Summary

  • Respawn introduces major updates in Apex Legends Season 22, including aim assist nerfs and akimbo pistols.
  • The game now features highlights around enemies and visible health bars, as well as looting adjustments mid-match.
  • Changes to weapons and Legends also come in Season 22.

Apex Legends players have a laundry list of requests for the game. They want a constant slew of new Legends and maps, fixes to bugged audio, aim assist nerfs, buffs for their mains, and that’s before you get to the wishlist proper. Luckily, developer Respawn is listening, and is dropping a slew of massive updates in Apex Legends Season 22. Akimbo pistols, aim assist tuning, and a brand new city map are the headline additions to the game, but smaller changes like adding Gibby-esque gun shields to LMGs and turning Crypto invisible make this a major turning point for the battle royale.

“We have our February anniversary seasons where we do these larger, wider sweeping changes that affect a lot of parts of the game,” says Josh Mohan, lead game designer. “But you don't see as many of those wider sweeping changes in the remaining three seasons of the year. So with [Season] 22, part of the philosophy is, can we bring that wider shakeup to the game more frequently throughout the year, at a midpoint as well as the anniversary?”

Apex Legends Season 22 Combat Changes

The first of those changes is to combat. Mohan explains that Respawn is adding highlights around enemies in close proximity, and giving them visible health bars when you hit them. Looting is also changed, with loot bins closing and refilling halfway through the match, and one ‘mythic’ loot bin granting players Evo, a gold weapon, and a chance to find a Care Package weapon.

“A big push for us for Season 22 was to try to bridge the skill gap,” Mohan explains. Respawn has heard plenty of feedback that players find it difficult to track opponents and remember how much damage they’ve dealt, so the changes will hopefully improve this readability in fights. However, he’s keen to keep Apex’s “special sauce” when it comes to combat. Despite trying to lower the skill floor of the game, Respawn wants to reward high-skilled players. Therefore you need line of sight to get an outline of your opponent – and that includes Bangalore smoke. “Enemies can’t track you behind walls,” Mohan reassures me. Unless they’re playing Bloodhound, of course.

Apex Legends Season 22 Akimbo Pistols

As well as increasing the opportunities to find mythic weapons during a game, Respawn wants to give “dumpster tier” guns some juice, too. Lead game designer Eric Canavese explains the process for adding the option to wield the P2020 and Mozambique akimbo, and why it has come now after half a decade. “We really wanted to take basically dumpster tier weapons – weapons you get rid of as soon as you find something, anything, that isn't them, you pretty much swap them – and we really wanted to see a world where people were actually finishing games with P2020s and Mozambiques,” he says.

But it wasn’t an easy process. The designs for akimbo pistols have been worked on for “years” by this point, and Respawn finally got to a place where it was happy with how they worked.

"We really wanted to take basically dumpster tier weapons [...] and we really wanted to see a world where people were actually finishing games with P2020s and Mozambiques." Eric Canavese, lead game designer, Apex Legends

“The biggest hurdle we encountered was the firing mechanism,” Canavese explains. Using each trigger or mouse button for each gun felt too “frantic”, and playtesters found it hard to aim or track while mashing both keys. However, everything fell into place when the team switched to automatic P2020s.

I tested out the akimbo pistols in a bot lobby (a new addition to replace orientation matches for new players), and they are a blast. I was already an unironic Mozam stan, but the P2020 really took me by surprise. With attachments mirroring on each gun (so you only need one light magazine to buff the ammo of both pistols, for instance), you can quickly make dual pistols a fearsome close-quarters combination. I even trialled an akimbo Mozambique/akimbo P2020 loadout which was a ball against the bots, but it doesn’t have the range to work against real players.

Apex Legends Season 22 Weapon Changes And LMG Buff

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Lots of weapons have had sweeping changes made to them, though. All LMGs can now attach a hopup to grant a gun shield similar to Gibraltar’s that recharges over time. Nearly every weapon that takes light ammo has an increased capacity (including the R301). The Peacekeeper and Mastiff have a decreased number of pellets but more damage per pellet to make them more reliable. The R99 has entered the Care Package and the Havoc and Hemlok are receiving their long overdue nerfs.

Watch out for the Spitfire this season, it’s looking nasty.

Apex Legends Season 22 Aim Assist Nerf

An even bigger change to shooting that will undoubtedly be the biggest talking point of Apex Legends Season 22: the aim assist nerf. Anyone who uses a controller in a PC lobby – that’s PC players and console players opting into PC crossplay – will have their aim assist strength reduced by 25 percent. It’s a big change, and one that the team hasn’t undertaken lightly.

However, it feels good. I was playing a match with YouTuber ‘staycation’, a controller player, who said he didn’t feel much difference until he was up close. That one-clip potential seemed more difficult to achieve, but overall the feel of aim assist, especially at distance, wasn’t too different. If the wider community agrees, then this seems like the perfect first step to balancing inputs. It’s something that the team will be monitoring closely.

“As we move forward, we'll be continuing to improve and continuing to look at more holistic ways to make the whole experience of using a controller – and that cross-input lobby – just feel good, feel better, and feel competitive,” says Canavese. However, don’t expect to see more aim assist changes any quicker from now on. “Now that we've made an adjustment, if there's issues with the adjustment, it'll be easier for us to continue to dial that in,” Canavese explains. “I can't say that we'll see changes more rapidly because we will launch them as soon as they're ready.”

Apex Legends Season 22 New Map

While these enormous changes will alter the feel of the game, the aesthetic has taken a turn for the cyberpunk in Season 22. World director Eduardo Agostini said Apex Legends’ new map E-District had “Eastern influences” in a roundtable presentation, so I pressed him further on exactly what that meant.

“Japan is our primary inspiration for the city,” he says. “[There’s] a lot of anime inspiration, Ghost in the Shell was one of our favourites. But when you create a cyberpunk city, you don't want to play into stereotypes [of] a dystopian future. That's not what we're trying to represent.

“We wanted to represent a multicultural city and, and stick to Eastern flavours. So we have Korean, we have Chinese, we have Arabic and we have Indian [design influences] and we think that gives it a nice melting pot that we don't really see in a lot of games.

“Yet seeing the signage in like neon and graffiti, it feels fresh for us. And if you look back at old Titanfall [maps], we had mixtures of languages in our maps before. So I think it's not a new idea, it's just a new mix.”

I noticed Tengu graffiti on the skyscrapers and neon characters adorning the food market (I was in the middle of a firefight – forgive me for not recognising the language flashing in the corner of my screen), but the cyberpunk influences are writ large. And as much as Agostini wants to reject the idea of a dystopian city, there is some great environmental storytelling across the map, from poor areas of the city that have been besieged by riots compared to the rich half of the map filled with luxury apartments.

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Wherever you are, though, this is a different kind of Apex Legends map. It’s nightfighting, for one, and space is restricted and enclosed. It’s claustrophobic at times, but Agostini tried to maintain that “Apex formula” of rotations and chokes, which feel clear as you play. Miniature versions of Storm Point’s gravity cannons can aid rotations horizontally or vertically, and it’s the verticality of the map that will be most interesting to see in players’ hands.

“The buildings themselves have so many layers to them,” Agostini says. “So you're going to be playing on a lot of rooftops, multiple levels of apartments and buildings. It'll be a new experience for a lot of players.”

Apex Legends Season 22 Legend Changes

Finally, we have changes to the Legends themselves. Here, game designer for balance John Larson has also taken those big swings at entire swathes of Legends, reassessing the whole controller class as well as buffing some of the least-used Legends.

Controllers now gain a pip of ‘overcharge’ on their shields while in the zone, and Survey Beacons spawn more often and take less time to scan. However, their range is reduced and less Evo is gained, but the scan refreshes multiple times over its 15 second duration so you can better assess enemy movements and rotations.

The biggest individual buff goes to Crypto, who can now take a perk that turns him completely invisible while using his drone. Larson describes this as the “spiciest” change, but adds that there “should be” an audio cue if you’re close to a cloaked Crypto to let you know.

Elsewhere, Rampart’s Ultimate – the devastating minigun she calls Sheila – now works like Vantage’s Ult. Once you’ve charged one ‘pip’ of Ultimate (presumably 20 percent like Vantage, though I didn’t get a chance to check myself), she can start spraying. Larson thinks this could be a game-changer for hot drops or contests in the ALGS.

Whether either change is enough to upend that stubborn meta remains to be seen, but Apex Legends promises a host of those “sweeping changes” that will radically alter how the game feels come release day. I know I’ll be dropping at the Neon Oval Raceway for its name alone.

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