By and large, Respawn’s delivery of Apex Legends Season 4 has gone off without a hitch.
Following a truly excellent bait-and-switch marketing campaign that saw supposed new Legend Forge replaced with fan-favorite Revenant, hype for the battle royale’s fourth seasonal refresh has been off the charts. Having had a fortnight to acclimatise themselves to a majorly revamped World’s Edge map, rejigged ranked changes and, of course, a fresh metagame, however, players are beginning to notice the presence of a few cracks in an otherwise flawless update.
Currently, one of the hottest topics over on Apex‘s official subreddit is that concerning Revenant’s hitboxes. The term, for those unaware, refers to the surface area of each Legend which, when hit, registers incoming damage. Due to their size, characters such as Gibraltar and Caustic are ‘easier’ to hit as a result, a downside that ultimately resulted in Respawn giving both characters a buff to their defence.
Naturally, small, fast-moving members of the roster such as Wraith are more difficult to hit, an advantage recently offset by the introduction of a 5% damage bonus on all heroes deemed to be petite. Revenant falls into this latter category which, following heavy testing, fans believe to be a mistake. Check out the evidence for yourselves over on Reddit.
Simply put, the issue is that Revenant, despite taking 5% more damage, has a much larger hitbox than Wraith or Octane, often making it feel as if the newcomer has the defence rating of a potato. As SAS97x’s example above shows, even when clearly missing shots in empty spaces around the character’s slender frame, the game still registers them as a hit. Hardly an ideal situation, then, and one that, should the developer see fit to address, could be fixed via a number of different methods. Currently, the most popular changes appear to be either the removal of Revenant’s 5% damage penalty or a tightening of his hitbox.
Respawn has yet to acknowledge the current big issue affecting Apex Legends but we’ll be sure to update you as and when it does, so stay tuned.