The ALGS Split One Playoffs ended when Reject Winnity saw victory, with fans the world over getting to enjoy incredibly high-level matches. It’s pretty easy to see whatApex Legendsmeta dominated the competition as far as characters go, with a majority of teams consistently running Bangalore, Bloodhound, and Caustic (with a few teams opting for Wattsons, Conduits, and others), but it could be a bit harder to gauge whatApex Legendsguns dominated. There was definitely more variety at play, with Havocs and Hemlocks running rampant, Mozambiques getting used, and pretty much everything under the sun getting some highlights, including the R-99.
During ALGS, Game Rant saw down withApex Legends' battle royale systems lead Eric Canavese to discuss everything from the guns at play in ALGS to decisions made behind the scenes, like how the team decides to introduce anew weapon intoApex Legendswhen it does. Canavese also spoke about how content gets shipped, how his team makes decisions, and much more.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Apex Legends Weapon Meta at ALGS
Q: Could you introduce yourself and discuss how you juggle watching the high-level play of ALGS as a developer, but also as a fan of the game?
Canavese:My name is Eric Canavese. I’m the battle royale systems lead. My team works on weapons, loot, and the rules of the battle royale, basically anything that’s not legends, game modes, events, or anything like that. All the core gameplay, the moment-to-moment gameplay that you’re playing in the game, comes from my team.
When I’m watching ALGS, high-level pros, high-level streamers, or anything like that, I’m watching it with the biggest block of salt I can possibly find because they represent a very honed skill ceiling - like nearest to the skill ceiling that we can possibly have. That, quite honestly, is not what the majority of our players are doing with these tools. While I use it as a very potent tool for us to understand the state of everything, I look at anALGS gamelike this: if you could have a simulation where you eliminate all of the variables and all of the mistakes that regular players would make, ALGS is the closest to those simulations that we can get. I use it like that, with the understanding that when we actually use it, when the casual players, the majority of real-life human beings, use these weapons, they’re not hitting every single bullet in every gun and tracking perfectly.
So we need to use it for what it is and what it represents, that high-skill ceiling, and then we need to translate that for the rest of us and see: What is it? How does it function, and how strong is it in our hands? We use data for that, stories, and social media, and we scrape everything that we can possibly find to paint the most vivid and accurate picture of what the particular piece of content’s strengths and weaknesses are across all the different skill levels.
Really, when I’m watching these players execute at such a high degree, I’m just so fascinated by their ability to find and execute on mechanics, features, and synergies that we maybe thought could exist, but were never truly able to experience. Then they go and do it in an hour! And we were like: “I’ve been playing this for six months! I did not know you could do that!” And then we say: “Oh, is that good? Yeah, sure, it’s good, we’ll leave it in.” Or we will adjust it or hotfix it.
Q: Watching ALGS, the Legends meta is pretty obvious, but the guns and loot are a little less easy to see with the eye. So I was curious if there’s been anything so far that has stood out to you regarding the guns or the loot now that you’ve seen it?
A:Yeah, what stands out to me is, I’m not surprised, but I wasn’t expecting so much Havoc today. Havoc has been pretty dominant - every team’s got a Havoc, maybe two, maybe three, and we’re even seeing a lot of double Energy! Double Energy has traditionally been a pretty hard combo to run. Energy is highly sought after; there are not as manyEnergy weapons. Oftentimes, one of them is locked away in a care package or something like that, so generally speaking, double Energy isn’t a type you see a lot of. We’re seeing it quite often here today with like a Havoc and a Volt or a Triple-Take and Havoc or something like that. I think that’s really cool, that this ecosystem has allowed double Energy and Energy-heavy loadouts to thrive.
I think that’s the biggest thing on my radar. Again, I know theHavoc is strong. I’m not unaware that it’s a strong gun. It’s just interesting to see that so many people are gravitating towards it, and using it in hyper CQC like a shotgun or an SMG. It’s like - it’s not even what it’s really the best at. I mean, it may be the best at it now, but it wasn’t what its design was ever reallyfor,especially with that delay at the start of the firing. It quite literally has always been classified as a poor CQC weapon because of that delay. And again, these players who are operating at such a high degree, they playaroundthat delay because 18 damage a bullet is a hell of a drug, and it’s worth the delay to get in there, barrel stuff somebody, and take them out. With 36 bullets in the mag, it’s kind of got everything you need, if you can work around its weaknesses. And with these players, the weaknesses aren’t even there for them.
Q: It’s so interesting. I’ve seen it used in close quarters a couple of times.
A:It’s just got great hip fire and great spray if you pre-fire properly. I was actually talking with one of our other devs about this the other day, about how the Havoc is working and why I think it’s actually pushing up into the CQC meta more than we originally anticipated it would. Because with a 36-mag bullet, it’s quite large. With the delay at the front, we’re actually asking you to pre-fire it if you want to be successful in CQC. When you have a purple mag on it, you can pre-fire to get through that delay, and you can actually waste the first six bullets in your pre-fire phase because you’ve got 30 more bullets of 18 damage each ready to come out.
That’s actually quite a large uptime of damage after you get through the initial delay. Even though that was never the intention, I think these things are allowing it to be used in that CQC compensation for that pre-fire, and we’re seeing high-skill players are able to actually use it in a way that traditionally it was never really designed for, which is cool. Again, they can push these things to the nth degree so that they’re as powerful as they could probably be. Like, squeeze the last bit of power out of these weapons. It’s really exciting. It’s really interesting - and now I have so much work to do!
Q: It’s not being used as much as the Havoc, but I’ve seen quite a few people pick up the Mozambique. Can you talk a little bit about getting that weapon from the joke weapon it kind of was in the early days to competitively viable for ALGS today?
A:What a ride the Mozambique has had. It’s a great question. I’ve never really taken a second to step back and look at thejourney of the Mozambique, but you’re right. It’s a pretty interesting one. I’m very excited. It’s always important to us - every gun in our game has a place on the roster. It is there for a reason. We don’t have shades of gray on the roster. Everything does something specific, solves a certain problem in the gameplay, offers an opportunity that maybe wasn’t there without it.
Everything in the weapon roster is designed to do something specific, and the Mozambique is designed to be an early-game shotgun that has late-game transition with the Hammer Points but ultimately is not a powerhouse. We often expect you to drop the Mozambique for the other ones. However, the handling of the Mozambique, the speed at which the game is being played with the smoke that is very high in the meta right now, and having high ADS strafe speed has really elevated the Mozambique in the meta. You want to be fast when you’re dancing in that smoke with other Bangalores because Bangalore is going to get her movement speed passive popping off, so you have to have something that can combat that. That means you need to bring high-speed weapons into those combat scenarios, and that’s where you start getting things like the Mozambique.
you may’t bring a PK or the Mastiff in there and have that speed. You bring the light weapons, so the Mozambique has that agility advantage over the other shotguns. It can have the threat vision that SMGs have not been able to take anymore. You combine that with who you’re fighting, and you have smoke on every team. You have a recipe now: the Mozambique has a special and unique place in the shotgun meta, combined with the unique Legend meta that we’re experiencing right now, which has created this platform for it to be elevated. That’s why, I see, the Mozambique has organically pushed its way through the meta and said: “I have a place here, in these hyper-CQC encounters where you’re combating with other speedsters.” That’s why it’s being pushed up, and you know, you’ve got risk-reward there, with being slightly lower on the upfront damage. If you’ve gotHammerpoints, you can rip through and finish those fights. I love it.
We design every weapon with the intention that, if the setting is right, it could be a top tier weapon. We never say, “You’ll never be a good gun.” There are early-game weapons, there are transitionary weapons, but everything needs to compete. And a P2020 is not a bad gun.
Q: I’m bad with it.
A:We’re all bad with it. It’s not a forgiving gun, but it’s a good gun. The damage uptime, thedamage output of a P2020, the fire rate - if you’re good with it, if you’re able to track with it, you can put out a lot of damage with these weapons. It’s just finding the right place and the right environment around them to give them the platform to be the strong one now.
Q: Going back to something you said a bit ago, you mentioned how ALGS represents that perfect simulation, or close to it. But even then, we’re seeing outliers, like DarkZero, who have literally broken records here this weekend. When you’re already looking at high-level play, how do outliers like that even factor in?
A:There are always exceptions to the rule. And even when we’re at the highest level, there’s always a bigger shark, right? Someday, we’ll find a bigger shark than DarkZero. I think that when you’re balancing a game that millions of people are playing, and the skill brackets or skill bands are so varied - from “what’s a gun?” to “breaking records at ALGS events” - you have to average stuff out sometimes. That’s when data and analytics come into play. Making the best decisions requires looking at the anecdotal evidence from record breakers and also that data to paint that picture of “what is the state of it?” What’s the top end? What’s the bottom, and what are all of us doing in the middle?"
Then, it’s sort of like how do you weigh those? And what’s the specific problem? If DarkZero had broken their record off of a weapon nobody’s ever used before, using a part of it that was unintended, then I would probably go use that as anecdotal evidence on why something should probably change, but we generally don’t do that. That’s more like a bug or an unintended interaction. If they just got really good with it and they’ve been putting in the work, the hours, scrimming, and they know what they’re doing - I mean, more power to them! I’m not going to go change something just because somebody figured out how to pop off. We use all of those data points to make the best, most holistic, and healthiest decisions for the game that’s going to make the vast majority of players happy and excited to be playing. We’re not out here balancing the game just for the pros, and we’re not out here balancing it just for the people who don’t understand how bullets work. It’s a game for everyone. And when we make these decisions, we try to make the best decisions for everyone, obviously not trying to ostracize any one particular group of players or skill of players.
Q: When you’re looking at the meta, how do you define the key differences between looking at short-, medium-, and long-range weapons?
A:That’s a good question. Usually, it’s in the ballistics: the gravity of the bullets, the projectile speeds of the bullets, and how much bullet drop the gun is going to have. That’ll help us to understand the ranges at which we think they’re going to be effective. Because, obviously, when you are aiming down sights, how far away is the sight true to accuracy? When you put the dot on their head, how far away is that dot still going to hit the head? On a sniper, quite far. Marksman, closer. AR, a little closer. SMG, very close. Shotgun, I’m pretty close. The ballistics of the actual gun is how we generally decide and define what the ranges are going to be for those weapons.
Even within those, there are outliers, right? In the Marksman weapons, the 30-30 has a pretty significant bullet drop compared to the Triple Take, which has Energy bullets. Energy bullets, traditionally inApex,have very little bullet drop, so it’s kind of a hidden perk of Energy weapons. Those bullets are always going to fly farther and faster than their Heavy or Light counterparts. But when we’re making weapons, we absolutely define them - the range is part of their identity. For example, theWingman is a long-range pistoland the RE-45 is a very short-range pistol. If you were to crack open the data, you would see: ‘Oh, wow, the bullet speed is 10,000 on the Wingman, and it’s 4000 on the RE-45.’ That’s very hard evidence that these weapons are going to be effective in different engagement ranges.
Q:Apexfeels very meta upon meta upon meta. There’s the Legends meta, there’s the overarching gun meta, but then, we could look at meta within each weapon or each ammo type, and then each range. For high-level play, how do you approach dealing with all these different meta factors?
A:I’m going to give you a terrible answer because it is the best answer. It’s tough. I’ve been balancing guns for a long time. I’ve been thinking about, analyzing, and studying metas in our game and other games for a really long time. At this point, it’s a gut feeling about what I think is going to make the healthiest changes to the game.
For any meta decision that comes through from my team, specifically on weapons because those are the things that I think have the most impact when we’re making meta changes, we all sit down and we talk about it for hours. At the end of the day, we’re all like: ‘How do we feel? How’s your gut feel about this? Pretty good. Okay, mine feels pretty good too. Let’s try it. Let’s go for it.’ There is a science, I suppose, in the data, in feeding the right information into these decisions, but at the end of the day, it’s just a bunch of gamers who think about this game nonstop, deciding what they think is going to make the game better. We play and then we build it. We play it and we’re like, ‘Yeah, that was great’ or ‘It was stupid, let’s not do that.’
We have canceled and pulled out and cut far more things than we have shipped, in the pursuit of trying to find the healthiest and the most fun gameplay that we can. The general rule of thumb in design is that you’re probably not going to nail it the first time. You’ve got to make it and try it. Maybe you’ll iterate, or maybe you’ll chuck it in the bin and try something new.
Q: The whole “gut check vibe” thing is super awesome because there’s got to be a human element to this stuff, right?New Vegaswas like, we did vibes on our weapons.Another Crab’s Treasurewas like, we did vibes on our bosses. I’m like - that means nothing to me, but I’msoglad that means something to you.
A:When you work on it for so long, you kind of form that baseline in your head about like, what is it? What does “good” look like? Once you understand what good looks like, you’re able to start making decisions based off of that, and then push the boundary, push the envelope, and start chasing “great” and “amazing.” But yeah, you baseline on “good” and you keep pushing from there.
Q: It’s been about five seasons now since the Nemesis was introduced. What kind of things do you consider before bringing a new weapon into the meta?
A:It goes back to the stuff we were talking about earlier, where it’s got to have a true reason to exist. We’re not really interested in making new weapons that just do what other weapons do but slightly different. Or, where it’s just there like an R-301 with a fresh coat of paint, but it’s just basically another assault rifle. No interest in that, because we want players to have an actual relationship with these weapons. Like, the Mastiff does what the Mastiff does, and I love thehorizontal blast pattern on the Mastiff. It’s a gun that speaks to me, and you start losing that when you make 20 different shotguns. It’s like: why do you even care about the 18th shotgun vs. the 17th shotgun? What do they even do differently? Keeping a tight roster is important to us.
I’m not saying we’re never going to release other guns, but what I’m saying is we take a real strong look at the meta, the economy, and the ecosystem of weapons and decide: What are we missing? What gameplay don’t we have? What situations don’t have good answers? Is there a weapon or is there a tool that we can provide to players to create more gameplay in the world and more opportunities that don’t exist? It’s all about creating more scenarios and exciting opportunities for players to seize or defend against.
That’s where we start getting into: Is it good gameplay? Is there counter-gameplay? What is this adding to the space? And if it’s not adding anything, it’s not going in the game.
Player Agency, Expression, and Armor in Apex Legends
Q: This is the first ALGS Playoffs since the armor changes. How do you think that has changed high-level play in the loot meta?
A:I think it’s changed for the better, to be honest. Everybody’s starting on the same footing and having access to the same kind of armor qualities at around the same time intervals. It has been incredibly healthy for the competitive scene because, before, you’dRNG into purple armorand win the fight because your side of the POI had loot and the other side didn’t. I think that has created a much healthier dynamic, and I think it’s made 50/50 contests more exciting. Because they’re not decided on the first two seconds of landing and who’s closer to the better loot.
Maybe in the gun area, there’s still some play there. I think that’s fine, to have RNG on the weapons you’re getting, but to RNG into your health pool seemed a little bit unfair. I think this new version has provided a deterministic and interesting way for players to push and pull within the space of: everybody is going to have relatively the same strengths as the phases of the game progress. But there’s still expression there. Like, are you going to rotate to Harvester? Are you going to go for camps? What are you going to do to push your team slightly farther ahead?
As long as we still retain that, that expression for players to optimize their routes and think about, what are the best rotates that they can make for their specific phase of the game or their specific level that they’re currently at. What do they need to get to that next breakpoint? So, as we still provide opportunities for players to do that, I think where we’re headed with armor and how we’re kind of treating the game and access to this power has been really good for very specifically the competitive scene. But I also think it smooths out a lot of that “getting screwed by RNG early” for just the regular players in the game as well.
Q: Yesterday, I was talking with one of the teams, and one thing they highlighted that they really enjoyed aboutApexover other games is the fact that there is a lot of thought in every element ofApex.You have to decide your rotations, your weapons, your meta, your comp, all of that. How do you, as a designer on the game, take into account player choice in all of these elements?
A:Agency is giving players the choices, and the options to make those choices, of whatever is going to be good for them in those moments. We want to provide agency to players so that it’s their game that they’re playing. That means: What are all the things that I can do now? I’m going to choose this because I think it’s going to make me have the most success. Whenever we’re making a change, we always come back to: “Do we still provide the player enough agency? Do we still provide the player enough control over their own destiny in this match? Or are we taking too much agency away? Are we saying, “Oh, well, you have to do it this way or you will be unsuccessful?”
When we’re making those decisions, we always look back to the player. What decision points will the player have now that we’ve made this change? The Armor changes, for example, are kind of what I was talking about, having that expression of how they’re going to pull ahead or what they want to do. That’s agency.
We’re saying there’s the agency to go to the Evo Harvesters, or the agency to go to the camps, or the agency to just pick a fight. We needed to ensure that all of those vectors of progression were still there, so players could choose the way that they wanted to progress in the game. Do I want to drop cold and do a long rotate and scoop up harvesters, or do I want to drop mid, take fights, hot drop and ape everything that I can? Because both of those are completely viable ways for you to level up and make it to the end game in red. What is good for you, as a player in your play style?
We always go back to that, especially when we’re making a change. What agency did the player have before? What agency are we continuing to provide or taking away - and is that still healthy for the game? And are we still providing enough agency that the players are thinking that the game is still working for them, and not forcing them to do something that they don’t want to do?
Q: As a wrap-up question, if you had to summarize the state of the meta in two to three words, what would you say?
A:What we always say is: we’re currently in the “Can’t See Sh*t” meta, which is theBangalore-Bloodhound-Caustic meta. That would be how we have to summarize this current meta that we’re in. Luckily, the Digi-Threat is helping out at the moment. It’s tough. It’s always hard to understand the meta you’re currently in until it’s sort of over.
I think we’re in a pretty good meta right now. The meta seems pretty varied, and we are seeing a lot of variance in player loadouts, even in ALGS. Yeah, the Hemlock is everywhere, and the Havoc is everywhere, but there’s also other stuff everywhere too. We’re seeing a lot of Sentinel play, a lot of Triple-Take play, andSMGs are still there: Volt, Car. I saw somebody one-clip with an R-99 yesterday and people are still trying to tell me it’s dead - like, come on!
I think, right now, the Legend meta has pulled ahead in terms of defining the meta that we’re in right now at this particular instance and milestone in time. The “Can’t See Shit” meta is pretty much the best way we can describe it at the moment, and with Digis being pulled back on, it sort of solidified that - Digis not going on, like, Wingman and SMGs and stuff.
Previous metas, though, we’ve had, you know, “Shotgun Legends” when the Mastiff was really strong. We just got out of a “30-30 Legends” meta - three 30-30s on a team, you just crack one person, take him down, and 3v1. I think the moment when a meta gets a name - that’s when we realize we should probably fix it. Because once it gets a name, it becomes one-note like everybody just run this. This is the team comp. This is the weapon comp. Once we define a meta like that, it signifies that something has pulled ahead for enough time that it has got memed and got a name.
That usually means it’s time to address it, or at least start looking at it and see: Is this healthy? Do we need to nerf - or, better yet, do we need to buff? To pull things up to that level so that it’s still fun and exciting? You know, we try to buff and nerf and make the right call on whether it’s time to buff or nerf something just because we don’t like always pulling things down. We definitely want to pull things up to make them fun, as well.
[END]
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