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Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends has suffered as of late with lower player counts amidst a wave of live-service failures. As titles like Concord spectacularly fail and games like Destiny 2 and The First Descendant struggle to keep players engaged, Respawn is aware of the struggles of live-service instability.
Apex Legends devs aim to combat live-service issues
In an interview for the launch of Apex Legends Season 24, a new adrenaline shot that buffs every single weapon in the game, VideoGamer asked Respawn if the massive change in gameplay was needed in the face of live-service instability. Basically, the answer was a resounding yes.
Lead Legend Designer on Apex Legends, Devan McGuire, explained that Apex “absolutely” needs to keep evolving as players eventually move on. With a revolving door of old players leaving and new players joining, there’s a need to evolve the game as time goes on.
“As a live service game gets longer in its life, it needs to meet the moment as the audience changes with it and around it,” McGuire explained. “We have a ton of core players that have been with us since Season Zero. But we also need to refresh the roots of the tree with new players.”
For Respawn, the best method of doing this is to frequently provide players with a substantial meta shift that offers “a reset in terms of what skill means in Apex”. With this in mind, every season needs to “service our core”, aka long-term players, as well as “provide a really good entry point for players who are potentially returning, haven’t played in a while, or even are new players”.
“It’s something that’s necessary,” McGuire explained. “I think it needs to be done in any live service game. It’s been around for a while. It needs to do this.”
Apex Legends Season 24 is a massive gameplay shift for Respawn’s battle royale, and it’s not known how fans are going to take the sweeping gameplay changes as of yet. However, the team at Respawn are extremely excited about the game’s huge shift in speed—and maybe players will be too.
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