Respawn on the next five years of Apex Legends

Believe it or not, it’s been five years since the surprise launch of Apex Legends.

Respawn‘s massively popular battle royale has endured through the genre’s huge popularity and the subsequent gold rush of every developer attempting a similar last-man-standing game mode, many of whom are no longer a going concern.

20 seasons later, Respawn knows it’s time for a change. While sweeping change is a regular feature of the battle royale genre, this often comes in the form of a new map, or an environment-changing in-game event. While Respawn has dabbled in that kind of thing before, with this Breakout update, it’s focussing on something much more simple.

Apex Legends: Breakout brings the game back to basics. Complicated armour and replication systems have been stripped out in favour of changes that seem to serve a simple goal: less admin and more shooting.

Further reading

FIRST LOOK: Apex Legends: Breakout is the game's smartest change in 5 years

5 years later, Apex Legends takes things back to basics

VGC recently traveled to Respawn’s office in Los Angeles, California, to try out a few rounds of the new Breakout update, our impressions of which you can read here.

At the end of our time at Respawn, we sat down with Josh Mohan (lead battle royale designer), Devan McGuire (lead Legends designer), and Mike Renner (game design director – maps) to chat about Breakout, the new Thunderdome map, and the future of Apex Legends.

When did the idea for Breakout originate? 

Josh Mohan: Last May we had an in-person summit as a team to go over the battle royale, specifically the rules and the systems that we had. A big topic I wanted to discuss was that we have so many moving pieces in the game, so when we wanted to introduce the Legends Upgrade system we had to take a step back.

We have the crafting materials, we have EVO points, we have the inventory system, and all the attachments. How does a new player step into this environment and understand it to the level of an existing player? So that’s when we said, “Okay, if we’re adding something like this, we really need to take something away.”

Crafting was one of those things. Our new players would constantly get to that point and think, “What the hell is this thing? How do I use it?” and so the new one is really simple. There are no different materials; you run up to it, grab your item, and move on. So, that was all part of our master plan to unify things in season 20.

When coming up with the new system, how did you ensure that it was balanced to appeal to both the hardcore Apex Legends faithful and the more casual player?

Devan McGuire: I think the biggest advantage of the new EVO system is that before EVO, it was all about damage. That was the only thing that counted, besides, of course, lucking into finding something on the ground. But this new ecosystem now rewards your behaviors, all kinds of different behaviors, not just any damage.

So it gives newer players something different, maybe one who’s just getting the ropes of combat. Now, you play Lifeline, open a box and you’re getting points for the team. You’re doing your job, you can run off and interact with the EVO harvester. So it’s much less combat-oriented while still feeling like you’re contributing.

Has there been any consideration for making it possible to assign auto-upgrade paths for certain Legends if a player is committed to using the same upgrades in every match?

DM: We have. It wasn’t something that we had the bandwidth to explore for Breakout, but it’s something we’re considering based on how things work out. There were a lot of voices here that said, “Hey, I know I just want to use this upgrade every single time. I want to automate that.”

“I think the biggest advantage of the new EVO system is that before EVO, it was all about damage. That was the only thing that counted, besides, of course, lucking into finding something on the ground.”

We also wanted to make those choices meaningful too, rather than something that just happens in the background. We also found in our own playtest sessions that it’s something that becomes a natural instinctive thing when playing the game over and over again.

Alongside the Breakout seasonal update, the Thunderdome, a new map for smaller modes, is being added. This map is modeled off a sports arena and features new audio and visual effects, how did you balance those with maintaining the readability of the game? 

Mike Renner: There’s always a tricky balance there. That’s always a design problem that we need to solve for. We really wanted to bring that energy and fanfare to the forefront so we had to resolve it.

Now that every Legend has all these different permutations to consider, how did you go about balancing that? 

JM: To be perfectly frank, none of the balancing changes we know to date have been perfect and have not broken something (laughs.) Our internal play tests can only take us so far, it’s when it gets to the live game and people go, “Oh if you put this upgrade together with this thing it becomes much more powerful than we expected.” So there’s a certain amount of things we need to take on the chin.

You mentioned during our visit that you spend a lot of time testing updates with your pro Apex Legends players, what has their reaction been to the Breakout update? 

JM: We’ve had internal playtests where we’ve invited various pillars of the Pro and influencer community to try these changes out and see what they feel about the game. The reception to them has been overwhelmingly positive for the most part.

Some of the feedback has been things like “Hey, X was already pretty good, they don’t need these upgrades,”, especially with the Legends that were already meta, so that made us go back to make sure things don’t get too stale, and to make sure other Legends can improve.

How do you feel when you see other battle royale games implementing mechanics that originated in Apex Legends?

JM: I have to admit, we take it as a compliment. We’ve seen it here and there. Honestly, it’s an indication you’re doing something right.

“We’ve had internal playtests where we’ve invited various pillars of the Pro and influencer community to try these changes out and see what they feel about the game. The reception to them has been overwhelmingly positive”

Finally, Apex Legends is now five years old, what do you see the next five years of Apex Legends looking like?

MR: It’s just going to keep growing in my mind. It’s going to keep evolving. The Apex today won’t be the same as the Apex in five years. We’ll look at ourselves, and we’ll look at competitors and how they’ve solved issues, and keep building on the genre as a whole.

JM: To echo Mike, I think all we want is to see it continue to grow. I want Apex in five years to be a place for everybody. I think sometimes we can get a reputation for being a very hard, competitive game, and I want that to remain at its core, but I also want the game to be a large space to entice more people to come and join in.

DM: I want the game to be strong and competitive and I want to find the meta at some point (laughs). That would be my ideal. The game is considered pretty hard, and I think some way to make the game more approachable over the next five years would be great. We want a more approachable game for a wider group of people to come in and find success more frequently.

I think we are a great game. We love what we do. We’re a highly competitive game, but we always have things we can improve on.