Apex Legends had a great start when it was first launched in February early this year. It smashed milestone after milestone like fully-ramped Devotion. Even though it may seem like it’s fading out for a moment, I believe that Respawn will bounce back, especially after receiving this update from them.

Respawn stated their full commitment towards the game, and won’t stop improving and supporting the free-to-play title. Season 1 was strong but wasn’t strong enough to keep players from slowly losing interest due to many factors such as slow server performances, hackers, and some issues here and there.

Today, the developers have reached to the community and cleared up a few things as we steadily head into Season 2 which will drop in June, according to the roadmap here.

Let’s break it down.

Slow Server Performance

Respawn acknowledges the issue and has found that it affects some datacenters more than others, it happens on many different server configurations, and it doesn’t seem to hit multiple server instances running on the same machine.

In essence, it isn’t a machine that’s overloaded, but one instance on the same machine seems to be doing more work than the others. They are trying to figure this one out and have stated that it takes priority.

Goddamned Hackers

3 out 5 games I’ve played will be infested by these lowlife scums. That’s 60 percent of my games ruined because someone thought it would be fun to hack. Not to mention that these hackers aren’t afraid to show off their cheats, going to the extent of naming the account ‘IM_HACKING_LOLOL’. I remember reporting that one the moment my squad got mowed by a Spitfire from across the map.

As a matter of fact, Respawn has banned almost 355k cheaters on PC through Easy-Anti-Cheat. Respawn can’t disclose much details on what they’re planning to do. They will always be more secretive about it to avoid telegraphing the dev’s moves to cheaters, but Respawn will be sharing more on the progress made next week.

Hitbox & Hit Registration

As players are aware, the hitbox for each character is quite wonky and sometimes unfair. Take Wraith, for example, her small hitbox and moveset make her very hard to hit, and thanks to her diminutive size, she’ll only take small damage from a Peacekeeper blast. On the other hand, Gibraltar, the largest character from the roster, has a hitbox that’s 140% larger than Wraith. That explains why he usually dies first in my games.

I’m not sure if it’s intended or if it’s a bug, but Pathfinder’s hitbox is way larger than his character model.

Respawn has responded and said that they’re adding engine features to track down bugs and report instances of incorrect hit registration in playtests so we can force the bug and reproduce the issue consistently. Some fixes have been done, but more work is needed to completely tackle the issue.

What’s Coming Next?

The developers have also included a few bits of information regarding the upcoming updates.

Season Launches will start off with a bang; new Battle Pass, a new Legend, new metas, and much more.

More fixes and updates throughout the course of the season. Respawn did point out that weekly updates weren’t part of the plan even from the start, but they believe strongly in the importance of large, meaningful changes to the game that have a lasting impact, thus their focus on a seasonal release cadence they’ve laid out at launch.

Improved communication between the developers and the community. Respawn will provide more transparency and will share with the community what they are working on.

Is That All?

Respawn will drop a few more highlights about the coming season at EA PLAY this June. They have planned to create a Battle Pass with more meaningful content. What that means is still up for speculation.

They will also introduce a new Legend to the roster. So far, we haven’t got anything but some clues to the new Legend. A new weapon is also in the works.

Respawn also teased at a possible change to our beloved map, Kings Canyon. They said;

For Season 2 you can expect a Battle Pass with more meaningful content, the introduction of a new Legend, the debut of a new weapon . . . and you didn’t expect Kings Canyon to stay the same forever, did you?

As an end note, Respawn reminded us players that it’s important to understand that there are entirely separate development teams working on Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

Also, to fully commit to the hit battle royale, the team is pushing out plans for future Titanfall games (awww). No resources from the Apex Legends team are being shifted to other titles in development here at the studio, nor are they pulling resources from the team working on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

All in all, this looks like an interesting leap towards what we’re having now, and to be honest, it feels fresh and this kind of communication inspires strong confidence towards the team and the game.