It’s a tough time to be a live service game, even if you’re one of the biggest and most established names on the block. Apex Legends is still one of the best-feeling FPS games around, if you ask me, but that’s not stopped it from going through a major slump. Respawn has already revealed some radical changes that are coming in its imminent new season, but the Apex Legends Season 24 patch notes have just landed, and they further prove that this is one of the most transformational updates the game has ever seen.
While every seasonal update in Apex Legends offers significant rebalancing, new features, and other tweaks to keep things fresh and to shake up the meta, Season 24 is taking things to new levels. As Respawn alluded to last week, every single weapon in the FPS game is getting some form of rebalancing, and the new set of patch notes reveal the extent of the studio’s efforts. The majority of changes are to do with damage output, due to Respawn overhauling its armor system (more on that in a moment) and expressing a desire to make Apex’s time-to-kill much faster overall.
For example, all snipers have had their headshot damage increased, shotguns have had their base damage increased but no longer have a headshot multiplier, and the eternally satisfying Wingman has received a generous damage increase but now has a smaller magazine as standard.
A major new addition in Season 24 is the network of Arsenals, which can be found in set locations across every map and offer you a chance to grab whatever weapon you want that corresponds with the ammo type of that Arsenal. They will also act as an upgrade station that has a single use, and the weapon you want to upgrade must match the ammo type too.
To make gunfights more clear, Respawn has also reworked muzzle flashes and other weapon effects like sparks or smoke to make sightlines less cluttered.
As mentioned, the Evo system Apex Legends uses for its upgradeable armor has been totally overhauled. You can no longer upgrade your armor to the top red tier by damaging opponents, as the cap will now be set at the gold tier’s 100 shield points. As with the weapon damage buffs, this is Respawn trying to make players less spongy and tanky in the later stages of a match and speed up time-to-kill. You’ll also be finding far fewer helmets in Season 24: “Low tier Helmets (white, blue, and purple) have been removed, and rare high value Helmets that provide meaningful gameplay perks have been added in their place.”
The legend meta isn’t safe from some serious reworking either. Class perks have had a once-over, and Respawn is highlighting the under-played Ash and Ballistic as the biggest benefactors from Season 24’s changes. They’ve both received new or tweaked abilities that make them so much stronger.
These are some really big gameplay changes that will make Apex Legends feel more different than it has in a long time. That difference should be for the better, but we’ll have to wait and see how players react when it arrives. Apex Legends Season 24 drops tomorrow, February 11.
If you want to check out every single change arriving in the update (and believe me, there are a lot) here are the full patch notes.
If all of these overhauls, reworks, and changes aren’t enough to convince you to come back to Apex just yet, here are some other amazing battle royale games and free PC games to try instead.
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