Apex Legends was a surprise when it came onto the battle royale seen four years ago, and has continued to be an exception to the rule by building more momentum each year.
Now as it goes into year five, major changes are being made including the addition of new classes, new perks, and more all coming with Season 16: Revelry.
In a new blog post on the official Apex Legends website, developer Respawn went into more details as to what these changes will be, and we now have some answers regarding these five new classes and some new legend changes.
All 23 legends have been divided into five different classes: Assault, Skirmisher, Recon, Controller, and Support. These classes now all come with an additional perk, and new changes to the game that have the potential to be extremely meaningful.
Assault legends, which are Bangalore, Mad Maggie, Fuse, Ash and Revenant will have access to a new kind of loot bin called “Red Bins,” which’ll include Respawn’s aptly named ‘smart loot’ that is tailored to your current loadout, and an emphasis on loadout accessories like optics.
These new Red Bins will even drop a weapon and two attachments if you open one right at drop, and don’t already have a weapon.
Assault legends will also be able to carry an extra stack of ammo per backpack square, a huge advantage when you first drop and can’t spend the time managing your backpack, just needing to grab what you can without it getting full.
Skirmisher legends, which includes Pathfinder, Horizon, Wraith, Valkyrie, Octane, and Mirage will be able to see into care packages as they come down, and alert their teammates if there’s any loot worth grabbing before running towards them.
If another team has grabbed that care package, then you can also see what was taken. Beyond that, Skirmisher legends don’t have any other perks.
Recon legends consist of Crypto, Bloodhound, Vantage and Seer. These changes go a little beyond just the legends, because this also means changes to the survey beacon.
Now, survey beacons have essentially been split up into two types of beacons, one for Recon class legends and one for Controller class legends.
Recon class legends can now do something entirely new with the beacon, as it’ll reveal enemy positions on the mini-map for 30 seconds. Though using the beacon alerts other enemies in the area.
Controller legends, who are Caustic, Wattson, Rampart and Catalyst, now have access to something called a Ring Beacon, which like the survey beacons we know now do, will show you the location of the next ring.
These ring beacons also won’t be placed high on top of buildings like survey beacons, but be more accessible to the less-movement based legends that belong to the Controller class.
Finally the changes that come with the new Support class are perhaps the most impactful. Support legends consist of Lifeline, Gibraltar, Newcastle and Loba.
Support legends will be able to use a crafter to craft the banners of fallen teammates, even if you’ve failed to grab the banner before the respawn time limit ran out.
Which means that so long as you have a Lifeline, Gibraltar, Newcastle or Loba on your squad, there’s almost always a chance you can bring back your teammates.
A huge change for ranked play, which currently puts players in a limbo if they die and the time to grab their banner goes out.
Quitting the match at that point the way you would in public servers means losing the ranked points you jumped into ranked play to earn, and a potential play suspension for ‘abandoning’ your teammates, despite their being no way you could come back into the game and help them anyways.
It also doesn’t help that the longer your squad survives, even if it is just the one teammate, the more ranked points you’ll earn, so playing to just survive can result in some rather boring ranked matches where you sit back and wait for the final ring.
This new perk will hopefully put an end, or at least put on a decline, the consistency with which players find themselves in that limbo.
While these changes have the potential to be hugely impactful, what’ll probably change the day-to-day feel of Apex Legends far more is the inclusion of Mixtape, a new permanent rotation of game modes that’ll feature Team Deathmatch for the first three weeks, then cycle through Team Deathmatch, Control and Gun Run every 15 minutes.
Having those modes around all the time will make the thought of jumping into a ‘quick match’ of Apex far more enticing, with all of these low-pressure modes being available more than just during seasonal promotions.
There are still plenty of smaller, individual legend and weapon changes we’ve yet to see that’ll likely come to light in patch notes. These changes we know of now will definitely have an impact, but often times the biggest impact will come in the detailed patch notes.
For those, we’ll have to wait likely closer to the season’s actual launch date.
Source – [Respawn]