As PC Guide’s resident Apex Legends guru today marks an extra-exciting landmark in Respawn’s ever-popular Battle Royale
With just four weeks to go of Season 4, the devs are dropping their latest in-game event today and also making some significant permanent changes and additions to the way we play.
In recent months it’s been pretty clear Respawn has been using events to test out gameplay options before dropping them into the main game. The latest example is the Evo-Shield – armor that improves the more damage you cause.
Season 4 also daw the Devotion move to a care-package drop, and the L-Star weapon move into the mainstream loot.
One of the more recent events featured a Duos mode that was only available for two days, but as part of the launch of today’s Old Ways package, Duos is back, and this time it’s permanent.
Assuming it will operate the same was as it was trialed, there will be 30 squads of two, rather than 20 of three. So no limit rise on the player numbers.
King’s Canyon has made regular reappearances in recent weeks in limited form and now will be available on a rotating basis with World’s Edge, again permanently.
Running for the next fortnight, however, will be the Old Ways event, based around the Bloodhound Legend.
Keen players might have noticed the rotting carcass of a Predator appeared un on Sniper’s Ridge last week with some of Bloodhound’s crows feeding off it. Now, a section of the map – presumably there – will be converted into a ‘town takeover mode’ that will pit you and your squad, not just against other players but AI prowler monsters.
This marks the first time we have had any kind of AI bot enemy and will change the dynamic considerably.
Bearing in mind my opinion that Respawn is using events almost as beta tests to see what works and how players react, it’s not that much of a stretch to figure that this kind of mechanic may be planned for future game modes.
There will be a wealth of event-specific loot from today until the event ends on the 21st April – by then, we will only have two weeks to wait until Season 5.
Exciting times.
