Respawn Releases First Major Update for Apex Legends

Respawn released the first major update for Apex Legends yesterday. Featuring weapon balances, Legend adjustments, and bug fixes, it addresses some of the things fans have been clamoring about since launch.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest issues  – that being the hitboxes of the larger characters – won’t be address until Season 1 starts. As of right now, they tend to lead to lopsided shootouts.

“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,” stated Respawn. “The results between the 5 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. We’re planning on adjusting the size of the large character hitboxes to better fit the model. 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.”

At first, changing these character’s hitboxes seems odd. It makes sense that they’re hit more often given their large sizes. That said, no one likes being gunned down quicker when playing as them. For example, as great as Gibraltar is as a Legend, based on his kit and personality, he’s an easy target; he has a hard time winning a straight up fight. This future update will deal with this issue by shrinking his, Caustic and Pathfinder’s hitboxes. We’ll have to wait and see how this pans out (if we shoot Gib’s arm, will the bullets register a hit?) of course.

This update did bring about some meaningful updates though. Two major weapons – the Wingman and Peacekeeper – have been nerfed, the availability of energy weapons/ammo have been improved, and several bugs that result in disconnection have been squashed. Awesome. Now if we can just get a launch date for Season 1…

All in all, Apex Legends is keeping everyone’s attention. For the full patch notes, head over to Reddit. Just make sure to check back here as we continue to follow this game’s growth.

Update: The original article stated that the hitboxes changes went into effect with this patch. That isn’t the case; they won’t show up until Season 1. We’ve changed the article to provide a more accurate statement.