New Weapon: Charge Rifle

The Charge Rifle is a sniper rifle which fires a continuous damaging hitscan beam for a short time before firing a single powerful hitscan shot.

The Charge Rifle is quite unique to Apex, as there is only one other hitscan weapon capable weapon in the game and due to power level and difficult loot requirements it was relatively unused. The Charge Rifle’s hitscan nature makes it exceptionally strong at tracking moving targets at long range vs ballistic projectile weapons. However, its long firing duration makes it weak when peek trading with enemies in cover. The Charge Rifle can gain players strong positional advantages by preventing enemies from covering large open ground, but players can fight effectively against the charge rifle by baiting shots out and attacking/moving during shot cooldowns or the long reloads.

Season 3 Large Meta Changes

Even though I started about halfway through season 3’s development cycle, I was still able to make some large changes and additions to adjust the meta .

For season 3, I created 2 new weapon hopups, which are special attachments that players loot which modify how a weapon behaves. There wasn’t time or resources for hopups which would require VFX or audio support, but there was space to add interesting firing behavior to some weapons.

The Anvil Receiver hopup is a rare attachment for the 2 main assault rifles in Apex, the Flatline and the R301. With the Anvil Receiver attached, the single fire mode of these weapons would do considerably increased damage, but at the cost of decreased fire rate and increased ammo consumption (2 ammo per shot). The Anvil Receiver doesn’t provide a DPS boost, but it allows these medium ranged ARs to engage targets at medium-long to long range. The hopup provides versatility, allowing a player to cover most engagement ranges with one gun, opening up their 2nd weapon slot for a more situational weapon like a Shotgun or Sniper.

The Double Tap hopup adds an additional “double fire” firing mode to the G7 Scout marksman rifle and the EVA-8 shotgun. While in double tap mode, each trigger pull fires 2 rapid shots, with an increased cooldown between shots. The hopup doesn’t increase pure DPS on paper, but it makes the damage come out in higher spikes with less frequency. This is an advantage when engaging in peek battles at range (in the case of the G7), or around corners and doors in close quarters (in the case of the EVA-8). This is because players in these situations only get a very short window to do damage before the enemy goes into cover; so, being able to do more damage in that short window offers an advantage.

Another major change for season 3 I introduced is an adjusment to the perks of high tier “gold” loot. In Apex, some loot drops at the highest tier 4 (legendary / gold) rarity — gold items offer equal benefits to tier 3 loot of the same class, but also offer a bonus perk. Prior to season 3, Gold armor made it so a player replenishes their shields after executing an enemy, and a gold backpack allowed the wearer to heal twice as fast. For season 3, I moved the “fast heal” perk onto the gold armor to add readability, so players knew when their enemy had the ability to heal faster (since players see shield damage numbers matching the armor color of the victim). I made the old gold armor perk of shield healing upon executing a downed target a universal mechanic of the game to help improve the reward for the risk/reward gameplay of executions. For gold backpack, I added a new “guardian angel” perk which makes players who picked up a teammate from the downed state revive their teammate with bonus health and shields. This makes the decision of when to revive a downed ally and when to fight more nuanced and situational, and creates interesting team loot sharing decisions where players may want to give the backpack to allied characters with improved reviving abilities.