Respawn finally delivered a long-awaited addition to Apex Legends earlier this week.
Following on from the success of a limited-time trial run for Duos Mode in previous events, the developer has finally made the playlist a permanent fixture in Season 4 alongside the battle royale’s original Kings Canyon map. Unfortunately for solo-minded players, however, it appears as if implementing a dedicated mode for lone wolves has proven to be not so easy for a number of reasons.
Addressing the topic over on Reddit, the studio describes how unlike the initial introduction of Duos, Solos Mode had the unintended effect of negatively impacting the game, especially in regards to player retention. In addition to that and as folks quickly discovered themselves, many Legend abilities are built with team-play in mind, meaning they become essentially useless when striking out on your own.
The full statement is as follows:
Now, what about Solos? When we introduced Solos as a limited-time mode last year we saw it actually negatively impacted the game, especially when it came to new player retention. We’ve also purposely designed Legends and their abilities to compliment teamplay and squad composition, but when played Solo some Legend abilities become useless. These are just some of the reasons we decided not to include Solos in today’s update. We’re still exploring ways to allow a Solo experience, but for now grab a friend (or two) and jump into the arena.
Short of a total redesign of several gameplay elements specifically to make solo play feel more natural in Apex Legends, then, the one-man army approach just isn’t up to snuff right now. This is certainly a case of never say never, of course, though we imagine right now, Respawn would rather focus its efforts on delivering new content for areas of the game that have already proven to be popular.
In fact, if recent comments are anything to go by, the studio already has the next 12 months planned out ahead of time. See here for the full story.
Published: Apr 8, 2020 09:37 am