legends 2, opting instead to nurture the existing game with updates in the long term.

The studio also shared a key detail around how it thinks about weapon balance. Respawn's goal isn't to make every gun equally viable ("We love y’all’s ‘Bique memes, so we’re hesitant to lose that,") but to deliberately build power differences between the game's weapons in order to create meaningful, fun discrepancies. "Our goal is to have a power curve of weapons," writes Respawn.

"'Power curve' just means that some weapons will be weaker and more common, while others will be stronger and rarer. Some weapons are intentionally less powerful until fully purp’d [purple tier, level three] with hopups and attachments, while other weapons on the bottom of the power curve are your early game, better-than-melee, but-gotta-upgrade-out-of-ASAP weapons. We’ve seen some good feedback from players about how to make these pistols more exciting without losing out on the goal above that we’re listening to. We’ll be continuing to watch player data and feedback and trying things out internally but for now, they’ll remain the same."

Respawn Bans Cheaters

When Respawn added its widely-requested reporting tool to Apex Legends in the March 19 Season One update, almost half a million players had already been banned for using such cheats. As of May 2nd, the studio says that a total 770,000 players have been banned, partly off the back of this new reporting system. 

As it released this figure, Respawn underlined its commitment to stamping out cheaters. "We take cheating in Apex incredibly serious and have a large amount of resources tackling it from a variety of angles. It is a constant war with the cheat makers that we will continue to fight,"  writes Respawn community manager Jay Frechette. "We’ve been working closely with key experts across EA including: EA Security and Fraud, the Origin teams, our fellow developers at DICE, FIFA, and Capital Games, in addition to Easy-Anti-Cheat." 

Respawn also shared these related statistics: 

•  We have blocked over 300K account creations 
•  We have banned over 4,000 cheat seller accounts (spammers) in the last 20 days
•  Total affected matches on PC impacted by cheaters or spammers has been reduced by over half in the last month due to recent efforts

1.2 Patch notes: June 4, 2019

KNOWN ISSUES

“Teamwork” and “Bonus Round” Badges

• We are working on a server side patch for these ASAP.

PlayStation sign-in bug for new players

• [affects Playstation only] There is an issue with some brand new players that do not already have an EA account linked to PSN being unable to sign into the game. We’re working a fix for this to get out ASAP.

KINGS CANYON UPDATES

• Thunderdome has had some small changes to loot placement, mostly around moving loose loot into bins for more visibility on where the loot is.
• The Pit has about 2x the loot in it
• Repulsor has loot bins added to the west side of the area, on top of the trapezoid buildings.
• Some loot added to the underground pit in the small town in Shattered Forest.
• Added voice over lines that will callout Jump Towers when you ping them. You can now ping the jump towers.

QUALITY OF LIFE/BUG FIXES

• Decreased the delay with items showing up in the menu when looting a Death Box.
• Mini Map direction will now display correctly while in the ship or skydiving.
• Improved server performance for some cases of rubberbanding when using items.
• Removed an exploit that allowed a squad to have more than one of the same Legend.
• Removed an exploit that allowed to "bunny hop" while healing.
• Fixed issue where players might “bounce” off your squad when breaking off during a skydive.
• Improved skydiving so it should feel more responsive and smooth.
• Thermite grenades now cause damage to doors.
• Squad Summary Page Improvements: cursor support added, players can now mute / report players from this page, players can now report teammates that have disconnected.
• Caustic barrels can now be triggered or disabled by friendly teammates.
• Added cooldown [.5 seconds] before you can reuse the last zipline you were on.
• Pathfinder’s Grapple now has a blue crosshair indicator that will appear when the Grapple is in range of objects it can connect to.
• When grappling a zipline, the trajectory will now pull players to a point below the zipline rather than above. This makes it so players are more likely to connect with the zipline instead of flying over it.
• Made improvements to how weapon reticles and optics are displayed when playing with colorblind settings.
• Added colorblind support for threat vision scope and Bloodhound’s Ultimate.
• Removed the ability for players to change game settings not intended to be modified on a client level. Our intent is to prevent exploits like removing muzzle flash, disabling lighting, and other changes that give players an unfair competitive advantage.
• We've reverted the behavior of "Holster Weapons" so pressing that button while your melee weapon is out will no longer bring out your last primary weapon.
• Added ability to fully customize button layout for controllers.
• Added localized voice overs for all Legends that now supports: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Polish, Japanese, Mandarin
• Fixed an issue where a player is unable to change their Party Privacy option.
• Fixed the extra sway from the G7 crosshair while moving.
• Fixed bug where cloaked Mirage was too noticeable.
• Fixed a rare issue with using consumables while having a Caustic gas canister out.
• Fixed an issue where shield cells and shield batteries would sometimes appear to be permanently stuck to the player.
• Improved framerate when Sun shadow coverage is set High in Video options.
• Fixed issue with the Long Distance Kill Badge not displaying the correct max distance.
• Fixed issue with bad framerate when using Bloodhound’s Ultimate.
• Fixed players being crushed by opening or closing doors when climbing onto a roof just above the door.
• Fixed a crash related to model code.
• Fixed issue where player would crawl very fast in place.
• Fixed some rare cases of players getting stuck in geometry.
• Fixed issue where Octane’s Stim trail would still linger after death.
• Fixed cases where melee lunges could stop too far from their intended target.
• Fixed issue with players not receiving any XP for anything after a match and the Champion Bonus showing as -1XP.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes the audio and visual effects would not play when a weapon fires.
• Lots of minor fixes and polish to game stability and performance.

Update 1.1.3, May 19, 2019

Respawn is taking us into the weekend with patch notes for a new Apex Legends update that's set to go live early next week. It's largely a fixer-upper, with a number of quality-of-life improvements, and a workaround for an issue that was causing crashes on Intel CPUs. But amidst all that is a spot of unhappiness for fans of the big boy named Gibraltar: His Stupid Sticky Shield trick is no more.

"Admittedly it’s been fun to see the results of this but the behavior is not intended by design and could get out of control," Respawn wrote. "Items will no longer stick to Gibraltar’s Gun Shield, however, it will now deflect Arc Stars." 

On the upside, the Fortified Passive bug that causes Gibraltar and Caustic to take damage through their shields has been fixed.  

There's also significant focus on audio issues. "One of our biggest issues to tackle was improving the audio performance to address issues reported of sounds dropping out, sounds missing for extended time, or distortion for a period of time. We have made improvements both in our code and with our content that will hopefully fix these issues for many players, and for others, at least lower the amount and length of time they encounter audio issues," Respawn wrote. 

"We have also addressed some of the other mix issues with the game, including increasing the volume of close proximity enemy footsteps and lowering the overall volume of the game from the character select screen to the end of the drop sequence. We will continue to monitor mix issues and address them as necessary. Below are the notes of improvements we’ve included in today’s patch and we’re continuing to work on future improvements." 

Crashes specific to Intel CPUs were tracked down to a failure to properly execute the instructions in one particular function. Lowering the CPU clock speed corrects the issue, even in cases where the CPU isn't overclocked or overheating, but that's obviously not a practical long-term solution; the issue has been reported to Intel and for now and workaround will be added in the patch that should prevent crashes at normal CPU clocks. 

Quality of life fixes include: 

• Lowered the master volume of all sounds during the character select screen through the end of the drop sequence.
• Lowered the volume of Wraith's ambient kunai knife sound for those who are sensitive to the sound. If it is still bothersome we will remove it in a later patch.
• Increased the volume of close proximity enemy footsteps for all Legends.
• Increased the priority of enemy footsteps to ensure the sounds play even in heavy combat situations.
• Slightly lowered the volume of Pathfinder footstep sounds heard from the first person view.
• Fixed missing or quiet dryfire (out of ammo trigger click sound) and low ammo (the progressive change in sound that the gun makes as the magazine approaches empty) sounds for the R301, Hemlok, Flatline and RE45.
• Increased the volume of the music that plays when winning a match.
• Added more detailed audio to the Training mission.

Respawn is also working to fix and improve hit detection with "some behind-the-scenes tracking of bullet damage logic" that will help developers track down specific problems, including issues related to connection quality. 

"We have put some time into refining the functionality behind our network problem indicator icons in the upper right of the screen. These icons are now pickier about your connection quality and may show up more frequently than they did before," it wrote. "These icon changes will be useful for us in narrowing down the cause of any bugs that we continue to see. Please continue to share videos and report hit registration issues you still encounter after the patch."

Update 1.1.1, April 17, 2019

LEGEND BALANCING 

Gibraltar and Caustic, both known for their impressive statue and resulting larger hitboxes, are getting another update to help balance them against slimmer legends. Respawn is adding a new perk to their passive abilities called Fortified, which reduces incoming damage by 10 percent. Both are getting their own individual updates as well. 

Caustic

•  Fortified Passive Perk added: reduces damage taken by 10% 
•  Gas Damage per tick increased: 1 -> 4 
•  Ultimate Throw distance increased: 28 meters -> 33 meters 

Gibraltar 

•  Fortified Passive Perk added: reduces damage taken by 10% 
•  Gun Shield health increased: 50 -> 75 

Update: Shortly after the 1.1.1 patch, players noticed that the Fortified perk for Gibraltar was broken. Respawn is aware of the issue but no ETA on a fix has been given.

WEAPON BALANCING 

Some weapons are also being changed to make them a little more effective. Leg-shot damage reduction and sway on sniper class weapons are being reduced to make them more effective, the Spitfire and Wingman are getting nerfed a bit in the form of smaller ammo capacities, and the Havoc is getting some ammo and charge beam buffs intended to make it suck less—or, as Respawn put it, "to bring it in line as a viable energy ammo AR that competes with the R-301 and Flatline/Hemlok." 

 G7 Scout/ Triple Take/ Longbow DMR 

• Lowered leg shot damage reduction: 25% -> 10%
• Reduced base weapon sway by about 33%
• Reduced base sway speed by about 25%

Longbow DMR

Increased fire rate 1.2 -> 1.6

Increased magazine size Base mag increased: 5 -> 6 rounds

• Common mag extender increased: 6 -> 8 rounds
• Rare mag extender increased: 8 -> 10 rounds
• Epic mag extender increased: 10 -> 12 rounds

Havoc

Increased base magazine size: 25 -> 32 rounds

Charge Beam:

• Reduced cost per shot: 5 -> 4
• Increased close range damage: 55 -> 60
• Increased damage at range: 45 -> 50
• Close range damage falloff increased: 35m -> 75m
• Ranged damage falloff increased: 75m -> 125m

Wingman

Reduced magazine size: 

• Base mag reduced: 6 -> 4 rounds
• Common mag extender reduced: 8 -> 6 rounds
• Rare mag extender reduced: 9 -> 8 rounds
• Epic mag extender reduced: 12 -> 10 rounds

Spitfire

Reduced base damage: 20 -> 18

Magazine extender attachments reduced:

• Common mag extender reduced: 45 -> 40 rounds
• Rare mag extender reduced: 55 -> 45 rounds
• Epic mag extender reduced: 60 -> 55 rounds

Adjustments to Gold Weapon Attachments

• Gold Havoc now has Turbocharger, 1x-2x variable holo site
• Gold R301 now has 1x-2x variable holo site
• Gold Wingman now has digital threat

Under the "miscellaneous" category, the jump ship speed is being increased by roughly 50 percent so that players who aren't in a super-fired-up hurry to be killed (like me) don't have to wait quite so long to get where they want to go, and a bug in the interface that was displaying incorrect percentages for boost badges has been fixed. For the future, Respawn said it's aware of "reports around audio issues, slow mo servers, hit registration, and more," and is "actively working on many improvements" to address them.  

Update 1.1, April 4, 2019:

 QUALITY OF LIFE

• Added the ability to party up with the last squad you played with. After the match you will see buttons in the lobby that display the last two people you played with and can invite them to your squad.

• You can choose to allow invites or opt out in the Friends menu.
• Additional behind-the-scenes improvements for squashing cheaters.
• Added Mute button during the intro and Legend selection.
• When using the Report Player button for PC, you now have the option of selecting Cheat or Other.
• Made small improvements to the UI for customizing Legends.
• Added option to turn off lighting on compatible hardware [for example, Razer Chroma devices] in the Mouse/Keyboard settings.
• Added informative messages that appear on PC for crashes due to:
• Running out of memory.
• CPU errors best explained by overclocking/overheating.
• Added better collision to the turrets on Supply Ships.
• Stability fixes to all platforms.

​BUG FIXES

• Fixed issue where the Battle Pass rewards page would not have a default item selected, resulting in a mostly blank page.
• Fixed bug for PS4 and X1 where sometimes attempting to use a keyboard to chat could cause a fatal script error.
• Fixed bug with Banner Cards not showing up during and at the end of a match.

JUMP PAD PHASE WALK INTERACTIONS

• Octane’s Jump Pad no longer affects players when using Into the Void ability.

March 7, 2019

March 7, 2019:

Today Respawn has released the first significant balancing patch for Apex Legends, an update that carries meaningful tweaks to two of the game's most powerful guns, the Wingman and the Peacekeeper, and that lays out a plan for changing the hitboxes of three characters.

The big takeaways from this Apex Legends update:

• The Wingman now fires more slowly, and is less accurate when hip firing ("Our adjustments are attempting to move it more into the hand cannon space and away from full auto Deagle.")
• The Peacekeeper rechambers less quickly based on which shotgun bolt is equipped
• Both the Wingman and the Peacekeeper spawn less frequently
• Caustic's traps are a bit more powerful
• Energy ammo is more abundant
• Respawn will adjust the hitbox sizes of Gibraltar, Caustic, and Pathfinder at the start of Season 1

No new weapons, characters, or other content was revealed in this announcement. However, alongside the patch notes, the studio took the opportunity to share some of its philosophy around balance, laying the groundwork for what to expect in updates to come.

"Our goal is to make less frequent, better tested, higher impact changes, so it minimizes the effects on your time spent mastering a particular mechanic, weapon, character, etc.," writes the update, which was co-authored by four Respawn developers. "You shouldn't have to read our patch notes every few days just to keep up with how characters and weapons now work … We know y'all are putting a ton of time into the game and mastering every nuance (like Wraith portalling people off cliffs for the final kill lolz)."

The studio also shared a key detail around how it thinks about weapon balance. Respawn's goal isn't to make every gun equally viable ("We love y’all’s ‘Bique memes, so we’re hesitant to lose that,") but to deliberately build power differences between the game's weapons in order to create meaningful, fun discrepancies. "Our goal is to have a power curve of weapons," writes Respawn. "'Power curve' just means that some weapons will be weaker and more common, while others will be stronger and rarer. Some weapons are intentionally less powerful until fully purp’d [purple tier, level three] with hopups and attachments, while other weapons on the bottom of the power curve are your early game, better-than-melee, but-gotta-upgrade-out-of-ASAP weapons. We’ve seen some good feedback from players about how to make these pistols more exciting without losing out on the goal above that we’re listening to. We’ll be continuing to watch player data and feedback and trying things out internally but for now, they’ll remain the same."

In the four weeks following Apex's sudden release, hitboxes have been one of the most-discussed issues. On this topic, Respawn clarified its philosophy while shedding light on the tweaks it plans to make. "For character balance, we look at a combination of things: pick rate, win rate, and character v. character matchup win rate among other metrics, and, of course, player feedback. The results between the five small and medium rig characters have been positive—they are all in a safe band of relatively equal power. Our large rig characters, however, are underpowered and their natural size appears to be a large contributor, writes Respawn."

Respawn says it intends to "reduce" and "optimize" the hitbox size of the three largest characters—Pathfinder, Gibraltar, and Caustic—with the Apex Legends Season 1 patch. "If these changes are insufficient to bring these characters in line, we’re also considering a range of other changes such as natural damage reduction as well as individual kit power tweaks. Because many of these changes are significant, we want to make sure they are heavily tested before they go live, in the event they are necessary."

Finally, Respawn acknowledged the chorus of pleas anticipating Apex Legends Season 1 and its still-unofficial whereabouts. "We know you folks are fired up for info on Season 1 and Battle Pass," wrote Jay Frechette, Respawn community manager. "We still have work to do to get everything ready for prime time and won’t be talking about it yet. There are a lot of moving parts and coordination that go into big announcements and launches like this so please be patient. I know the wait sucks but it’s coming and ask that you all please be patient with us."

Wingman

• Rate of fire reduced from 3.1 -> 2.6
• Skullpiercer Headshot damage multiplier reduced from 2.5 -> 2.25
• Increased base hip fire spread and decreased the rate at which hip fire spread decays (shrinks back down).

Peacekeeper

• Shotgun Bolt rechamber rate has been reduced for the Peacekeeper only.
• Level 1 mitigation 10% -> 7.5%
• Level 2 mitigation 20% -> 13%
• Level 3 mitigation 25% -> 16%
• Wingman and Peacekeeper availability has been reduced in all zone tiers.
• Increased availability of energy weapons & ammo in all zone tiers.

Additional patch notes

• Caustic occasionally causing disconnects while throwing his Ultimate.
• Pathfinder occasionally causing disconnects when activating a Survey Beacon.
• Players occasionally causing disconnects when removing an attachment.
• Gibraltar occasionally causing disconnects when pulling up his Gun Shield.
• Players occasionally causing disconnects when entering Spectate Mode.

COMING IN SEASON 1
Major balance changes

• Hit box size reductions and optimizations for Caustic, Pathfinder and Gibraltar
• We’re better sizing hitboxes to character gear & model
• Since these adjustments have a MAJOR impact on the game, we want to make sure there aren't any major bugs, so we didn’t want to rush them out
• If these adjustments prove to be insufficient, we’ll consider additional adjustments during Season 1

Minor balance changes

Caustic

• Traps - Reduced cooldown to 25 seconds from 30 seconds
• Traps - Increased radius and proximity radius by about 10%
• Traps - Removed a 1 second delay on the smoke dealing damage to players

Pathfinder

• Insider Knowledge - Increased the number of beacons in the world to 12 from 10

Lifeline

• Care Package - Removed slight chance that level 4 armor and helmets will drop

Wraith

• Into The Void - Cooldown increased from 20 -> 25 seconds

Bangalore

• Double Time - Reduced move speed bonus to 30% from 40%