Apex Legends Aftermarket Patch Notes Includes Cross-Play, Flashpoint LTM
The Apex Legends Aftermarket patch notes went live Tuesday, bringing details of the new cross-platform play system, the Flashpoint limited-time mode, an Heirloom for Caustic, changes to Legends and weapons, quality of life improvements and bug fixes.
Apex Legends Aftermarket Patch Notes: Cross-Play
Cross-platform play began in open beta Tuesday. Apex Legends players are able to party up on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Origin, while Steam players will be able to join once Apex Legends launches on that platform. The feature is enabled by default, but players can opt out if they care to.
Developer Respawn Entertainment will collect data and feedback from players about the functionality of cross-play throughout the beta.
Apex Legends Aftermarket Patch Notes: Caustic's Heirloom, New Cosmetics
As revealed in data mining, Caustic's Heirloom is a huge hammer that spews Caustic's trademark toxic gas. Caustic's face appears on the back side of the hammer.
The Heirloom is one of 24 new cosmetics introduced in the Aftermarket Collection event. Most can be purchased directly or through Event Apex Packs, but some can be unlocked by making progress on an Aftermarket-specific prize track with challenges that can offer players up to 1,000 points per day.
Apex Legends Aftermarket Patch Notes: Flashpoint LTM
The new Flashpoint LTM is played on Kings Canyon. No healing items spawn in-game, replaced by safe zones called Flash Points that regenerate players' health and shields as long as they stand inside. These Flash Points slowly get boxed out by an ever-shrinking circle.
Players can still craft Phoenix Kits and Crafting Replications.
Apex Legends Aftermarket Patch Notes: Legend Changes
Rampart
- Increased the rate at which Sheila’s bullet spread tightens
Bloodhound
- Updated Bloodhound’s tactical cooldown while ultimate is active from 6 seconds to 8 seconds.
Dev Note: The 6.0 changes have been extremely powerful for Bloodhound. Their ultimate is now truly a moment you should fear as the enemy. We think we might have gone a little far with 6s. Against a competent BH, there would only ever be 2s during which you’re not scanned. Changing it to 8s means you’ve got 4s of being revealed and 4s to reposition in between pulses.
Pathfinder
- Grapple cooldown is now based on the distance Pathfinder traveled. The shortest possible pull has a 10s cooldown; the maximum cooldown is still 35s, but you’re going to have to swing a very long distance to get there. Have fun out there, friends!
Dev note: Pathfinder mains rejoice, the Outlands' happiest robot is getting some love. Instead of dropping grapple cooldown back to 15s where it was before, or moving it to 25s as a compromise, we considered a player suggestion (thanks Reddit) to have the Grapple drain energy as it goes, similar to Titanfall 2. The difference here is we’re looking at your full distance traveled: from the moment you leave the ground to when you’re on the ground again and not sliding at crazy high speeds.
What this means is two things: Bad Pathfinder players, no longer need to fear the faceplant grapple quite as much. If you’re not going anywhere, you’re not incurring much of a cooldown. If you’re really really good at Pathfinder and looking for the absolute max distance grapple, you’ll still have a 35s cooldown, assuming you land it. This both buffs Path a little less for the scariest robot players out there and it also opens up room for extra skill expression: can you find useful short-distance grapples that’ll give you a shorter CD but still do something good for you? Looking forward to seeing what you all do with this one.
Wraith
- Updated Wraith’s sprint animation.
Dev note: Wraith is a very challenging Legend to nerf. We look at Legend performance across a number of axes: how often trios with this Legend on them win games / place highly, how often this Legend gets knock downs vs. is knocked down, how often this Legend is picked. Across each and every single one of these axes, Wraith dominates. And yet each time we hit her abilities (which we’ve done a lot) she bounces back within a few weeks without bleeding a lot of pick rate. Her kit is uniquely useful both in solo games and in highly coordinated games. Also she’s just really cool. We get it.
We don’t want to hit her abilities anymore. We think both she and Pathfinder have been pushed to the edge in terms of cooldown and utility nerfs where pushing them any further would make them a lot less fun to play. We don’t want that! So we started looking at other Legend specific things that could give her this power — and discovered that her sprinting animations are unique in how much they artificially shorten her (by hunching over), thus shrinking her shootable area from the perspective of the enemy. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but taken together with her already small hitbox, it’s a lot of power.
This patch, we’re introducing a new set of sprint animations for Wraith. These are much more upright and expose a larger area of her body to gunfire. Now we know her old sprint was iconic and we hate to see it go as well, but we believe this is the best way by far of bringing her in line without having to hit her abilities again. Depending on what we see after these animations go live, we may even be able to put some power back into her abilities (no promises though).As always, we will be listening to feedback and monitoring data on this change.
Crypto
- Crypto’s Drone can now open loot vaults if Crypto has a key in his inventory. It consumes the key as usual.
Loba
- Increased range of ultimate & passive from 3100 units to 4500 units.
- Loba now starts the match with her ultimate half charged.
Apex Legends Aftermarket Patch Notes: Weapon Changes
Devotion
- Increasing hipfire spread at a base level and also increasing the spread added while firing.
Spitfire
- We try to keep hipfire numbers consistent with similar weapons of the same class. So, the hipfire spread increase on the Devotion is also being applied to the Spitfire. To compensate, we are reducing horizontal recoil on the Spitfire.
Triple Take
- Reduced fire rate from 1.4 to 1.3.
Apex Legends Aftermarket Patch Notes: Quality of Life Improvements
- Loot Prompts now show how much damage an evo shield has accumulated, so you can make a better decision when switching.
- You are now able to switch to same-level armor that has less health, if it is closer to evolving.
Loot Prompts will now have a small indicator that lets you know if your teammate needs this item, so you can ping it! - Performance Display is a new option that activates a panel that appears in the top right corner of your screen during a match. The data displayed is as follows:
FPS – Frames Per Second, or how quickly your game is rendering frames
Latency – The time (in milliseconds) it takes for your game client to communicate to the server and back
Loss – Indicates the percentage of packet data lost per second on its way to or from the server
Choke – Indicates the percentage of packet data congestion on its way from the server
In/Out – The amount of data being sent from/to the server - Anonymous Mode has been added to the options. Anonymize your name in the champion presentation, obituary, and other locations of living opponents.
- Level 0 Evo Armor will now appear as empty in the inventory, so you can ping to request for Armor
- There are more banners placed around World’s Edge to better support Cryptos ability to see nearby squads in his drone.
- Out of Bounds — The out of bounds timer no longer refreshes each time you enter a new out of bounds area. The timer is now a fixed amount of time: 30 seconds. If you enter new out of bounds areas, the timer will steadily decrease. However, if you only have 5 seconds left, the timer will keep refreshing up to that 5 second mark. This should work against people exploiting the timer, while still allowing time for people to get down if they land up there.
- Random Favorite selection added for Music and Loadscreen categories
- Holo Sprays will now remember which players liked them, and will display a count to the owner. This also prevents other players from spamming “like” on the holo spray.
- Legend Tokens have been minimized to a tool tip in the lobby. Hover over your currency to see your amount.
Apex Legends Aftermarket Patch Notes: Bug Fixes
General
- Added the ability to ping the satellite dish at Crypto’s Map Room from the dropship.
Gibraltar
- Fixed an issue with the bubble shield looking white in certain conditions.
Lifeline
- Fixed an issue with the “Guardian Angel” Skin having a stretched neck when using Sheila.
- Fixed an issue where care packages would not be allowed to be placed on certain parts of Capacitor, Rig, or Salvage in Kings Canyon.
Caustic
- Fixed Caustic barrels from being placed at an angle on shipping crates.
Mirage
- Fixed an issue that prevented Mirage decoys from being pinged.
- Fixed an issue that did not allow Crypto’s drone to highlight decoys.
Octane
- Fixed a visual issue that removed Revenant’s shadow form from a player after jumping off an Octane Jump Pad.
- Fixed an issue with the Jump Pad clipping into the ground in certain areas
Crypto
- Fixed an issue with his drone not detecting Wattson’s Security Fences.
- Fixed an audio issue with survey beacon sometimes making very little sound when using it as Crypto’s drone.
- Fixed an issue with his drone not taking damage from directly below.
Revenant
- Fixed an issue with the HUD of the Replicator staying on screen when the totem effect wears off.
Loba
- Fixed inconsistencies with teleporting onto a supply ship.
- Fixed an issue allowing teleporting into drills around Lava Fissure.
- Fixed an issue preventing teleporting on certain terrain in Staging.
Rampart
- Fixed an issue with doors closing when dismounting a placed Sheila in a doorway.
- Fixed Amped Cover from floating in the air when placed on a supply ship.
- Fixed an issue with being able to place Sheila on loot bins.
- Fixed an issue with Longbow DMR, Triple Take, Mastiff and Sentinel not always receiving the Amped Cover buff.
- Fixed an issue with Amped Cover being able to be placed at bad angles around the map.
- Fixed an issue with the Amped Cover not being destroyed by the initial blast of Charge Rifle.
- Fixed an issue with bullets getting amped before they cross the amped wall from certain angles.
L-Star
- Fixed an issue with overheating occurring when firing a single shot from the weapon multiple times.