- Seasons have become a staple of the Battle Royale genre,
offering players more to do and more to grind for,
all while playing.
These seasons often usher in massive changes to a game,
both in balance and themes,
and Apex Legends is no different.
Season One, nicknamed "The Wild Frontier" has arrived,
and it looks as if it will change Apex Legends
in some drastic ways.
So in today's episode, we'll be covering everything you need
to know about Apex Legends Season One.
Number five, the L-Star LMG.
Apex Legends has been out for barely any time at all,
and with Season One, they're already planning
to add a new weapon in.
Hot off the heels of the Havoc Energy Assault Rifle,
the new L-Star LMG is the newest member of the Apex family.
Those of you that are long-time fans
of the Titanfall series will be very well acquainted
with the L-Star.
Added in Titanfall Season Two, the L-Star is a rapid-fire,
energy based light machine gun
that excelled at close range combat.
Its high damage and fire rate allowed the weapon
to shred through the health of enemies in seconds.
Though, because of the travel time
of the particle bolts it fires,
long range combat can be more tricky.
In Titanfall 2, the weapon was well-known
for being unconventional.
To start with, the gun had an unlimited amount
of ammunition, which would be a pretty scary prospect
in a battle royale game.
One of the biggest mechanics
of a battle royale game is trying to win fights
with a limited amount of ammo,
and then grabbing what you need
from the enemies you've defeated to keep on going.
With an infinite ammo gun, you don't need
to be anywhere near as conservative in your play style.
The weapon also had an unlimited magazine,
though this didn't mean
that you could continually fire it forever.
The weapon could overheat, which resulted
in a pretty lengthy cool-down period.
If anything, it was more restrictive
than actually having a limited weapon magazine
because you were forced to fire in bursts
to avoid overheating.
All in all, the L-Star was actually a pretty difficult
but rewarding weapon to use.
The only worry for a battle royal game really is
that infinite ammo, but Respawn probably has a plan
to address that.
Number four, Cheater Reporting.
Every online game tends to have problems with cheaters
and hacking, though battle royale games seem
to get it even worse than most.
Apex Legends is no exception to this rule
and has been under siege from hackers pretty much
since the game released.
Hacks in Apex Legends have ranged from the standard fair
of wall hacks and auto-aim to high-speed running hacks
that allow players to run across the map
at impossible speeds.
Apex Legends does use Easy Anti-Cheat Launcher,
which makes it harder for hackers to ruin the game,
but it's still not impossible.
Even though Apex Legends has banned upwards
of 500,000 accounts for using cheats,
hackers still manage to slip through the cracks
and ruin the game for normal players.
Luckily, Respawn has now introduced an easy way
for players to report on hackers.
Players are now able to report on cheaters
that they come across in their games,
and that report will be sent directly
to Easy Anti-Cheat for review.
This should allow players to tackle the increasing problem
of hackers directly, taking more hackers
than ever before out of the game for good.
This can be done on both PC and on consoles
after you've been killed by an enemy.
The report will be sent off and then checked
by the Easy Anti-Cheat program.
If a hacker is found, their hardware will be banned
from the game permanently.
Number three, Balance Changes.
While game developers always try to get the balance
in their games perfect by launch,
the simple fact of the matter is
that a game will never be perfectly balanced
when the public gets their hands on it.
When you have tens of millions of players on your game,
there's always a chance of
at least one player finding an incredibly overpowered combo
or tactic, which will then spread to become a dominant force
in the game's meta.
With the Season One update,
a massive balance patch was added to the game,
mainly affecting the characters.
The biggest changes were made to the characters' hit boxes.
Since the launch of Apex Legends,
it's been blatantly obvious that some characters' hit boxes,
namely the larger characters like Caustic, Pathfinder,
and Gibraltar had hit boxes that were way bigger
than the character's actual in-game model.
This means that even
if bullets weren't actually hitting the character,
they could still end up doing damage.
In the latest patch, the hit boxes
of these three characters have been reduced and optimized,
so now they're more accurately reflecting
of the actual character model.
Now, alongside that major update to the hit boxes
of the characters came some smaller adjustments too.
The cool-down time for Caustic's Gas Trap was reduced
by five seconds, from thirty seconds originally
to twenty five seconds now.
The traps are also now able
to spread their gas 10% further, and that one second delay
to dealing damage has been removed.
Pathfinder has also had two more of his beacons added
to the world, so now it should be easier
for Pathfinder players to actually use that ability.
And Wraith's Void Walk cool-down was increased
from twenty seconds to twenty five seconds,
plus Bangalore's Double Time passive was slightly nerfed,
from giving you a forty percent move speed bonus
to a thirty percent move speed bonus.
Thank God!
Number two, The Battle Pass.
One of the biggest things added
to this new update was the Season One Battle Pass.
As with pretty much any battle royale game
on the market right now, Apex Legends has decided
to grace the community with a battle pass
for us to earn new cosmetics with.
Just like most of the battle passes out there,
the Apex Legends equivalent allows players
to unlock some low-value items for free.
Alternatively, you could hand over 950 Apex Coins
and gain access to the premium version of the pass
which contains way more stuff.
You could also buy the Battle Pass Bundle
for 2800 Apex Coins,
which unlocks an extra twenty five levels
of the Battle Pass straight away.
The pass includes a wide variety of rewards
that range from weapon skins to stat trackers,
Legend voice lines, XP Boosts, Legend skins,
Apex Packs, and even more Apex Coins.
Believe it or not, you can actually earn a total
of 1000 Apex Coins through the course
of playing the Battle Pass.
This means you would not just be making your money back,
but you would be earning a little bit extra too.
While at first you may think this battle pass only goes up
to Tier 100, you'd actually be wrong.
There's ten extra tiers that you can earn,
which result in an alternate golden version
of the Tier 100 havoc skin,
and a new Tier 110 animated badge
to place on your player card.
When the Battle Pass was released,
players were pretty disappointed.
Many of the Apex Legends Reddit users said
that they were disappointed
in the way the Battle Pass had been handled in Season One,
there just wasn't enough interesting content.
They claimed that the pass had been stuffed
with useless stat trackers and badges,
and that there should have been more Legendary skins
at the higher levels.
Some also declared that they were disappointed
in there being no challenges to complete.
Respawn quickly made their position
on Season One clear, however.
In a blog post, they claimed that the first version
of the pass wasn't built around complex quest systems,
they just wanted it to be simple and focused
around allowing players to just learn the game.
In other words, this Battle Pass wasn't meant
to be loaded with extras, it was just meant
to be a starting point that allowed players
to jump on and have a little extra to grind for.
At the moment, we don't have any concrete dates
on when the current Battle Pass will end,
though with Season Two slated to start
around June, it's likely
that players will have more than enough time to climb
through the ranks of the 110 tiers in the pass.
Number One, Octane.
Are you ready for some brand new, high octane gameplay?
Then Octane might just be the character for you.
Purchasable for 750 Apex Coins,
or by spending 12,000 Legend Tokens,
Octane is the first brand-new character
to be added to Apex Legends
since the launch of the game.
The character, full name Octavio Silva,
is a hot-headed adrenaline junkie
who is the son of a successful Pharmaseutical CEO.
In his daredevil exploits, he one day set the course record
for a nearby gauntlet challenge
by using a grenade to launch himself
across the finish line.
Hours later, he was laying in the triage,
the doctors said his daredeviling days were over,
but that wasn't enough to stop him.
With a pair of bionic legs, Octane decided
to take things to the next level: he signed up
for the Apex games.
Octane's tactical ability's a stem shot
with a two second cool-down.
It allows Octane to move thirty percent faster
than usual for six seconds,
and also makes him less affected by enemy attacks
that cause characters to slow down,
but this ability isn't without its own unique cost.
The ability actually takes 10%
of your own health to use, but you don't need
to worry about that health cost too much,
because Octane's swift Mend Passive
is actually a heal over time ability.
As long as Octane isn't taking any damage,
he will recover one Health every two seconds.
This doesn't sound like much, but it does mean he'll be able
to recover the 10 Health cost
within 20 seconds, which isn't too bad.
It also means that if Octane were to be taken down
to one HP and then somehow avoided combat completely,
would take just over three minutes
to fully repair from the damage
without any other healing items.
That's kind of sick!
The final ability is Octane's Launch Pad Ultimate.
This ability takes 90 seconds to charge up,
and then allows Octane to place down a launch pad
that catapults players and objects through the air.
Now, it may seem a bit underwhelming
when you first use it, but nothing beats the feeling
of soaring through the air at mach speeds,
all while hyped on Octanes' Q ability.
You can flank an enemy and then riddle them
with bullets with serious ease,
even if his Ultimate does feel a little weak
in comparison to some other Ultimates
in this game, his other two abilities more
than make up for it.
Well, that's a wrap on our video
on everything you need to know
about Apex Legends Season One!
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