Apex Legends is gearing up to celebrate in season 16
It is time to celebrate as Apex Legends is getting ready to celebrate another birthday and the launch of its next season. But there is a massive change here, for the first time in the series history, it will not include a new Legend this season, so welcome to Revelry.
Season 14 could have had a new Legend, every other season has, but instead the developers went ahead and made the decision to remaster all of the existing ones. One of the ways that the team are doing that is by overhauling the class system to make it more relevant to the modern landscape of the series.
“Over time, with the addition of new Legends and the evolving meta, the class roles have started to become a little bit muddy, so this season, we want to take a chance to redefine what classes mean to the game.”
The game is splitting the characters into one of five class groups and no, they have not put characters into classes to make the count event. These are the five groups:
Assault
Skirmisher
Recon
Controller
Support
The group names should give you an idea on what he class can do, but let us take a look at the Assault class in detail. This group includes Ash, Fuse, Maggie, Bangalore and Revenant as its starting group, with each character having a focus on combat utility.
As each class has a perk, the Assault class perk lets characters open a hidden shelf within supply bins, which can contain a host of extra items that can be shared with the squad. These might be attachments or upgrades, but no matter that they are, they will be a little better than what lies within the main area. Another big perk for this class is that they can carry more ammo per slot, giving them more continuous combat potential.
Pathfinder, Horizon, Octane, Valkyrie, Wraith and Mirage fall into the Skirmisher group and excel at combat mobility and escapes. Their perk lets them scan the inside of incoming supply drops, to see what it has, helping to make the decision if you should go for it.
The third class, Recon, is the smallest right now with only Crypto, Seer and Vantage included. As you might expect from the name, they are all about intel and while they no longer have access to the ring data, their new perk lets them use a modified survey beacon, to reveal enemy positions for a limited time. But this isn’t a reveal only enemies option, because if you use it, the game will let other players know where you are.
The Controller class, which includes Wattson, Catalyst, Rampart and Caustic is all about control, funny that. The perk that this class has is called Ring Console and that lets them discover where the ring will be moving to next, giving them more tactical information than ever before.
The final class is called Support and includes Lifeline, Loba, Newcastle and Gibraltar. The reason for you to play this class is if you were someone who liked to assist your squadmates, their perk enhances that by extending the shelf in the blue supply bins. Rather than being random, if a blue bin is opened by this class, players will find more healing related items.
Classes are not the only big change to the game, for the first time in 18 months, since Season 11, a new gun is being added to the title, welcome the Nemesis. The gun is an energy based assault rifle and the more you shoot it the faster it fires. This happens as the gun uses a ramp up technique, which gets shorter between each firing, but you don’t have to keep using it as the ramping does hold in the gun for a brief moment. For example, if you have used all of your mag and need to reload, the ramp charge can still be held, meaning once you have reloaded, you don’t have to wait for it to ramp up again.
A new weapon attachment being added is the Golden Bolt, which weather equipped on the gun or in the inventory, allows players to automatically reload a shotgun, when sliding.
But the team haven’t stopped there as they are also finally adding Team Deathmatch to the game, but with that addition comes the removal of the 3v3 Arenas mode. Team Deathmatch is a 6v6 mode that allows for respawns and the team to get 30 kills first win the round, with the match being best two out of three. While airdrops and loot finds are still available on the maps, you can also select the equipment you want before you respawn.
Another addition is the Mixtape, a new rotational system that will let you play modes like Control and Gun Run, in addition to Team Deathmatch. Every 24 hours the mode will change, meaning today might be Control, but tomorrow is Team Deathmath and while the maps will be similar, with the modes rotating through, it should give players fresh experiences pretty consistantly.
Finally, yes we are almost there, the game is bringing in new ways to learn the game for those players who haven’t had the change to enjoy the game yet. One of the big additions, apart from improvements to the firing range, is that bots are being added to the game. These bots will let new players get some matches under their belts, without the need to jump into the regular mode. There will even be special matches for all new players, giving them a chance to see all the action with players who are learning just like they are, but once you have done a few of those, you are back into the pool of regular players.
There is still more to talk about in season 14, but that will have to wait for another day. Season 14 will launch for all platforms on February 14.
